The Changing Pronunciation of “Leisure”

When I was about ten years old, my aunt gave me a subscription to a Disney comic. I remember one issue in which Donald Duck and his nephews had a treasure map.

Overheard saying that he was “in search of buried treasure,” Donald tried to deceive the villain who’d heard him by claiming that what he’d really said was “in search of hurried leisure.”

That was in the Fifties.

By the time the “leisure suit” craze struck in the Seventies, not many Americans were pronouncing “leisure” to rhyme with “measure.”

Come to think of it, I don’t know of anyone who pronounces “buried” to rhyme with “hurried.”

Here are the current American pronunciations of these words:

buried [bĕr'ēd]
hurried [hûr'ē]
treasure [trĕzh'ər]
leisure [lē'zhər] –although some folks still say [lĕzh'ər]

What pronunciation changes have you noticed since your were a child?

Passing the Buck Slip

The other day I received a letter that directed me to refer to an enclosed “buck slip.”
I’d never heard the expression, but I figured out that what was meant was a printed insert.

Apparently this term, along with “lift note,” is common in the world of direct mailing:

…there’s really very little difference between a buckslip and a lift note except that a lift note is generally written as a mini-letter. Buckslips can be any sort of additional insert.

I wondered where the expression got its name. Could it be that the buck slip was called that because it was about the size of a dollar bill? Other questions bubbled up. Why is buck another name for dollar? And why does passing the buck mean avoiding responsibility?

Here’s where the questions led.

The word buck to mean a dollar may come from the use of buckskins as articles of trade.

Answer.com’s definition of buckslip (spelled as one word),

a small insert added to a mailing package; it is usually about the size of a dollar bill

implies that the name may derive from the buck/dollar connection.

Merriam-Webster, however, favors a different origin, defining buck slip (two words) as

1. a routing slip used especially in military offices to indicate the persons to whom the attached material is to go and usually the kind of action to be taken with such material

and

2. an object formerly used in poker to mark the next player to deal or to deal a jackpot, the winner of each jackpot placing the buck in front of him; especially : a buckhorn-handled knife used for this purpose

According to J.W. Keller, author of Draw Poker (1887),

The ‘buck’ is any inanimate object, usually knife or pencil, which is thrown into a jack pot and temporarily taken by the winner of the pot. Whenever the deal reaches the holder of the ‘buck’, a new jack pot must be made.”

According to a site called Dutch’s English Language Oddity Clearing House:

Some card games use a marker called a buck. Players take turns acting as dealer with the buck marking the current dealer. When the buck is passed to the next player, the responsibility for dealing is passed.

The buck slip as routing list explains the expression to pass the buck.

Before email, when someone at work wanted everyone to see the same message, one copy of the message was sent around with a list of recipients. Each recipient checked or crossed off his name and passed it on. The person who passed the buck slip on without checking his name could claim he wasn’t responsible for knowing what was in the memo.

When President Harry S Truman placed a sign that said “The Buck Stops Here” on his desk in the Oval Office, he was assuring his staff that he would take responsibility for all problems that came to his attention.

I don’t know that any of that really explains buck slip as a term for a mailing insert, but it was an interesting exploration.

We’re in the Pink

Look up the word pink in theMerriam-Webster Online Unabridged Dictionary, and you’ll find 13 entries for the single word, and 175 two-word entries in which one of the words ispink.

An impressive legacy for a word that entered the language in 1573 as the name of a plant and not a color.

The plant known as a “pink” has the Latin name dianthus. About 300 species of dianthus exist. The carnation belongs to this family.

No one is quite certain as to how dianthus plants came to be called “pinks.” It’s thought that the name derives from the jagged edges of the flower that look as if they’ve been “pinked.”

As a verb, pink has been in English since 1307 with the sense of “pierce, stab, make holes in.” It’s from this verb that pinking shears get their name.

pinking shears – scissors with a saw-toothed inner edge. They’re used to cut fabric in order to create a zig zag edge that won’t ravel.

Although dianthus flowers can be other shades, pink must have been the most familiar to have given us the word we now use to mean “pale red.”

“Pink-colored,” i.e. “colored like a pink,” is recorded in 1681. Pink as an adjective of color, meaning “pale rose color, is recorded in 1733.

