February 14, 2023 • 48 mins
Are you feeling merry as a grig? Or merry as a pismire? Pert as a pearmonger? Fit as a fiddle? Where do these idioms come from? Do they make life more fun? If you’ve ever wanted to be in a room full of expert etymologists, this is your ticket. Anatoly Liberman, author of TAKE MY WORD FOR IT: A Dictionary of English Idioms, is joined in conversation by Ari Hoptman and J. Lawrence (Larry) Mitchell. After listening, you will be informed, you will be enthralled, and most importantly, you will never sign off on another letter or e-mail with “All best” again. We are not talking through our hats here.
That’s the cheese!
Episode references:
Notes & Queries, a long-running quarterly scholarly journal est. 1849
James H. Murray, primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary
Theodore Francis (T. F.) Powys
Virginia Woolf
God’s Acre (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Walter W. Skeat (the author of still the most authoritative English etymological dictionary)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (00:07):
To go the whole hog.
Anatole Liberman (00:09):
As merry as a pizmo.
Ari Hoptman (00:10):
Fit as a fiddle.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (00:11):
Before you could say Jack Robinson.
Anatole Liberman (00:14):
As perked as a pear monger.
Ari Hoptman (00:16):
So I don't know him from Adam's off Ox.
Anatole Liberman (00:20):
Draining cats and dogs, peeing through the
nose, and all those strangethings which no one seems to
know anything about. We have methere today to discuss the book
recently published by theUniversity of Minnesota Press.
Take my word for it. There is anidiom in the title, and it's all
(00:42):
about idioms because the book isabout idioms. There is a
subtitle here, a dictionary ofEnglish idioms, and it is a
dictionary of English idioms.
But before we begin to speakabout idioms, I think it would
be good if I introduced allthree of us to the world at
large. I'm Anatole Liberman fromthe University of of Minnesota,
(01:02):
and I'm the author of this book.My friends today, professor
Larry Mitchell and and doctorAri Hochman, have collaborated
with me on the majoretymological project of my life.
And Larry's name is on the coverof a of a dictionary, and Ari's
on the cover of a bibliography.Both books have been published
(01:25):
by the University of MinnesotaPress.
So it's not that we are simplytogether to chat about things
which interest us in some way.We're professionally interested
in etymology and in in origin ofwords, and we are all three
specialists in language history.So that that is the reason why
(01:46):
this team exists. That is asmuch as I can say about about
introductions unless you want toadd something, Ari. You wanted
to add something to myintroduction?
Ari Hoptman (01:56):
No. No. You said it all very nicely.
Anatole Liberman (01:58):
No. No. No. Because I thought the expression
on your face No.
Ari Hoptman (02:01):
No. You said we just were down to three people
gathered to chat about funthings. I said, oh, well well, I
thought we were.
Anatole Liberman (02:07):
Exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to to
talk about fun things. And, themain thing is that, all three
have read the entire book. Well,I have read it because I had no
chance not to read it. I'vewritten it.
And Larry and Ari were kindenough to read it. Though
reading a whole dictionary isprobably another tedious task,
(02:28):
so I'm very grateful to them.But we're here to discuss one
important thing. To what extentis such a book interesting to
the world at large, tospecialists and to
nonspecialists who is going toread it? I am not an objective
critic because I know the bookby heart.
And since I know the book byheart, I have lost the emotional
(02:51):
contact with it that that mademe write it. But you, Larry, and
you are you have recently readthe book, so you are not yet
bored by it or with it. And thisis a very good thing, So you can
certainly say something aboutit. So what do you think? There
are many questions really.
Is it a readable book? Is it abook, or is it only a reference
(03:12):
tool as they say? Is itsomething that people will read
and enjoy? Is it something thatgoes above and over what has
been published along the samelines? What do you think the
future of this book is?
J. Lawrence Mitchell (03:28):
Well, I let me say right away, in terms
of the the reading part of it, Iwouldn't characterize it by
saying I I read the book. Ijumped in at the deep end, I
would say. That is I looked upsomething right away. So I had
something in mind, and I look itup. Then I I'm moved from there,
moving back and forth, inentries.
(03:51):
So it's not a book that I wouldstart by reading at the
beginning under the letter a andgo through the z. Although I
might see look to see if therewas anything on the z or zed as
we might call it. So jumping inthe deep end, I think, is what
most people will do here. Andonce they're in, they'll want to
swim.
Anatole Liberman (04:10):
Not sink, which is a very good thing.
Ari Hoptman (04:13):
And I, opened it up at random and, just looked at
what I found. I just pointed myfinger randomly and said, well,
let's take a look at this. Someof the idioms I knew, some of
the idioms I didn't know, theywere all fun. They were all
interesting. Even the ones thatI I had never heard about, I was
strangely curious to know theetymology of, if that sentence
(04:34):
was grammatical.
I was very close, anyway.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (04:37):
Yeah. I think for many people, the the
issue will be which ones thatthey know and which ones they
don't know so that they want tostart with the ones they know, I
imagine.
Anatole Liberman (04:49):
Very good. Thank you. And, now that you
have heard all of us, perhaps, ashort comment on three different
accents will not be entirely outof place. As you have heard, all
of us speak English, but somehowin a different way or in
different ways. So let me, letme explain how it how it
(05:09):
happened.
Now Larry was born in Scotland,but was educated not in
Scotland. And his is a Britishaccent, which all my life I've
been trying to imitate with verylittle, success. That is every
time when I ask someone who wasborn in England, when I am in
England, would you take me foran Englishman? The answer was a
resounding no under nocircumstances, which is
(05:31):
extremely disappointing becauseI learned English from, from the
BBC seventy or eighty or ninetyyears ago, the way they spoke
English at that time. But thereis something wrong, with my
English.
There is no local accent. Youwill never guess whether I'm
from Devonshire or fromCambridgeshire, and, that is
probably why I'm never taken foran Englishman. I was, born and
(05:54):
educated in the Former SovietUnion and learned English from
my English teachers who hadnever heard an Englishman in
their lives. So I was the thirdor the fourth generation of
Russian English speakers. NowI've spent more than half a
century in The United Statesand, almost half a century in
The United States and haven'tAmericanized my accent because,
(06:16):
that would turn me into alaughingstock.
And so I decided I will stick tomy accent. Now Ari, was born in
the Midwest and has hisabsolutely obvious cultured,
cultivated accent that he useson stage because he's also a a
well known popular actor.
Ari Hoptman (06:36):
I I should say when I go back to my hometown, which
is Detroit, people think I'mfrom someplace else. So I'm my
accent has no home. It'sMidwestern, and it's neutral,
but it I I I tell the storyfrequently about how I applied
for a job once in Detroit, andthe person who took my paperwork
said, well, wherever you'refrom, you really kept your
accent. And I said, I'm I'm oneof you. I grew up just down the
(06:59):
street.
So I don't know what happened tome. I wasn't trying to, fool
anyone, but, something happened.
Anatole Liberman (07:05):
Well, I think you should have used some idiom,
to prove, that you're really,from Detroit. Well, now that you
know so many idioms, that won'tbe too difficult. So now that
you know who we are, all threeof us, it brings me to another
point. We may call ourselves aninternational team to a certain
extent. One born in Britain, Oneborn, in The United States, and
(07:27):
one born in Russia, and all ofus interested in English
professionally so and alsobecause we love the language.
The book is called, of course, adictionary of English idioms.
What do you think? Is it trulyBritish? Is it English? What is
the appeal of the book as far asits geography is concerned?
I also have my own opinion, butI would, first of all, like to
(07:49):
know what the two of you think.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (07:52):
Well, my impression of it is that, if
anything, it leans towardsBritish usage in the number of
examples. They're probably moredrawn from British, speech than
from American, but that's afunction of the world at large
to some extent. But there areother cases where I couldn't say
(08:14):
offhand whether the, particularidiom is British or American, in
part because I have become soused to speaking to Americans
and speaking in America andreading that way. So take take
the example of touch wood. Somepeople say touch wood, and some
people say knock on wood.
If you ask me without having thedictionary by my side which one
(08:36):
was British and which one wasAmerican, I couldn't tell you
offhand because I've assimilatedboth of them, and I could say
either of them. So I think thatthat makes for me a very
interesting aspect of the bookitself is the way in which you
can find yourself or loseyourself in the locutions and
their origin.
Ari Hoptman (08:57):
And I think reading as an American, the ones that I
don't recognize, I automaticallyassume to be both British and
classy. So, I was thinking, oh,this must be from some very fine
works of literature that Ihaven't read, but I want to
know. It doesn't dissuade mefrom wanting to know more about
the, about the phrase. Actually,I want to know more about it
(09:19):
because I think, well, I shouldbe a bit more educated.
Anatole Liberman (09:22):
Well, I have have almost the same, attitude
toward it. Both of you, I think,have mentioned something which
partly amused me. You said thereare many idioms there which you
don't know. I would like to saythat 80% of the idioms that I
discussed in the book weretotally new to me. Is that a
drawback or an asset?
(09:44):
So many, of these idioms aretruly local. You know that their
discussion goes back to somediscussion in notes and queries
and other popular magazines.Very often, I write, no one knew
this expression. People wouldask, what's the origin of this
phrase? And no one knew thisexpression.
To me, these expressions were agreat source of both amusement
(10:08):
and, enlightenment, because, ofcourse, it's like reading
Webster's dictionary. You don'texpect to know all the words.
Who knows all these words? Also,who needs those words?
Ari Hoptman (10:21):
But as a great man once said, the the the one of
the great things about thedictionary is that it has all
the other books in it.
Anatole Liberman (10:27):
And that is true. That's also true here.
Ari Hoptman (10:31):
I thought that was gonna be funnier than it
actually turned out to be. Butyou mentioned notes and queries,
and you mentioned notes andqueries in the same sentence
with the word popular. Andpopular works like notes and
queries, but maybe you canmention maybe you can describe
what notes and queries is orwas.
Anatole Liberman (10:47):
I expect that someone from the editorial board
of notes and queries will giveme a medal, because for forty
years or so, I have been singingthe virtues of notes and
queries, have been quoting,citing, describing, and admiring
notes and queries. Notes andqueries appeared in the middle
of the nineteenth century andbecame wildly, incomprehensibly
(11:11):
popular. That is we cannot evenimagine how popular it was. It's
a beautiful periodical. It wasbiweekly, which was something
like, our Internet today.
