William Safire, the Chief Language Maven for The New York Times [AND his
editor/s] ALSO screwed the pooch on this one -- in an otherwise quite
interesting and informative article. Vide infra.
Further, we note with amusement that Pogue Tiglath The Wanker is NOW
offering up the lame implication that since he is not "RETIRED" he cannot
make sure what he posts is correct before he posts it -- hence his
continuing entertaining gaffes and pratfalls.
Hilarious!
DSH
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
-----------------------------------------------
<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE4D61539F931A35754C0A963958260>
July 2, 1995
IN LANGUAGE; A Woman of a Certain Age
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The New York Times
HOW OLD IS A woman of a certain age?
Only a Nosy Parker* would try to find out. But the expression is becoming
androgynous, and the age seems to be creeping upward.
Safire and his editor/s get THAT wrong too. It's NOSEY PARKER, among the
cognoscenti. Only the pognoscenti spell it "nosy". -- DSH
Sidney Wade, a woman who lives in Gainesville, Fla., reports that she was
complaining to a friend, Debora Greger, about a loss of hair: "My friend
remarked that we, as women of a certain age, were prone to a number of
peculiar developments. At first I was surprised by her use of the phrase to
describe us (we are mildly ripening), remembering it from my more youthful
days in France as an insulting kind of polite elocution but one that remains
rather wonderful and precise."
Correct. -- DSH
Then Ms. Wade was stunned to see a headline in The New York Times "3
Explorers of a Certain Age, Scaling Mountains and More" about three men in
their 80's. "Reeling, I reported this to Debora, who supposes that the
phrase itself seems to have developed a pronounced middle-aged spread. Is
this so? I hope not."
The phrase, in English, can be cited to 1754: "I could not help wishing,"
wrote an anonymous essayist in Connoisseur magazine, "that some middle term
was invented between Miss and Mrs. to be adopted, at a certain age, by all
females not inclined to matrimony." (This was two centuries pre-Ms.)
The certain age suggested spinsterhood; the poet Byron in 1817 wrote, "She
was not old, nor young, nor at the years/Which certain people call a certain
age,/Which yet the most uncertain age appears." Five years later, in a
grumpier mood, he returned to the phrase: "A lady of a 'certain age,' which
means Certainly aged." Charles Dickens picked it up in "Barnaby Rudge": "A
very old house, perhaps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which
will sometimes happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of a
certain, age."
The Oxford English Dictionary defined that sense of certain as "which it is
not polite or necessary further to define." That was the sense meant by
William Dean Howells when he wrote of "gentlemen approaching a certain
weight." The special sense reverses the literal meaning of the word
certain, which is "fixed, definite" (much as "I could care less" means "I
could not care less").
Yes. Well Stated. -- DSH
The phrase was repopularized in a 1979 book by the psychotherapist Lillian
B. Rubin, "Women of a Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self," in which
midlife spanned 35 to 54.
Renia Simmonds, our Brit expatriatrix in Athens, will be 55 on 14
December. -- DSH
So, she is definitely "a woman of a certain age" and beyond -- according to
the new, extended age span. -- DSH
Reached in San Francisco, Dr. Rubin, whose book indicates she is now in her
early 70's, was surprised to learn of the long English history of the phase
[sic] because "it has a long history in French, where it refers to women of
fortyish and thereabouts who are able to initiate boys and young men into
the beauties of sexual encounters. The early use in English seems to be
about spinsterhood, but the French meaning has nothing to do with marriage."
Indeed. The Older Woman teaching the Younger Man about Sex. -- DSH
In French, the phrase has erotically or sexually charged overtones. "It
comes from a society where sexuality is freer," Dr. Rubin notes, "and more
understood as an important part of human life."
<G> -- DSH
The phrase in French is _femmes d'une certaine age_*. The term, however, can
apply to either sex. Without the certain, the phrase _un homme d'un age_
translates literally as "a man of an age" and is defined in the
Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary as "a man of advanced years."
As we see, The Mighty New York Times ALSO confuses a MASCULINE noun for a
FEMININE noun. So, both Safire and his editor/editors royally screwed the
pooch on this one. -- DSH
And now to the point: is that certain age getting older?
"When I wrote the book in 1979," Dr. Rubin says, "the 'women of a certain
age' were in their late 30's and early 40's. I think that has changed with
the baby boomers and the lengthening of the life span. I'd say the 'certain
age' has now moved to the age of 50 or 55."
Look at it this way: late 30's or early 40's is no longer that "certain"
age; it's moved up a decade. The good news is that 40 is still young, at
least linguistically. That's how it seems to a language maven of a certain
weight and getting long in the tooth.
But short in the knowledge of the GENDER of FRENCH NOUNS. -- DSH
Which brings us to long in the tooth, which I used in a political column in
an unkind reference to vigorous Senator Bob Dole. (The first user was
William Makepeace Thackeray in an 1852 novel: "She was lean, and yellow, and
long in the tooth; all the red and white in all the toyshops of London could
not make a beauty of her.") In my piece, I was impelled by wordmavenhood to
give the derivation of the expression: "As horses age, their gums recede,
making their teeth appear longer." My source was the Oxford English
Dictionary: "displaying the roots of the teeth owing to the recession of the
gums with increasing age; hence gen., old."
This folk wisdom about the illusion of tooth-lengthening was promptly
challenged by Michael Brisbane McCrary, former Hong Kong polo player and now
a squire in Hunter, N.Y.: "Horses actually do get 'long in the tooth.' It is
not receding gums; their teeth continue to grow out (like beavers, and there
is a word for it beginning with 'ex-') throughout their lives until the
teeth actually fall out."
Mr. McCrary (his wife is Jane Buckle; her long-panted-for book, "How to
Massage Your Dog," is scheduled for publication this fall) continues: "The
growth of the horses' teeth is required because they would wear down in the
process of eating in a natural setting. As the teeth grow out, lines show;
this is how one usually tells the age of a horse. And this is the background
to the phrase 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth'; i.e., if it is a gift,
don't ask how old it is."
That moved me to call the National Zoo. I don't call the Bronx Zoo anymore;
any zoo that calls itself a "wildlife center" cannot be trusted.
Quite Right. -- DSH
(A spokesman at our national zoological park, Mike Morgan, remembered me as
the one who revealed the reason that pandas have reduplicating names like
Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing they can't hear well and zoo keepers have to call
them twice.) ******
<G> -- DSH
It seems that Mr. McCrary could be right and all of us lexicographers could
be wrong. "As horses age," noted Dr. Richard Montali, one of the National
Zoo's veterinarians, "their teeth actually do continue to grow for some
time. The incisors appear to look longer, but it's mainly because the angle
of the teeth changes. Instead of perpendicular growth, the teeth angle out
as they grow and wear."
Maybe the gums recede a little as the growing teeth angle out; that's why
horses' teeth reveal their age. As a result of receiving this new
information, and with deference to animal rights groups, I will no longer
refer to old horses as being long in the tooth. They are horses of a certain
age.
Hmmmmmmm... Yes, like Renia.
Indeed.
Long in the tooth and of a certain age.
DSH
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