NOTE: The practice of adding “colored” to words that already signifiy a specific color is a solecism that seems to be gaining ground. For example, it makes perfect sense to speak of “a Pepto-Bismol-colored house.” It is absurd to speak of “red-colored” area on a map. The area is red. It is a red area.

The word pinkie, as in “pinkie finger,” derives neither from the word for the color, nor from the word meaning “to pierce.” Apparently it comes from the Dutch diminutive pinkje. Dutch pink means “little.” Pinkie entered Scots dialect in the early 1800s with the meaning “little finger.” Scots speakers use pink to mean “a small gleam of light,” as in the expression “the pink of the evening,” i.e.,”late afternoon, early evening.”

Another use of pink without the color sense is the term fox hunters use for the red coats some of them wear. These hunting coats, although bright red, are called “pinks.” One explanation is that the first ones were created by a tailor called Pinque. No evidence exists to support this example of folk etymology. A more believable reason to call the red coats “pinks” has to do with the expression to be in the pink.

Nowadays, “to be in the pink,” usually means to be in top physical condition, but in Shakespeare’s time, “pink” meant something like “epitome” or “pinnacle of perfection.”

The dianthus was much admired by Queen Elizabeth I and her courtiers. They may have considered it to be the “perfect” flower, beautiful to look at and delightful to smell.

When Mercutio (Romeo and Juliet, 1597), says ” I am the very pinke of curtesie,” he means that he is is not just courteous, but a model of courtesy.

Thackeray (1811-1863), uses the expresssion “in the very pink of the mode” to mean “at the very height of fashion.” Charles Dickens (1812-1870) called an Italian town he’d visited “the very pink of hideousness and squalid misery.”

The appearance of a rider in the signature red hunting coat is very dashing, almost as dazzling as a U.S. Marine in full dress uniform. It’s quite possible that such a rider in his scarlet coat was said to be “in the pink of fashion” and the expression dwindled to the noun “pink” for such a coat.

Here are some other expressions that have evolved from the word pink with its meaning of “pale red.”

pink-eye – the common name for an inflammation of the membrane of the inner eyelid. It’s extremely contagious. Some animals also suffer from it. The term was first recorded in 1882.

pinko – a term of political contempt and mistrust applied to persons who hold liberal views regarding government and economics. Red is a color associated with revolution. Presumably “pinkos” are not quite as extreme as “communists,” who are often called “reds.” The term pinko entered the language in 1936, but the the word pink was used as early as 1837 to describe people whose views “have a tendency toward ‘red.’ ”

to see pink elephants – “to experience delirium tremens (or hallucinate) because of over-consumption of alcohol.” Jack London used this expression in a story in 1913.

pink slip – “discharge notice.” When the word was coined, employers often informed employees that they’d been terminated by placing a notice written on a pink sheet of paper in their final pay envelope. First recorded use 1915.

pink collar – “blue collar job” has long been understood to mean a job requiring work clothes as opposed to a “white-collar job” performed by office workers. In 1977 someone introduced the expression “pink collar” to refer to jobs held by women. Understandably and deservedly, it didn’t catch on.

O Captain, My Captain!

Reader Cathy poses this question:

Is the proper use of helm “at the helm” or “under the helm?”

She gives this example of the use of the latter:

The tennis team, under the helm of second-year head coach John Doe, advanced to the championship round.

What we have here is the decomposition of a dead metaphor.

The word helm has more than one meaning in English, but in the context of leadership it derives from a metaphorical use of this definition:

helm: the handle or tiller, in large ships the wheel, by which the rudder is managed.”

The mariner guiding the ship stands at the helm.

Metaphorically, anyone in charge of an endeavor is at the helm.

The word can also be used as a verb:

Early “talkies” were helmed by producers who had learned their trade with silent films.

A new coach takes the helm. If the team he has been hired to lead is under the helm, the players must be lying about on the deck.

However…

A search of under the helm brought two million Google hits. Clearly a lot of writers are using the expression.

To answer the reader’s question, at the helm is the “proper” version, but the wide use of under the helm may signal a new incarnation of a dead metaphor.Helm may be taking on the new definition of “leadership.”