The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time (46 page)

This “is hardly an error that we could consider a hapax legomenon,” says Bryan Garner, author of the
Dictionary of Modern American Usage
. (That Greek phrase is used by irritated biblical exegetes to mean “only time used in a text” and often means they have to guess at the meaning.) Because the confusion of
rift
with
riff
is happening so frequently, notes the lexicographer sternly, “the modern use of
riff
in that sense appears to be nothing more than rank word-swapping resulting from sound association.”

Word-swapping, like spouse-swapping, is a no-no. Let us resist, holding fast to the distinction: when the president-elect swings into a familiar unity pitch, that’s a
riff;
when he tells a wing of his party that thought it deserved cabinet posts to get lost, that starts a
rift
.

On the third hand, if any politician uses a vulgarity or deliberately dresses like a slob—but in a kind of attractive way—he is said to be
raffish
.

The French writer Frédéric Dard was “known for his
raffish
prose style,” wrote Eric Pace in a
Times
obituary. This adjective first appeared in a letter from Jane Austen in 1801: “He is as
raffish
in his appearance as I would wish every disciple of Godwin to be.” William Godwin was a brilliant, unkempt Dissenter, husband of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and he struck admirers as delightfully unconventional.

Raff
may come from
raft,
in one sense “a large collection of rubbish,” and I won’t belabor the reader with a whole
raft
of citations.

But see how the language meanders through time. Is the
raff
of
raffish
connected to the
raff
of
riffraff
? Yes. The
riffraff
are the “rabble,” the elitist’s scornful dismissal of the disreputable or seemingly worthless elements of society. “You would inforce upon us the old
riffe-raffe
of Sarum,” wrote the poet Milton in 1641.

Riff
and
raff
are half-rhyming quasi-nouns from the Old French
rifler,
“to rifle, ransack,” and
raffler,
“to ravage, snatch away,” applied to things of little value.

Today’s piece is less of a snobbish improvisation for society’s elite than a
raffish riff
for the
riffraff
.

When President James Monroe borrowed books from the Library of Congress, he placed the letters “PUS” after his name to indicate “President of the United States.”

Kurt S. Maier

The Library of Congress

Washington, D.C.

If you ever have occasion to write about the origins of “Potus” again, you should know that it was created, I believe, during the Johnson administration—by an AT&T repairman. The phone company man was installing direct connections on the consoles of certain members of LBJ’s staff with a red button and the repairman felt that was insufficient designation; thus came
Potus,
because
President of the United States
would not fit on the console panel
.

It was soon adopted by staff when discussing White House affairs while lunching at San Souci or Paul Young, using the term “Potus” in case anybody was listening. LBJ’s secretary, Marie Fehmer, later verbalized it, and once when I had to see the President and asked what he was doing, she said: “Go right in. He’s just
potusing
around.”

Joseph Laitin
^*

Bethesda, Maryland

I recall distinctly reading the news of the death of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945. News of the president’s travels was always restricted by wartime censorship, but when he died, the newspapers reported the slow journey of the train carrying the late president from Warm Springs, Georgia, to Hyde Park. The news stories reported that the train dispatchers were notified to give priority to the presidential train, which had the special designation
POTUS.
I think that the acronym was used whenever President Roosevelt traveled by train, which was the way presidents traveled in those days
.

William Shank

Ardsley, New York

A comment on
riff-raff.
In the Bible we find the phrase “a mixed multitude” in a derogatory sense (Exodus 12:28). The Hebrew original says
EREFF RAFF.
Not a hapax legomenon
.

Eric G. Freudenstein

Riverdale, New York

Roll Out.
“Early in its foreign
rollout,
” reported
Daily Variety,
a movie titled
X-Men
hauled in $3.4 million over an opening weekend.

A restored version of the Rolling Stones’ concert film
Gimme Shelter,
issued on its thirtieth anniversary, “will begin a nationwide
rollout
in a few markets,” according to a Reuters dispatch from Los Angeles.

The
Asian Wall Street Journal
spread the word throughout the Far East: “
The Broken Hearts Club
will have a slow U.S.
rollout
beginning in major cities.”

What is this movie marketing term that has so captivated the merchants of dreams in Hollywood? Where did it begin, and what did it come to mean?

“
Roll out!
” as every Army veteran of World War II grimly remembers, was the unwelcome barracks call that pierced the blessed stillness of the morning. Accompanied by the admonition to “grab yer socks,” the phrase has a literal meaning of “roll out of bed.” It was often followed by a sardonic “rise and shine,” a metaphoric allusion to the sun, and a few minutes later by “fall out on the company street!”—an order to assemble outside, in front of the barracks.

The transitional metaphor to its use in Hollywood probably came from the aircraft or automotive industries, as vehicles
rolled out
of hangars or off assembly lines. Ira Konigsberg, author of the
Complete Film Dictionary,
suggests a more ancient origin: “The point of the term is to suggest the growing appearance of the film much like the expansion of a carpet when it is
rolled out
.”

