“Gallimaufry”

@PeterSokolowsi of Merriam-Webster reports on Twitter that gallimaufry is, at this moment, the most looked-up word at the company’s website. Why? Because the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd used it in her column yesterday: “Just like the Bushes before him, Romney tried to portray himself as more American than his Democratic opponent. But America’s gallimaufry wasn’t knuckling under to the gentry this time.”

(Dowd NOOBed in her opening line: “It makes sense that Mitt Romney and his advisers are still gobsmacked by the fact that they’re not commandeering the West Wing.”)

The OED’s first meaning for gallimaufry (which is spelled various ways) is culinary, referring to a stew or ragout with various ingredients, but as early as 1551 it took on the meaning “A heterogeneous mixture, a confused jumble, a ridiculous medley,” which is how Dowd uses it, though with a more positive spin than the definition suggests.

A Google Ngram reveals that, except for a puzzling period between about 1875 and 1885, the word has historically been used more in Britain (red line) than the U.S. (blue line):

But I wouldn’t exactly call it a Britishism, Not One-Off or otherwise. It’s just that columnists need to say things in colorful ways, and Dowd is about as colorful as they come.

“Spanner in the works” (though not “spanner”)

Faithful reader Cameron directed me to a quotation from an article on MLB.com by Anthony Castrovince (the MLB standing for Major League Baseball):

“Wakefield was a dependable eater of innings who annoyed opponents — not just on the days he pitched, but the day after, for a knuckleballer serves as quite the spanner in the works.”

(Translation, for non-American readers: Tim Wakefield is a pitcher who specializes in a rather unusual, fluttering pitch called the knuckleball. Wakefield himself, while he doesn’t produce spectacular results, has the ability to get his team fairly deep in the game without giving up too many runs: that is, “eat innings.” It is a general truth that, if a team faces a knuckleballer one day, its batters don’t do very well against a conventional pitcher the next day.)

I categorize spanner, meaning wrench (the tool) as a Doobious NOOB–that is, it is never found here–and spanner in the works as an outlier. The OED finds the first use of the latter in P.G. Wodehouse’s 1934 Right Ho, Jeeves: “He should have had sense enough to see that he was throwing a spanner into the works.”

I believe the expression will never achieve wide circulation here–will be used only, as Mr. Castrovince does, as a self-conscious exoticism–because we have a synonymous and, arguably, more adaptable and expressive counterpart: throw a monkey wrench in or into, which can be followed by works, plans, operation, or anything else. The OED reports a use of this by the Chicago Tribune back in 1907: “It should look to them as if he were throwing a monkeywrench into the only market by visiting that Cincinnati circus upon the devoted heads of Kentucky’s best customers.”

When Cameron brought up spanner in the works, it rang a vague bell, originating, I realized, in the title of a 1995 Rod Stewart album. I’d never known what this meant, and so categorized it with similarly mystifying British record names, like “Tea for the Tillerman,” “John Barleycorn Is Dead,” and “Thick as a Brick.” When I mentioned the expression to my wife, she reminded me that John Lennon’s 1965 book was titled A Spaniard in the Works. I had never before gotten the play on words. Good one, John.

“Athletics”

A few days ago, the (London) Daily Mail published an article that began:

Olympic legend Michael Johnson says a ‘superior athletic gene’ in the descendants of West African slaves means black American and Caribbean sprinters will command the sport at the London Games.

The Olympic gold medallist and BBC commentator said: ‘Over the last few years, athletes of Afro- Caribbean and Afro-American descent have dominated athletics finals.

‘It’s a fact that hasn’t been discussed openly before. It’s a taboo subject in the States but it is what it is. Why shouldn’t we discuss it?’

If you’re American, you will probably be puzzled by (the American) Johnson’s comment that certain people “have dominated athletics finals.” In the U.S., athletics is an all-purpose term, pretty much a fancier and more formal version of sports (sport to you). In the U.K., however, athletics is used as Johnson was quoted as using it: to refer to track, that is, running, events.

I said that Johnson was “quoted as” saying athletics. I bet that he did not actually say it, but rather that the Daily Mail–not known for its journalistic scruples–doctored the quote to make it understandable to readers. Anyone think otherwise?