You wanted you have a coin, forexample, and it's a strange
coin. You don't know where it isfrom, and you are not quite sure
what the inscription means, sowe describe it and send a letter
to know some queries. Two weekslater, three people from Great
(11:35):
Britain will tell you that theyknow exactly what this coin is
because they have another coinof the same type, and you will
be perfectly satisfied. Or youhave a quotation, and there was
no Google. You forget where thisquotation is from.
Does anyone know? Yes. Yes. Fivepeople know it, and 10 people
use it every day. And so itgoes.
(11:56):
Absolutely everything, amiscellany of multifarious
things, useful or useless,stupid or enlightened, more
enlightened than stupid. Andamong many other things, people
asked one another about theorigin of words and idioms. And,
of course, to know the origin ofa word, you have to be a
specialist. That is why you finda lot of silliness there. But
(12:19):
the best scholars in the worldreplied to the questions.
There was, for example, thegreat Walter Skeet, the
constantly irascible WalterSkeet who never stopped telling
his countrymen that they wereignorant and didn't want to stop
being ignorant. And he was thereto cure them of that ignorance.
(12:40):
And there was the great, JamesMurray that is probably in the
pronunciation of most AmericansMurray, but I still cannot make
myself pronounce Murray asMurray. James James a h Murray,
who was the first editor of theOxford English Dictionary, who
also wrote letters, very oftenirascible letters. If you want
to say something, say itplainly, and don't beat about
(13:02):
the bush or something like that.
Or if you want to send me aletter, send it to me. And the
addresses was very easy. MurrayOxford, and that would be enough
for the letter to to reach him.
Ari Hoptman (13:14):
They both had excellent beards, by the way.
Murray and, the first one youmentioned. Not Murray, but,
Anatole Liberman (13:20):
As he yes. He had a more presentable beard.
Ari Hoptman (13:23):
Yes.
Anatole Liberman (13:24):
And, and Murray had a a beard as long as
long as his dictionary.
Ari Hoptman (13:29):
But it seems a lot of those explanations of of
words, those etymologies, didn'ta lot of them show up almost
word for word in the OxfordEnglish dictionary later on.
Anatole Liberman (13:38):
Yes. That's exactly how how it was.
Ari Hoptman (13:40):
In a way, it's sort of reading the pre Oxford
English dictionary if you readnotes and queries, plus all
those articles about the coinsand, symbols on
Anatole Liberman (13:49):
Kings and emperors and Exactly.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (13:52):
Remember also that the popularity that
you refer to of notes andqueries is in part driven by the
situation in England at the timewhen it began. There were many
reverend gentlemen who hadlivings which required them to
do very little, and so they hadlots of time on their hands. And
so if if they weren't digging inthe earth and doing amateur
(14:13):
archaeology, they werecollecting words. So notes and
queries was a godsend to them.And those that weren't reverend
were often gentlemen farmers,and they similarly had lots of
time on their hand.
And and so those are the kind ofeducated gentlemen, who were
looking around for something todo. And as you say, there was no
Internet. There was no radio ortelevision. And so this kind of
(14:37):
activity was the kind of thingthat would result in, local
dictionaries and dictionaries ofslang and, ultimately, of
course, in the OED itself.
Ari Hoptman (14:47):
And some of these discussions went on for weeks or
even a couple of months.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (14:51):
Oh, yes.
Ari Hoptman (14:51):
And I remember looking at the, the etymology of
gazebo, which is a particularfavorite of mine because no one
came into any conclusions, buteveryone had some opinion that
they wanted to to share with therest of the world or at least
the rest of England.
Anatole Liberman (15:06):
There was a discussion of the word henchman,
which lasted ten years withFrank Chance, whose name is
unfortunately almost forgotten.Though, again, I sing, his
praise whenever I can because hewas a great etymologist and a
very well educated man.
Ari Hoptman (15:22):
You don't know about his beard?
Anatole Liberman (15:23):
No. There is no no no portrait. Absolutely
nothing. And I know very littleabout him except for the fact
that he was a medical doctor.Apparently, he didn't have too
many patients, because that isapproximately what Larry meant,
too much time on one's hands.
But as a result, I have awonderful database of what
people said about idioms closerto today's topic when it's not
(15:47):
so difficult to explain an idiomor not as difficult as it is to
explain the origin of a word.Because in order to explain the
origin of a word, you have to bea specialist. And idioms are
late, which is an interestingthing too. Very few idioms are
really old. And if they're old,they're quotes from the Bible or
(16:07):
translations from Horace orsomething like that.
But truly English idioms areabout four or five centuries
old, not much older thanShakespeare in most cases and
usually much younger so thatmany people really knew the
explanation of our mostrecondite proverbs, sayings, and
(16:29):
so on, and could explain thingsabout raining cats and dogs and,
pain through the nose and allthose strange things which no
one seems to know anythingabout, but suddenly, someone
knew. After all, this book thatwe are discussing now owes its
existence to those people, notonly in awesome queries. That's
(16:50):
the main source, but not theonly one. It owes its existence
to those who offered,volunteered their opinions. Do
you think that this wasprofitable enough to read to go
through several hundred volumesin order to sift their opinions
and come up sometimes with theanswer origin still unknown?
J. Lawrence Mitchell (17:12):
Yes. And in fact, in this, take my word
for it, many of the explanationsand the long paragraphs that,
you have written don't reach adefinitive conclusion about the
origin of the phrase, in partbecause you're well aware even
if you replicate them of folketymological explanations that
(17:34):
are so prevalent in some of thehistorical contributions made in
notes and queries and elsewhere.
Anatole Liberman (17:41):
There is no doubt that that's the way it is.
It's almost the same that we cansay, we could say, or might say
about the original words.Hundreds of pages written about
the origin of some of the mostcommon words, man, wife, god,
ship, anything. And at the end,we have those phrases, origin
(18:05):
uncertain, which is a politeword of saying that nobody knows
anything for sure. So it's thesame thing here.
But I think one of theadvantages of my method is that
when you know how many peoplewanted to explain something and
failed, you will be careful inthe future, and you will not
(18:25):
repeat the nonsense. Read, theentry about cats and dogs,
raining cats and dogs. Theexplanations are incredibly
stupid. That is one wonders whythose gentlemen who had so much
time on their on their hands,why they said those things. Oh,
it's because cats, when theywalk, the sound they produce
(18:48):
does resemble the the sound of apouring shower.
That's why cats now wait amoment. What about dogs? Oh,
never mind the dogs. If you haveexplained the cats, that's
enough, isn't it?
Ari Hoptman (18:59):
Well, of course, it's become a little, more, if I
can say, dangerous now becausewe have the Internet. And to
publish something, you don'teven have to have a stamp, which
you needed in the days of notesand queries. You just need a
computer, which almost everyonehas. And if you can set up a
website, you can publish yourown etymology of any idiom you
(19:20):
want. And if you make it looknice, well, then it it carries a
lot of weight.
So it's much easier, I think,now to popularize a wrong or
ridiculous etymology, much moreso than it was in the days of
the gentleman farmers.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (19:36):
Can I come back to some concrete examples
that I came across that, that Iknew to some degree or had used
in some other way, but, wasenlightened by what I found in
the dictionary? For example,God's Acre. Now I've written
about, the novels of TheodoreFrancis Powis, and he uses this
(19:57):
phrase a lot. And, of course, hemeans the churchyard, but I
didn't know anything about, whatyou mentioned, a German origin
for that term, but it'scertainly also used in God's
Little Acre. But, obviously,it's referring to the same
thing.
And the other one that occurredto me was, the phrase to go the
whole hog, which again wascommon enough violence in
(20:20):
England when I was growing up.But I I've come across it in
literary terms because VirginiaWoolf uses it to describe her
talks with Katherine Mansfield,and she describes her with some
awe as having gone the wholehog, on a number of occasions
after Catherine had confessed toVirginia about all her, little
(20:42):
affairs. So it's interesting tosee something that has literary
characteristics as it were, buthaven't been explained in in the
way that that you explain it.And and so I thought that this
would be useful for a literaryscholar who was interested in
following up on something likethat.
Anatole Liberman (21:00):
Since you mentioned this idiom, history is
also very the history of ofresearch is interesting because
the article appeared in a fastshift, and the author of that
article used only notes andqueries. The numerous
explanations in notes andqueries and nothing else. This
is a classic predecessor,really, of this book. And he
(21:22):
said something about notes andqueries being immensely useful,
and it is immensely useful,God's Acre and how it started in
Massachusetts and how Longfellowused it and what he thought
about
J. Lawrence Mitchell (21:35):
Right.
Anatole Liberman (21:36):
And all those things. But I also find it
interesting if you rememberFox's wedding, which means rain
and sunshine at the same time.Something that I, of course,
have never heard, and I don'tthink that anyone around us
heard it. And it traveled allthe way from India and crossed
many borders and then becametotally incomprehensible. And
(21:58):
there is a thick book about theorigin of this idiom.
So when you read, somethinglike, my paragraph about it, you
only see a reference to thebook, and you have no idea how
much time it may have taken, toexplain the origin. And when I
(22:18):
read the, God's Acre story, Iwas thrilled. Also, there was
someone before me who knew thatnotes and queries is an
inestimable source. And there isa bibliography of everything on
the proverbs and sayings innotes and queries, but just an
enumeration of titles withoutany explanation. So you go from
(22:40):
there, but we, of course, anarmy of volunteers, opened every
page, and I xeroxed every page,and the whole thing now is in my
office.
So that, yes, notes and queriesis not the only source, but one
of the most important ones. Whatdo you think about the indexes
in the book? Will they make thebook more usable, more useful,
(23:03):
and more, if I can use theignoble term, marketable?
Because we all want the book notonly to be opened, but also to
be bought. There are so manyindexes there.
Do you think those indexes werea good idea? I have gone too far
indexing absolutely everything,words, origins, authors, and so
(23:27):
on.
Ari Hoptman (23:27):
Well, let's see. I'm looking through the I first
went to the subject indexbecause I thought, well, the
index has got to be the last fewpages. But then as I flipped
back, I saw, oh, here's for me amuch more useful index of words
rather than topics. But if Iwere looking up an individual
idiom, I would find thisextremely useful. But if I were
doing a paper on idioms and Iwanted animal idioms, well, I
(23:50):
would go to the back.
So I think it's useful for bothcasual curiosity and for greater
research needs.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (23:57):
Yes. I found the word index very
useful. For example, I wanted tosee whether you had, before you
could say Jack Robinson. And, Ilooked up under j, and, of
course, it wasn't under j, but,it's under before. But it's
there, and so that was useful.
