THE King William IV, at Barton on the back road from Darlington to Scotch Corner, is a pleasant wayside pub where on Saturday evening, we were invited to attend a charity presentation and got wrong for being late.

There was also what they called a Dutch auction, though possibly it was a double Dutch auction. More of that in a moment.

The Dutch seem almost to have invaded the English dictionary, though the torrent is of our own making. When the two countries were empire building rivals in the 17th century, it's said, our boys unleashed across the North Sea a fusillade of uncomplimentary neologisms.

Still among the more familiar are the alcohol-fuelled Dutch courage, Dutch treat - originally when the invited person paid wholly - Dutch uncle, a miserable mentor; Dutch barn (without sides) and Dutch wife, which (get this) was a bolster pillow laid lengthways where the lady might otherwise have been.

A stuffed pillow should not, of course, be confused with "Dear old Duch", which is short for Duchess - and in particular, the Duchess of Fife, rhyming slang for wife.

At any rate, says one of the dictionaries, it was enough to have made Dutch "an epithet of inferiority".

Among those now seldom encountered are Dutch defence (a retreat), Dutch concert (a raucous uproar), Dutch comfort ("Thank God it's no worse") and a Dutch nightingale which, particularly unkindly, was a frog.

The 17th century Dutch, of course, fired plenty of "English" insults back again. Perhaps the Rev Tjarda Murray, Dutch-born and delightful minister of the United Reformed Church in Darlington, can weigh in with a few of her own?

A Dutch auction, the dictionaries concur, is where the auctioneer begins at a ludicrously high price and descends to whatever pittance he can get.

At the King Willie, they began with a quid in the bucket and worked upwards, raising the neck end of £200 for a couple of bottles of spirit and a box of chocolates. It was a good night: more in tomorrow's John North.

SPEAKING of auctions - that sort of thing, anyway - Alan Archbold in Sunderland wonders if there's anywhere else on earth, save Wearside, where fish and chips are ordered in lots - as in one lot, two lots and so on. "Even just up the road in Boldon, they've never come across it," he says.

THE French have a similar number of dictionary entries to the Dutch - leave, letter, kiss, knickers, window, toast - other European countries hardly any.

The only thing peculiarly German in the Bloomsbury English Dictionary is a cockroach, the only thing Belgian a hare.

Spanish practices are unusual working arrangements - anyone know quite why? - and should not be confused with the English disease, which is not working at all. Ugandan negotiations - per Private Eye and Idi Amin - were something else entirely.

French toast, incidentally, is more prosaically known as eggy bread. Perfect with a full English breakfast.

CONTEMPLATING November's generally moribund restaurant trade - except at Ristorante Fiumi in Fatfield, Washington - yesterday's Eating Owt column wondered about the phrase "As dead as a doornail".

So did Charles Dickens. "Mind," he wrote on the first page of A Christmas Carol, "I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail.

"I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade."

The wisdom of our ancestors is in the similie, Dickens added - the phrase's first recorded use was in 1350 - though he had recourse neither to the Internet nor to Mr John Briggs, and may Providence be thanked for both of them.

The most popular theory, and probably the most plausible, is that the door's principal "nail" - the one on which the knocker resounded - was hammered right in and then bent over on the other side, so that it couldn't work loose.

Effectively it was then "dead". As a nail maker might observe, you see the point, anyway.

THIS amateur etymology gets no easier, as an e-mail from Steve Hodgson in Darlington underlines.

Challenged by an American friend and fellow motor bike enthusiast to explain the distinctly English phrase "cock a snook", Steve turns to the Gadfly column which turns subsequently to....

Cassells Dictionary of Word Histories: "A gesture of defiance made with the thumb to the nose and the fingers spread. 18th century. Origin unknown."

The Bloomsbury English Dictionary: "A gesture made as a sign of contempt....Late 18th century. Origin ?"

Chambers Dictionary: "The gesture of putting the thumb...."

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Same thing - "Otherwise sometimes known as Queen Anne's fan." No explanation.

The other snook, of course, was a particularly unlovely fish - didn't it become a staple diet during the war?. The name comes from snoek, Dutch - what else? - for pike.

ITSELF all at sea, as usual, last week's column cited New Covey Crump - "an alphabetical glossary of seagoing terms" - and wondered what a covey crump might be.

Covey-Crump, it transpires, was the naval commander who wrote the thing, first published in 1955.

Explaining why ships are always referred to as "She", Covey-Crump quotes Plautus in the second century BC. "If a man is looking for trouble, he only need buy a ship or take a wife; both of them will always need trimming."

Tony Eaton in Northallerton recalls that the naval chaplain's assistants were always known as the sin bosun's mate; Jamie Tucknutt in Stanhope is moved to remember the nicknames of some of those with whom he served.

"Spike" Thorne, "Slinger" Wood, "Soapy" Bath, "Shady" Lane, "Tex" Rutter, "Shiner" Wright and - of course, says Jamie - "the ubiquitous Vera Duckworth".

....and finally from etymology to entomology, and a note on war paint from Tom Purvis in Sunderland. Experts, Tom discovers, have concluded that wasps know a hard case - and a soft touch - when they see one.

By studying the little perishers fighting, they concluded that those with "broken up, spotty or wavy markings" usually won.

"To test whether it was because they had a mean look, scientists painted the faces of the losing wasps to give them stronger facial markings. The naturally hard faced wasps still won."

Tom's perplexed. "I have yet to decide the benefits which this will bring either to the wasps or to future generations, or am I simply the victim of a sting?"

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Published: ??/??/2004