80 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
80 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
From fork-admin@xent.com Fri Sep 20 11:32:30 2002
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From: Kragen Sitaker <kragen@pobox.com>
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To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
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Cc: webmaster@worldwidewords.org
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Subject: Re: Avast there matey
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Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 13:18:04 -0400
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Owen Byrne writes:
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> [quoting http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-shi2.htm]
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> *SHIVER MY TIMBERS*
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>
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> /From Tad Spencer/: "Please could you tell me where the phrase /shiver
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> my timbers/ originated?"
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>
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> This is one of those supposedly nautical expressions that seem to be
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> better known through a couple of appearances in fiction than by any
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> actual sailors' usage.
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>
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> It's an exclamation that may allude to a ship striking some rock or
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> other obstacle so hard that her timbers shiver, or shake, so implying a
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> calamity has occurred. It is first recorded as being used by Captain
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> Frederick Marryat in /Jacob Faithful/ in 1835: "I won't thrash you Tom.
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> Shiver my timbers if I do".
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It seems implausible to me that "shiver" here means "to shake"; I don't
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recall seeing the word used transitively in that sense, and web1913
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lists that sense as "v. i.", or intransitive. The transitive sense of
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"shiver", which we no longer use but which people used widely in the
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1800s (web1913 doesn't even list it as archaic or obsolete), means
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"to shatter into splinters, normally with a blow".
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Shivering a boat's timbers, of course, leaves you with no boat.
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(Shivering some of them, which will happen if you hit a rock hard enough,
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leaves you with a sinking boat.)
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So, "Shiver my timbers if I do," can be reasonably interpreted as a more
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vivid way of saying, "May I die suddenly if I do." The interpretation
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suggested by Quinion, "May my boat be damaged," neither makes as much
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sense in context nor obeys the normal rules of grammar.
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I've sent a copy of this to Quinion.
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