19th Century Etiquette for Gentlemen

December 11, 2004 4:18 PM

19th Century Etiquette: For Gentlemen How to keep yourself from looking like an ass if you happen to go back in time. Funny. "If one is walking with a friend, and happens to run into another, one is not obligated--indeed, one is discouraged--to introduce them to each other. So one can completely ignore the first friend while carrying on a conversation with the second, leaving the first to smile absent-mindedly, look in window shops, and half-heartedly laugh at comments you make even though he really has no idea what you're talking about."
posted by Count Ziggurat (27 comments total)

Is this based on a period source, or is this just some guy on C2 talking out of his ass? See the Gentleman's Page maintained by the Lively Arts History Association for more detail.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 4:41 PM on December 11, 2004

Anyone intrigued by the potential of culture clash involved in time-traveling to Victorian-era England (or indeed anyone who thinks blending in with the native population would be a piece of cake) should read Connie Willis' hilarious, frenetic, intelligent and charmingly old-fashioned To Say Nothing of the Dog.
posted by gentle at 8:19 PM on December 11, 2004

It's a nice link -- although it's still standard practice here to not necessarily introduce a third party, and a lot of people are still quite funny about introducing themselves. Less and less so as the habits of the former colonies take hold, of course.

Speaking of etiquette, I still can't get over E2's horrific mangling of link meanings. F'rinstance, across most of the web, "It was the coldest winter in years" would link coldest to an example of the coldest winter. Not on e2: there you get taken to a page explaining what "coldest" means, as if you can't speak English. GrrrR
posted by bonaldi at 8:21 PM on December 11, 2004

(everything2 is rather like Wikipedia, in that it is a collection of linked-together articles. The "coldest" link will point to the "coldest" node, which is unlikely to be related to the current article.)

The link seems broken for me.
posted by neckro23 at 8:48 PM on December 11, 2004

Off-topic: Connie Willis kicks much, much ass. Also see Passage, her on a researcher on near-death experiences, Bellwether on a fad researcher, and many other hilarious books full of wickedly realistic scientists working in wickedly realistic research institutions and environments.
posted by By The Grace of God at 8:52 PM on December 11, 2004

Ah....for the days when people cared what other people thought of them.
posted by Miko at 9:08 PM on December 11, 2004

I especially liked the following ones:

Don't ...
... let people walk over your outstretched legs
... stamp out a fire or put water or any rubbish on it; fire is sacred
... have long conversations in your own language in front of hosts who don't understand it
... pass anything to a Mongolian with just two fingers

Wait ... that's not 19th Century England though but from here.

It is not acceptable to knock at the door of a ger and to ask if you may enter; one is expected to holler "Hold the dog!" ("Nokhoi Khori!") and then approach, even if there is no dog, to let the hosts know they have a guest. The host and hostess will then emerge wearing their hats ...

... or release the hounds, as the case me be.
posted by sour cream at 9:14 PM on December 11, 2004

Uh, *may* be.
posted by sour cream at 9:17 PM on December 11, 2004

From sour cream's link:

As in most other places in the world, a greeting equivalent to "How are you?" ("Sain bainuu") is most common. The Mongolian difference is that a negative answer is considered to be impolite; one is expected to answer "Sain", meaning "Fine", and only later in the conversation may one's problems be mentioned.

In my experience that is also the case in the US.

Europeans (like myself) who converse with Americans are often confused by the "How are you?" greeting, because they interpret is an actual question, but it's really just a protocol whose expected acknowledgement is "I'm fine, thanks, how are you?" (or even just "How are you?", which is even more surreal), and any relevant, non-neutral answer is bound to mystify the other party. I have worked for an American company for more than four years, and I still find myself at a loss for words when confronted with the question; maybe the next time I'll go for "Fine, thanks; are your sheep fattening well?"
posted by gentle at 10:00 PM on December 11, 2004

everything2 is rather like Wikipedia

I believe you meant to say that Wikipedia is like e2, which has been around for much longer than all this Wiki-fad.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:10 PM on December 11, 2004

gentle, I often have conversations like this:

Me: How ya doing?
Them: Fine, how are you?
Me: Great! How are you?
Them: ... uh ...

It's tricky, damn it!
posted by breath at 11:19 PM on December 11, 2004

I believe you meant to say that Wikipedia is like e2, which has been around for much longer than all this Wiki-fad.

Ahem. Around longer than the fad, perhaps, but the first wiki was created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham, who invented the name as well as the concept. Everything₂ has been around since 1999.
posted by gentle at 12:36 AM on December 12, 2004

breath, I've done that. But don't Americans do this all the time, pretty much compressing the phrase as a single, non-interrogative word?

A: Howareya!
B: Hey, howareya!
A: Howwasthetraffic?
B: Ohyouknow! Howsthewife!
A: She'sgood! Catchthegamelastnight!

Come to think of it, that's exactly what howdy is.
posted by gentle at 12:53 AM on December 12, 2004

How great we are as gentlemen to have evolved in such short time in which we now introduce ourselves to women by thrusting our manly parts into their backsides at the local dance hall.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 5:38 AM on December 12, 2004

A: Howareya!
B: Hey, howareya!
A: Howwasthetraffic?
B: Ohyouknow! Howsthewife!
A: She'sgood! Catchthegamelastnight!

