Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 July 23

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July 23

Boys and bies (Forster)

In Three Cheers for Democracy, E. M. Forster wrote:

• Ladies and gentlemen, boys and bies; school was the unhappiest time of my life, and the worst trick it played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. [1]

When I first read this I assumed "bies" was a misprint. But it appears wherever the quote pops up. It's not explained anywhere. Wiktionary has no entry for such an English word, the closest being bys, the plural of by (n.)

Who or what are bies? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:27, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

• Errata: Oops, I was wrong. It wasn't in anything he ever published. I guess it was found among his papers, and quoted in Wendy Moffat's biography E. M. Forster: A New Life, p. 37. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:46, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

it was probably some insider term. It may be related to “the bye-and-bye.” It may be related to the bis or the Bois.Temerarius (talk) 07:27, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Presumably school slang for girls, derived from by, "A secondary or subsidiary object, course, or undertaking; a side issue; something of minor importance". The traditional opening of a school speech would be "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls". DuncanHill (talk) 09:36, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

According to this, Forster used the term in The Spectator in 1936. Someone at WP:RX may be able to provide you with a copy of the article. DuncanHill (talk) 09:44, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Ah, that is the exact source of the quote. From what I'd read before, I wasn't aware it had ever been published in his lifetime. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:22, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Found a clue in this review of E. M. Forster: A New Life by Wendy Moffat, which says: "I had to look up bies = an evil spirit".

Wikipedia has an article Bies; "Bies /ˈbjɛs/ or bes (Russian: бес [ˈbʲɛs]) is an evil spirit or demon in Slavic mythology. The word is synonymous with chort". Perhaps Forster's unhappy schooldays led him to put boys and demons in the same bracket? The context of the quote is an imagined dissolution of a school, presumably Forster was thinking of Tonbridge School which is still for boys only. Alansplodge (talk) 14:00, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Alan. I did see that article in my original search, but I discounted it. For starters, "bies" in this sense is a singular word, while "boys and bies" requires a plural. But more to the point, if we learnéd elders have to search high and low to find the meaning, it's most unlikely this Slavic word would have been immediately recognised by the readers of 1936. I think there's a somewhat more prosaic explanation. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:47, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

The term occurs ten times in Volume 1 of The Boys Champion Paper (1885–86). From the uses I conclude that bies are schoolboys; the occurrences are all in quoted dialectal speech.  --Lambiam 16:08, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah. Probably not relevant directly, but here in Canada, "bies" would be understood as Newfoundland English for "boys" in the colloquial and familiar sense of "the lads". It would normally be written "b'y" in singular (as our article does), though I'm not sure about the plural. See also I's the B'y. Forster was born in Dorset Square, London; I have no idea if they have a similar short form, but that's the first avenue I'd check. Matt Deres (talk) 19:36, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

So if bies means boys, how would we interpret "boys and boys"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:49, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I think he added bies to give his address a local flavour; presumably that is how he, in his days at Tonbridge School, heard the boys being referred to. If the Kentish dialect was still common at the time (our section on it gives no dates), rounding of the diphthong of [aɪ] would have made by be pronounced like [bɔɪ], so perhaps this "bies" was a hypercorrection.  --Lambiam 07:49, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Tom Brown's Universe: The Development of the English Public School in the Nineteenth Century (p. 231) agrees a it's a dialect form of "boys":

'Frederick Temple (Blundells and Oxford) had a “marked provincial accent” which Rugby boys attempted to reproduce by “Bies, yer getting ruude: this must cease”'. Alansplodge (talk) 15:39, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, all who helped us get to the nub of this. If the only thing we've done here is connect us to the truth, that's a good thing. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:28, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Jack of Oz|Jack. I think he's just being jocular. If I'm reading the context correctly, he's speaking with regards to private schools and the "audience" there would be the parents ("ladies and gentlemen...") and the students, whom I assume would all have been male. In that latter group, he's singling out a subset affectionately. Perhaps it was a nod to the other closeted gays or just to friends in general? I guess I'm reading it like if I was addressing Wikipedia as whole by starting "Wikipedians - and RefDeskers - lend me your ears..." Matt Deres (talk) 21:25, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Matt. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:19, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Japanese vocabulary.

Hi. Is the fact that Japanese word 'そして' (and thus) resembles the て form of そうする　"to do thus" a coincidence? Duomillia (talk) 06:40, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's a coincidence, Duomillia. According to Wiktionary そうして is an alternative form of そして. --ColinFine (talk) 09:05, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

What is so significant about the phrase "Aaron earned an iron urn" by the people of Baltimore?

