793-1: Feedback, Notes and Comments

Going dutch Several readers commented that these expressions are indeed based on a Dutch national characteristic. Arthur Brede wrote: “Dutch attitudes to money, debt, sharing costs and contracts are different from those in England. For the Dutch, keeping track is important, as is any implication that money can influence personal relationships. I’ve been on holiday with Dutch friends who’ve kept quite meticulous records of what was spent, and expected the same of me and a ‘reckoning-up’ at the end. I find it very healthy and open, although anyone English making a contract with a Dutch person would do well to check up on who’s paying for the teabags.”

Richard Bos added, “The English habit of buying rounds has never caught on over here. You will on occasion find someone buying a round individually, perhaps to celebrate something, or to treat his friends, but the regularised round-buying of the English is not common. Possibly the most usual way of dealing with the bill is that of divvying up the tab equally at the end of the evening; but going Dutch is also considered quite normal in the Netherlands.”

Other dutch expressions Several readers mentioned Dutch wife, a rattan open frame or bolster used in the Dutch Indies to support the limbs in bed; Ian Williams told me of Dutchman’s log, an improvised way to measure a ship’s speed using any piece of rubbish that was handy; Rhody Streeter remembers Dutch tilt or Dutch angle from the film business, in which the camera was turned off vertical to create a sense of disorientation or indicate drunkenness. Bruce Brantley and Nicholas Brandes noted that carpenters and masons use Dutchman for a piece of wood or stone inserted as a repair; this is mainly US usage and was listed as long ago as 1859 in John Russell Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms.

Dead reckoning Numerous readers queried a Sic! item last week in which a report on the marketing of halal products used the phrase “animals that were dead prior to slaughtering”. To me this made no sense, because slaughter means kill. But Aelfwine Mischler e-mailed from Cairo: “I hear things like this all the time from Arabic speakers. They understand slaughter to mean specifically cut the throat (the way Muslims kill animals for meat) rather than the broader meaning kill. It means that Muslims cannot eat meat from animals that were dead before the throat was slit and the blood drained.” In a completely different context, Randall Bart found references in US official documents about BSE that the slaughter of dead animals was prohibited. So the original news report was right and in certain circumstances slaughter can mean butcher rather than kill. Dictionaries haven’t caught up with this specialised usage.

State’s right Professor Gustavus Hinrichs, whom I mentioned in my piece about derecho last week, was based at the University of Iowa, not Ohio. I’m told that this confusion between the two four-letter words isn’t unknown even among natives, especially in speech when local accents may blur the distinction. John Estill wrote, “An old joke has an Ohioan introducing himself at a cocktail party as being from Ohio. His hostess, condescendingly tells him, ‘I hope you won’t mind, but around here we usually pronounce it “Iowa”.’”