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Here's one of my old stand-by interests. I noticed some time ago that there are compound nouns in English that are a) constructed as verb-noun pairs, b) old (they don't make 'em any more, apparently) and c) almost universally pejorative. I've compiled a long list, but some obvious examples are pickpocket, cutthroat, sawbones, daredevil, breakneck and scofflaw.
Some are less obvious than others. I've become convinced that "hangman" refers not to a man that hangs, but someone who hangs men. Likewise a wet-blanket is not someone who's like a blanket that's wet, but someone who wets a blanket, in other words, who spoils the mood. Consider also "dimwit" and "pastime". There are plenty of others that I used to take for granted without realizing their structure: "rotgut", "scarecrow", "spendthrift" and "telltale", for instance.
I said these are all old, but many of them are simply not in circulation any more; you have to read some really old books to encounter "smell-smock", "love-bed", "pinchfart", "lickspittle" or "gripefarthing". Some others are still around: "lackluster", for example, "spoilsport", "turncoat".
I couldn't say why these interest me, but if anyone has any that aren't on my list, I'm always looking. Here are all the ones I've found so far, in alphabetical order: breakbone breakheart breakneck breakwater cutpurse cutthroat daredevil dimwit gripe-farthing hangdog hangman killjoy know-all know-nothing lackluster lackwit lickspittle make-work mar-all numbwit pastime ("pass-time") pickpocket pinchfart pinchpenny rakehell rotgut sawbones scarecrow scofflaw scrape-farthing smell-smock spendthrift spitfire spoilsport stopgap swashbuckler telltale turncoat turnkey wet-blanket.
Can't imagine why that one didn't occur to me before, after "telltale". Let's see what "tattle" means..."late 15c., 'to stammer, prattle', in Caxton's translation of 'Reynard the Fox', probably from M.Flem. tatelen 'to stutter', parallel to M.Du., M.L.G., E.Fris. tateren 'to chatter, babble', possibly of imitative origin. The meaning 'tell tales or secrets' is first recorded 1580s. Sense influenced by tittle." So "telltale" came first, and then "tattletale" is a sort of contemptuous variation on it because "tattle" meant "stutter". And the entry for "tattletale" adds "A 16c. word for 'tattle-tale' was pickthank." Never heard that.
Bob Bridges said:
Can't imagine why that one didn't occur to me before, after "telltale"...
Honestly, Bob, I did not know the main definition of telltale, but tattletale instead for that concept. Telltale meant essentially hint to me. And, since I did not know it as synonomous to tattletale, I had never noticed its negative connotation you mention as a common attribute to these verb-noun pairs.
Thanks,
Emmett
Ron Draney said:
Will you accept blowhard and tenderfoot (and possibly its synonym greenhorn)?
Dick said:
How about "rugrat" and "noseminer"? Common references to children.
"Tenderfoot" and "greenhorn" are adjective-noun pairs. "Rugrat" and "noseminer" (never heard that one before) are noun-noun pairs. "Blowhard" comes closest, but unless I've misunderstood it, it's a verb-adverb pair. None of those are very interesting—sorry—since English has thousands of them. But the verb-object pair is harder to find, seems not to be coined any more and (as I said before) seems to be almost always pejorative, for reasons I can't explain.
You didn't spell it out, Emmett, but "telltale", as I understand it, means something that tells a tale; nowadays it's an indicator light on a control panel, but of course in The Tell-Tale Heart it was a tattling heart, something that gave away a secret. I gather you looked it up and found the same thing?
But why are these words all (or nearly all) meant to express contempt? Nowadays we don't think of "daredevil" as an insult, or "breakwater", but most of them. Why do we have no "braverisk", "paydebt", "teachchild" or "strikeevil"? Probably there's no answer, but it's interesting.
Bob Bridges said:
You didn't spell it out, Emmett, but "telltale", as I understand it, means something that tells a tale; nowadays it's an indicator light on a control panel, but of course in The Tell-Tale Heart it was a tattling heart, something that gave away a secret. I gather you looked it up and found the same thing?
But why are these words all (or nearly all) meant to express contempt? Nowadays we don't think of "daredevil" as an insult, or "breakwater", but most of them. Why do we have no "braverisk", "paydebt", "teachchild" or "strikeevil"? Probably there's no answer, but it's interesting.
Yes, Bob, I did look it up. As I said, I did not know the perjoritive (and nominative) definition of "telltale". In my lexicon, that definition was ONLY associated with "tattletale".
I ONLY knew the (non-perjoritive, to me, adjective) definition essentially meaning "revealing, significant, meaningful, giveaway (informal), unmistakable, suggestive, revelatory". Here is an example from a website found via Google, "The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), discovered in 1964, is a telltale remnant of the early universe."
BTW, I found one more verb-noun, perjorative pair, "blabbermouth".
Concerning all of them being (originally) negative, here is a speculation/hypothesis: Could it be showing some longterm English language aversion to labeling someone? I know many objections to labeling are of relatively recent vintage. But one way to avoid being accused of labeling someone with a negative noun is to describe their action with a negative verb. Bob, your pairs DO start with the "negative" verb. Now, this hypothesis has to also explain the absence of verb-pairs like you end with. The center of this is, "Who objects to a positive label?" After all, hero basically means a braverisk; a good credit risk or honest person (as in Abe) means a paydebt; mentor or Big Brother means a teachchild; and vampire slayer is a specific kind of strikeevil.
There may be no way to prove this hypothesis, but it might be of interest.
Emmett
Ah, very good...at least some of them. I have to decline "poptop" and "scratchpad", because they refer not to the person popping the top or scratching the pad but to the top and pad themselves. And I happened to look up "turnstile" the other day, shortly after this conversation started, and decided it doesn't work either, again because a turnstile is a stile, rather than the person who turns it. But scapegrace has possibilities, and I think both stopgap and tosspot are additions to my list. A scapegrace would be someone who escapes grace (ie forgiveness), no? Let's see...right you are, scapegrace. So that's three more for my list—no, wait, two; I forgot, "stopgap" was already on it. Thank you, sir.
(I looked into "scapegoat" once, too. But a scapegoat is the goat itself, again not the person who escapes the goat. So no.)
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