Can anyone explain the significance of the expression "Aaron Earned An Iron Urn" for the people of Baltimore, Maryland? --2600:1700:D740:1720:FCA6:6DB0:541A:750 (talk) 09:18, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

According to Baltimore accent, Baltimore speakers have a tendency to modify or omit vowels around /r/ in particular ways, so presumably this sentence shows several of these contexts. Looking at samples of the sentence posted on youtube, it sounds as if most of the vowels in the four words were neutralized, the whole thing sounding like "ahrn ahrn n ahrn ahrn". Fut.Perf. su 09:57, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

There are a number of examples on YouTube. Alansplodge (talk) 13:48, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

"Earned" and "urn" already have the same vowel in standard forms of modern English. AnonMoos (talk) 14:13, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Q: "What's a Grecian urn?” A: “About 30 shillings a week”. Boom, boom! Alansplodge (talk) 15:10, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies. (William Faulkner). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:34, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

There is nothing significant about the phrase. It's just a phrase that sounds funny when spoken in a Ballmer accent. Temerarius (talk) 01:23, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

The first video in that Youtube link that Alansplodge posted went viral not too long ago, so the phrase earned some extra notoriety vis-a-vis the Baltimore accent. bibliomaniac15 04:19, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Somewhat analogous to "park the car in Harvard Yard" for Bostonians, I suppose. 107.15.157.44 (talk) 19:34, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Y / I are interchangeable, in some pairs of words, e.g. in lucky vs. luckiness. Are W / U interchangeable, as well, in any pair of words ?

Except for loanwords - like Jew vs. Judea, and except for W 's very name: DOUBLE-U, and except for: plow vs. plough...

I'm not referring to Old English, but rather to Modern English only. 87.70.116.38 (talk) 22:00, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

First off, the letter "w" is not used to represent an independent vowel in English, only a diphthong element (except in a very few poorly-assimilated loanwords such as "cwm"), so its interchangeability with the letter "u" is rather limited. The letter "y" represents an independent vowel in English mainly when word-final, or stressed and occurring before a vowel letter, or corresponding to ancient Greek upsilon; otherwise it also is mainly used as a diphthong element... AnonMoos (talk) 22:55, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I know that, but I'm still asking my question... 87.70.39.62 (talk) 03:53, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Plough used to be pronounced with a guttural ending.[2] <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 05:54, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I know that, but please notice that your reference was not the one you had intended. 77.127.62.122 (talk) 06:10, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

No, I posted the one I intended. The "plough" info is farther down the "plow" page. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:15, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

In none of your examples has one letter been interchanged with another. That would result in luckyness, Jwdea and plowgh. A true example of interchanged letters might be realise/realize, or licence/license (in some English variants). I am not clear about what it is you are really asking. Bazza (talk) 12:13, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

I think it's fair to say that "lucky" has one spelling when it stands alone, and a different spelling when it has a suffix "-ness" added. I would call that an "allograph" (by analogy with the allomorphs of a morpheme), but our article allograph says the word is usually used with a different meaning. However, "Jew" and "Judea" are words that have a similar ultimate etymology, but historically came into the English language by very different routes, and are not too closely connected in modern English, so I'm not sure what the point of comparing the modern English spellings of the two words is... AnonMoos (talk) 12:35, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Last recorded in 1440, the word feute or fewte means the track of an animal. 77.101.226.208 (talk) 12:51, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

The same is true for feuter / fewter, indicated in Wiktionary as two alternative spellings of the same word. 77.127.62.122 (talk) 13:12, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

@AnonMoos:, You did understand what I had meant (as opposed to Bazza who didn't, as they have claimed about themself). so I'm really asking about whether w / u are anywhere used as two different allogarphs (the way you had wanted to interpret this concept), for any route (in Modern English). 77.127.62.122 (talk) 13:12, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

There are some proper names which can be spelled with either u or w. William Euing's name was sometimes spelled as William Ewing. Skoyt (talk) 08:42, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Thx. 87.70.49.174 (talk) 09:43, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

wikt:cauk and wikt:cawk? --Amble (talk) 23:09, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Oh, this an excellent example, becasuse it stems from a general phenomenon: the "au" (e.g. in "caught") and the "aw" (e.g. in "law") are always pronounced the same way (with few exceptions e.g. "aunt" in most varieties of English). 87.70.49.174 (talk) 09:04, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Different spellings of the same colloquial variation of "chalk". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:00, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Thx. 21:50, 28 July 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.70.49.174 (talk)