A smorgasbord of possibilities

Inquiring minds want to know...

What's with the word "smorgasbord"? Does anyone use it anymore?

In my Winnipeg youth, quite a few restaurants boasted a smorgasbord or all-you-can-eat buffet, but it's a word that is hardly ever used in English in this literal sense anymore, except referring specifically to the original Swedish buffet of open sandwiches and other dishes, such as smoked and pickled fish, cheeses, and salads. 

Its etymology is as follows:

< Swedish, < smörgås (slice of) bread and butter ( < smör butter, cognate with smear n. + gås goose, lump of butter) + bord board n., table

Food fashions are notoriously transient, and the smorgasbord trend of the 60s and 70s seems to have been particularly fleeting. I don't really know if these smorgasbords limited themselves to authentic Swedish food; I rather think they were just buffets with a fancy name. 

But we English speakers have not abandoned the word "smorgasbord". That would be so unlike us, to get rid of a good word. It is alive and well meaning "a rich variety or selection".   Here are some examples of the types of smorgasbord we may hear about today:

a smorgasbord of:

sights
events
possibilities
ideas
approaches
political candidates
law school dropouts

Do you use the word "smorgasbord" to mean "buffet"? Did you in the past?

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! You can either:

use the subscribe window at the top of this page

OR

(if you are reading this on a mobile device): send me an email with the subject line SUBSCRIBE at wordlady.barber@gmail.com

Privacy policy: we will not sell, rent, or give your name or address to anyone. You can unsubscribe at any point.

Follow me on twitter: @thewordlady

When you are mizzled by English spelling

We all know that English spelling and pronunciation do not match up very well.

A facebook group I belong to recently had a very entertaining discussion of words that its members had mispronounced for a very long time because they had only ever seen them written.
The culprits:

WORD	MISTAKEN PRONUNCIATION	CORRECT PRONUNCIATION
Placebo	PLACE-bo	Pluh SEE bo
Pinochle	Pin OACH'll	PEE nuckle
Epitome	EPPY tome	ip PITTA mee
Awry	AWEree	Uh RYE
Rely	RELLee	Ruh LIE
Asylum	ASSY lum	Uh SYE lum
Misled	MIZZ'ld, MIZE'ld	Miss LED
Underfed	Un DERFD	Under FED
Ascites	ASS kitties	Uh SITE eez
Whodunit	WODD you nit	Hoo DUNNit
Subunit	Soo BUNNit	SUB you nit
Fatigue	FATTY goo	Fuh TEEG
Anathema	ANNA THEEmuh	Uh NATH uh muh
Voila	VOYL uh	Vwah LA
Infrared	In FRAIRD	IN fruh RED
Flamingo	FLAY ming go	Fluh MING go
Sundried (tomatoes)	SUN dreed	SUN dried
Nauseating	NAW seeting	NAW zee ate ing
Paradigm	Para DIDGE um	PARA dime
Omnipotent	Omnee POTE 'nt	Om NIP uh t'nt
Redolent	Ree DOLE 'nt	REDDA l'nt
Picturesque	PICK chur skew	Pick chur ESK
Cesarean	Seez ur EEN	Suhz AIR ee 'n
Pseudo	Puh SWAYED oh	SOO do
Hyperbole	HIPE ur bole	Hi PURR buh lee
Colonel	Koe l'n ell	KER n'll
Bedraggled	BED ragg 'lld	Buh DRAG 'lld
Hitherto	HITHER toe	HITHER too
Indict	In DICKT	In DITE
Chaos	CHAY oze	KAY oss
Fajitas	Fuh JYE tiss, FADGY tass	Fu HEE tuhzz
Aspartame	A SPARTA mee	ASS purr tame
Inchoate	INCH oh ate	In KO uht, INKO uht

What words have you had this experience with?

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! You can either:

use the subscribe window at the top of this page

OR

(if you are reading this on a mobile device): send me an email with the subject line SUBSCRIBE at wordlady.barber@gmail.com

Privacy policy: we will not sell, rent, or give your name or address to anyone. You can unsubscribe at any point.

Follow me on twitter: @thewordlady

No rhyme or reason

There's a reason for those thistles and shamrocks

A Vancouverite facebook friend of mine recently posted that she had "rhymed off" her telephone number to someone. 

I leapt on it, as I am wont to do. "Did you know that 'rhyme off' is a CANADIANISM?" I exulted triumphantly (and felt quite smug when a few Americans chimed in to say that they had indeed been perplexed by her usage). "Ha!" said I. "Seeeeee! Other people don't use this!"

But I was much deflated the very next day when the First Law of Lexicography (The minute you make a pronouncement about a word not being used, you will be sure to hear it or see it in the mass media within 24 hours) raised its ugly head. Thanks to another facebook post, I learned that a certain Ross O'Carroll-Kelly (a name so cartoonishly Irish that it is, not surprisingly, a pseudonym) wrote this in The Irish Times: 

Sorcha goes, “Oh my God, Ross, this is the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done to me!”

I’m pretty sure it’s not. I could rhyme off a list, although I’m not sure it would help the situation.

Was I -- gasp -- WRONG about "rhyme off"?

The OED did not include "rhyme off" when they revised the entry for "rhyme" in 2010. Not surprising that they overlooked it, considering that there are only two instances of the phrase (both from Scottish speakers) in the 1.6 BILLION words of British Hansard (the record of the debates in the British parliament) between 1805 and 2005. Only one example (from Ireland) appears in the 100 million words of the British National Corpus. So it certainly isn't used in English English. 

The 1.9-billion word corpus of Global Web-based English has only 

5 examples from the UK, three of those being definitely Scottish, 

5 from Ireland,

none from anywhere else,

but a significant

18 from Canada

In contrast, in a mere 50 million words of the Strathy Canadian corpus, "rhyme off" appears 9 times. 

So I think we can still claim Canadian citizenship for this word. 

Or perhaps we should say Canadian landed immigrant status, because it seems we inherited it from our numerous Scottish and Irish settlers.

The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English has this entry:

rhyme off verb to recite; to talk (UK: SCOTLAND) From Scottish dialect rame (to talk nonsense; to reiterate): "For one thing, rhyming off the places he'd broken into."

The OED also has an entry for "rame":

Of uncertain origin.
Scottish, Irish English (northern), and English regional (northern)
To shout, cry aloud, scream; to keep up the same cry, to repeat the same thing continuously; to complain persistently.

So it would seem that "rhyme off" is actually a corruption by folk etymology of "rame off", and has nothing really to do with rhymes.  Clearly, it landed on fertile soil when it arrived in Canada, where it has continued to thrive. 

Tell us about YOUR usage of "rhyme off". Where are you from, and do you use it/recognize it, or not? 

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! You can either:

use the subscribe window at the top of this page

OR

(if you are reading this on a mobile device): send me an email with the subject line SUBSCRIBE at wordlady.barber@gmail.com

Privacy policy: we will not sell, rent, or give your name or address to anyone. You can unsubscribe at any point.