What's amazing is to see the equivalent exchange in a traditional society where the required queries and responses are still a living thing, not yet reduced to a boiled-down minimum. African movies usually include more than one scene in which people meet and go through a variant of the following:

A: How are you?
B. Well.
A: How is your eldest son?
B: Well.
A: How is your father?
B: Well.
A: How is your eldest brother?
B: Well.
[&c &c]

followed immediately by:

B: How are you?
A: Well.
B: How is your eldest son?
A: Well...

This can be excruciating until you get used to it, but it's fascinating to see where our abbreviated exchanges came from, back when we were expected to actually know and care about everyone in the other person's family.
posted by languagehat at 6:56 AM on December 12, 2004

but the first wiki was created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham

Sorry, Ward's Wiki is and was not what we now use the term for, which is a general information database with links to other sections of the database, a-la Encyclopedia. The whole Wiki fad has only been going strong for a few years: when Wiki had it's 100,000th article, E2 was at about 5 times that.

Don't get me wrong: much of those 500,000 articles on E2 are nothing more than nonsensical ramblings about "What I dreamt last night after eating some bad seafood." But many people were using it as a publicly contributed reference guide far longer than Wiki. So you know, Wiki is in my Firefox search engines of choice, while the buried E2 bookmark hasn't been touched in ages.

Sorry for the derail.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:31 AM on December 12, 2004

What's really tricky about the "how are you" thing, for someone who's totally internalized its ritual nature, is when a doctor asks it.

Doctor: "How are you?"
Me: "Good."
Doctor: ...
Me: "Um, actually, I've broken my leg. So I guess not that good."
posted by rusty at 7:34 AM on December 12, 2004

In other words, you use "wiki" to refer to Wikipedia exclusively?
posted by Utilitaritron at 7:58 AM on December 12, 2004

In other words, you use "wiki" to refer to Wikipedia exclusively?

Pretty much.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:49 AM on December 12, 2004

Sorry, Ward's Wiki is and was not what we now use the term for, which is a general information database with links to other sections of the database, a-la Encyclopedia.

Sorry, but Ward's wiki is what we use the term wiki for nowadays.

A wiki is, in essence, a system that allows very easy editing, hence the name, wiki meaning "quick". Instant over-the-web form editing, a simple plaintext format and automatic/easy linking are the three recurrent wiki features.

There are many, many other wikis out there, and the Wikipedia is only the largest and most visible. The most common use of a wiki is not as an encyclopedia format, but as a generic web hosting system. I use several of these systems daily.

Ward's original wiki is in fact similar to an encyclopedia. The Portland Pattern Repository, as it's called, is a heavily annotated (I would say chaotic) knowledge database on design patterns in computer programming.

Re what Utilitaritron said, that's like calling all soft drinks "Coke"!
posted by gentle at 8:58 AM on December 12, 2004

But... I do call all softdrinks coke.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:13 AM on December 12, 2004

If it's any consolation, I've been living in the states my whole life and still have a tendancy towards honesty in response to the "how are you?" question.
posted by kavasa at 9:20 AM on December 12, 2004

that's like calling all soft drinks "Coke"!

It's more like saying "soft drinks" but only ever meaning coca-cola. Or referring to only Metafilter as the Web.

If it's any consolation, I've been living in the states my whole life and still have a tendancy towards honesty in response to the "how are you?" question.

Same here.
posted by Utilitaritron at 10:22 AM on December 12, 2004

In England, particularly in the south, 'Alright?' is often used as greeting. An advantage is that you can reply with the same word, with it not quite being a question, and not quite an answer. And so the conversation can move on, as neither party is entirely sure about what has been asked or replied.

In Lancashire and Yorkshire you can still find some old blokes who use, 'What dost thou know, lad?' Unfortunately it has largely fallen out of use, perhaps because the only satisfactory response would be to show them the pages of Wiki and Everything₂ that you've read.

Sorry, I mean Wikipedia. I mean Coke. I mean soft drinks. What was I saying?

Rusty,

I hate it when the doctor gets me with that one, and makes me feel like I'm wasting his time. Tricksy old man.

Kavasa and Utiliaritron,

When I ask someone how they're doing, I probably don't really care or want to know. Sorry.
posted by stuporJIX at 12:41 PM on December 12, 2004

Having just moved to London from Canada, the 'Alright?' greeting has left me flustered on several occasions, as it took me a few weeks to realize that it was just an equivalent to the North American "how are you?" rote greeting.

At first I kept thinking that I must be looking unwell or out of sorts, since my brain was processing it more along the lines of a slightly more urgent "is everything okay? / are you alright?".

It's the little things...
posted by flaneur at 4:43 PM on December 12, 2004

I've always used the "Enough to get you hung..." response to the "What do you know?" greeting myself.
posted by BadSeamus at 6:43 PM on December 12, 2004

*waits for some pedant to come along and say "I say, old chap, that should be hanged."*
posted by languagehat at 8:12 AM on December 13, 2004