Pubdate: Sun, 22 Dec 2002
Source: New York Times (NY)
Section: On Language
Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: William Safire
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1995/a07.html

GOING TO POT

Is America Going to Pot?" asked Time magazine on its cover recently. The 
article was about the battle over legalizing marijuana, and the headline 
was wordplay on the familiar expression going to pot (synonymous with 
"going to hell in a handbasket"), which the headline writer tied into the 
slang term for the hemp plant.

Scholarly potheads know the derivation of pot, the controlled psychoactive 
substance: the word is rooted in the Mexican Spanish potiguaya, which are 
marijuana leaves after their pods have been removed. The word may be 
derived from potacion de guaya, a potation (from the Latin potere, "to 
drink") that causes guaya, "lamentation" in Latin American Spanish. 
Apparently, this was "the wine of grief" in which marijuana buds were 
steeped. (The word marijuana could come from Mariguana, one of the Bahamian 
islands, or from a seductive Maria Juana -- Mary Jane. It's a mystery.)

The earliest citation for pot in its drug sense can be found in Chester 
Himes's "Black on Black," a collection of stories and essays published in 
1973, in a story written in 1938: "She made him smoke pot, and when he got 
jagged, she put him out on the street." (Jagged is an 18th-century term for 
"drunk," or -- you guessed it -- potted. For nonalcoholic intoxication, we 
now say stoned or zoinked or wrecked.)

But the slang term pot may have been influenced by the aforementioned pod: 
in his 1959 novel, "Naked Lunch," William Burroughs derided "a square wants 
to come on hip. . . . Talks about 'pod' and smokes it now and then."

All clear? (Actually, in reading this, you should be getting a little 
woozy.) Now to the part stimulated by Time's headline: the origin of the 
much earlier going to pot, which is by no means the road to marijuana.

"The riche & welthie of his subjectes," went the 1542 translation of 
Erasmus's Apophthegmes, "went dayly to the potte, & wer chopped up." (I 
report the archaic spelling, which triggers the question: Why did we change 
the spelling of welthie to wealthy and dayly to daily? And doesn't the 
ampersand -- "&" -- take less space than and? The old guys had it right.)

The phrase collector John Ray in 1670 defined to go to pot as "to perish; 
to be done for; as by death, bad seasons, pecuniary difficulties and so 
forth." A decade later, the poet John Dryden wrote, "Then all you heathen 
wits shall go to pot/For disbelieving of a Popish plot."

The cannibalistic origin of the metaphor -- to chop people up into edible 
portions and stew them in a pot until tender -- disappeared over the 
centuries. The meaning is now "to deteriorate; to fall apart; to go to 
seed." Colleen Barrett, president of the profitable, no-frills Southwest 
Airlines (bring your own lunch), told reporters recently, "A nongrowing 
company is the quickest way to have morale go to pot."

What do you take at executives of nongrowing companies? Our final entry in 
the ubiquitous pot derby: a potshot.

The Associated Press reporter covering the good-humored Al Smith dinner in 
New York two months ago reported that Secretary of State Colin Powell, 
before turning serious, "took several more potshots at Saddam and even 
poked fun at American politicians."

Across the country at the same time, The Los Angeles Times, reporting on 
the trend toward more "scantily clad women of impossible proportions" in 
video games, quoted a responsible industry executive as complaining, "With 
the strip-bar stuff, it's just too easy to open up the industry to potshots."

This comes from taking a shot only for the purpose of filling the pot for a 
meal, usually at an easy target and with no heed to the rules of sport 
hunting or the preservation of the head for mounting. It was an elitist 
derogation of hungry hunters who killed game to put food on the family 
table. "Most people took potshots," sneered an arbiter of social life in 
the reign of Queen Anne, "and would not risk shooting at a bird on the 
wing." So, too, in politics today.

MR. HUSSEIN?

When you are writing a news article about Saddam Hussein, Times style calls 
for you to use both his first and last name the first time you mention him 
("on first reference," in stylese). No argument about that. But on second 
reference, Times style calls for the use of a last name with an honorific 
- -- President Hussein" or "Mr. Hussein."

The A.P. disagrees. Its style, adopted by most newspapers, is to use the 
whole name (with or without "President") on first reference, but to use 
"Saddam" subsequently in the article, contrary to the usual A.P. style.

"This is common usage in the Mideast," says Norm Goldstein, the A.P. 
stylebook editor. (Except in headlines, The Times always spells out Middle 
East.) "Our Middle East correspondents say it's part of his personality 
cult, that he's chosen his first name as the name he wants to go by, and 
it's universally accepted. (They also note that Hussein is not a family 
name but his father's first name. His original 'last' name was derived from 
the region he's from, but he previously decreed the elimination of regional 
surnames)."

I use "Saddam" in both first and second references. Years ago, when King 
Hussein of Jordan was alive, I used only "Saddam" to identify the Iraqi so 
as not to get readers confused between Arab rulers. The Times continues to 
indulge me, as well as my fellow columnists, in this first-name 
familiarity, while our editors properly hold other writers to our 
stylebook's discipline except in quotations and letters.

It troubles me to learn from the A.P. that the dictator prefers my usage, 
but at this stage I refuse to change it to "Hussein." Not only is there a 
certain sassiness bordering on profound disrespect in using the first name 
only, but "Saddam" is also the moniker readers have come to know and 
despise him by.

American presidents tend to pronounce the name as SOD-um, as in the 
biblical city of ill fame, or SAD-um, rhyming with "Adam." Wrong; according 
to the Arabic scholars I have consulted, the accent should be on the second 
syllable, which should not be pronounced as "damn." The name is best 
transliterated as sah-DAAM, in which the stressed syllable should sound 
closer to "bomb."
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D