Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 December 5

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December 5

Definition of "hollow victory"?

Greetings.

As far back as I can remember, everybody whom I knew defined hollow victory as a synonym for "Pyrrhic victory." (And Wiktionary [1] agrees, by the way.) Not only that, but practically every reference to said term that I can find in television, movies, etc. considers it to mean a victory far more detrimental than beneficial.

Here's the thing, though: The Oxford English Dictionary gives meaning 6 of the adjective hollow as "complete, thorough, out and out." The OED then gives several citations—including this one from the Times, dated July 31st, 1894: "The prince's cutter steadily left her opponent and gained a very hollow victory."

So, which is it? Are virtually all English speakers mistaken? Does a "hollow victory" actually constitute something for which one must dutifully strive (and not something that he must avoid at all costs)? Or could the phrase have actually changed its meaning 180° in barely a century?

I mean, I've heard of semantic drift, but this is utterly surreal!

Pine (talk) 02:41, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

First, note that this part of the dictionary has not been fully updated since it was originally written in 1899. So it is entirely possible that sense 6 has become obsolete, and I suspect it has.

Second, I don't think a hollow victory as we now understand it means a Pyrrhic victory, exactly; rather, it's a victory that produces little benefit for any reason. For example, say you're rich and it's no trouble for you to sue a certain opponent; you win and are awarded a large judgement; but it turns out your opponent is broke and can't pay you anything. That's not a Pyrrhic victory, since you weren't hurt by it, but it is a hollow one.

In the OED entry, note sense 5 ("Of persons and things: wanting soundness, solidity, or substance; empty, vain; not answering inwardly to outward appearance; insincere, false") and also sense 7 ("Of a race: feebly contested. Hence of a victory: obtained against feeble competition|). Our sense of "hollow victory" fits more with these; definition 7 even mentions "victory" although there is no quotation supporting the phrase "hollow victory". So this meaning was already competing with the one in sense 6 when the entry was written, and it's not too surprising to see one die out. --76.71.5.45 (talk) 04:06, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

A good example may be Hillary's hollow victory in the popular vote, since it doesn't make her President. StuRat (talk) 04:29, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

What does "The prince's cutter steadily left her opponent" mean? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:17, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

That the prince's sailboat, a cutter, steadily expanded it's lead over the opponent's sailboat. StuRat (talk) 04:27, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Aha, a boat. I thought maybe the prince was pitching to her and striking her out. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:07, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Hence the classic schoolboy howler: "Magellan circumcised the world with a 100 foot cutter". Alansplodge (talk) 13:49, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

If he could do that, bris-kly, he would get quite a tip. StuRat (talk) 17:09, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

cut it out, you two. --Jayron32 01:57, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

• I think that sense 7 is still in use in east Tennessee (and perhaps other parts of Appalachia), at least in the phrase "all hollow", meaning "completely". For instance "Them Rebels beat them Yankees all hollow." -Arch dude (talk) 05:31, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

To "beat someone hollow" in this sense is (as far as I know) fairly common, and not geographically limited; e.g. Brewer (which suggests a different etymology from the sense 7 discussed above). Henry^Flower 10:26, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

• In that case the opponent, not the victory, is left hollow. —Tamfang (talk) 00:38, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

ou in southern

Internet sites are not helpful on revealing why southern is pronounced suthern. Any reason?? Does it have an etymology that diverged from that of south and did it only get its ou from the influence of south?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:31, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

The various etymological sites indicate that the old English words were suth and suthern - and most of the related Germanic languages also have a spelling with just the "u." Oddly, none of them that I have seen indicate when the "ou" spelling developed, though I suspect it may have been because the pronunciation changed over time, and the spelling adapted to that of similar sounding words. Wymspen (talk) 15:40, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

My Concise Oxford tells me that in OE, the sound in both words was "ū" ,i.e. rhymed with "sue". Martinevans123 (talk) 15:49, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

And how did the sounds in each word diverge?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:50, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Alas my Concise Oxford is too concise for that. But I suspect it was long before Southern States emerged. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:55, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

You may find Kathleen Ferrier's version of "Blow the Wind Southerly" interesting in this respect, as she pronounces it "sow-ther-ly", and I'm wondering if this is an affectation or maybe an indication of how the Queen's English has changed in the last century. --TammyMoet (talk) 16:28, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I always thought that was her rather quaint RP take on Northumbrian? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:03, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

My guess is that the change in pronunciation of "south" followed the introduction of the "o" into the spelling around 1300, and that "southern" retains a version of the older pronunciation (modified by the vowel shift). Perhaps an expert in Old English can check this? Southerners Some in the UK tend to pronounce Robert Southey's surname with the vowel of "southern" whereas northerners those around Keswick know that the surname has always been pronounces with the vowel of "south". Dbfirs 17:00, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Dbfirs, the Southey article which you link to says the exact opposite of what you claim regarding southerners and northerners: Southey's biographer comments that: "There should be no doubt as to the proper pronunciation of the name: 'Sowthey'. The poet himself complained that people in the North would call him 'Mr Suthy'" Unless southerners and northerners have swapped pronunciations since Southey's day. Henry^Flower 20:56, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Oh yes, sorry, it does quote his biographer saying that. I got the opposite impression from a radio programme. Perhaps it was only those around Keswick who knew the correct pronunciation, and other northerners mispronounced it. We do have the Southall in London. I've adjusted my comment to avoid accidentally misleading anyone. Martinevans' link above has a different view. Dbfirs 21:18, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Appears to be a case of Trisyllabic laxing, q.v. —Stephen (talk) 21:21, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