And another example would be Ican say things like as nice as
(24:17):
9p, but probably not somethingeither of you would say. But I
wanted to see how often 9p camein because it does occur in a
number of of your entries. Andso the word index pulls them
together in a useful way that Ifound very helpful.
Ari Hoptman (24:33):
I like the theme index. Is it called theme index
topic index at the back?
Anatole Liberman (24:37):
Yes. Yes. Some sort of the scores. Yes.
Ari Hoptman (24:39):
Yeah. I think one of the disadvantages is also the
advantage because you you startto look at, oh, well, you want
to find all of these that haveto do with, I don't know,
tables, and you start to go downrabbit holes as you would on
the, on the Internet. I thinkwe've all experienced that. But
I think that's the nice thingthat can happen here with the,
with the indexes or indices ifyou want.
Anatole Liberman (25:02):
Now I think indexes is perfectly alright.
Unless we suddenly switch toLatin, I think indexes will
satisfy absolutely everybody. Iwant also to say one thing may
probably come as a revelation tothose who will not only open the
book and immediately close it,but who will read it. And that
is how late most idioms reallyare. Words are perennial.
(25:26):
If you ask how old the word man,wife, boy, girl is, then you
find out that man is very old,boy is not very old, and girl is
not very old, and wife is veryold. And wife is, of course, is
the root of the word woman,which was. But when you look at
the chronology of the idioms inthe book, you see that they're
(25:48):
late, post renaissance, and thatis not by chance. I think that
might also be an asset becauseit, to a certain extent, tells
people about the origin oflanguage, of mentality of the
middle ages. It's also a look atthe history of language and not
(26:08):
only at the history of idioms.
Did it come as surprise to youthat the idioms are late, or did
you take it for granted? Yes.Well, of course, they should be
late.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (26:19):
Relatively late. But still, what's
surprising in some ways is howpersistent some are. You know,
again, using similes, happy asor as clean as a clean as a
whistle. Well, that seems to beboth British and American, and
it seems to be around for anawful long time. But at the same
time, there's a creative elementin the formulation of these, and
(26:40):
I found in this corpus ofcontemporary American English
under happy, for example, ashappy as the day is long, as
happy as heaven pleases, ashappy as a pig in mud or
something else, as happy asLarry, of course, which
interested me,
Anatole Liberman (26:55):
of course, and
J. Lawrence Mitchell (26:57):
as happy as a lark or as happy as a kid
in a candy store. Now I'm prettysure a kid in the candy store is
not British, but it shows youhow alive these idioms are. Even
put when they're beingpreserved, they're being, let's
say, added to even so.
Ari Hoptman (27:13):
So when you read a when you read something like
Beowulf, which is about the yearJanuary, the language is pretty
straightforward. What aboutChaucer a few hundred years
later? How did he feel about,
Anatole Liberman (27:24):
Well, that's the beginning, of our epic to a
certain extent, and that's whatI mentioned briefly in the
introduction. I could havewritten and probably should have
written more about it, but Ididn't want the introduction to
engulf the whole book. If, I canalmost quote what I wrote in the
introduction. If you have a verygood old English grammar and a
good old English dictionary anda good edition of Beowulf, like,
(27:48):
Cleaver's Beowulf in its modernversion, you can read Beowulf
and understand everythingwithout an instructor if you
have enough time and enoughpatience. With choices, it is
somewhat different because manyphrases are truly idiomatic.
But today, you are absolutelylost because you suddenly find
(28:09):
out one of the characters in thebook kicked the back the bucket,
And you begin to think about thebucket, and there is no bucket
in view. You have to look it upin some dictionary, and you
don't know where to look it upunder kick or under bucket and
what it has to do with thebucket. And that's why I have a
word index. We're dealing withsomething that can be called the
(28:30):
post medieval mentality. Whenthey invented the art of
perspective, that is when theypride themselves away from the
canvas.
Like children's drawings,they're flat, and their language
was flat. They had episodes, andthey had similes, but they never
(28:50):
had metaphors. And they couldsay that my beloved is like a
rose, but they would never havesaid my beloved is a rose
because my beloved is not aflower. So my beloved was not a
rose. Like a rose is fine.
And when they learned thefigurative use of words and
things, then they began toproduce idioms by the million,
(29:14):
really.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (29:15):
So that example you used of, kick the
bucket in America, I discoveredyou could also cash in your
chips, which I would never use,but I might kick the bucket.
Ari Hoptman (29:26):
You can also buy the farm, which is, I think,
much more much easier tounderstand.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (29:30):
Now does it mean that people didn't know
kick the bucket or that theyweren't satisfied with it as a
as a solution, as it were, to,the location where we plot the
problem?
Anatole Liberman (29:42):
It's hard to tell, because it's this the same
question about synonyms. Youhave already five or six words
meaning brave, and you open adictionary of synonyms in
addition to brave and doubting,valiant, and so on. You find to
a horror that there are 25 or 30words meaning brave. Language is
(30:06):
so redundant, and that's whyit's so hard to learn it. There
are so many of them, but, ofcourse, more or less, I think
that is what you mean.
Once they began to produce thesethings, then they could never
stop. And there was much funthere, especially if you look at
the section beginning with theword as and those Yeah. Those
(30:29):
similes. A pages and pages ofas, and one wonders who did it
and as wise as the woman ofManbrit. Had a long explanation.
Fine. As mean as tongs. Whyshould tongs be mean, and what
does that mean? The explanation,perhaps the association is with
(30:51):
pincers, an instrument thatpinches, and we go back to the
old attraction of flippingmoney. Perhaps, but that's
really all that one one can say.
As merry as a Greek, which I usefrom time to time, only that no
one knows what a Greek is.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (31:09):
I came across that interestingly a
couple of years ago in reading abiography of Charlotte Bronte,
and she uses as merry as aGreek. And and there was a note
in the edition, which also saidthey didn't weren't really sure
what the grig was, but it mightmight be a frog.
Anatole Liberman (31:25):
Yes. Grig, as I have found, that is what Skeet
explained. And, of course, ifSkeet explained something, who
am I, to doubt the value of thisexplanation? Greek meanings
cricket, and he cited manydialectal synonyms. Greek means
an eel and cricket and way andso on, a whole a whole line.
I had the same trouble with asmerry as a pisma. Nobody
(31:48):
understands the word pisma.Pisma. And my student said, what
is pisma?
Ari Hoptman (31:52):
That's one I haven't heard in a while.
Anatole Liberman (31:55):
Where on earth, Harry, did you run into
the word pisma?
Ari Hoptman (31:58):
There was a nonsense song that was floating
around in the nineteen forties.I remember my father quoting
this, singing this in the house,and it had, it just it was a
nonsense song with the wordPismire, which I assumed was a
nonsense word. And then I foundout it had an actual meaning
and, didn't make the song anymore popular instantly, but, it
was just floating around myhouse.
Anatole Liberman (32:19):
Have only one virtue that, they illiterate
because they're stupid, silly.It's fine sometimes, and there
may be, of course, some depth asnice as a nun's n u n, as nun's
hen. As Keith explained it, butthen Keith explained everything.
It doesn't mean that hisexplanation was absolutely
(32:41):
correct. But probably thegreatest attraction was that
nice as a nun's hen hasalliterating n's, but then the
next is as pert as a pearmonger.
Well, that is really too toomuch, to to swallow.
Ari Hoptman (32:56):
If you need the word pert, that is, which which
you don't generally need.
Anatole Liberman (33:01):
No. Of course. Of course. And why pear monger,
is so pert is not very clear.
Ari Hoptman (33:06):
Of Of course, you have ones like fit as a fiddle,
which is
Anatole Liberman (33:09):
Exactly.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (33:10):
Yes. And, again, the alliteration seems to
be more important there than,than meaning.
Anatole Liberman (33:16):
I have no doubt that you are right.
Though, one of course, as alwayswhen one, deals with such
things, one should be verycareful. As fit as a fiddle,
that's something that youmentioned in in our conversation
a few days ago. As fit as afiddle, are fiddles fit? In the
book, you will find anexplanation.
Yes. What the word fit meant atthat time and when fiddles were
(33:38):
fit, that's, probably true. Asplain as a pike staff.
Apparently, there are somethings which are more plain than
pike staffs. And that brings meto another question.
How how well are not only these,but in general, how well are
sayings, idioms known? I thinkit, differs tremendously from
(33:59):
country to country, from area toarea, because sometimes I say
something simply to amuse mystudents. A long lecture,
they're tired, sometimes bored.They are students. They have no
way of avoiding me, so they haveto listen to me for an hour, an
hour and a half, and sometimesthey teach evening lectures.
They're there like prisoners andcannot escape. So from time to
(34:22):
time, I would say somethingsimply to enliven them.
Something like, well, there'sthank you very much that warms
the cockles of my heart. Andthey will wake up, simply
because it's it's so funny. Justas there are words which make
them smile, using the word fool,is nothing.
But if I call a fool an incomepoof, everybody begins to to
smile because it's a funny word.Or, someone who seems to be
(34:46):
looking out of the window, outthe window as most people around
me say now, and, not listeningto me. And I would say, I think,
you've gone wool gathering. And,again, everybody, begins to
laugh. Do you know what to gowool gathering is?
Somebody would timidly raise hisor her hand saying, yes. I know,
(35:08):
and the others will wake up andlisten to it. One of the
examples which amazed me verymuch and amused me very much was
connected with wordpecker.Everybody knew the obscene
meaning of the word pecker, butnot the saying, which is the
only one. I that is I neverheard the word, the word pecker,
(35:31):
but there is one, which issupposed to be unpronounceable
in England and turned out to bepretty clear everywhere.
Keep a pecker up. And they toldme that in in this country,
pecker means nose, so there isreally nothing to be ashamed of.
Ari Hoptman (35:48):
In this country meaning England.
Anatole Liberman (35:50):
I don't know.
Ari Hoptman (35:51):
Because there's the song, it's very, very British.
Drop down dead. What is thethey're out of sorts in
Sunderland and terribly coarsein Kent. They're dull and hull,
and the Isle Of Mull is seethingwith discontent. And that has
the phrase, we'll keep ourpeckers down or we'll,
Anatole Liberman (36:05):
Those in England tell told me that this
was totally unpronounceable. Andhere, it seems to be rather
innocuous, only that nobody everuses it. What is your general
impression? How idearmatic thosewhom you know? Well, I don't
mean only those exotic phraseswhich nobody's supposed to know
and nobody knew even a hundredyears ago.
