Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 December 24

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December 24

British slang: "Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth"

I heard this in an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, Father and Son, filmed in 1957 but set in 1912 London. The dialog goes something like this:

"You used to be a lush, Dad, you never even bothered to run the shop until Mom died, and now you act as though butter wouldn't melt in your mouth."

The son is trying to get money from his Dad, who wants the son to make something of his life. Still, I can't quite decipher that expression. Does it mean he's cold, as in unloving ? StuRat (talk) 02:47, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

In the UK, the expression is used mostly for babies or young children who are cute or endearing, quite the opposite of what you say. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 02:59, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

What would be the origin of such an expression? To this American also, it immediately suggests someone who is cold. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:41, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, it's generally used in a sort of sarcastic sense - as in "You wouldn't think he would be like that, but in reality he is that type of person", as in he seems innocent, but in reality.... See this article. The origin itself seems to be unknown. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 05:14, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

That link indicates it does indeed have to do with someone being cold or cool. And apparently used in an ironic way, as you say. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:48, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, notice that in the original post, the word 'act' is used. So in this sense, it is ironic. The actual phrase itself means 'innocent', but is almost always used in this ironic sense. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 05:59, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Interesting. I always thought the phrase look as if butter wouldn't melt in one's mouth simply describes someone who is cold or unfeeling (as this website suggests), but Oxford Dictionaries Online says it means to "[a]ppear gentle or innocent while typically being the opposite". The first-mentioned website notes that the term pops up as early as the 16th century. — SMUconlaw (talk) 08:55, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm an American, have never heard that phrase before, and agree that the first meaning that occurs to me is to suggest that a person is cold. However, melting butter could be seen as causing minor damage, so maybe the original meaning was to appear to be unable to do harm. Marco polo (talk) 14:42, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

What? No, clearly that's not the origin. It's a sarcastic statement, not a literal one. And Americans claim to be able to speak English... Ha! 94.212.132.191 (talk) 15:05, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, I have just asked my British mother, and she agrees with me. We have just had a recent addition to the family (my cousin's baby) and she says she used that phrase to describe him. It means 'innocent'. When you say 'looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth', it becomes ironic. Hence the 'looks like' or the 'acts like' or 'seems like' part. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 14:57, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. It has nothing to do with being cold or unfeeling. In London (and probably elsewhere), the expression has been shortened to just "butter wouldn't melt". It means that the subject (usually a child) appears to be innocent but is actually badly behaved. Hitchcock and I are both natives of Leytonstone. Alansplodge (talk) 21:40, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

So any guess as to why butter not melting in a baby's mouth shows that baby to be innocent ? I just don't get it. StuRat (talk) 06:59, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Charles Dickens used the expression in : ""It would be no description of Mr Pecksniff's gentleness of manner to adopt the common parlance, and say that he looked at this moment as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He rather looked as if any quantity of butter might have been made out of him, by churning the milk of human kindness, as it spouted upwards from his heart.", and the "innocent" sense might possibly arise from this usage because it seems to be slightly different from the meaning in Thackeray's usage: "When a visitor comes in, she smiles and languishes, you’d think that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth: and the minute he is gone, very likely, she flares up like a little demon, and says things fit to send you wild." The expression is so old (more than 500 years) that the origin and original meaning seem to have been lost. Dbfirs 09:04, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm an American and have heard this expression all my life, with the meaning of apparent innocence hiding one's true nature. Maybe it survives in the US only in the South? (I'm from NC) --Khajidha (talk) 17:07, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Licenses, permits, and concessions

I've found a general answer for difference between licenses and permits but does anyone have a clear idea about the distinction between these three words in the natural resource exploitation context (e.g. mining concession, mining license, mining permit)?

Muzzleflash (talk) 06:17, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, I thought that a licence/license is a right given to someone else to do something that you have the right to do, whereas a permit is consent to do something which would otherwise be illegal. However, both Black's Law Dictionary and the OED disagree with me, treating licence and permit interchangeably, both meaning permission to do something that would otherwise be illegal. According to the OED, concession has a more precise meaning – it is either a right or privilege granted by a government or ruling power to an individual (and in particular, a grant of land or property), or a right or privilege granted by a commercial organization to a company or an individual, especially to market goods. — SMUconlaw (talk) 08:59, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

EO likewise suggests they are virtually synonymous, or have come to be used that way. One oddity in the US is that one who is working towards getting a "driver's license" initially has a "learner's permit". The only practical difference is the rules connected with each. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:59, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

If Black's says license and permit are interchangeable I guess there really must be no legal distinction. Muzzleflash (talk) 06:30, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

• Again, it depends on jurisdiction. In the NE US a permit is usually a limited permission to do something, like have six months to practice driving before taking the license test, or being allowed a certain time to build a specified structure on your property. A license implies that you've demonstrated the necessary skill to legally be allowed to practice a skill like law, massage, or driving for an indefinite period.
  

Of course these are words, not facts of nature, and they are used contextually and according to linguistic convention, so one gets a marriage "license", but that doesn't allow you to go around getting married or performing marriages any more than a building permit allows you to build a shed on all your neighbors' properties as well. μηδείς (talk) 17:38, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Odd we don't have an article. Here is the Stanford Encyclopedia on linguistic convention. μηδείς (talk) 19:54, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Ancient Greek Transliteration Technique

Before /pʰ/ shifted to /f/ in Greek, how did the Ancient Greeks transliterate /f/ found in words from other languages?

I know that they transliterated /v/ as /b/ back then, but I don't know how they transliterated /f/.

Does anyone here know? Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 15:46, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

In the Septuagint, both letters Π and Φ appear for both the stop and fricative variants of the ancient Hebrew /p/ phoneme פ, and it's hard to discern whether Φ is used more often for the fricative allophone, or whether it's pretty much random. However, in the Greek New Testament, Φ appears to correspond to Latin F (Φηλιξ=Felix, Φηστος=Festus)... AnonMoos (talk) 17:37, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Herodotus used "Ἀρταφέρνης" (Artaphernes) for a name that presumably had an /f/ in Persian. And going the other way, Dionysius of Halicarnassus wrote about the "Φαλίσκοι" (Faliscans) . Adam Bishop (talk) 16:27, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Tharthan, why do you think they transliterated /v/ as /b/? I've never heard this; but I know that, like the other voiced plosives, the sound /b/ in Ancient Greek has become fricativised to /v/ in Modern Greek. --ColinFine (talk) 22:49, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

ColinFine Well, for instance, Latin Aventinum was transliterated typically as Ἀβεντῖνον or Ἀβεντῖνος in Ancient Greek times. It was really only the educated that transliterated it as Αὐεντῖνον or Αὐεντῖνος. Similarly, Calvinus was transliterated as Καλβῖνος in Ancient Greek times. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 17:02, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't know that. But I take it you are talking about New Testament Greek, rather than Classical Greek. It may be the lenition of /b/ etc had already started by then. --ColinFine (talk) 17:53, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Mayhap. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 21:51, 28 December 2014 (UTC)