Official Dictionary of Unofficial English-Grant-Barrett-0071458042

Z

zeitgeber n. a naturally occurring cue, such as light or temperature, that regulates biological rhythms; something that influences or regulates the timing or rhythm of something else. Biology. German. Germany. Jargon. Science. [zeit ‘time’ + geber ‘giver.’ Coined by scientist Jürgen Aschoff, ca. 1954.]

1958 Colin Pittendrigh, Victor Bruce, Peter Kaus (Proceedings of the Natl. Acad. of Sciences) (U.S.) (Sept. 15) “On the Significance of Transients in Daily Rhythms,” vol. 44, no. 9, p. 966 (Int.)

perature are the only periodic or quasi-periodic environmental variables to which endogenous oscillation can be coupled: in nature they entrain the endogenous oscillation, thereby controlling period and establishing appropriate phase. They are, to use Aschoff’s phrase, the principal Zeitgeber. 1962 Miklos D. F. Udvardy American Midland Naturalist (Apr.) “Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds,”

vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 507-8 (Int.) ! No reference is made to diurnal activity, Orstreue, Zeitgeber, and other terms of the last thirty years. 2003

Franz Halberg Journal of Circadian Rhythms (Sept. 24) “Transdisciplinary Unifying Implications of Circadian Findings in the 1950s” (Int.)

! All three of us redefined our terms, they a zeitgeber and I a synchronizer (as primary or secondary), respectively, as an external agent, usually a cycle that does not “give” time and merely synchronizes existing body time with its own. 2004 Alison Stein Wellner

Inc.com (NYC) (June) “The Time Trap,” p. 42 (Int.) ! These “external pacers” are known among academics as zeitgebers—German for “time givers” and they exert tremendous influence on your company. Zeitgebers can include anything from the fiscal year to the production schedule of a supplier to the school calendar in your community, and every company possesses a unique set of them.

zhing-zhong n. merchandise made in Asia; cheaply made, inexpensive, or substandard goods. Business. Slang. Zimbabwe.

*2004 [The Woodpecker] Standard (Zimbabwe) (July 22) “Christmas Comes Early for People of Tsholotsho” (Int.) ! Shavings can only advise that, judging from what we hear, the “Zhing Zhong” condoms may not be that protective to Zimbabweans, many of whom are of bigger built than your average Chinese man. 2004 Financial Gazette

(Harare, Zimbabwe) (July 29) “Save Us from ‘Zhing-Zhongs,’ Say

404

ziatype

Leather Industry Players” (Int.) ! A deluge of cheap counterfeits, nicknamed “zhing-zhongs,” imported mainly from Asia, has threatened the viability of the country’s leather industry. 2004 Vincent Kahiya

Zimbabwe Independent (Harare) (July 30) “Locals Exposed” (Int.)

! Zhing-zhong is the street lingo for products from Asia—mainly China—which have hit the country.

ziat ype n. a photo-printing process that uses palladium and platinum and does not require developer fluid. Arts. [The process was created by photographer Richard Sullivan of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Technical details of ziatype can be found at his web site, bostick-sullivan.com/ziatype.htm, where it is explained that “the Ziatype was named for the ancient New Mexico Anasazi pueblo people’s symbol for the sun. The Zia is the familiar circular image with 4 sets of 4 rays seen on the flag of New Mexico.”]

1997 Usenet: Paul Romaniuk (Oct. 2) “Paper Negatives” ! I’m getting interested in trying some alternative processes like kallitype and ziatype. For this, I’ll need to convert 35 mm negs and positives to 8X10, 11X14 etc. paper negatives for the contact printing. 1998

Richard Farber Historic Photographic Processes (Oct. 1), p. 112

! Richard Sullivan announced a palladium and gold POP (and developing-out) process in 1996 called the Ziatype. Lithium chloropalladite is used for cool tones and the addition of sodium tungstate to give warm brown to sepia tones. 1998 Sil Horwitz PSA Journal (Nov. 1) “Tools for Photographers” ! Continuing with “alternative” photography, Richard Sullivan and Carl Weese are the authors of a new definitive work, The New Platinum Print.... This covers the complete field of chemical and procedural controls of color and contrast for expressive photographic printing in platinum, palladium, and gold, introducing the new Ziatype process, while explaining in detail the traditional methods. 2005 Robert McFarlane Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) (May 17) “From the Mean Streets to Silent Meadows” (Int.) ! Kersey uses several processes for printing his pictures, from traditional silver gelatin prints to a mysterious, little-known technique called a ziatype.