But in general, are peopleusually plain spoken, or do they
(36:29):
want to enjoy what they say andadd idioms for dessert?
J. Lawrence Mitchell (36:36):
But but, of course, it depends upon how
much they know about the, thephrase, I mean, that keep your
pecker up. People may avoid itbecause they do feel that it may
be in some way obscene eventhough that's not their usage.
But I don't I couldn't saywhether it's British or
American. That's one of thoseexamples where I I could say it
(36:57):
quite happily, and I wouldn'tconsider it inappropriate. But
it would mean, you know,continue to be optimistic.
Anatole Liberman (37:05):
Yes. That's right.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (37:06):
Yes. Right.
Ari Hoptman (37:07):
But I don't think people are very, idiom friendly,
at least in our little corner ofof the world in Minnesota, which
is where I'm based.
Anatole Liberman (37:16):
Have the same opinion.
Ari Hoptman (37:18):
I don't hear people using or if they do use idioms,
it's usually a kind of a bigproduction. They make a little
pause, and they say, well, youknow, it's
Anatole Liberman (37:25):
Yes. Showing off.
Ari Hoptman (37:27):
Well, not showing off, but saying I'm about to,
pay attention because this isabout to this is about to get
more interesting. So I don'tknow him from Adam's off aux,
which I only heard once in mylife, but I've been I've been
waiting for an opportunity touse it.
Anatole Liberman (37:41):
Yes.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (37:42):
Well, I think in Texas where I'm located
now, there seem to be much morewillingness to launch into sort
of, let's say, dodgy,terminology. I've come across
one as as as happy as a leatherqueen at a prison rodeo, which I
think is, an interestinglocation.
Ari Hoptman (38:01):
Texas has one of my favorites. I don't know if it's
in the book. That dog don'thunt, which sounds strange
coming out of Midwestern mouth,but, I mean, that doesn't make
any sense. I can't even I can'teven use it just because it
doesn't it doesn't sound right.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (38:15):
There's a variant on it that said that
hound don't hunt.
Ari Hoptman (38:18):
That hound don't hunt.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (38:19):
And that works better as a little from a
little point of view. Right.Yeah. It means something like
you can't make that argument oryou can't you can't go there.
Ari Hoptman (38:29):
Yeah. They say he did that? No. That dog don't
hunt or that hound don't hunt. Itried my best.
Anatole Liberman (38:35):
Well, I can tell you an example of more or
less the same type. One of myfavorite, phrases is to be in a
Brown study, which means in astate of deep meditation,
reverie, and having a seriousproblem, and I have to decide
what to do with it. I learnedthe the phrase from Agatha
Christie, because Hercule Poirotis very often in a in a Brown
(38:56):
study, and I'm very fond ofAgatha Christie's books and of
her style. I think she writesbeautiful English. So from time
to time, I use it.
I know for for sure that nobodyunderstands it. So that's fine,
I thought. And there was a longdiscussion of this phrase in
periodical, not in notes andqueries, but, in the periodical,
(39:16):
the nation, in the American,periodical, when the b volume of
the Oxford English Dictionaryappeared, and there was an
explanation there. And in orderto find the material for this
book, we, I mean, an army ofvolunteers, not only I. We
opened every periodical in theworld, really, like Scientific
American, The Nation, New York,New Yorker, everything.
(39:38):
And, not only notes and queries.Notes and queries looms large,
but that's not the only one.And, a very interesting
explanation about Brown study.And, I was quite sure that this
is specifically British phrase.Two years ago, I won't tell you
why, but I reread HuckleberryFinn, the Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, the book whichI read first when I was 12 years
(40:00):
old.
So I reread it and enjoyed itvery much, and then I jumped up.
Hack says, I felt rather Brownstuddish. Hear me. Huckleberry
Finn knew this expression. Heknew this idiom.
Was it something that they knewonly in the South, in one of
those southern states? How onearth did Huck know something
(40:25):
that no one seems to understandtoday? I think someone who will
open, open this dictionary, notnecessarily read it from cover
to cover because that's reallytoo much to explain, would find
many amusing examples of whatthey thought was true and what
was not necessarily true. Thereis a long entry on being in a
(40:45):
Brown study. Harry, do you everuse it?
Ari Hoptman (40:49):
I have heard it a few times, each time from you.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (40:54):
I know that I heard it when I was
growing up, but I would neveruse it myself.
Anatole Liberman (40:59):
But you knew it when you were growing up?
J. Lawrence Mitchell (41:01):
I knew it when I was growing up. Yeah.
Anatole Liberman (41:02):
Yeah. So it was common enough, for you for
you to become. I've never heardanyone to use it. If we can
imagine that someone can readthis book from cover to cover,
will this person close the bookwith the feeling of having
learned something reallyworthwhile so that the money
spent on it hadn't been wasted?What is your opinion?
(41:24):
That's a very blunt question. Isthe book worth buying?
J. Lawrence Mitchell: Absolutely. I think it's, again, (41:28):
undefined
it's going to be one of thosekinds of books that people will
keep handy because they'll wantto dip into it from time to time
either when they're talking withfriends or because, they've got
something there that they wantto, test. For example, with
those as happy as in otherphrases of that sort. I tested
(41:51):
them among friends in the areawhere I live in in this
retirement community just to seewhat people use because I can
use my wife as one kind of,measure of American English,
but, she's been exposed toBritish English too. But there's
lots of people here fromdifferent parts of the country
who never have.
So I find it quite useful. And,of course, it's the kind of
(42:13):
thing that might well constitutea kind of parlor game or the
kind of thing that you do overdinner Because often I get
together with other people overdinner, and there may be half a
dozen of us. And I I would say,if you're gonna say as happy as,
what would you say? Or as cleanas, and it's interesting to see
what responses you get. So Ithink having the book, at hand
(42:35):
would be valuable for that kindof, enterprise.
Certainly, in in Christmas, itwould be a a great present for
somebody.
Anatole Liberman (42:42):
Do you think, Ari, that this book could be
used in any courses dealing withthe English language?
Ari Hoptman (42:51):
Oh, sure. People talking about exactly what you
were saying, the changes in howpeople express themselves,
certainly, where you made thatcomparison of, the directness of
Beowulf versus what happenslater on, you know, with, in in
Chaucer where it starts to shiftand Shakespeare where it's
going. Am I using it right wholehog? But what I was thinking of
(43:13):
also is that some people mightdecide, just to have some fun
and, use some of these inconversation, which might lead
other people to think, well,where where did you, where did
you come up with such an obscurephrase? Well, it was in well, it
was in this book that I gothere.
That was when well, take my wordfor it. I think people might
have some fun just trying torevive some of these, idioms.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (43:35):
By by the way, I think the title is a
great one. Take my word for it.It really sort of captures the
the contents there very nicely.
Anatole Liberman (43:42):
It's not easy to write a book. It's very hard
to think of a good title, and,that has been my experience for
years. I tried dozens and dozensof titles and offered them to
the press, and they finallysaid, take my word for it. It's
perhaps the best. And that'swhy, it now graces the cover of
the book.
Ari Hoptman (44:03):
The previous title the pre previous suggestion,
Oklahoma, I'm glad they didn'tgo with that one.
Anatole Liberman (44:10):
Yeah. That's It was not
Ari Hoptman (44:11):
as good. Not as descriptive.
Anatole Liberman (44:13):
Not as descriptive. And, I can only
finish our discussion because Ithink that we can talk about it
forever, but, one hour is quiteenough. Let me tell you two
things of which I am immenselyproud. Once upon a time, the
University of Minnesota Pressused to exhibit books, I think,
in the faculty club. And, one ofmy books was there, and it was
(44:36):
stolen.
And those who organized theexhibit said, it's the only time
in the history of our exhibitionthat a book has been stolen. And
I was tremendously proud thatthe book which was stolen was
the last book, which I wouldimagine, being stolen. That was
Germanic exantology. The verytitle makes people, sleepy. And
(45:01):
then, on another case, someoneworked for the University of
Minnesota Press and then leftthe press.
I think this young woman was astudent. And, the press said, we
want to give you some partingpresent. What would you want?
And she chose one of my books,translation of Lermanente. That
makes more sense.
In my long life, one could haveboasted of more things, but
(45:25):
that's all I have. So I have toshare the, little treasure that
that I have.
Ari Hoptman (45:30):
But don't steal the book. Pay for the book. Buy the
book.
Anatole Liberman (45:33):
Yes. Take my word for it. Absolutely.
Ari Hoptman (45:35):
Absolutely.
Narrator (45:37):
Hello. Quick interjection from producer
Maggie here. Number one, this isdirected to our listeners. Very
importantly, please support yourlocal bookstore. Number two,
personally, for me, having somuch word and etymological
expertise in one space, virtualthough it may be, is a rare
opportunity to ask a question ofour conversants that's been
persisting with me.
(45:58):
How do each of you sign off onyour letters or emails?
J. Lawrence Mitchell (46:03):
I always use cordially even on my emails.
I tend to be old fashioned thatway.
Ari Hoptman (46:09):
I say sincerely or. When I'm writing to students, I
write because they're they'resupposed to know after three
semesters.
Anatole Liberman (46:16):
Yes. Well, I I have a small range of
signatures. I learned it fromsome Englishman, many years ago
who signed his letters withever. Sometimes when I feel more
linen sentimental, I write ever.When in other cases, I sometimes
write well, of course, bestregards and so on.
(46:37):
But there's one thing, that Ireally hate. That the word all
the best, has, at least inEngland, has lost the article,
and now everybody writes allbest. And I think it's
absolutely wrong because withthe superlative degree, you need
the definite article. So Irefuse to write all best and
(46:58):
write all the best just to provethat I'm still alive and
kicking, of course.
Ari Hoptman (47:04):
But you have to be very, very careful with the when
you use, smellulator because,not everyone's going to like it.
Anatole Liberman (47:11):
That's absolutely right.
Ari Hoptman (47:13):
Has to be a a very good friend.
Anatole Liberman (47:16):
Thank you very much. It has been a pleasure to
see you both, especially,because, Larry lives now the
whole country across from me,and we exchange a few, Christmas
cards. But now, it's thepleasure of talking to you
several days ago when we were,discussing how to organize, this
(47:36):
session. And now seeing youseeing you and seeing you you,
Ari, with with our COVID things,and we always meet with masks
and don't recognize each other.And now we're here showing our
true face.
So thank you very much.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (47:54):
Thank you.
Ari Hoptman (47:55):
Always a pleasure.
