The Story of English in 100 Words (29 page)

The
-ic
of
nucleic
is one of several suffixes we associate with chemistry. Others include the
-ene
of
acetylene
and
benzene
, the
-ol
of
ethanol
and
alchohol
, the
-ium
of
chromium
and
sodium
and the
-ate
of
nitrate
and
sulphate
. But each science has its own distinctive forms, as suggested by botany’s
spermatozoid
, geology’s
cretaceous
and zoology’s
stegosaurus
. Indeed, some of these suffixes are so distinctive that they can prompt errors in the unwary. In 2010 it was reported that a student, in an essay, thought a
thesaurus
was a species of dinosaur from
Jurassic Park
.

Garage

a pronunciation problem (20th century)

Words are identified through their spelling and their pronunciation, so it’s a natural tendency to think that both are fixed. In fact, spelling often varies, as we have seen (
§51
). And we tend to underestimate the amount of variation that exists in pronunciation.

Choices vary between British and American English. Sometimes it’s a straight swap:
tomahto
in Britain,
tomayto
in the US; the first syllable of
yoghurt
in Britain with the vowel of
dog
and in the US with the vowel of
oh
. Some US pronunciations have taken root in Britain: I normally say
schedule
with a
sh-
, but my children all say it with a
sk-
. As a result, I now use both pronunciations, and never quite know which one is going to pop up next in my speech.

In other cases, the situation is more complicated, because one of the dialects has alternatives. In British English,
vase
is ‘vahz’, whereas in American English some people say ‘vaze’ (rhyming with
haze
) and some ‘vace’ (rhyming with
place
). Conversely, in American English
glacier
is pronounced ‘glaysher’, whereas in British English it is either ‘glassier’ or ‘glaysier’.
Garage
is like
glacier
. In America it is ‘garahge’, with the stress on the second syllable. In Britain it is either ‘
ga
rahge’ or ‘
ga
rridge’.

Garage
is a good word to choose as a reminder that pronunciation is always changing. When the BBC was formed, it set up an Advisory Committee
on Spoken English to advise announcers how they should pronounce words which were unfamiliar or had competing usages. In their 1926 publication, they recommended ‘garahge’. But by 1931 the members of the Committee had changed their mind. They say, ‘
Garage
has been granted unconditional British nationality, and may now be rhymed with
marriage
and
carriage
.’ Both pronunciations are still heard today.

Several of the other BBC recommendations of the 1920s have long disappeared. They thought
fetish
should be pronounced ‘feetish’, and
Celtic
(the race, not the football team) as ‘seltic’. They opted for
airplane
, not
aeroplane
. And they sometimes put the stress in places where hardly anybody – perhaps nobody – would put it now, such as
a
cu
men
,
an
cho
vy
and
pre
ce
dence
. I have to say ‘perhaps’, because the old pronunciations could still be in the consciousness of some senior citizens, much as some continue to say ‘forrid’ for
forehead
.

Over half the words in a Pronouncing Dictionary will display alternative forms, though in many cases the differences are slight. Here are some of the more noticeable ones. Do you say the first letters of
either
with the sound of the vowel in
see
or in
sigh
? Do you say
example
with the
a
as in
cat
or as in
calm
?
Envelope
with the
e
of
hen
or the
o
of
on
?
Greasy
with the
s
of
see
or the
z
of
zoo
? Is it
a hotel
or
an ’otel –
or even
an hotel
? Does
tortoise
rhyme with
bus
or
voice
? Some stories depend on these variations, such as the one about the child who heard a priest ask the congregation to say ‘the prayer that Jesus taught us’ and wondered why Jesus had a pet. People who say
tortoice
don’t seem to find it funny.

Escalator

word into name into word (20th century)

Imagine you invent something and you want to give it a name – say a device which automatically repairs non-functioning keys on computer keyboards. You think up a word which you think suits the product –
Keefiks
, shall we say, based on
key
+
fix
– check it hasn’t been used by anyone else, protect it by registering a trademark and go into business. It takes off. You sell millions. And before you know it, the name has become part of the language. People talk about
keefiksing
their machines. The word becomes a metaphor. People start saying such things as
I’m keefiksing my apartment
and
I need a spiritual keefiks
.

You’re quite pleased. And then along comes another firm with a keyboard-fixing technology that is different from yours, and people call it
the latest keefiks
, with a small
k
. You object.
Keefiks
should have a capital
K
, you insist. They’ll have to call their product something else. You need to protect your brand. But it’s too late. Other firms have already joined in. Shops start advertising
all keefiks models now in stock
. People ask for
a keefiks
for their birthday,
regardless of make. A Hollywood movie about alien keyboard manipulators is called
Keefiks Attacks
. You appoint lawyers and go to court, arguing that others should not be using your word in this way. And you lose.

Dozens of real words have been through this scenario. One of the first was
escalator
. Various designs for moving staircase were invented in the 19th century, but the rights to the name
escalator
were purchased by the Otis Elevator Company. It was a word coined from
scala
(Latin, ‘a ladder’) with a prefix and suffix on analogy with
elevator
. It’s first recorded in 1900, and within a few years it was being used figuratively. People talked of
escalator clauses
in contracts, referring to a planned increase in prices. Ambitious politicians were said to be on a
political escalator
. The verb
to escalate
appears in the 1920s, and
escalation
soon after. Otis tried hard to retain their control over the name, but in 1950 a court case concluded that the word had developed a general (or
generic
) meaning among the public, referring to any kind of ‘moving stairway’ and not just Otis’s original design. Otis lost.

Several trademarks have become generic, over the years, such as
aspirin, butterscotch, heroin, thermos, yo-yo
and
zipper
.
Fedex, lego, meccano, kleenex, portakabin, rollerblade
and
hoover
have also become lower-case in some of their uses. A few companies have fought a battle to retain the rights over their name. Xerox Corporation, for example, has generally succeeded in persuading people to say
photocopy
instead of
xerox
. But most realise that they can’t do much about controlling everyday usage. It’s one of the penalties of success.

Internet names are the latest to attract generic use. The popularity of the Slashdot web site has generated a verb:
to be slashdotted
is to be overwhelmed with messages. Google has generated
to google
, meaning ‘to search for information on the internet’, regardless of which search engine is being used. Google has tried to prevent this extension in meaning, so far with some success. Several dictionaries now define the verb with reference to its originator, such as (in the
Oxford English Dictionary
) ‘to use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet’. But whether this recognition has a long-term future, in the face of the steamroller of usage, remains to be seen.

Robot

a global journey (20th century)

In 1921, Karel
Č
apek’s play
R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots
had its premiere in Prague, and was translated into English for a New York production the following year. He needed a name for the factory-produced humanoid workers of the story, and was thinking of coining something based on the Latin word for ‘work’,
labor
. But his brother Josef suggested an old Czech word for ‘forced labour’,
robota
. And
robot
was born.

16. A 1920 poster for Karel
Č
apek’s play
, Rossum’s Universal Robots.
Details in the poster show (top left) the mechanism controlling arms, hands and head movements, (top right) the robot rising from its seat and bowing, (bottom right) the gear controlling standing, bowing and sitting actions, and (bottom left) a unit of the electrical mechanism for moving hands, arms and head.

If the
Č
apeks had known English, they might have opted for one of the words with relevant senses that were already in the language.
Automaton
had been available since the 17th century and
android
since the 18th. But the succinct punchy sound of
robot
seemed to capture the public imagination, because within five years it was being used not only for intelligent artificial beings but for any machine capable of carrying out a complex set of movements. An American newspaper in 1927 talked about different kinds of
electrical robots
that could answer the telephone, open doors and switch on lights.