The Lexicographer's Rules

This is my latest column in the Malaysia Star. Thanks to cousin Kirk Gadberry, whose query about "chinny chin chin" gave me the idea of talking about the lore of children. We'll be talking more about counting rhymes and such on an upcoming episode of the radio show, now carried in many more markets across the country and available by podcast, too.

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My son is two and we are well beyond the “peek-a-boo” stage (also called “peep-eye”, “peepo” or “beebo” in some places), so I spend a good deal of time telling him stories.

Books we have by the dozens, but every once in a while I like to tell him a story off the top of my head – from my own imagination – such as how the monkey family gave him to us because he didn’t have tail or fur (not true; the monkey part, I mean – he indeed does not have a tail or fur).

Harder to recall are the fairy tales, those stories passed from ear to mouth over the generations. I can recollect only bits and pieces of rhymes, songs, and stories I knew as a child.

I do recall most of ‘The Three Little Pigs’. There are three pigs, and a wolf who is trying to get inside their houses, and in response to his demands, the pigs say the memorable phrase, “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.”

This is partly a nonsense phrase, of course. That jutting feature of the face just below the mouth doesn’t need the “chinny chin”. So why do we add the extra words?

Well, in a version of the story that predates the version we usually tell today, the pigs were goats. Although pigs do have whiskers of a sort, goats have beards, which makes more sense.

The wolf would say something like “Let me in!” and the goats would reply, “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!”

The extra syllables were added to “chin” to make “chinny chin chin” in order to rhyme with the right rhythm and meter.

Other mysterious language of childhood includes what are called “counting rhymes”. When it comes time to play a game, somebody has to go first. Children try to keep each other fair, so you must “count off” (point at each person in turn until you reach the end).

One counting rhyme we used when I was a boy was:

One potato, two potato, three potato, four.
Five potato, six potato, seven potato, ore.

The potatoes are there to give it the proper counting rhythm. Every time you say a number and a potato, you point to a person.

The “ore” is probably from an old-fashioned pronunciation of “over”, which means that if the count lands on you when it’s said, then you are counted out. Then the rhyme is done again and the last person left is “it”.

Being “it” is a prime honour. It means you are the one who controls the game play and, probably, has the most fun. “It” is the person who chases everyone else when playing tag, “it” is the person who covers their eyes while everyone else hides in the game ‘hide and seek’, and “it” is the person who gives the orders in the game ‘Mother May I’ which is all about following instructions.

There are also a variety of counting rhymes that begin “eeny, meany, miney, moe” and are followed by any number of verses, some of them off-colour (meaning, racist or prejudiced), so I won’t repeat them here. Given that these are generally transmitted between children, the values and mores (the basic customs of a community; pronounced “MORE-ayze”) of parents don’t necessarily come into play.

There are also rhymes for teaching the numbers and their order. The one that most people know is “One, two, buckle my shoe; three, four, open the door” and so on. Then there’s this one – no longer in use, as far as I can tell – recorded in 1798 which is part of a set of rhymes meant to teach multiplication tables:

So 5 times 8 were 40 Scots,
Who came from Aberdeen,
And 5 times 9 were 45,
Which gave them all the spleen.

“To give someone the spleen” is an archaic expression which means “to make someone angry”.

There are also childhood superstitions that my son won’t learn from me. He’ll probably learn them from his friends.

One is “step on a crack, break your mother’s back”. This is something you say as you walk on the pavement and it causes a great deal of hopping and skipping as you try to avoid the cracks.

And when my son gets older, there will no doubt be punching games. These are, basically, excuses for young boys to hit each other. One common one was called “the eye” when we were growing up, but that’s just one of many names.

A boy will make the “okay” sign with his hand – the thumb and index finger forming a circle – and he’ll rest it on his leg. The first person to see it gets punched in the arm or leg. Juvenile and childish, but that’s boys for you.

My latest column has been published in the Malaysia Star.

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Folks from those parts of the world—or even the parts of the United States—that have only known warm climates have a hard time getting a handle on snow, even after a few winters where snow is common.

So it occurs to me—as I stare out my window here in New York City at 11 inches of the white stuff, as the weathercasters (those people paid to predict the weather) sometimes like to call it—that a glossary of some of the more interesting snow language would not go amiss.

A big snowstorm that dumps a lot of snow fast can be called a thump snow, because it seems so sudden that you can imagine you might hear a sound like a dropped box of books.

A monstrously large snowstorm deserves its own name, like those given to hurricanes. One that swept across Canada earlier this winter was called Snowmageddon and the Snowpocalypse.

Snowmageddon is the word “snow” plus part of the word “Armageddon”, a battle scene marked in Christian theology as a precursor to the Day of Judgment, in which the sins of all people are counted.

Snowpocalypse, similarly, is the word “snow” plus the word “apocalypse”, predicted in the Christian Bible as the final destruction of the world.

Both words, “Armageddon” and “apocalypse”, are often used trivially to refer to something serious or dangerous and both often lend part of themselves to other words to indicate something disastrous.