Anatole Liberman (47:56):
Thank you
Ari Hoptman (47:56):
so much. Thank you.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (47:57):
Thanks. Ari, good to meet you.
Ari Hoptman (47:59):
Good to meet you. We're we're our names appear in
the same book, but we've nevermet until this, till this
moment.
Anatole Liberman (48:05):
It's,
Ari Hoptman (48:06):
rather bizarre.
Anatole Liberman (48:07):
No other place like etymology which unites
people We'll see
Ari Hoptman (48:13):
you later.
To go the whole hog.
Anatole Liberman (00:09):
As merry as a pizmo.
Ari Hoptman (00:10):
Fit as a fiddle.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (00:11):
Before you could say Jack Robinson.
Anatole Liberman (00:14):
As perked as a pear monger.
Ari Hoptman (00:16):
So I don't know him from Adam's off Ox.
Anatole Liberman (00:20):
Draining cats and dogs, peeing through the
nose, and all those strangethings which no one seems to
know anything about. We have methere today to discuss the book
recently published by theUniversity of Minnesota Press.
Take my word for it. There is anidiom in the title, and it's all
(00:42):
about idioms because the book isabout idioms. There is a
subtitle here, a dictionary ofEnglish idioms, and it is a
dictionary of English idioms.
But before we begin to speakabout idioms, I think it would
be good if I introduced allthree of us to the world at
large. I'm Anatole Liberman fromthe University of of Minnesota,
(01:02):
and I'm the author of this book.My friends today, professor
Larry Mitchell and and doctorAri Hochman, have collaborated
with me on the majoretymological project of my life.
And Larry's name is on the coverof a of a dictionary, and Ari's
on the cover of a bibliography.Both books have been published
(01:25):
by the University of MinnesotaPress.
So it's not that we are simplytogether to chat about things
which interest us in some way.We're professionally interested
in etymology and in in origin ofwords, and we are all three
specialists in language history.So that that is the reason why
(01:46):
this team exists. That is asmuch as I can say about about
introductions unless you want toadd something, Ari. You wanted
to add something to myintroduction?
Ari Hoptman (01:56):
No. No. You said it all very nicely.
Anatole Liberman (01:58):
No. No. No. Because I thought the expression
on your face No.
Ari Hoptman (02:01):
No. You said we just were down to three people
gathered to chat about funthings. I said, oh, well well, I
thought we were.
Anatole Liberman (02:07):
Exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to to
talk about fun things. And, themain thing is that, all three
have read the entire book. Well,I have read it because I had no
chance not to read it. I'vewritten it.
And Larry and Ari were kindenough to read it. Though
reading a whole dictionary isprobably another tedious task,
(02:28):
so I'm very grateful to them.But we're here to discuss one
important thing. To what extentis such a book interesting to
the world at large, tospecialists and to
nonspecialists who is going toread it? I am not an objective
critic because I know the bookby heart.
And since I know the book byheart, I have lost the emotional
(02:51):
contact with it that that mademe write it. But you, Larry, and
you are you have recently readthe book, so you are not yet
bored by it or with it. And thisis a very good thing, So you can
certainly say something aboutit. So what do you think? There
are many questions really.
Is it a readable book? Is it abook, or is it only a reference
(03:12):
tool as they say? Is itsomething that people will read
and enjoy? Is it something thatgoes above and over what has
been published along the samelines? What do you think the
future of this book is?
J. Lawrence Mitchell (03:28):
Well, I let me say right away, in terms
of the the reading part of it, Iwouldn't characterize it by
saying I I read the book. Ijumped in at the deep end, I
would say. That is I looked upsomething right away. So I had
something in mind, and I look itup. Then I I'm moved from there,
moving back and forth, inentries.
(03:51):
So it's not a book that I wouldstart by reading at the
beginning under the letter a andgo through the z. Although I
might see look to see if therewas anything on the z or zed as
we might call it. So jumping inthe deep end, I think, is what
most people will do here. Andonce they're in, they'll want to
swim.
Anatole Liberman (04:10):
Not sink, which is a very good thing.
Ari Hoptman (04:13):
And I, opened it up at random and, just looked at
what I found. I just pointed myfinger randomly and said, well,
let's take a look at this. Someof the idioms I knew, some of
the idioms I didn't know, theywere all fun. They were all
interesting. Even the ones thatI I had never heard about, I was
strangely curious to know theetymology of, if that sentence
(04:34):
was grammatical.
I was very close, anyway.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (04:37):
Yeah. I think for many people, the the
issue will be which ones thatthey know and which ones they
don't know so that they want tostart with the ones they know, I
imagine.
Anatole Liberman (04:49):
Very good. Thank you. And, now that you
have heard all of us, perhaps, ashort comment on three different
accents will not be entirely outof place. As you have heard, all
of us speak English, but somehowin a different way or in
different ways. So let me, letme explain how it how it
(05:09):
happened.
Now Larry was born in Scotland,but was educated not in
Scotland. And his is a Britishaccent, which all my life I've
been trying to imitate with verylittle, success. That is every
time when I ask someone who wasborn in England, when I am in
England, would you take me foran Englishman? The answer was a
resounding no under nocircumstances, which is
(05:31):
extremely disappointing becauseI learned English from, from the
BBC seventy or eighty or ninetyyears ago, the way they spoke
English at that time. But thereis something wrong, with my
English.
There is no local accent. Youwill never guess whether I'm
from Devonshire or fromCambridgeshire, and, that is
probably why I'm never taken foran Englishman. I was, born and
(05:54):
educated in the Former SovietUnion and learned English from
my English teachers who hadnever heard an Englishman in
their lives. So I was the thirdor the fourth generation of
Russian English speakers. NowI've spent more than half a
century in The United Statesand, almost half a century in
The United States and haven'tAmericanized my accent because,
(06:16):
that would turn me into alaughingstock.
And so I decided I will stick tomy accent. Now Ari, was born in
the Midwest and has hisabsolutely obvious cultured,
cultivated accent that he useson stage because he's also a a
well known popular actor.
Ari Hoptman (06:36):
I I should say when I go back to my hometown, which
is Detroit, people think I'mfrom someplace else. So I'm my
accent has no home. It'sMidwestern, and it's neutral,
but it I I I tell the storyfrequently about how I applied
for a job once in Detroit, andthe person who took my paperwork
said, well, wherever you'refrom, you really kept your
accent. And I said, I'm I'm oneof you. I grew up just down the
(06:59):
street.
So I don't know what happened tome. I wasn't trying to, fool
anyone, but, something happened.
Anatole Liberman (07:05):
Well, I think you should have used some idiom,
to prove, that you're really,from Detroit. Well, now that you
know so many idioms, that won'tbe too difficult. So now that
you know who we are, all threeof us, it brings me to another
point. We may call ourselves aninternational team to a certain
extent. One born in Britain, Oneborn, in The United States, and
(07:27):
one born in Russia, and all ofus interested in English
professionally so and alsobecause we love the language.
The book is called, of course, adictionary of English idioms.
What do you think? Is it trulyBritish? Is it English? What is
the appeal of the book as far asits geography is concerned?
I also have my own opinion, butI would, first of all, like to
(07:49):
know what the two of you think.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (07:52):
Well, my impression of it is that, if
anything, it leans towardsBritish usage in the number of
examples. They're probably moredrawn from British, speech than
from American, but that's afunction of the world at large
to some extent. But there areother cases where I couldn't say
(08:14):
offhand whether the, particularidiom is British or American, in
part because I have become soused to speaking to Americans
and speaking in America andreading that way. So take take
the example of touch wood. Somepeople say touch wood, and some
people say knock on wood.
If you ask me without having thedictionary by my side which one
(08:36):
was British and which one wasAmerican, I couldn't tell you
offhand because I've assimilatedboth of them, and I could say
either of them. So I think thatthat makes for me a very
interesting aspect of the bookitself is the way in which you
can find yourself or loseyourself in the locutions and
their origin.
Ari Hoptman (08:57):
And I think reading as an American, the ones that I
don't recognize, I automaticallyassume to be both British and
classy. So, I was thinking, oh,this must be from some very fine
works of literature that Ihaven't read, but I want to
know. It doesn't dissuade mefrom wanting to know more about
the, about the phrase. Actually,I want to know more about it
(09:19):
because I think, well, I shouldbe a bit more educated.
Anatole Liberman (09:22):
Well, I have have almost the same, attitude
toward it. Both of you, I think,have mentioned something which
partly amused me. You said thereare many idioms there which you
don't know. I would like to saythat 80% of the idioms that I
discussed in the book weretotally new to me. Is that a
drawback or an asset?
(09:44):
So many, of these idioms aretruly local. You know that their
discussion goes back to somediscussion in notes and queries
and other popular magazines.Very often, I write, no one knew
this expression. People wouldask, what's the origin of this
phrase? And no one knew thisexpression.
To me, these expressions were agreat source of both amusement
(10:08):
and, enlightenment, because, ofcourse, it's like reading
Webster's dictionary. You don'texpect to know all the words.
Who knows all these words? Also,who needs those words?
Ari Hoptman (10:21):
But as a great man once said, the the the one of
the great things about thedictionary is that it has all
the other books in it.
Anatole Liberman (10:27):
And that is true. That's also true here.
Ari Hoptman (10:31):
I thought that was gonna be funnier than it
actually turned out to be. Butyou mentioned notes and queries,
and you mentioned notes andqueries in the same sentence
with the word popular. Andpopular works like notes and
queries, but maybe you canmention maybe you can describe
what notes and queries is orwas.
Anatole Liberman (10:47):
I expect that someone from the editorial board
of notes and queries will giveme a medal, because for forty
years or so, I have been singingthe virtues of notes and
queries, have been quoting,citing, describing, and admiring
notes and queries. Notes andqueries appeared in the middle
of the nineteenth century andbecame wildly, incomprehensibly
(11:11):
popular. That is we cannot evenimagine how popular it was. It's
a beautiful periodical. It wasbiweekly, which was something
like, our Internet today.
You wanted you have a coin, forexample, and it's a strange
coin. You don't know where it isfrom, and you are not quite sure
what the inscription means, sowe describe it and send a letter
to know some queries. Two weekslater, three people from Great
(11:35):
Britain will tell you that theyknow exactly what this coin is
because they have another coinof the same type, and you will
be perfectly satisfied. Or youhave a quotation, and there was
no Google. You forget where thisquotation is from.
Does anyone know? Yes. Yes. Fivepeople know it, and 10 people
use it every day. And so itgoes.
