Language Log

The other day, someone asked me about the origins of the phrase "off the cuff". I've always assumed that it had something to do with the old practice of writing informal notes on men's detachable (and disposable) cuffs. And the OED's entry agrees, glossing it as

off the cuff (as if from notes made on the shirt-cuff) orig. U.S., extempore, on the spur of the moment, unrehearsed

But as far as I know, the practice of wearing detachable (and sometimes disposable) cuffs ended by the time of the first world war or even before, while the OED's earliest citation for this idiom is from 1938:

1938 New York Panorama (Federal Writers' Project, N.Y.) vi. 157   Double talk is created by mixing plausible-sounding gibberish into ordinary conversation, the speaker keeping a straight face or dead pan and enumerating casually or off the cuff.
1941 Time (Air Exp. Ed.) 4 Aug. 1/1   Talking off the cuff to a group of civilian-defense volunteers he made them a little homily.
1944 Penguin New Writing XX. 130   In that scene, shot off the cuff in a shockingly bad light, there leapt out of the screen..something of the real human guts and dignity.
1948 Economist 3 July 17/2   Mr. Truman's off-the-cuff comment.

D.D., who previously contributed some observations on Caribbean "What!!??", sends more:

After a general staff meeting concluded this a.m. at work, I was sitting with a few co-workers and for some reason the conversation turned to 'strange critters' that people of different cultures eat. ('Koreans eat dogs'… 'Some Africans & Chinese eat insects'… etc etc.)

Our workplace is currently being painted/renovated by 3 Caribbean men who have been there for a week or so–one of whom I've had a couple of chats & shared a few jokes with in passing.  Hearing our conversation, that one man (from St. Vincent) stepped away from his painting on the other side of the conference room and addressed me, "Did you ever eat POSSUM?"

I laughed aloud, wondering if he was serious. He seemed to be, so I asked, "Uh… is it good?"  His loud reply, "WHAT!!??" (Read: 'OMG it is friggin' delicious!')

Lindy West "Are Men Going Extinct?", Jezebel 7/11/2012:

Did you hear the big news? Men are going extinct. Really really slowly, and probably only in theory, but extinct nonetheless! […]

Lame! RIP, dudes! Now, I'm sure kneejerk anti-feminist dickwads think that the eradication of men is exactly what we women mean by "plz can we have equal rights now thx." Because logic.

Reader C.A. writes:

I oversee a chess club at my local library. The kids (mostly 8-10 years old) will often use "versus" as a verb, saying "I already versed him" or "do you want to verse me?" I was wondering if you've seen this usage cropping up anywhere (I'm in a suburb of Ft. Worth, TX). Is it specific to this age group or geographic area? Is it becoming common usage in younger people?

Reader D.D. writes to ask about a use of the word "what" that he's noticed "on the part of young blacks of Caribbean descent here in NYC":

The word is sort of shrieked, or perhaps yelped, as if a very insistent question… and the final 't' is accentuated (Brit like)… But the meaning is something like "And how!" or "I'll say!" or "Fuckin' A!!"

I've noticed it outside of work this past week–by two strangers in public settings–but this most recent at-work example sticks in my mind:

Yesterday at work a twenty-something Jamaican-born NY'er went out to move his car, as per NYC parking regs. When he came back MUCH LATER someone asked him, "Was it hard to find parking?" His loud reply, "WHAT!!?" (and then he mumbled something about how hard it was…)

Tom Roeper sent the following "Summer question" around to the UMass Linguistics Department the other day, and I offered to put it onto Language Log as a guest post. What follows is all Tom's. (I've never worked on this topic myself).

For anybody who is intrigued: This is a summer question because you might have time in the summer to devote 10 minutes to it — if it captures your fancy. For several years [too many actually] in my various explorations of recursion, I have looked at cases like: hero after hero after dead hero => all the heroes are dead.

Today in the NYT, I read this quote from Ray Bradbury who just died: "it was one frenzy after one elation after one enthusiasm after one hysteria after another" My question is: what does this sentence mean?  Is it a set of frenzies followed by a set of elations followed by a set of enthusiasms or are they systematically interspersed, or randomly interspersed? Any comments welcome– Tom

Bob Moore asks:

Has Language Log ever looked at the origins of "(I'm) just saying'" as a stand alone utterance (without an S or S-bar complement)? In last night's episode of "Downton Abbey" on PBS, one of the servants used it in a scene set in 1916. I am not aware of having heard it much before, say, 2005, so I am wondering if this was a howling anachronism. Just sayin' :-)

I don't think that we've discussed it, except for a comment or two.

In the spirit of this, this and this (but maybe not this):

Throughout my whole life it has been the standard British English metaphor for Sisyphean tasks, the jobs that are endless because by the time you get to the end you need to start over: It's like painting the Forth Bridge.

It is legendary that after finishing the magnificent rail bridge over the Firth of Forth north-west of Edinburgh in 1890 they started repainting it, and a hundred years later they were still at it. Every time they painted their way to the far end, which took years, the paint had worn off where they had started, and they had to go back over there and begin again immediately.

But there was a new development this week: they finally finished the job, and stopped. Now the simile's future looks bleak.

From the AP wire…

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP)—So what that the Texas Rangers won their only game this season against Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander.

This sentence tripped me up in a couple of different ways. First, I initially had trouble parsing the subordinate clause, "the Texas Rangers won their only game this season against Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander." Now, obviously it doesn't mean that the only game this season that the Rangers won was against Verlander. For a little while, I thought it was a muddled way to say that the only game this season that the Rangers won against the Tigers was against Verlander. Eventually, I got it: the only game in which the Rangers faced Verlander this season was a game that the Rangers won. In other words, it's:

the Texas Rangers [won [their only game this season against Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander]]

not:

the Texas Rangers [won [their only game this season] [against Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander]]

Now that's settled. But what about the introductory "So what that…"? Shouldn't it be "So what if…"?

"It's a mare's nest of vipers," said a colleague of mine today, hopelessly entangling two nest-related idioms (intentionally, for the humor, I think). But it was no higher in rank than number 2 in the contest for worst idiom entanglement of the day, because this morning I heard on the radio a Conservative Party politician saying perfectly seriously that "the dénouement is about to hit the fan". (At least, it was either an idiom entanglement or the strangest excremental euphemism I ever heard. And yet I realize, even as I write this, that almost immediately I have begun to think it's rather cute, and I might adopt it: "I had to use the plunger this morning — had a dénouement that wouldn't go down.")

Today's "Candorville," by Darrin Bell:

(As usual, click on the image for a larger version.)

"In no uncertain terms" is an idiom in which the "no" and the "un-" cancel, so that the result means something like "in very specific and direct language", "very clearly", "in a strong and direct way", or perhaps "emphatically". In other words, "in no uncertain terms" means "in certain terms", construing "certain" as in certainty. The earliest example that I've been able to find is this sentence from the Chicago Tribune, July 20 1863:

Our dispatches contain another circular from the Provost Marshal General's office, and accompanying, the voice of the Government, couched in no uncertain terms, that the draft will be enforced in every loyal State, without fear or favor.

And "in no uncertain terms" is still being used that way, as in this example from today's New York Times:

After last week, the question now is: Why am I writing a post this week instead of sleeping?

When more than 200 people tell you, in no uncertain terms, that the first step to dealing with the exhaustion incurred when a child does not sleep is to find ways and moments for you, yourself, to sleep, that’s a fair question.

But recently, through the miracle of misnegation, this elderly cliché has found a new role in life.