"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 27/10/17 (cliffhanger, end up on the cutting-room floor, being in the can, silver screen

I've been browsing through the Oxford Dictionary's blog, which I recommended quite often, just a free site with lots of lovely facts and stories about the English language. And thix one remind me of all the words that have passed into English from movies and movie-making, film-making. Since its inception in the early 20th century, lota and lots of worda have travelled into English. Cliffhanger - that of course came from shots of people literally hanging onto a cliff by their fingertips, becamr a famous film with Sylvester Stallone as well. Something might end up on the cutting-room floor, we might just say that, that obviously refers back to parts of the film that were literally cut out from the reel and discarded onto the floor. We talk about things being in the can, reffering to the canister in which a film reel is held once editing is complete. But there's one that took me by surprise and I didn't know this one, and I love it. We talk about the silver screen - that goes back to people first visiting the pictures, as they well called, and movie screens were coated with reflective metallic paint, so it resulted in a really highly reflective silver surface to better display the projected images, so from the screen projector. And, obviously, as technologies moved on, then that died out. So there you go, just the smattering of words that have passed into English from the cinema. But I like silver screen, I didn't realise it was literally silver to being with. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 26/10/17 (handsome)

I had an e-mail from Moira. Didn't want to give her last name. But Moira is a keen viewer of Coundown, so thanks for writing in. And she wanted to know what the "hand" is doing in "handsome". It's a good question. Again, it's one of those words that you don't usually question. And the earliest evidence for it is surprisingly early - it's 1440. And it's an English-to-Latin bilingual dictionary for kids. And it says, "Handsum, of esy to hond werke"- hand work - "manualis". That was the Latin translation. And essentially, they were saying that something handsome was easy to control or... or handleable, if you like. So, how do you go from something that's easy to handle to striking? Well, it's a kind of... process that happens a lot in English, really. If you thing about something that's easy to use, as I say, a sort of malleable in some way, that it makes life a lot easier. It's sutable for a particular job, it makes life agreeable and pleasant. And handsome slipped into English really to mean well proportioned and elegant arount the 16th century. So things could be particularly handsome because they looked nice as well as being sutable for a particular job. And of course these things nice and thn people could start to look nice, too, and it was Spenser, Edmund Spenser, who was one of the first to use it in his famous Faerie Queene. And then Shakespeare, who loved his Spenser, use it in Richard III in one of his big rants. He talks about "a handsome stripling". So, it's a long, long journey that handsome has taken through the ages. But "hand" is still preserved there, really, if you think about sort of manual work and how that was its original meaning. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 25/10/17 (going for a Burton)

Well, I mentioned yesterday, talking about aviation slang and the words and expressions that have come from the skies, so we talk about "going for a Burton" or "gone for a Burton", which is one of the phrases that attracts most debate, probably, in ethymological circles. Lots and lots of theories abound for this one. What we do know is that it definetily does go back to the RAF, which was a home for a lot of slang, actually, in current English. It means, if you've gone for a Burton in the RAF, it means you have been killed, sadly. So, ruined or destroyed. But of course, we use it slightly more figuratively now, to mean, it's just... it's broken. So you might say, "My laptop has gone for a Burton". But what is the Burton and where did the phrase begin? Well, two main theories. I have to say, there are many, many more, but two main ones which hold most water... which is slightly inappropriate pun for the skies. But they both demonstrate tha black humour, really, that is needed to deal with the fact that during the World Wars, aviators did die, obviously, in some of the horrible dogfights that took place up there. The first involves the English town of Burton-upon-Trent, which is known for its brewing industry. And a Burton came to refer to a type of delicious ale. And when an aviator crashed into the sea, which is known, of course, as "the drink", informally, the idea was that the person was aabsent because they'd gone for a pint of beer. So it was a nice, friendly, slightly affectionate euphemism for an aviator that had died in action. The second one involves a very famous family of tailors called Montague Barton. Burton's, of course, you can still find, I think, in high streets today. But if an airman went for a Burton, he'd died and gone to be fitted for a wooden suit. That was the idea. So, again, a lot of black humour there, that he'd got a wooden overcoat, if you like, ie a coffin because he'd died, again, in action. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 24/10/17 (leading edge, pushing the envelope, flat spin)

I've been talking recently about words that began their life at sea. So, many, many words in English have nautical origins behind them. So, I thought I would look at aviation today. So, words and expressions that were born in the skies. We're going to is start with "leading edge". We talking about something that is leading edge, it's at the vanguard of development, it's right there at the forefront. It was, to be fair, first found on the seas as well, but when it came into aviation terminology, it meant the foremost edge of an aerofoil, especially a wing or again a propeller blade. There's another one which again you might think of as management speak and that's "pushing the envelope". Slightly annoying, pushing the envelope, but it means to extend the boundaries of what's possible, thinking outside the box, if you like. That goes back to 1940s, where in aviation parlance, an envelope or flight envelope, the definition is a set of limiting combinations of speed and altitude or speed and range possible for a particular aircraft of aircraft engine. And so, to push that envelope is to test it beyond its limits, almost, which of course is an important thing when you researching an aeronautical capabilities. Finally, we talk about being in a "flat spin", often, these days, if we're really agitated or slightly panicked about something. Probably, you can guess this one. It does go back to a serious situation for the pilot which may well lead to a sense of panic, and that's the aircraft descending whilist staying almost horizontal. Not a very nice experience at all. That goes back to 1917. So, all of those began in the skies. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 23/10/17 (cut and run, copper bottom, up sticks)

