February 2008 Issue

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readme:

Well, here we go again. This issue marks the return of strange headlines and even stranger illustrations to the columns.

We are still in the process of integrating the old archives into this new site, so if you’re looking for something and can’t find it in the “New Archives” at left, check the “Old Archives” link a bit further down. If all else fails, the Google search box at the foot of each page works on the sledgehammer principle, searching everything on both sites. If you still can’t find the answer, it probably isn’t here, and you should send me a question.

A special thanks to all the folks who have chipped in moolah lately, especially subscribers who renewed their subscriptions. Your premium cats are in the mail. But seriously, we here at TWD World Headquarters depend on the kindness of our readers to support this site, so please consider subscribing to TWD-by-Email. You’ll still be able to come back here, see the illustrations, and post your comments on the columns.

And if you run out of things to read here, swing by Ask for It by Name!, which is just getting started but already explains the origins of many of your favorite brand names. Mmmm, Chef Boyardee.

Update: There’s something new at the bottom of every page of this site: a customized Google Word Origins search engine which will search a range of credible English etymology websites (which I picked) for any word or phrase entered in the box. It sure beats searching the entire web for something if you can’t find it here.

Give it a shot:


And now, on with the show….

 

 

Under the bus, to throw

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Cross at the green, not in betw…

Dear Word Detective: What is the origin of the phrase “to throw one under the bus”? — Brenda Varney.

bus08.pngGood question, and, it would seem, a timely one as well. It’s hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV these days without hearing of someone being “thrown under the bus.” Last year CNN’s Jack Cafferty declared that “Rather than face Senate confirmation hearings over his reappointment as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Bush White House has decided to simply throw General Peter Pace under the bus.” Elsewhere, the E-Commerce News warned that a new song royalty scheme would “… throw large webcasters under the bus and put an end to small webcasters’ hopes of one day becoming big.” And a letter to the New York Times cautioned the paper not to “throw doctors under the bus … as the cause of health care costs.”

“To throw someone under the bus” is defined as meaning “to sacrifice; to treat as a scapegoat; to betray,” but I think the key to the phrase really lies in the element of utter betrayal, the sudden, brutal sacrifice of a stalwart and loyal teammate for a temporary and often minor advantage. There is no retirement dinner, no gold watch, for poor schmuck “thrown under the bus.” On the contrary, the scapegoat’s name is liable to disappear from the website overnight.

The earliest solid example of “throw under the bus” found in print so far is from 1991, although a 1984 quote from rock star Cyndi Lauper where she uses the phrase “under the bus” (without “throw”) may or may not count as a sighting. Incidentally, by far the best compilation of citations for the phrase can be found, as usual, at Grant Barrett’s Double-Tongued Dictionary website (www.doubletongued.org).

The exact origin of “thrown under the bus” is, unfortunately, a mystery. Slang expert Paul Dickson, quoted by William Safire in his New York Times magazine column, traces it to sports, specifically the standard announcement by managers trying to get the players to board the team bus: “Bus leaving. Be on it or under it.” The phrase does seem to be popular in sports circles, but few of the citations I have seen from sports publications carry the same overtones of casual, callous betrayal that one finds in non-sporting uses.

Consequently, I have my own theory. I don’t think the “bus” was ever the team bus. As someone who spent a lot of time standing on Manhattan street corners and narrowly avoided being expunged by speeding city buses on several occasions, to me the phrase conjures up the classic urban nightmare of being pushed in front of a bus. As a way to quickly and irreversibly get rid of someone, “throwing” them under a bus in this sense would be the ideal solution and would satisfy the connotations of sudden, cold brutality the phrase usually carries. So I suspect that the phrase has urban origins, and migrated into sports world via players from big cities.

 

 

Vent one’s spleen

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Operators are standing by, polishing their revolvers.

Dear Word Detective: I’m sitting in a “Communicating with tact and finesse” conference and our hyper-talkative instructor is regaling us with stories of her forty years of professional life. Several times during the two-day training, she described an emotional outpouring as “venting my spleen.” I’ve heard of someone “spilling their guts,” but never venting their spleen. I’m not sure if this helps, but in 1968 she worked as an operator for the very first 1-800 number in the United States, and she’s from Kansas. — Jeff.

spleen08.pngSo in 1968, while the rest of us were perfecting our tie-dyeing skills and forging new frontiers in backyard agriculture, this poor person was chained to a switchboard answering questions about hearing aids and the like? In Kansas? No wonder she has anger issues. I am, by the way, very proud that, in my many years of working in an office, I managed to avoid every single “motivational” training course my bosses came up with. Eventually management gave up on me (obviously indicating a lack of motivation on their part).

“To vent one’s spleen” means “to express one’s anger,” usually in forceful terms and/or at top volume. “Venting one’s spleen” differs from “spilling one’s guts,” which means simply “to divulge a secret, to tell the whole truth” or “to confess.”

The spleen is, of course, one of those brave little organs nestled in the human midsection (just east of the stomach, in this case), performing those thankless tasks we don’t notice until something goes wrong and our deductible becomes relevant. The spleen’s job is to act as a sort of filter for the blood, but in medieval times, when each bodily organ was thought to be the home of one emotion or another, the spleen was regarded as the seat of melancholy (a mood we now know to reside in the wallet). There was apparently a brief period later on when the spleen was suspected, improbably, of supplying humor and good cheer, but by the late 16th century it was decided that the spleen was the source of rage and ill-temper. Thus “spleen” has for several centuries been a metaphor for “anger,” “resentment” and general crankiness.

“Vent” comes ultimately from the Latin “ventus,” meaning “wind,” and as a verb means “to emit or discharge from a confined space,” as a fan “vents” cooking fumes from a kitchen. The “vent” in “vent one’s spleen” is a metaphorical use of the verb that arose in the 17th century meaning “to relieve or unburden one’s heart or soul,” a sense we still use today (”Don’t mind me, I’m just venting”).

 

 

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