405

Select Bibliography

Allsopp, Richard. Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Barnhart, Clarence L., Steinmetz, Sol, and Barnhart, Robert K., eds.

The Barnhart Dictionary of New English Since 1963. Bronxville, N.Y.: Barnhart/Harper & Row, 1973.

Barnhart, Clarence L., Steinmetz, Sol, and Barnhart, Robert K., eds.

Second Barnhart Dictionary of New English. Bronxville, N.Y.: Barnhart/Harper & Row, 1980.

Bluestein, Gene. Anglish/Yinglish. 2nd ed. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

Bolton, Kingsley. Chinese Englishes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Cassidy, Frederick G., ed. Dictionary of American Regional English, vol. I. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985.

Cassidy, Frederick G., and Hall, Joan Houston, eds. Dictionary of American Regional English, vol. II. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991.

—. Dictionary of American Regional English, vol. III. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996.

Cassidy, Frederick, and Le Page, Robert. Dictionary of Jamaican English. 2nd ed. Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2002.

Cruz, Bill, and Teck, Bill, eds. Official Spanglish Dictionary. New York: Fireside, 1998.

De Bhaldraithe, Tomás, ed. English-Irish Dictionary. Dublin: An Gum, Baile Atha Cliath, 1959.

Dictionary of Scots Language. Edinburgh, Scotland: Scottish Language Dictionaries Limited, 2004. Available at dsl.ac.uk/dsl.

Foley, Joseph. New Englishes: The Case of Singapore. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1988.

Görlach, Manfred. Dictionary of European Anglicisms. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Görlach, Manfred. English in Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

407

Select Bibliography

Green, Jonathon. Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang. London: Cassell, 1998.

Gupta, Anthea Fraser. The Step-Tongue: Children’s English in Singapore. U.K.: Multilingual Matters Limited, 1994.

Hall, Joan Houston, ed. Dictionary of American Regional English, vol. IV. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002.

Harkavy’s Manual Dictionary. New York: Hebrew Publishing Co., 1894.

HarperCollins German Dictionary. 2nd ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Jarman, Beatriz Galimberti, and Russell, Roy, eds. Oxford Spanish Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington D.C. Papers of the Works Progress Administration, Lexicon of Trade Jargon, boxes A798-A804.

Lighter, J. E., ed. Historical Dictionary of American Slang, vols. I & II. New York: Random House, 1994 & 1997.

Macquarie Dictionary. 3rd ed. New South Wales, Australia: Macquarie University, Macquarie Library, 1997.

Manessy, Gabriel. Le français en Afrique noire. Paris: Harmattan, 1994.

Mathews, Mitford M., ed. A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951.

McArthur, Tom. Oxford Guide to World English. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Mencken, H. L. The American Language. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. New York: Mer- riam-Webster, 2003.

Metcalf, Allan. Predicting New Words. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

Montgomery, Michael, and Hall, Joseph S., eds. Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2004.

Moore, Bruce, ed. Australian Oxford Dictionary. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004.

New Revised Velásquez Spanish and English Dictionary. Clinton, N.J.: New Win Publishing, 1985.

408

Select Bibliography

Ooi, Vincent B.Y., ed. Evolving Identities: The English Language in Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 2001.

Orsman, H.W., ed. Dictionary of New Zealand English. Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Oxford Duden German Dictionary. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Oxford English Dictionary Online. Available at oed.com; Oxford University Press, 2003-2005. Includes draft entries that are posted quarterly.

Partridge, Eric, and Beale, Paul, eds. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. 8th ed. New York: Macmillan, 1984.