I've been looking at words and expressions that began at sea, so I'm going to have three expressions, very quickly, for you today that began at sea. The first is to "cut and run". If you cut and run, you make a swift exit, usually from a tricky situation. In the age of sail, however, it meant something very different and much more literal, because a captain's options were very limited if an enemy ship came up to it and it was at anchor. Obviously, he didn't have very much time to move, so if the situation was very, very urgent and staying put would lead to a loss of life, then the captain might deside it was safer and more prudent in fact just to cut the anchor cable and to leg it, living to fight another day, and that's exactly what cutting and run meant. It was the literal cutting of the anchor cable. So that's cut and run. Copper bottom, we talk about giving a "copper-bottomed assurance", a "copper-bottomed guarantee", which is cast-iron, if you like, to use another expression. And those two goes back not to sturdy saucepans, but to sea, and the use a copper to cover the bottom of wooden ships, and it was done specifically to protect ships from a really pesky mollusc that was called the teredo, or, in fact, is called the teredo, and it drills into wood. Copper also prevented shells and weeds accumulating on the bottom, which also hampered a boat's progress. But then it slipped into mainstream language, meaning something that was secure and sound because it had that copper bottom. And finally, to "up sticks", this was a bit of a surprise to me, that too goes back to a ship where the sticks in fact are either masts or the portion of a mast. A mast can often be unshipped, ie, removed from their regular or a fixed position when the ship's at anchor, but when you want to prepare the ship to set off, again, the mast, or masts, the sticks, in other words, must be upped. In other words they must be set up, and once that happens, the ship is ready to sail away. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 20/10/17 (swinging the lead, marine)

I don't suppose anyone's ever accused you of swinging the lead. I think probably not. But if they had, they would've been accusing you of being a sriker basically, a lazy malingerer, and the British idiom, definitely British, it's first founded in the Army slang, so during the First World War, but it probably came onshore via the vital Naval activity which is depth sounding, so measuring the depth of water in which a ship stands or floats, if you like. So masuring between the ship and the seabed or river bottom. And these were in the days before sonar transformed the entire exercise. Soa lead was a very large lump of lead that was suspended from a rope and that was known in full as a lead line, and it was lobbed from the side by the leadsman and it came to reat on the seabed. And it had markers, knots, or different sort of measurements, if you like, so that the leadsmen could gauge just how far the ship was from the sea bottom and it would ensure, of course, that the vessel didn't run aground, which was incredibly important. That lead was incredibly heavy, so it could weight anything from 9 lb to 32 lb. So particularly in rough weather, if you can imagine, that was a pretty demanding task. So that all seems a bit puzzling. Why then did such a difficult task come to mean something that involved, you know, somebody being lazy, basically. Well, it's probably because in some cases, the leadsman, instead of dropping the weight right to the seabed, would shrink his duty and just swing it over the side and then sort of happily sit there, if you like, without giving the exact measurement. But more likely the meaning stemmed from the rivalries, traditional rivalry between the Army and the Navy, because when I had to research my book, and I spoke with sailors and soldiers, they had such joking acronyms for ewach other and the ones that the Army insists on for any marine is that "marine" itself is an acronym for Muscles Are Required, Intelligence Not Expected. So, swinging the lead, yes, something you,ve never, never done, but it's a really good expression, I think, for somebody, who's just really bunking off and not pulling their weight. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 19/10/17 (brass monkey)

Anyone investigating the origins of words will quite often refer to a certain body that operates under the acronym CANOE. And CANOE stands for Committee to Ascribe a Nautical Origin to Everything. That's because so many words in English are said to have begun their lives on the high seas and, as you can probably tell, not all of them are true. But one of the most hotly disputed stories of all involves the saying brass monkeys. If you talk about brass monkeys weather, it's incredibly cold and in full, the expression is to freeze the balls of brass monkey. It's said to come frome triangles that supported large kind of pyramid-style stacks of iron candles that were held on sailing ships - military sailing ships. But the plot does thicken a little bit, because we do know a naval cannon itself was known as a monkey and the boys that loaded the cannons, the cannons on naval ships were called powder monkeys. So a nautical origin is just about possible, but where it gets confusing  is that the cannonballs came along after a whole line of other sayings involving brass monkey. Most of them involve extremes of hot or cold weather. So you would have, "It's hot enough to singe the hair off a brass monkey", "hot enough to burn the ears off a brass monkey", you could also talk the legs, not off the donkey, but off of  brass monkey. You might not have the brains of a brass monkey, or you could touch the heart of a brass monkey if you did something very, very kind. There's a whole line of expressions involving this brass figure. Which means in the end, with all those bodily references, that the balls in question are simply testicles with an added punning referense to those monkeys that I mentioned, which were the cannons on naval ship. So the sea does come into itsomewhere, but it's a very, very thick plot that you have to really kind of get into to find out the thruth.