(11:56):
Absolutely everything, amiscellany of multifarious
things, useful or useless,stupid or enlightened, more
enlightened than stupid. Andamong many other things, people
asked one another about theorigin of words and idioms. And,
of course, to know the origin ofa word, you have to be a
specialist. That is why you finda lot of silliness there. But
(12:19):
the best scholars in the worldreplied to the questions.
There was, for example, thegreat Walter Skeet, the
constantly irascible WalterSkeet who never stopped telling
his countrymen that they wereignorant and didn't want to stop
being ignorant. And he was thereto cure them of that ignorance.
(12:40):
And there was the great, JamesMurray that is probably in the
pronunciation of most AmericansMurray, but I still cannot make
myself pronounce Murray asMurray. James James a h Murray,
who was the first editor of theOxford English Dictionary, who
also wrote letters, very oftenirascible letters. If you want
to say something, say itplainly, and don't beat about
(13:02):
the bush or something like that.
Or if you want to send me aletter, send it to me. And the
addresses was very easy. MurrayOxford, and that would be enough
for the letter to to reach him.
Ari Hoptman (13:14):
They both had excellent beards, by the way.
Murray and, the first one youmentioned. Not Murray, but,
Anatole Liberman (13:20):
As he yes. He had a more presentable beard.
Ari Hoptman (13:23):
Yes.
Anatole Liberman (13:24):
And, and Murray had a a beard as long as
long as his dictionary.
Ari Hoptman (13:29):
But it seems a lot of those explanations of of
words, those etymologies, didn'ta lot of them show up almost
word for word in the OxfordEnglish dictionary later on.
Anatole Liberman (13:38):
Yes. That's exactly how how it was.
Ari Hoptman (13:40):
In a way, it's sort of reading the pre Oxford
English dictionary if you readnotes and queries, plus all
those articles about the coinsand, symbols on
Anatole Liberman (13:49):
Kings and emperors and Exactly.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (13:52):
Remember also that the popularity that
you refer to of notes andqueries is in part driven by the
situation in England at the timewhen it began. There were many
reverend gentlemen who hadlivings which required them to
do very little, and so they hadlots of time on their hands. And
so if if they weren't digging inthe earth and doing amateur
(14:13):
archaeology, they werecollecting words. So notes and
queries was a godsend to them.And those that weren't reverend
were often gentlemen farmers,and they similarly had lots of
time on their hand.
And and so those are the kind ofeducated gentlemen, who were
looking around for something todo. And as you say, there was no
Internet. There was no radio ortelevision. And so this kind of
(14:37):
activity was the kind of thingthat would result in, local
dictionaries and dictionaries ofslang and, ultimately, of
course, in the OED itself.
Ari Hoptman (14:47):
And some of these discussions went on for weeks or
even a couple of months.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (14:51):
Oh, yes.
Ari Hoptman (14:51):
And I remember looking at the, the etymology of
gazebo, which is a particularfavorite of mine because no one
came into any conclusions, buteveryone had some opinion that
they wanted to to share with therest of the world or at least
the rest of England.
Anatole Liberman (15:06):
There was a discussion of the word henchman,
which lasted ten years withFrank Chance, whose name is
unfortunately almost forgotten.Though, again, I sing, his
praise whenever I can because hewas a great etymologist and a
very well educated man.
Ari Hoptman (15:22):
You don't know about his beard?
Anatole Liberman (15:23):
No. There is no no no portrait. Absolutely
nothing. And I know very littleabout him except for the fact
that he was a medical doctor.Apparently, he didn't have too
many patients, because that isapproximately what Larry meant,
too much time on one's hands.
But as a result, I have awonderful database of what
people said about idioms closerto today's topic when it's not
(15:47):
so difficult to explain an idiomor not as difficult as it is to
explain the origin of a word.Because in order to explain the
origin of a word, you have to bea specialist. And idioms are
late, which is an interestingthing too. Very few idioms are
really old. And if they're old,they're quotes from the Bible or
(16:07):
translations from Horace orsomething like that.
But truly English idioms areabout four or five centuries
old, not much older thanShakespeare in most cases and
usually much younger so thatmany people really knew the
explanation of our mostrecondite proverbs, sayings, and
(16:29):
so on, and could explain thingsabout raining cats and dogs and,
pain through the nose and allthose strange things which no
one seems to know anythingabout, but suddenly, someone
knew. After all, this book thatwe are discussing now owes its
existence to those people, notonly in awesome queries. That's
(16:50):
the main source, but not theonly one. It owes its existence
to those who offered,volunteered their opinions. Do
you think that this wasprofitable enough to read to go
through several hundred volumesin order to sift their opinions
and come up sometimes with theanswer origin still unknown?
J. Lawrence Mitchell (17:12):
Yes. And in fact, in this, take my word
for it, many of the explanationsand the long paragraphs that,
you have written don't reach adefinitive conclusion about the
origin of the phrase, in partbecause you're well aware even
if you replicate them of folketymological explanations that
(17:34):
are so prevalent in some of thehistorical contributions made in
notes and queries and elsewhere.
Anatole Liberman (17:41):
There is no doubt that that's the way it is.
It's almost the same that we cansay, we could say, or might say
about the original words.Hundreds of pages written about
the origin of some of the mostcommon words, man, wife, god,
ship, anything. And at the end,we have those phrases, origin
(18:05):
uncertain, which is a politeword of saying that nobody knows
anything for sure. So it's thesame thing here.
But I think one of theadvantages of my method is that
when you know how many peoplewanted to explain something and
failed, you will be careful inthe future, and you will not
(18:25):
repeat the nonsense. Read, theentry about cats and dogs,
raining cats and dogs. Theexplanations are incredibly
stupid. That is one wonders whythose gentlemen who had so much
time on their on their hands,why they said those things. Oh,
it's because cats, when theywalk, the sound they produce
(18:48):
does resemble the the sound of apouring shower.
That's why cats now wait amoment. What about dogs? Oh,
never mind the dogs. If you haveexplained the cats, that's
enough, isn't it?
Ari Hoptman (18:59):
Well, of course, it's become a little, more, if I
can say, dangerous now becausewe have the Internet. And to
publish something, you don'teven have to have a stamp, which
you needed in the days of notesand queries. You just need a
computer, which almost everyonehas. And if you can set up a
website, you can publish yourown etymology of any idiom you
(19:20):
want. And if you make it looknice, well, then it it carries a
lot of weight.
So it's much easier, I think,now to popularize a wrong or
ridiculous etymology, much moreso than it was in the days of
the gentleman farmers.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (19:36):
Can I come back to some concrete examples
that I came across that, that Iknew to some degree or had used
in some other way, but, wasenlightened by what I found in
the dictionary? For example,God's Acre. Now I've written
about, the novels of TheodoreFrancis Powis, and he uses this
(19:57):
phrase a lot. And, of course, hemeans the churchyard, but I
didn't know anything about, whatyou mentioned, a German origin
for that term, but it'scertainly also used in God's
Little Acre. But, obviously,it's referring to the same
thing.
And the other one that occurredto me was, the phrase to go the
whole hog, which again wascommon enough violence in
(20:20):
England when I was growing up.But I I've come across it in
literary terms because VirginiaWoolf uses it to describe her
talks with Katherine Mansfield,and she describes her with some
awe as having gone the wholehog, on a number of occasions
after Catherine had confessed toVirginia about all her, little
(20:42):
affairs. So it's interesting tosee something that has literary
characteristics as it were, buthaven't been explained in in the
way that that you explain it.And and so I thought that this
would be useful for a literaryscholar who was interested in
following up on something likethat.
Anatole Liberman (21:00):
Since you mentioned this idiom, history is
also very the history of ofresearch is interesting because
the article appeared in a fastshift, and the author of that
article used only notes andqueries. The numerous
explanations in notes andqueries and nothing else. This
is a classic predecessor,really, of this book. And he
(21:22):
said something about notes andqueries being immensely useful,
and it is immensely useful,God's Acre and how it started in
Massachusetts and how Longfellowused it and what he thought
about
J. Lawrence Mitchell (21:35):
Right.
Anatole Liberman (21:36):
And all those things. But I also find it
interesting if you rememberFox's wedding, which means rain
and sunshine at the same time.Something that I, of course,
have never heard, and I don'tthink that anyone around us
heard it. And it traveled allthe way from India and crossed
many borders and then becametotally incomprehensible. And
(21:58):
there is a thick book about theorigin of this idiom.
So when you read, somethinglike, my paragraph about it, you
only see a reference to thebook, and you have no idea how
much time it may have taken, toexplain the origin. And when I
(22:18):
read the, God's Acre story, Iwas thrilled. Also, there was
someone before me who knew thatnotes and queries is an
inestimable source. And there isa bibliography of everything on
the proverbs and sayings innotes and queries, but just an
enumeration of titles withoutany explanation. So you go from
(22:40):
there, but we, of course, anarmy of volunteers, opened every
page, and I xeroxed every page,and the whole thing now is in my
office.
So that, yes, notes and queriesis not the only source, but one
of the most important ones. Whatdo you think about the indexes
in the book? Will they make thebook more usable, more useful,
(23:03):
and more, if I can use theignoble term, marketable?
Because we all want the book notonly to be opened, but also to
be bought. There are so manyindexes there.
Do you think those indexes werea good idea? I have gone too far
indexing absolutely everything,words, origins, authors, and so
(23:27):
on.
Ari Hoptman (23:27):
Well, let's see. I'm looking through the I first
went to the subject indexbecause I thought, well, the
index has got to be the last fewpages. But then as I flipped
back, I saw, oh, here's for me amuch more useful index of words
rather than topics. But if Iwere looking up an individual
idiom, I would find thisextremely useful. But if I were
doing a paper on idioms and Iwanted animal idioms, well, I
(23:50):
would go to the back.
So I think it's useful for bothcasual curiosity and for greater
research needs.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (23:57):
Yes. I found the word index very
useful. For example, I wanted tosee whether you had, before you
could say Jack Robinson. And, Ilooked up under j, and, of
course, it wasn't under j, but,it's under before. But it's
there, and so that was useful.
And another example would be Ican say things like as nice as
(24:17):
9p, but probably not somethingeither of you would say. But I
wanted to see how often 9p camein because it does occur in a
number of of your entries. Andso the word index pulls them
together in a useful way that Ifound very helpful.
Ari Hoptman (24:33):
I like the theme index. Is it called theme index
topic index at the back?
Anatole Liberman (24:37):
Yes. Yes. Some sort of the scores. Yes.