In London, we have Southall and Southwark, not fifteen miles apart and pronounced differently. Alansplodge (talk) 17:34, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

@Georgia guy: See the last paragraph and paragraph (b) here and here. P.S. Well, we already have the article--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:38, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

• See Great Vowel Shift. Old English /uː/ fairly regularly became modern /au/, spelt ‹ou›. Apparently the ancestor of southern shortened its /u/ before that happened, giving the usual /ŭ/ → /ʌ/, but the spelling conformed to that of the root word. —Tamfang (talk) 00:35, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I think it is related to the change in words like "love", "glove", "other", "dozen", where a Middle English /o:/ has become /ʌ/ rather than the expected /əʊ/ (or /oʊ/ dependeing on dialect). Note that this is frequent before voiced continuants /z/, /v/, /ð/, but is not universal: compare "over", "clothing"; also "move", "lose", where it has become /uʊ/.--ColinFine (talk) 13:57, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Oh? Did the word in question ever have /oː/? —Tamfang (talk) 02:03, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

@ColinFine: Love (OE lufu) is written thus because of the medieval scribers' convention to avoid too many consecutive minims. The vowel /ʌ/ in glove, other (OE glōfe, ōther) is a result of the chain shift from OE/ME /oː/ to /uː/ > /ʊ/ > /ʌ/ during the GVS. It is not clear why, but there are some similar words (blood, flood). Dozen may have had a similar story, but it is a French word. The words over, clothe, move, lose are standard outcomes of the GVS. So you've confused unrelated cases. Did you read the links provided by me above?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:00, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Headless chickens and pork chops

Some hyperbolic expressions can be related to reality even though they're not intended to be understood literally:

• He was running around like a headless chicken

Headless chickens do indeed run around at random

But some others have no relationship to reality:

• There's no need to carry on like a pork chop (= there's no need to act hysterically)

Pork chops do not "carry on", or exhibit any kind of behaviour at all. They just sit passively on the plate and get eaten.

My question is: How would the latter type of expressions have come about? And how would they retain their foothold in the language, given that every new generation would have to be taught what they mean? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:14, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Your pork chop is explained here. Origins will vary with each expression; if there's no recorded original reason, there may be one lost in the mists of time, or it may just have amused someone. I don't understand your second question at all: how is learning the meaning of an idiom any different from learning the meaning of any other word? Henry^Flower 21:37, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I wasn't seeking the origin of any particular expression, but thanks anyway.

What I mean by my 2nd question is this: If I said that someone was "running around like a headless chicken", any person in earshot old enough to be aware that chickens do not lie supine after being beheaded but run around, would understand the simile. It would need no further explanation. But everybody, on hearing for the first time the expression "carrying on like a pork chop", would need more information in order to work it out. Context might help, but that may not always be available.

There are many other examples of idioms that have no apparent meaning and would absolutely need to be explained: "to get one's goat", "the cat's pajamas", "the bee's knees" ... -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:14, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Eventually these idioms become "meaningful" through repetition. I'm sure a lot of folks have said something about "getting one's goat" while having no clue what it's based on. As for those other two, I think they fell out of fashion after the 1920s or so - but maybe not? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:45, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

If by "explained" you mean otherwise than by context, then I think you misunderstand how vocabulary acquisition typically works. The meaning of spunky, formica, and puce, to name three more or less random words, is (like your idioms) not immediately obvious from the word itself, but neither did I ever need to have their meaning explained to me. As I heard people using the words, the meaning became clear from the context. (Sometimes only gradually -- for several years, I knew that puce was a colour, but thought it was a shade of yellow). This is how it works for most of the thousands of words in our vocabulary, and it works in exactly the same way for idioms as for individual words. Fairly random reference, if thought necessary Henry^Flower 05:28, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

"Spunky" has widely different meanings, depending on where in the world it is said. DuncanHill (talk) 15:24, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

See also Fossil word. It's perfectly possible for a word to lose all meaning among the general public, and yet still survive in fixed expressions. So a "moot" was originally a meeting, but that meaning has been more or less forgotten, yet the fixed phrase "moot point" has survived - even if both its meaning (it originally meant a topic of discussion, not something that is not worth discussing) and its spelling (you see a lot of "mute point", for instance - see eggcorn) have started drifting. Smurrayinchester 08:44, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I also long thought puce was yellow (well, yellowish-green). I'm happy to see that our article actually discusses that definition. Matt Deres (talk) 16:50, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

You were probably subconsciously thinking of puke. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.136.117 (talk) 11:19, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

• I thank all who contributed to my enlightenment. Now I must get back to chopping wood and carrying water. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:54, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

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