Memo to self: must stop apologising unnecessarily. I was recently taken to task for calling Derby the county town of Derbyshire; no no, several readers said, it is Matlock.
Enter a knight in shining armour, Rupert Barnes, trustee of the Historic Counties Trust: “You need not feel embarrassed at naming Derby as the county town of Derbyshire. You were quite correct. Matlock is where Derbyshire County Council has sat since 1958, but there have been county towns long before there were county councils. County councils were created in 1889; Derbyshire itself is almost 1,000 years older. Derby has been considered the county town for centuries.
“‘County town’ has no fixed definition. It is a matter of repute and there are some ambiguities. It might simply be the largest town, a natural centre, or the town where the men of the county used to meet to elect the knights of the shire. A county council might borrow the ancient county name, but that does not make the council the county. However one identifies the county town for any county, it would be odd to look to where such a transient body chooses to hold its meetings.”
Apology withdrawn.
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Drama crisis
Memo to self (II). Jeremy Clegg writes from Farnham: “I’m enjoying the continuing correspondence about the evolution of language. Erroneous usage quite quickly changes the meaning of a word. For instance, enormity, which is not related to enormous, is now acceptable as a synonym for enormousness.” (Not in The Times, but still...) “However, on June 6 a headline referred to the ‘Protagonists in a psychological drama’. As far as I know, you can only have one leading character in a drama; the other important figures are deuteragonists.”
My immediate response was to agree with Mr Clegg (and to out-Greek him; the deuteragonist is the second most important character, while the third is the tritagonist. But I digress, while showing off.)
However, my Shorter OED allows as a second meaning: “The leading person in a contest; a prominent supporter or champion of a cause; in plural, the most prominent or most important individuals in a situation or course of events”. Fowler has two columns on it and accepts that usage throughout the 20th century has turned a blind eye to its origins in Greek drama and embraced the plural form, even preceded by main, leading, chief etc. Apology also withdrawn.
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Sitting target
Memo to self (III). Chris Pearce writes: “The use of the word ‘sat’ instead of ‘sitting’ seems to have swept the country, but I hoped that quality newspapers would continue to use ‘sitting’. Last weekend your political reports included ‘trusted aide who was sat at his computer’. I would love to know the origin of this.” I’ve written about this before, taking the side of readers who deplore it, but Fowler points out that the OED has examples of “sat” as the present participle from Old English down to 1864, although it is “now dialect”, chiefly in North and West England. Fowler concludes: “In other words, it is an example of a use that was once standard but has gradually become regionally restricted...”
I don’t think we can complain at an example of the restitution of what was once standard English.
Eire head
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Don Barton writes from Hampshire: “You frequently refer to the Irish Prime Minister as the Taoiseach; why, unless it is to demonstrate that you can spell this daunting word? You do not describe the Indian PM in Hindi or the Norwegian PM in Norwegian; what is special about the Irish PM?”
This seemed such a good question that I asked the chief revise editor to answer it: “Four reasons. The ties between Britain and Ireland are long and complex (ditto Norway, India); there are very large numbers of readers within the UK who have links with Ireland (ditto India); Ireland is closest to us, not only literally but also metaphorically, I would argue; and there is an assumed familiarity among our learned readership of some Irish official titles and names.
“This is reflected in the word Taoiseach being found in reputable British dictionaries. I doubt if there is the same ‘brand recognition’ for the Hindi or Norwegian versions (of which I am woefully ignorant).”
Campbell Sylvester thinks he is seeing “covert ageism” in The Times: “In last Saturday’s Birthdays you had ‘Mike Gatting, cricketer, 52’ but ‘Frank Tyson, former cricketer, 79’. Surely a person is either famous for what they did, or becomes a former whatever when they retire from
that activity.” Nothing so sinister. The Register routinely deletes “former”, but this one slipped through the net.
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Good idea
Finally, Andy Pheasant e-mails: “What a wonderful and uplifting story in last Saturday’s Times about the project to develop the waterways around the Olympic Park. What a shame such a ‘good news’ story had to be buried so deep. How about a regular ‘good news’ page?”
As I’ve said before, no matter how deep the doom and how impenetrable the gloom that surround us, good news doesn’t sell newspapers. (That being the case we can only wonder why, after the past days, weeks and months, every member of Times staff hasn’t been given a duckhouse-sized bonus on the proceeds. Ah well.)