Ari Hoptman (24:39):
Yeah. I think one of the disadvantages is also the
advantage because you you startto look at, oh, well, you want
to find all of these that haveto do with, I don't know,
tables, and you start to go downrabbit holes as you would on
the, on the Internet. I thinkwe've all experienced that. But
I think that's the nice thingthat can happen here with the,
with the indexes or indices ifyou want.
Anatole Liberman (25:02):
Now I think indexes is perfectly alright.
Unless we suddenly switch toLatin, I think indexes will
satisfy absolutely everybody. Iwant also to say one thing may
probably come as a revelation tothose who will not only open the
book and immediately close it,but who will read it. And that
is how late most idioms reallyare. Words are perennial.
(25:26):
If you ask how old the word man,wife, boy, girl is, then you
find out that man is very old,boy is not very old, and girl is
not very old, and wife is veryold. And wife is, of course, is
the root of the word woman,which was. But when you look at
the chronology of the idioms inthe book, you see that they're
(25:48):
late, post renaissance, and thatis not by chance. I think that
might also be an asset becauseit, to a certain extent, tells
people about the origin oflanguage, of mentality of the
middle ages. It's also a look atthe history of language and not
(26:08):
only at the history of idioms.
Did it come as surprise to youthat the idioms are late, or did
you take it for granted? Yes.Well, of course, they should be
late.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (26:19):
Relatively late. But still, what's
surprising in some ways is howpersistent some are. You know,
again, using similes, happy asor as clean as a clean as a
whistle. Well, that seems to beboth British and American, and
it seems to be around for anawful long time. But at the same
time, there's a creative elementin the formulation of these, and
(26:40):
I found in this corpus ofcontemporary American English
under happy, for example, ashappy as the day is long, as
happy as heaven pleases, ashappy as a pig in mud or
something else, as happy asLarry, of course, which
interested me,
Anatole Liberman (26:55):
of course, and
J. Lawrence Mitchell (26:57):
as happy as a lark or as happy as a kid
in a candy store. Now I'm prettysure a kid in the candy store is
not British, but it shows youhow alive these idioms are. Even
put when they're beingpreserved, they're being, let's
say, added to even so.
Ari Hoptman (27:13):
So when you read a when you read something like
Beowulf, which is about the yearJanuary, the language is pretty
straightforward. What aboutChaucer a few hundred years
later? How did he feel about,
Anatole Liberman (27:24):
Well, that's the beginning, of our epic to a
certain extent, and that's whatI mentioned briefly in the
introduction. I could havewritten and probably should have
written more about it, but Ididn't want the introduction to
engulf the whole book. If, I canalmost quote what I wrote in the
introduction. If you have a verygood old English grammar and a
good old English dictionary anda good edition of Beowulf, like,
(27:48):
Cleaver's Beowulf in its modernversion, you can read Beowulf
and understand everythingwithout an instructor if you
have enough time and enoughpatience. With choices, it is
somewhat different because manyphrases are truly idiomatic.
But today, you are absolutelylost because you suddenly find
(28:09):
out one of the characters in thebook kicked the back the bucket,
And you begin to think about thebucket, and there is no bucket
in view. You have to look it upin some dictionary, and you
don't know where to look it upunder kick or under bucket and
what it has to do with thebucket. And that's why I have a
word index. We're dealing withsomething that can be called the
(28:30):
post medieval mentality. Whenthey invented the art of
perspective, that is when theypride themselves away from the
canvas.
Like children's drawings,they're flat, and their language
was flat. They had episodes, andthey had similes, but they never
(28:50):
had metaphors. And they couldsay that my beloved is like a
rose, but they would never havesaid my beloved is a rose
because my beloved is not aflower. So my beloved was not a
rose. Like a rose is fine.
And when they learned thefigurative use of words and
things, then they began toproduce idioms by the million,
(29:14):
really.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (29:15):
So that example you used of, kick the
bucket in America, I discoveredyou could also cash in your
chips, which I would never use,but I might kick the bucket.
Ari Hoptman (29:26):
You can also buy the farm, which is, I think,
much more much easier tounderstand.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (29:30):
Now does it mean that people didn't know
kick the bucket or that theyweren't satisfied with it as a
as a solution, as it were, to,the location where we plot the
problem?
Anatole Liberman (29:42):
It's hard to tell, because it's this the same
question about synonyms. Youhave already five or six words
meaning brave, and you open adictionary of synonyms in
addition to brave and doubting,valiant, and so on. You find to
a horror that there are 25 or 30words meaning brave. Language is
(30:06):
so redundant, and that's whyit's so hard to learn it. There
are so many of them, but, ofcourse, more or less, I think
that is what you mean.
Once they began to produce thesethings, then they could never
stop. And there was much funthere, especially if you look at
the section beginning with theword as and those Yeah. Those
(30:29):
similes. A pages and pages ofas, and one wonders who did it
and as wise as the woman ofManbrit. Had a long explanation.
Fine. As mean as tongs. Whyshould tongs be mean, and what
does that mean? The explanation,perhaps the association is with
(30:51):
pincers, an instrument thatpinches, and we go back to the
old attraction of flippingmoney. Perhaps, but that's
really all that one one can say.
As merry as a Greek, which I usefrom time to time, only that no
one knows what a Greek is.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (31:09):
I came across that interestingly a
couple of years ago in reading abiography of Charlotte Bronte,
and she uses as merry as aGreek. And and there was a note
in the edition, which also saidthey didn't weren't really sure
what the grig was, but it mightmight be a frog.
Anatole Liberman (31:25):
Yes. Grig, as I have found, that is what Skeet
explained. And, of course, ifSkeet explained something, who
am I, to doubt the value of thisexplanation? Greek meanings
cricket, and he cited manydialectal synonyms. Greek means
an eel and cricket and way andso on, a whole a whole line.
I had the same trouble with asmerry as a pisma. Nobody
(31:48):
understands the word pisma.Pisma. And my student said, what
is pisma?
Ari Hoptman (31:52):
That's one I haven't heard in a while.
Anatole Liberman (31:55):
Where on earth, Harry, did you run into
the word pisma?
Ari Hoptman (31:58):
There was a nonsense song that was floating
around in the nineteen forties.I remember my father quoting
this, singing this in the house,and it had, it just it was a
nonsense song with the wordPismire, which I assumed was a
nonsense word. And then I foundout it had an actual meaning
and, didn't make the song anymore popular instantly, but, it
was just floating around myhouse.
Anatole Liberman (32:19):
Have only one virtue that, they illiterate
because they're stupid, silly.It's fine sometimes, and there
may be, of course, some depth asnice as a nun's n u n, as nun's
hen. As Keith explained it, butthen Keith explained everything.
It doesn't mean that hisexplanation was absolutely
(32:41):
correct. But probably thegreatest attraction was that
nice as a nun's hen hasalliterating n's, but then the
next is as pert as a pearmonger.
Well, that is really too toomuch, to to swallow.
Ari Hoptman (32:56):
If you need the word pert, that is, which which
you don't generally need.
Anatole Liberman (33:01):
No. Of course. Of course. And why pear monger,
is so pert is not very clear.
Ari Hoptman (33:06):
Of Of course, you have ones like fit as a fiddle,
which is
Anatole Liberman (33:09):
Exactly.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (33:10):
Yes. And, again, the alliteration seems to
be more important there than,than meaning.
Anatole Liberman (33:16):
I have no doubt that you are right.
Though, one of course, as alwayswhen one, deals with such
things, one should be verycareful. As fit as a fiddle,
that's something that youmentioned in in our conversation
a few days ago. As fit as afiddle, are fiddles fit? In the
book, you will find anexplanation.
Yes. What the word fit meant atthat time and when fiddles were
(33:38):
fit, that's, probably true. Asplain as a pike staff.
Apparently, there are somethings which are more plain than
pike staffs. And that brings meto another question.
How how well are not only these,but in general, how well are
sayings, idioms known? I thinkit, differs tremendously from
(33:59):
country to country, from area toarea, because sometimes I say
something simply to amuse mystudents. A long lecture,
they're tired, sometimes bored.They are students. They have no
way of avoiding me, so they haveto listen to me for an hour, an
hour and a half, and sometimesthey teach evening lectures.
They're there like prisoners andcannot escape. So from time to
(34:22):
time, I would say somethingsimply to enliven them.
Something like, well, there'sthank you very much that warms
the cockles of my heart. Andthey will wake up, simply
because it's it's so funny. Justas there are words which make
them smile, using the word fool,is nothing.
But if I call a fool an incomepoof, everybody begins to to
smile because it's a funny word.Or, someone who seems to be
(34:46):
looking out of the window, outthe window as most people around
me say now, and, not listeningto me. And I would say, I think,
you've gone wool gathering. And,again, everybody, begins to
laugh. Do you know what to gowool gathering is?
Somebody would timidly raise hisor her hand saying, yes. I know,
(35:08):
and the others will wake up andlisten to it. One of the
examples which amazed me verymuch and amused me very much was
connected with wordpecker.Everybody knew the obscene
meaning of the word pecker, butnot the saying, which is the
only one. I that is I neverheard the word, the word pecker,
(35:31):
but there is one, which issupposed to be unpronounceable
in England and turned out to bepretty clear everywhere.
Keep a pecker up. And they toldme that in in this country,
pecker means nose, so there isreally nothing to be ashamed of.
Ari Hoptman (35:48):
In this country meaning England.
Anatole Liberman (35:50):
I don't know.
Ari Hoptman (35:51):
Because there's the song, it's very, very British.
Drop down dead. What is thethey're out of sorts in
Sunderland and terribly coarsein Kent. They're dull and hull,
and the Isle Of Mull is seethingwith discontent. And that has
the phrase, we'll keep ourpeckers down or we'll,
Anatole Liberman (36:05):
Those in England tell told me that this
was totally unpronounceable. Andhere, it seems to be rather
innocuous, only that nobody everuses it. What is your general
impression? How idearmatic thosewhom you know? Well, I don't
mean only those exotic phraseswhich nobody's supposed to know
and nobody knew even a hundredyears ago.
But in general, are peopleusually plain spoken, or do they
(36:29):
want to enjoy what they say andadd idioms for dessert?
J. Lawrence Mitchell (36:36):
But but, of course, it depends upon how
much they know about the, thephrase, I mean, that keep your
pecker up. People may avoid itbecause they do feel that it may
be in some way obscene eventhough that's not their usage.
But I don't I couldn't saywhether it's British or
American. That's one of thoseexamples where I I could say it
(36:57):
quite happily, and I wouldn'tconsider it inappropriate. But
it would mean, you know,continue to be optimistic.