That’s not to say that thundersnow (a snowstorm accompanied by thunder) and blizzards (severe snowstorms that make it impossible to see very far or to survive very long out of doors) aren’t scary. They are. Either one can whisk your courage right away.

But we handle large snowfalls all the same, with snow shovels and snow plows, vehicles—sometimes garbage trucks with large, long blades affixed to their fronts—that push snow off the roads, mittens and gloves, hats and scarves, and lots of hot drinks.

Sometimes, snow plows perform echelon plowing, in which several line up like geese in a flying-V formation, each pushing the snow a little further off the roadway than the ones in front of it.

Drivers of vehicles that have to travel in the snow might hang iron or chain up. That is, they put specially made metal chains on their tyres so that they can have added traction on the slippery roads.

Of course, snow isn’t all a chore. A day off from school or work is sometimes given because snow makes it difficult to travel. This is simply called a snow day.

If you have a snow day, you might hit the slopes, meaning you might go skiing, for which all you need are two boards strapped to your feet and a death wish (usually meaning a desire to die, but here a joking way of referring to someone’s desire to do fun but dangerous things).

But there’s also snowboarding, which is like skateboarding (or surfing) and skiing combined; snowski, which is basically skiing with just one board strapped to your foot; and snowboardcross, a mix between snowboarding and competitive off-road bicycling.

Of course, for some people, a day on the slopes isn’t a day off from work but a day at work. Professional or competitive skiers look for hero snow, snow so perfect that it makes the skiing look magical (especially if they are professional skiers in competitions).

They might also seek out hero bumps, small moguls (bumps created by lots of previous skiers) that make it easy for them to perform high-scoring moves. They might also look for windlips, snow that has been built-up into an inviting wave-like shape by the wind. You can ski right off of these straight into the air.

If you’re not a professional—or you are but your abilities aren’t up to snuff (good enough)—you might end up in what is jokingly called a snow sale or a yard sale. You will fall and everything—boots, skis, ski poles, clothes, body, etc—will be spread across the snowy slopes.

It’s called that because it looks kind of like a yard sale, when people sell their belongings from the lawn or yard in front of their homes.

Of course, you can always go snowmobiling, too. (Not in New York City, mind you.) In Alaska and parts of Canada, they call them snow machines, but they’re the same vehicle, a small, motorised transport with tracks in the back—like those on a military tank—rather than wheels. You sit astride them like a child riding on his papa’s back.

One way to stay entertained with a snowmobile is to do what is called highmarking. It’s a dangerous pastime of driving the machine straight up a steep incline to see how far you can go.

Unfortunately, if a snowmachiner (someone who rides a snow machine) goes too far, the machine will overturn and it can fall on them and kill them. Not recommended.

Sliding around on a cardboard box can be fun, too. And safer.

My latest column in the Malaysia Star is about the language of zombies. Aarrgurrggghhhhhh!

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The word “zombie” means a person who has come back from the dead and is now walking the Earth. Arising out of the religions brought by African slaves to the New World, the word traces it roots back to the religions of that continent more than 200 years ago.

In the earliest French writings, the zombi, as it was usually spelled, is simply called a spirit or a powerful being.

Travelling along with the word in English, however, has long been the idea that a zombie is mindless and not altogether itself.

For example, someone can be said to behave like a zombie if they don’t show emotion, if they seem uninterested or unengaged in life, or if they seem to be very tired.

A zombie can also be anybody who is loyal to someone or something in an unthinking way, such as someone who follows a sports team slavishly (meaning they think everything their favourite team does is interesting). If you buy every book written by a favourite author, you might be said to be zombie-like in your devotion.

A zombie is also someone who does the same task repetitively, such as eat one pastry after another without really enjoying it or thinking much about it. A zombie could also be someone who spends too much time playing computer games.

Someone who does a lot of illegal drugs, especially to the point of addiction, is often called a zombie, or at least zombie-like, because there is often something crude and primitive about their behaviour and because their minds are adversely affected. They cannot, in short, think straight.

In Canada, during World War II, a zombie was someone who was conscripted into the military but only to serve inside Canada and not overseas. Of course, every country needs a force to protect its borders, but this duty was seen as somehow less honourable than overseas service. The idea was that they weren’t real men – they only appeared to be the same as other men. This was intended to be insulting.

As you can see, being called a zombie isn’t very flattering. There are some more or less neutral uses, though.

A zombie process, for example, is a background computer program that appears to still be running but isn’t really. That is, it shows up in a list of currently operating software, but it’s not really active. This plays off the idea of a zombie as something that looks alive but isn’t.

A zombie is also a computer that is controlled by illicit or illegal software or by a secret, remote administrator. It is made to do things like send the computer’s information to a distant thief or to send lots of illegal e-mail. It’s like a zombie because it is controlled by an evil outside force.

