Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 October 16

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October 16

Bested vs. worsted

These past tense verbs seem to have the same meaning when used in the sense of "got the better of someone".

Are they truly synonyms, or is there some shade of difference? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:39, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

I'd never heard of "worsted" outside of knitting circles, and neither at first glance has [1]. But a look on the same site at "worst" reveals it's (among other things) a verb requiring an object, meaning "get the better of or defeat". The large number of examples given suggest it's of a certain age or use, but counts as my thing to have learnt for today. Bazza (talk) 11:03, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Going to those links triggers some sort of complaint that requires me to exit IE. Looking at Etymology Online, it appears that the term "worsted"[2] is a lot older than "bested"[3] in the sense of defeating. "Worsted" wool has nothing to do with defeating, though; it comes from Worstead. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:51, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

On the simplistic level of semantics from an ESL speaker:

• Bested is a term applied from the POV of the winner in the contest.
  
• Worsted is a term applied from the POV of the loser in the contest.
  

As such, there may be a not-so-subtle difference in these constructs. However, this is pure speculation. I have not lived in the Anglosphere for 40 years and I am reasonably sure never to have heard of “worsted” in colloquial or written communication. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 13:56, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

'Of course, I remember' he said. 'The men of Carn Dûm came on us at night, and we were worsted. Ah! the spear in my heart!'

— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 8, "Fog on the Barrow Downs"

—Deor (talk) 16:59, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Died in the wool? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:58, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Well spotted, but of course Tolkein was deliberately trying to evoke the feeling of archaic speech and his vocabulary would be considered exceptional compared to most people. Matt Deres (talk) 18:46, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

OED offers some more contemporary examples, but agrees with you that it's rare. For the transitive verb (meaning: "to get the better of (an adversary) in a fight or battle; to defeat, overcome. To defeat in argument, to outdo or prove better than (a person). Also: to overcome or foil (an undertaking). Frequently in passive."):

1980 K. Crossley-Holland Norse Myths (1982) Introd. p. xxxvii Initially worsted, the gods invariably come off better in the end.

2015 Spectator (Nexis) 5 Dec. An over-confident Japanese army was worsted by the Russians in Manchuria.

1985 B. Unsworth Stone Virgin 176 You can't bear to be worsted in argument, can you?

2012 Australian (Nexis) 5 June 14 Because she cannot bear to be bested—or worsted—by Abbott she too often uses her bully pulpit to sneer, or ridicule or belittle. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 21:47, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

• I agree that "worsted" in this sense is rare. I don't remember ever hearing it conversationally, and even "bested" is a once-in-a-blue-moon thing. But for better or worse I'm a relentless miner of quotes from all manner of sources old and new, and I sometimes come across each of them. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:09, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Shouldn't that be "for best or worst", Jack? Deor (talk) 17:52, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

'Pole shift' in Danish

What is the translation for this?83.75.7.147 (talk) 13:44, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Google translate says Pole shift translates to Pole shift if Danish. Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 13:53, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. It returns polskift. But google translate is not reliable, so you have to check that response. The danish article on earth's magnetic field (da:Jordens magnetfelt). The second sentence has in parentheses: magnetisk reversering eller polskifte, which connects reversal of the magnetic field with the word polskifte. I do not know what the e is, maybe just a declination away from the nominative, but it seems that google translate is giving a good response. --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:13, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

In particular, if Google Translate has no equivalent for a word or phrase, it leaves it unchanged. --76.69.116.4 (talk) 23:37, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Danish nouns do not show case, other than the possessive in -s, Wrongfilter. So "polskifte" would be the citation form. Searching for "polskifte" confirms that it has been used elsewhere, and even been taken as the name of an album. However "et nyt polskift" (a new polar shift) is used in this pedagogical site, so it looks as if both may be in use. --ColinFine (talk) 09:33, 17 October 2019 (UTC).

Oh my goodness gracious me

The Hill reports: Asked about Trump's comments on Wednesday, Romney added: "Oh my goodness gracious. Oh my goodness gracious. The Kurds are our friends and our allies." There's no upside to this clusterfuck politically, but the quote actually made me smile. I suppose this is the sound of a Mormon swearing, what with the third commandment etc., but I am neither a native speaker nor do I know any Mormons personally, anyways ... it also made me wonder about the pedigree of the expression "goodness gracious". Biblical? Puritan? Also: How am I supposed to parse "Oh my goodness gracious me", syntactically speaking? Whence the "me"? Ellipsis ("God [≈"goodness gracious"] [help] me") or what? --77.13.98.38 (talk) 18:38, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Dictionary.com says it is from the 1700s and was, as you surmised, a minced oath. Matt Deres (talk) 18:49, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

While I've got OED open I looked it up and found that Dickens is one influential author who used the expression:

1837 C. Dickens Pickwick Papers xxxviii. 417 ‘Goodness gracious!’ said Mary,..‘Why it's that very house.’

1841 C. Dickens Barnaby Rudge ix. 285 Goodness gracious me! 70.67.193.176 (talk) 21:50, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

There's a song with the title "Goodness Gracious Me" (a hit in the UK long ago)... AnonMoos (talk) 21:52, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

And a comedy show: Goodness_Gracious_Me_(TV_series) Iapetus (talk) 09:14, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Both of those examples refer to the phrase's survival in Indian English. It became something of a racial stereotype in the UK, which the writers of the TV series were ridiculing. Alansplodge (talk) 17:10, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

COHA and the like bring hits for "goodness gracious knows", "for goodness gracious(') sake(s)" and perhaps a few other sequences where "gracious" seems to be an inessential modifier of the noun "goodness". I also see at least one hit for the interjection "oh, mercy gracious!". As a separate word, "goodness" can only be a noun. "Goodness gracious" is pretty much a fossilized compound now, but for what an attempt at parsing it is worth, I'd guess that it is, or rather was, a noun phrase including a postpositional adjective. (Recall that certain adjectives can or even must go after head nouns: "all resources available", "whisky galore".) However, I think it's better to regard it as primarily an interjection. The polite Mr Romney may exclaim "Goodness gracious!" as the impolite may exclaim "Fuck!"; and indeed he may exclaim "Goodness gracious me!" as the impolite may exclaim "Fuck me!". It's important to realize that "Fuck me!" is, as Quang Phuc Dong has famously observed, not an imperative (or invitation), and the fact that the "fuck" within it sounds identical to that within "I'd like her to fuck me" shouldn't lead one to assume that it's a verb. Thus it's not surprising that what looks like (but isn't) a verb and what looks like (but isn't) a noun phrase can be used in the same place. However, the use in epithets of "goodness gracious" differs from that of "fuck" in that we (or anyway I) can't utter (and couldn't have uttered) such imagined epithets as

• Goodness gracious you.
• Goodness gracious Lyndon Johnson.

or indeed "goodness gracious" followed by any NP (broadly understood) aside from "me". The difference is drastic, so my tentative analysis may be entirely wrong. I'd enjoy reading a better-informed/argued one. (AnonMoos?) -- Hoary (talk) 05:58, 19 October 2019 (UTC)