Justdoinmyjob

Time for "Pedantic Sunday Sermon." Please note the last sentence.

Beck and call

Meaning

To be at someone's beck and call is to be entirely subservient to them; to be responsive to their slightest request.
Origin

'Call' is used here with its usual meaning. 'Beck' is more interesting. The word, although it has been in use in English since the 14th century, isn't one that is found outside the phrase 'beck and call' these days. It is merely a shortened form of 'beckon', which we do still know well and understand to mean 'to signal silently, by a nod or motion of the hand or finger, indicating a request or command'.
If the term 'beck and call' had originated prior to the 14th century we we would presumably now say 'beckon and call'. It didn't though and the first recorded use of 'beck and call' in print is in Aemilia Lanyer's set of poems Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, 1611: That is straightforward enough. What brings the phrase to the attention of etymologists is the confusion that some people have between it and 'beckon call'. This supposed phrase is a simple mishearing of 'beck and call'. The mistake comes about because no one uses 'beck' any longer, whereas 'beckon' is commonplace.
'Beckon call' could be said not to be a phrase in English at all, but it is gaining some ground nevertheless. At present (January 2007) Google finds 28,000 hits for 'beckon call' and 474,000 for 'beck and call'.
The misspelling began in the USA in the early 20th century; for example, this early citation from The Modesto News-Herald, May 1929:The rogue phrase still appears in print in newspapers. Here's a recent example from the London Daily Mirror, by Phil Differ and Jonathan Watson:Just because 'beckon call' is based on a mishearing doesn't mean that it won't one day become accepted as proper English. Other phrases, like 'beg the question' for instance, are routinely used incorrectly by so many people that the incorrect usage has now become the standard. Let's hope 'beckon call' dies a natural death, not only because it is essentially just a spelling mistake but because its adoption would signal the last gasp of the enjoyable little word 'beck'.

vagabond

What happened to my thread?? I thought I was the only Grammar Nazi on the Forums!

Well, beck (I mean, heck), captjns must be drinking too much vodka on a stomach empty of breadsticks.

Ooops, my Miniature Schnauzer beckoned calleth.

Justdoinmyjob

rotorhead1026

Maybe, but more likely he's a victim of autocorrect, combined with bifocals that may need a prescription update. BTDT

tsquare

I thought it had something to do with Glen Beck... or maybe Jeff Beck. Or I hear there is some guy called just Beck (I prefer the Jeff Beck guy myself as far as music goes... Funny looking word "beck".

Bucking Bar

Boeing's own airplane, the 777-9X will probably kill the 747. Boeing makes a greater profit from the 777 and Emirates is expected to kick of the program off with a large order at the Dubai Air Show in November.

The 777-9X will be smaller than a 747, but have the same seat mile costs as the 747 and considerably less than the A380. The A380 is really a hubris bet & counting slot constrained chickens which have yet to hatch. China Southern has operated their domestically and has been losing millions. Overall the A380 has only sold about 260 airplanes (and fewer if you count the airlines that have gone bankrupt or are publically talking about renegotiating their orders for smaller jets).

As Crandall showed in the last couple of decades, or Anderson is showing in this one, it is often more profitable to constrain supply for higher prices and spill customers rather than chasing declining yield curves with too much capacity.

Smaller aircraft can be deployed more flexibly. That's why the very large market isn't doing so hot and frankly, the demise of the Regional Jet has probably been overstated a bit.

Bucking Bar

747 porn:

BeenThere

Whichever they choose, airlines will need Boeings to fly when the A380 starts falling apart, or they finally figure out they can't make any money with it.

727C47

I have flown the Classic, and the 400 in freight dog service, they are pure gold, and vie with the 727 and the DC3 for my airman's heart. In truth I love flying them all.

Bucking Bar

Unfortunately, as the 787 demonstrates, the Douglas management take over of Boeing has destroyed the Company's abilities. Here's an article for further reading:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financ...alk_surowiecki

The Dreamliner was supposed to become famous for its revolutionary design. Instead, it’s become an object lesson in how not to build an airplane.

To understand why, you need to go back to 1997, when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas. Technically, Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas. But, as Richard Aboulafia, a noted industry analyst with the Teal Group, told me, “McDonnell Douglas in effect acquired Boeing with Boeing’s money.” McDonnell Douglas executives became key players in the new company, and the McDonnell Douglas culture, averse to risk and obsessed with cost-cutting, weakened Boeing’s historical commitment to making big investments in new products. Aboulafia says, “After the merger, there was a real battle over the future of the company, between the engineers and the finance and sales guys.” The nerds may have been running the show in Silicon Valley, but at Boeing they were increasingly marginalized by the bean counters.

Under these conditions, getting the company to commit to a major project like the Dreamliner took some doing. “Some of the board of directors would rather have spent money on a walk-in humidor for shareholders than on a new plane,” Aboulafia says. So the Dreamliner’s advocates came up with a development strategy that was supposed to be cheaper and quicker than the traditional approach: outsourcing. And Boeing didn’t outsource just the manufacturing of parts; it turned over the design, the engineering, and the manufacture of entire sections of the plane to some fifty “strategic partners.” Boeing itself ended up building less than forty per cent of the plane.

This strategy was trumpeted as a reinvention of manufacturing. But while the finance guys loved it—since it meant that Boeing had to put up less money—it was a huge headache for the engineers. In a fascinating study of the process, two U.C.L.A. researchers, Christopher Tang and Joshua Zimmerman, show how challenging it was for Boeing to work with fifty different partners. The more complex a supply chain, the more chances there are for something to go wrong, and Boeing had far less control than it would have if more of the operation had been in-house. Delays became endemic, and, instead of costing less, the project went billions over budget. In 2011, Jim Albaugh, who took over the program in 2009, said, “We spent a lot more money in trying to recover than we ever would have spent if we’d tried to keep the key technologies closer to home.” And the missed deadlines created other issues. Determined to get the Dreamliners to customers quickly, Boeing built many of them while still waiting for the F.A.A. to certify the plane to fly; then it had to go back and retrofit the planes in line with the F.A.A.’s requirements. “If the saying is check twice and build once, this was more like build twice and check once,” Aboulafia said to me. “With all the time and cost pressures, it was an alchemist’s recipe for trouble.”