In the finance world, zombie debt is money that was once owed to a company which, for whatever reason, it stopped trying to collect. Years later, however, that debt resurfaces, usually when the company is bought over and the new owner intends to collect on the debt anew. So, it starts badgering (bothering) the original debtor to make payments. A zombie debt, then, is one that has come back from the dead.

Elsewhere in business, a zombie is a company that is able to pay its bills and service its debt (meaning, make regular payments on money it has borrowed), but it is not able to borrow sufficiently to make improvements and grow, nor does it seem like a good prospect for a takeover. Its debts are too high.

A variant of this zombie company is one that is basically bankrupt but is kept alive by banks which are unwilling to acknowledge that they will never get back the money they loaned the business.

None of these zombies, of course, are as exciting as the ones in the movies.

These people are more brazen by the day. Here's someone repackaging and selling a book which can be had for at no cost from the Internet Archive, which is undoubtedly where they got it.

My latest column in the Malaysia Star.

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A recent New York Times article about Pu’er teas reminded me that I’ve been meaning to talk a bit about the names of food.

The article explained that the tea was thought to reduce cholesterol and cure hangovers, so the Pu’er name had become immensely powerful in selling teas.

This is something like a brand, which means the mark, name, or identifying characteristics of a product that help people identify it.

Usually, though, a brand belongs to a single company. The whole category of curative teas is called a vertical, meaning a single group of products which all compete for the same customers and the Pu’er teas are a smaller vertical still inside the larger one.

You’ll find a similar brand-like behaviour with prosecco, an Italian sparkling wine. According to another story in the New York Times, in 1984, Fabio Zardetto shipped 50 cases to the US. In 2007, he shipped 100,000 cases.

Now, he’s not quite yet in a position to compete against champagne, the French regional designation for the most famous of the sparkling wines. But he’s doing quite well.

He and the other Italian prosecco winemakers did it, of course, by turning their product into a brand and then marketing it. They create an atmosphere of desirability around their product so that distributors would carry it, wine experts would write about it, and customers would buy it. That is largely how names like “prosecco.”come to our attention these days.

Zardetto’s problem, and that of all the Italian prosecco-makers, however, is that “prosecco.”is the name of a grape. Therefore, anyone can call their sparkling wine a “prosecco.” even an Austrian company that sells the wine in cans at gas stations and features a nude, gold-painted Paris Hilton in its ads.

It’s hard to protect a brand name. In Europe, there are cultural, historical, and geographic ties to the names. Wines, beers, breads, balsamic vinegar, olives, and other things are all controlled in varying degrees in this way.

So a group of prosecco-wine makers are looking for protection for the name from the European Union.

The EU government make rules about what products can take what name. Prosecco, as similar as it is to champagne, is forbidden by law from taking the name “champagne.” The prosecco-makers, in turn, hope to forbid other growers and bottlers under the EU’s jurisdiction from using the name “prosecco.”

It’s the same with cheeses. “Parmesan.”and “parmigiano-reggiano.”are strictly controlled in Europe. You can’t sell a cheese by those names in Europe without meeting strict requirements as to where and how the cheese is made.

In the US, of course, we can and do call any cheese “parmesan.”or “parmigiano-reggiano.”

Of course, the US is the country where cheese product – a food-like substance that looks kind of like cheese and tastes kind of like cheese but might not contain any cheese whatsoever – can still be called “cheese.”

Outside Europe, of course, EU laws hold little sway unless there are international agreements. What work is done to control the naming is vaguely performed by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which is part of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Basically, they try to ensure that when something is labelled, for example, “soy sauce.” you’re getting what you think you’re getting.

If you’re Japanese, you want to make sure that “soy sauce.”means a condiment brewed and fermented from soybeans, whereas if you’re an American manufacturer, you want to make sure that the meaning of “soy sauce.”is broad enough to include a condiment that contains an extract of soybean or some other protein, flavour enhancers, and artificial colouring. Again, something that is called “soy sauce.”but is sometimes very far from being soy sauce at all.

A decade or two ago, the Meritage Association of Napa valley created the “Meritage.”name so that they could label what are blended table wines as something other than, well, “table wine.”

The conventional wisdom about wines says that blended wines — those made from more than one kind of grape, like table wines — tend to be inferior, or at the very least too variable to be counted on from bottle to bottle, from case to case, or from year to year.

Nobody with any class or sophistication ever bought a table wine to go with an expensive meal. So the vintners of table wines wanted to class up (improve the image of) the category a bit.

To be a meritage wine, there are specifications as to the types of grapes that must be included (at least two of the grapes used in red wine from Bordeaux), and a vintner must be admitted officially as a member to use the name, which is jealously guarded.

Many controls on the names of other wines specify explicitly that a certain percentage of the wine must be a certain grape in order to take a certain name. Not that violations aren’t found but we have to take their word for it at every pour, don’t we?

Probably the most outrageous example of a product straying far from what its name originally meant is ketchup (or catsup), but I’m not even going to go there. Pass the fish sauce.