Anatole Liberman (37:05):
Yes. That's right.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (37:06):
Yes. Right.
Ari Hoptman (37:07):
But I don't think people are very, idiom friendly,
at least in our little corner ofof the world in Minnesota, which
is where I'm based.
Anatole Liberman (37:16):
Have the same opinion.
Ari Hoptman (37:18):
I don't hear people using or if they do use idioms,
it's usually a kind of a bigproduction. They make a little
pause, and they say, well, youknow, it's
Anatole Liberman (37:25):
Yes. Showing off.
Ari Hoptman (37:27):
Well, not showing off, but saying I'm about to,
pay attention because this isabout to this is about to get
more interesting. So I don'tknow him from Adam's off aux,
which I only heard once in mylife, but I've been I've been
waiting for an opportunity touse it.
Anatole Liberman (37:41):
Yes.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (37:42):
Well, I think in Texas where I'm located
now, there seem to be much morewillingness to launch into sort
of, let's say, dodgy,terminology. I've come across
one as as as happy as a leatherqueen at a prison rodeo, which I
think is, an interestinglocation.
Ari Hoptman (38:01):
Texas has one of my favorites. I don't know if it's
in the book. That dog don'thunt, which sounds strange
coming out of Midwestern mouth,but, I mean, that doesn't make
any sense. I can't even I can'teven use it just because it
doesn't it doesn't sound right.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (38:15):
There's a variant on it that said that
hound don't hunt.
Ari Hoptman (38:18):
That hound don't hunt.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (38:19):
And that works better as a little from a
little point of view. Right.Yeah. It means something like
you can't make that argument oryou can't you can't go there.
Ari Hoptman (38:29):
Yeah. They say he did that? No. That dog don't
hunt or that hound don't hunt. Itried my best.
Anatole Liberman (38:35):
Well, I can tell you an example of more or
less the same type. One of myfavorite, phrases is to be in a
Brown study, which means in astate of deep meditation,
reverie, and having a seriousproblem, and I have to decide
what to do with it. I learnedthe the phrase from Agatha
Christie, because Hercule Poirotis very often in a in a Brown
(38:56):
study, and I'm very fond ofAgatha Christie's books and of
her style. I think she writesbeautiful English. So from time
to time, I use it.
I know for for sure that nobodyunderstands it. So that's fine,
I thought. And there was a longdiscussion of this phrase in
periodical, not in notes andqueries, but, in the periodical,
(39:16):
the nation, in the American,periodical, when the b volume of
the Oxford English Dictionaryappeared, and there was an
explanation there. And in orderto find the material for this
book, we, I mean, an army ofvolunteers, not only I. We
opened every periodical in theworld, really, like Scientific
American, The Nation, New York,New Yorker, everything.
(39:38):
And, not only notes and queries.Notes and queries looms large,
but that's not the only one.And, a very interesting
explanation about Brown study.And, I was quite sure that this
is specifically British phrase.Two years ago, I won't tell you
why, but I reread HuckleberryFinn, the Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, the book whichI read first when I was 12 years
(40:00):
old.
So I reread it and enjoyed itvery much, and then I jumped up.
Hack says, I felt rather Brownstuddish. Hear me. Huckleberry
Finn knew this expression. Heknew this idiom.
Was it something that they knewonly in the South, in one of
those southern states? How onearth did Huck know something
(40:25):
that no one seems to understandtoday? I think someone who will
open, open this dictionary, notnecessarily read it from cover
to cover because that's reallytoo much to explain, would find
many amusing examples of whatthey thought was true and what
was not necessarily true. Thereis a long entry on being in a
(40:45):
Brown study. Harry, do you everuse it?
Ari Hoptman (40:49):
I have heard it a few times, each time from you.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (40:54):
I know that I heard it when I was
growing up, but I would neveruse it myself.
Anatole Liberman (40:59):
But you knew it when you were growing up?
J. Lawrence Mitchell (41:01):
I knew it when I was growing up. Yeah.
Anatole Liberman (41:02):
Yeah. So it was common enough, for you for
you to become. I've never heardanyone to use it. If we can
imagine that someone can readthis book from cover to cover,
will this person close the bookwith the feeling of having
learned something reallyworthwhile so that the money
spent on it hadn't been wasted?What is your opinion?
(41:24):
That's a very blunt question. Isthe book worth buying?
J. Lawrence Mitchell: Absolutely. I think it's, again, (41:28):
undefined
it's going to be one of thosekinds of books that people will
keep handy because they'll wantto dip into it from time to time
either when they're talking withfriends or because, they've got
something there that they wantto, test. For example, with
those as happy as in otherphrases of that sort. I tested
(41:51):
them among friends in the areawhere I live in in this
retirement community just to seewhat people use because I can
use my wife as one kind of,measure of American English,
but, she's been exposed toBritish English too. But there's
lots of people here fromdifferent parts of the country
who never have.
So I find it quite useful. And,of course, it's the kind of
(42:13):
thing that might well constitutea kind of parlor game or the
kind of thing that you do overdinner Because often I get
together with other people overdinner, and there may be half a
dozen of us. And I I would say,if you're gonna say as happy as,
what would you say? Or as cleanas, and it's interesting to see
what responses you get. So Ithink having the book, at hand
(42:35):
would be valuable for that kindof, enterprise.
Certainly, in in Christmas, itwould be a a great present for
somebody.
Anatole Liberman (42:42):
Do you think, Ari, that this book could be
used in any courses dealing withthe English language?
Ari Hoptman (42:51):
Oh, sure. People talking about exactly what you
were saying, the changes in howpeople express themselves,
certainly, where you made thatcomparison of, the directness of
Beowulf versus what happenslater on, you know, with, in in
Chaucer where it starts to shiftand Shakespeare where it's
going. Am I using it right wholehog? But what I was thinking of
(43:13):
also is that some people mightdecide, just to have some fun
and, use some of these inconversation, which might lead
other people to think, well,where where did you, where did
you come up with such an obscurephrase? Well, it was in well, it
was in this book that I gothere.
That was when well, take my wordfor it. I think people might
have some fun just trying torevive some of these, idioms.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (43:35):
By by the way, I think the title is a
great one. Take my word for it.It really sort of captures the
the contents there very nicely.
Anatole Liberman (43:42):
It's not easy to write a book. It's very hard
to think of a good title, and,that has been my experience for
years. I tried dozens and dozensof titles and offered them to
the press, and they finallysaid, take my word for it. It's
perhaps the best. And that'swhy, it now graces the cover of
the book.
Ari Hoptman (44:03):
The previous title the pre previous suggestion,
Oklahoma, I'm glad they didn'tgo with that one.
Anatole Liberman (44:10):
Yeah. That's It was not
Ari Hoptman (44:11):
as good. Not as descriptive.
Anatole Liberman (44:13):
Not as descriptive. And, I can only
finish our discussion because Ithink that we can talk about it
forever, but, one hour is quiteenough. Let me tell you two
things of which I am immenselyproud. Once upon a time, the
University of Minnesota Pressused to exhibit books, I think,
in the faculty club. And, one ofmy books was there, and it was
(44:36):
stolen.
And those who organized theexhibit said, it's the only time
in the history of our exhibitionthat a book has been stolen. And
I was tremendously proud thatthe book which was stolen was
the last book, which I wouldimagine, being stolen. That was
Germanic exantology. The verytitle makes people, sleepy. And
(45:01):
then, on another case, someoneworked for the University of
Minnesota Press and then leftthe press.
I think this young woman was astudent. And, the press said, we
want to give you some partingpresent. What would you want?
And she chose one of my books,translation of Lermanente. That
makes more sense.
In my long life, one could haveboasted of more things, but
(45:25):
that's all I have. So I have toshare the, little treasure that
that I have.
Ari Hoptman (45:30):
But don't steal the book. Pay for the book. Buy the
book.
Anatole Liberman (45:33):
Yes. Take my word for it. Absolutely.
Ari Hoptman (45:35):
Absolutely.
Narrator (45:37):
Hello. Quick interjection from producer
Maggie here. Number one, this isdirected to our listeners. Very
importantly, please support yourlocal bookstore. Number two,
personally, for me, having somuch word and etymological
expertise in one space, virtualthough it may be, is a rare
opportunity to ask a question ofour conversants that's been
persisting with me.
(45:58):
How do each of you sign off onyour letters or emails?
J. Lawrence Mitchell (46:03):
I always use cordially even on my emails.
I tend to be old fashioned thatway.
Ari Hoptman (46:09):
I say sincerely or. When I'm writing to students, I
write because they're they'resupposed to know after three
semesters.
Anatole Liberman (46:16):
Yes. Well, I I have a small range of
signatures. I learned it fromsome Englishman, many years ago
who signed his letters withever. Sometimes when I feel more
linen sentimental, I write ever.When in other cases, I sometimes
write well, of course, bestregards and so on.
(46:37):
But there's one thing, that Ireally hate. That the word all
the best, has, at least inEngland, has lost the article,
and now everybody writes allbest. And I think it's
absolutely wrong because withthe superlative degree, you need
the definite article. So Irefuse to write all best and
(46:58):
write all the best just to provethat I'm still alive and
kicking, of course.
Ari Hoptman (47:04):
But you have to be very, very careful with the when
you use, smellulator because,not everyone's going to like it.
Anatole Liberman (47:11):
That's absolutely right.
Ari Hoptman (47:13):
Has to be a a very good friend.
Anatole Liberman (47:16):
Thank you very much. It has been a pleasure to
see you both, especially,because, Larry lives now the
whole country across from me,and we exchange a few, Christmas
cards. But now, it's thepleasure of talking to you
several days ago when we were,discussing how to organize, this
(47:36):
session. And now seeing youseeing you and seeing you you,
Ari, with with our COVID things,and we always meet with masks
and don't recognize each other.And now we're here showing our
true face.
So thank you very much.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (47:54):
Thank you.
Ari Hoptman (47:55):
Always a pleasure.
Anatole Liberman (47:56):
Thank you
Ari Hoptman (47:56):
so much. Thank you.
J. Lawrence Mitchell (47:57):
Thanks. Ari, good to meet you.
Ari Hoptman (47:59):
Good to meet you. We're we're our names appear in
the same book, but we've nevermet until this, till this
moment.
Anatole Liberman (48:05):
It's,
Ari Hoptman (48:06):
rather bizarre.
Anatole Liberman (48:07):
No other place like etymology which unites
people We'll see
Ari Hoptman (48:13):
you later.
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