Plus ça change?

Dear Word Detective:  What is the correct spelling and derivation of “sea change” or “C  change” (perhaps meaning an important or major change in some circumstance)? — Sean.

It’s a truism of anthropology that human beings are pattern-seeking creatures, and we tend to notice when things happen after (and perhaps because) other things happen.  This is as true of this column as it is of chicken farming or pole vaulting.  So when we decide to have a presidential election, I can expect to receive lots of questions about such words as “stump,” “caucus,” “soapbox,” “poll,” “ballot,” “narcolepsy” and “emigration.”  This means that I get to repeat myself in print at least a few times every four years, although I do my best to spice up the answers with fresh cat stories.

What’s a bit odd, although also absolutely predictable, is that whenever the winner of the election is not of the party to which the previous president belonged (still with me?), I am deluged with inquiries about the phrase “sea change” (which is indeed the correct spelling).  It’s almost as if the news media and their Pavlovian pundits were programmed to spit out this particular phrase whenever the White House gets new drapes, thereby confusing their listeners, who then write to me.  I’m not complaining, of course.  I just wish there were a way to float derivatives based on this certainty.

When pundits use the phrase “sea change” today, they usually mean “a profound change in the situation or the way things are done” (“Borosage said President-elect Obama’s victory spearheaded not only a change election, but a sea change election, marking the end of a conservative era,” Marketwatch, 11/07/08).

Like many of our most colorful phrases, “sea change” was coined by William Shakespeare, in this case in his play “The Tempest,” in Ariel’s song to Ferdinand:  “Full fathom five thy father lies / Of his bones are coral made / Those are pearls that were his eyes / Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange.”

Shakespeare’s “sea change” was more than a change in the appearance or functioning of the thing changed; it was a radical change in the very nature and composition of the thing itself (“Of his bones are coral made”), the kind of fundamental change that would result from long submersion in the sea.

As a metaphor for radical change, “sea change” had legs, as they say, although it certainly took a while to get going. The first use of the term in print found (so far) after Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” in 1610 didn’t come until Ezra Pound’s poem “Lustra” in 1917.  Subsequent usage of the phrase tended to restrict it to situations where a truly momentous change had taken place (“The Messianic vision … has undergone some strange sea-changes outside Judaism,” 1976).

Unfortunately, as “sea change” has gained more popularity lately, its meaning has often been diluted and trivialized (“Gavin believes that this update indicates a sea change for the software and web applications…,” TechRadar.com).  In the ultimate insult to the Bard, “sea change” has been harnessed as bizspeak (“Business is in the midst of a sea change when it comes to staffing and retaining superior talent,” New York Times), and I’m sure that somewhere out there right now a trucking company is promising a “sea change in package delivery.”  Full fathom five them all, I say.

[Edith — I need a head for this that won’t get me in trouble.]

Dear Word Detective:  My wife and I were discussing yesterday the history of the word “redneck.”  As a Texan, I’ve heard this word all my life, and just assumed it had to do with people working in the sun all day.  On a recent trip to Jackson, Mississippi, however, I was presented an alternate theory: the Old Capitol Museum there attributes the term to the red-tie wearing followers of an old politician there named Theodore G. Bilbo — the campaigners for Bilbo would wear white suits and red ties.  My Mississipian grandfather recalls Bilbo being a rabid racist.  A brief internet search revealed all kinds of other theories ranging from persecuted Presbyterians in Europe to coal miners in West Virginia.  Please Word Detective, help me get in touch with my redneck heritage. — Shane.

Good question, and now I get to type the word “Mississippi” a few times, which is almost as much fun as spelling it out loud.  It’s the only US state name that you can dance to.

First of all, I have to hand it to the folks at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson for bringing up Theodore G. Bilbo (1877-1947) in their explanation of “redneck.”  If I were in their shoes, I’d be strongly tempted to deny the guy ever existed.  But Bilbo was indeed twice Governor of Mississippi, as well as a US Senator from that state for 17 years, and to call Bilbo, a longtime member of the Ku Klux Klan, a “rabid” racist is an understatement.  In any case, it’s possible that Bilbo’s supporters wore red ties, but the term “redneck” first appeared in print in the 1830s, quite a while before Bilbo slithered onto the stage of history.

I, too, have heard the theory that the term “redneck” originally referred to 17th century Scottish Presbyterians who signed anti-Anglican proclamations in their own blood and wore red scarves or kerchiefs to signal their beliefs.  According to this theory, their descendants eventually settled in the Appalachian region of the US and came to be known as “rednecks” because of those scarves.  It is true, of course, that Appalachia was largely settled by Scottish and Irish immigrants.  But the fact that the term “redneck” was apparently never applied to the Presbyterians while they were still in Scotland and actually wearing the scarves poses a problem for this theory.

Various struggles by coal miners in Appalachia for the right to unionize also are said to have involved red neckwear, but this theory lacks any actual evidence connecting these struggles to “redneck.”

The accepted theory among linguists about “redneck” is the one you’ve deduced on your own:  that the term was applied to poor white Southerners because long hours working in the fields caused a permanent sunburn on the back of their necks.  But there may be more to it than that.  The term “redneck” first became truly widespread during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when food was scarce in the rural South, and many poor people subsisted on a diet composed largely of pork fat and hominy grits (made from corn).  Such a diet is lacking in niacin, and severe niacin deficiency produces a disease called “pellagra,” one of the symptoms of which is a striking reddening of the skin.  Pellagra was endemic to the American South during the Depression, and since sunlight worsens the dermatitis produced by the disease, the sunburned necks of poor white agricultural workers would have been even more noticeable, perhaps increasing the popularity of the term “redneck.”