Rosten, Leo. Hooray for Yiddish! New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982. Sáez, Julia Sanmartín. Diccionario de Argot. Madrid: Espasa, 2003. Safire, William. Safire’s New Political Dictionary. New York: Ran-

dom House, 1993.

Stavans, Ilan. Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language.

New York: Rayo of HarperCollins, 2003.

Tongue, R. K. The English of Singapore and Malaysia. 2nd ed. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1979.

Weinreich, Uriel. Modern English-Yiddish, Yiddish English Dictionary. New York: YIVO, 1968.

Weiser, Chaim M. Frumspeak. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.

WordNet, Cognitive Science Laboratory, Princeton University. Available at http://wordnet.princeton.edu.

409

Full-Text Digital Resources

African-American Poetry, http://collections.chadwyck.com American National Corpus, http://americannationalcorpus.org Black Drama, Alexander Street Press, alexanderstreet2.com/bldrlive Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina),

http://docsouth.unc.edu

Early English Books Online (Chadwyck-Healey), http://eebo.chad wyck.com

Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (Gale), gale.com/Eighteenth Century

JSTOR, jstor.org LexisNexis, lexisnexis.com

Literature Online, http://lion.chadwyck.com

Making of America (Cornell University), http://moa.umdl.umich

.edu

Making of America (University of Michigan), http://moa.umdl

.umich.edu netLibrary, netlibrary.com

NewspaperARCHIVE, newspaperarchive.com Paper of Record, paperofrecord.com ProQuest, proquest.com

Women Writers Online, wwp.brown.edu/texts/wwoentry.html

410

For Further Information

One place where some of today’s English-language professionals, amateurs, and gadabouts hash out the serious and frivolous questions of modern language is on the e-mail list of the American Dialect Society (ADS).

ADS, founded in 1889 at Harvard University, has always had on its member roster a comfortable mixture of professionals and amateurs. Although such language greats as Sir William Craigie (the third editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and chief editor of the Dictionary of American English) sat on the ADS advisory board and although the society included writers such as H. L. Mencken (among other works, author of The American Language, last edition published 1948, and editor of the journal The American Mercury), in the 1930s and 1940s the pages of the ADS journal American Speech were heavy with the names of now-forgotten contributors and commentators who by their own admission were dilettantes.

The pages of the journal are now held to much stricter academic standards; the e-mail list (ADS-L), however, is its egalitarian counterweight. Even more than the society, ADS-L subscribers represent all facets and professions of English usage and study: lexicographers, etymologists, editors, reporters, professors, students, linguists, grammarians, and interested nonscholarly observers and word-lovers. Now going on its fifteenth year, membership to the e-mail list continues to be freely open and includes participants from around the world.

The content of the list—whose daily messages can measure in the hundreds—has an excellent signal to noise ratio, meaning that idle chatter, spam, or flame wars are kept to a minimum. Many of the messages contain antedatings—recently found citations that prove a lexical item existed before the dates currently given in dictionaries. (Most often, these dates are compared against the Oxford English Dictionary, which is simultaneously the most-lauded and most-corrected dictionary in English.) Other messages discuss catchphrases, odd usages, pet peeves and bugaboos, comments on the language of public figures, memories of favorite family words, and, every couple of years, a fresh outbreak of the coke vs. soda vs. pop debate. And, of course, it’s not just lexicons and vocabularies

411

For Further Information

that get attention: changes in the sound and structure of American language are a constant topic.

That kind of collaborative atmosphere, where the professional and the amateur can mingle, brings together all sorts of personalities. Any new member to the list will note in particular the wordhunters, the men and women who hunt down new language and post their results to the e-mail list. They share many traits: a bit of obsessiveness, a drive for truth and accuracy, an eagerness to defy conventional wisdom and overturn popular beliefs, and a good level of computer aptitude. They also do not limit themselves to fun and quirky new words but recognize the value of researching humdrum everyday words, too. Their collegiality means they collaborate by sharing their findings freely, but their competitive spirit compels them to search just a bit harder for the antedatings, or look a bit deeper for new words and changing language, so they can have “eureka” moments.

You can join the society or subscribe to its e-mail list at americandialect.org.

412