How is a
rollout
different from a release? “A typical Hollywood release is a wide release to a national public all at once,” says Konigsberg, “because of the reliance on national television advertising.
Rollouts
are for independent, foreign or more specialized Hollywood films that need to build interest by word-of-mouth or simply must earn the right to proceed to larger audiences.”

A
rollout,
then, like its synonym
platforming,
is a process of release, taking place in stages. This useful term for gradual release or step-by-step development was picked up by marketers in other fields. The magazine
Martha Stewart Living
led to
Martha Stewart Weddings,
which gave birth to
Martha Stewart Baby,
and Ms. Stewart told
Advertising Age
last month, “There probably will be a
rollout
from there.”

Political usage in the recent campaign, however, vitiated the nice distinction between the simultaneous general release and the calibrated
rollout
. “One prominent Republican strategist said that the
rollout
of Mr. Cheney had been disappointing,” wrote Eric Schmitt of the
Times
in August. “Gore’s handlers are plotting yet another
rollout
of their candidate,” wrote Howard Fineman in
Newsweek
a month later.

This sense suggests only “introduction,” and frays the carpet’s specific edge. But politics likes to seize on with-it words and fuzz up their meanings.

I would not be surprised if the term “roll out” made its way into entertainment marketing etc. through direct mail. I believe that direct marketers have used the verb phrase and the noun “roll out” for ten years or more to refer to the culmination of direct mail testing
.

A careful direct marketer of any significant size will test several response rates that they generate. When one proves—often by a margin of less than 1 percent—to pull a greater response than the others, the marketer will order most of the productive package to be rolled out, that is, sent to the full mailing list of potential customers
.

Don Hill

Radio Free Europe

Prague, Czech Republic

Roll’s Roles.
Todd Beamer was a passenger on the doomed Flight 93, taken over on September 11 by terrorists who intended to use the aircraft as a missile to destroy the White House or the Capitol. He had a telephone line open to an operator in Chicago, who reported hearing him recite the Lord’s Prayer before he led a group of heroic passengers to rush the suicidal hijackers. Then Beamer said: “Are you guys ready?
Let’s roll
.”

President Bush recalled that moment in the eloquent peroration of a speech in Atlanta last month. “We will always remember the words of that brave man expressing the spirit of a great country,” he said. “We will no doubt face new challenges, but we have our marching orders. My fellow Americans,
let’s roll
.”

A song with that title was promptly distributed to radio disc jockeys. In a Philadelphia football stadium, a fan called “the sign man” unfurled a banner with the words “
Let’s roll
… out” to tumultuous applause. “The words are everywhere,” reported Britain’s
Guardian
. “They have become America’s favorite bittersweet and articulate bumper sticker.”

The phrase in its currently popular sense means “let’s get going; let’s move.” The original sense of
get rolling
had to do with the wheels of conveyances, horseless and otherwise, and dates back to the 16th century. The crapshooter’s
roll ’em
was introduced early in the 20th century, and the moviemakers’ command to cameramen, “
roll ’em
” (answered in an old joke by “anytime you’re ready, C.B.!”), was first recorded in 1939. Five years later, in his novel
The Man With the Lumpy Nose,
Lawrence Lariar wrote: “‘Do me a favor and go home and write it!’ McEmons stood over the reporter menacingly. ‘
Get rolling!
’” (I have an editor like that.) But the specific phrase
let’s roll
in its current meaning was first cited in the 1952 novel
The Tightrope,
by Stanley Jules Kauffman: “‘
Let’s roll,
dreamer,’ said Perry.”

In 1950 and 1951, the blues artist Cecil Gant (aka Private Gant, the GI sing-sation) came out with two songs that brought
roll
on to the music scene. “We’re Gonna Rock” was a remake of a lesser-known 1947 song by Wild Bill Moore, and repeated the words “We’re gonna rock, we’re gonna
roll
” for most of the song. The second was “Rock Little Baby” (the title bottoms on “rockabye your baby”), which included the line “Rock little daddy, send me with a rock and a
roll
.” By June 1951, the disc jockey Alan Freed promoted the revolution in popular music that became known as
rock ’n’
roll
. The phrase “Let’s
rock and roll
” was an excited call to dance to that music. Later—and this is the etymological conjecture of a confirmed fox-trotter—with the
rock
clipped out, the phrase became a more general exhortation to nonmusical movement or action.

In a related development, as transition-hungry writers like to put it, a new sense of to
roll up
wheeled into the lexicon. It was expressed this month by ABC’s Sam Donaldson: “It looks like the Taliban is being
rolled up
.” The verb phrase
roll up,
which might have begun in the showroom of a carpet salesman, later became the action of arriving in a carriage or automobile, and now has the meaning of “to defeat” or “to conclude” (expressed by film directors in a noun form as “that’s a wrap”), akin to the military meaning of “to mop up” (though no soldiers say “that’s a mop”).

The old verb
roll
—from the Latin
rota,
“wheel”—like Ol’ Man River, is unstoppable, creating new meanings as it goes, recently elevating itself by association with a historic moment. With the poet Byron, we can wish it ever more power: “
Roll on,
thou deep and dark blue Ocean—
Roll!
”