01.02.09
Posted in jargon, language change, neology, wordplay at 7:37 am by Bill Brohaugh
As a kid, I listened to Milwaukee top-40 station WOKY, though stating that might be oversharing. Today the radio is tuned to station WOTY, playing not the top pop songs but the top pop words. WOTY: an acronym for Word of the Year, and authorities of various stripes have recently announced a bunch of them for 2008. Here’s a not-so-comprehensive roundup (with a strong bow to eagle-eye Fritinancy for her great coverage of the topic); don’t touch that dial:
Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year: bailout, “a rescue from financial distress.”
Oxford University Press: hypermiling, the “attempt to maximize gas mileage by making fuel-conserving adjustments to one’s car and one’s driving techniques.”
Webster’s New World Dictionary: overshare, “to divulge excessive personal information, as in a blog or broadcast interview, prompting reactions ranging from alarmed discomfort to approval.”
William Safire: frugalista, “a person who lives a frugal lifestyle but stays fashionable and healthy by swapping clothes, buying secondhand, growing own produce, etc.”
UrbanDigs.com: Crecession, “a period of economic activity where available credit is contracting and the cost of credit is rising, leading to a disruption in the credit markets and difficulties for businesses that borrow short and lend long. The result will likely be a period of asset deflation leading to a lack of growth, rising unemployment, and rising commodity inflation due to pressure on the dollar” (OK, they made it up and declared it their own word of the year, but what the hell).
Mark Leibovich and Grant Barrett’s Buzzwords of 2008: Lots of them. Click the link.
Separated by a Common Language:
- vet (British-English-to-American-English Word of the Year), a transitive verb meaning “To examine carefully and critically for deficiencies or errors; spec. to investigate the suitability of (a person) for a post that requires loyalty and trustworthiness.”
- meh (American-English-to-British-English Word of the Year), an interjection expressing indifference.
The Web of Language: Obama (you may have heard the word before)
Baby Name Wizard: Joe (Name of the Year).
Geoffrey Nunberg (in a “Fresh Air” commentary): Joe (not the name, but as an iconic reference to the common folk). And hey, it’s faux radio theme day, so you can listen to the commentary, too.
Fritinancy herself: (nomination for the American Dialect Society’s upcoming word of the year selection) monumentous
American Dialect Society: To be announced a week from today, 1/9/2009. So far the word change is leading the list of nominations, though that could change.
Me: susurration. Why? Nobody used it this year (not even in whispers), and they should have. It’s a beautiful word. Specific to the task at hand, I’m going to award a tie to plutoid, which Grant Barrett points out as “a new term designated by the International Astronomical Union to refer to Pluto and space objects like it,” because I like the astronomical justice given to to the space body that had been plutoed (The American Dialect Society’s 2006 Word of the Year) and now honored not with planetary status but with dictionetary status); and a phrase, “nuke the fridge,” which crystalizes why you don’t want to see the most recent Indiana Jones movie. On the other hand, why not award the now-frequently used acronym WOTY as word of the year?
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12.30.08
Posted in English origins, Latin sources, persnickitors, spelling at 9:25 am by Bill Brohaugh
Language is one of the ultimate manifestations of democratic action. I can declare that the word blibbelfrigdibble means “the tendency to stop a word in the middl,” and the word takes meaning if others agree with that definition. I could spell that word as ieou7aer, and pronounce it blibbelfrigdibble, and if those I communicate with agree, then that’s how it’s spelled. Sure, arguments will ensue. “My English teacher taught me that it’s O before 7, except after a dipthong!—you descriptivist, you!” But in the history of the language, democracy wins out.
Now comes an interesting exercise both in language and in democracy, which reader Jeff Rasmussen kindly alerted me to. You see, in the formal democratic world, one places a proposed change before the public by circulating a petition. If enough people sign, then onto the ballot the proposal goes, and we vote. If people want to change the spelling of stationery (the writing paraphernalia) to stationary, they sign a petition and we vote. Well, we don’t vote, other than by our usage. But now we can sign a petition.
If you agree that stationary should become the proper spelling of both the paper goods and the adjective communicating motionlessness, then hop on over to iPetitions and support it with your John Hancock and your JohnHancock@JohnHancock.opining address. The petitioners explain:
The word “stationery” however was originally spelled with an “a” in English. It derived from the fact that such products were sold in “stationary” shops and not from travelling peddlers. Both spelling derive from the Latin stationarius defined as a place where something is located.
I know that the same folks who complain that it’s O before 7 except after a dipthong will shout that the difference in spelling communicates the difference in meaning, which is often a valid reason to discreetly retain discrete spellings. On the other hand, in this case one word is an adjective and the other a noun, so context will always clarify more quickly than spelling. And the truly technical folk will argue that stationery perhaps didn’t evolve directly from stationarious (as in the wares of a stationary store), but with lineage once removed—in that the person operating from a stationary location known as a station was a stationer, and therefore the adjective “stationery wares,” which know is known as stationery.
Doesn’t matter. One is a noun even though it was once an adjective, and the other remains an adjective. We could spell either or both as ieou7aer and still know what they mean.
Even so, on this particular ballot, I believe I shall take the reactionary stance and side with those who want to maintain the current spelling. Or would that be the reactionery stance?
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12.29.08
Posted in assorted weird crap, redundancy, verbal indiscretions, wordiness, writing craft at 7:46 am by Bill Brohaugh
Today’s visit to the land of Redundanstan:
Pakistan told India on Saturday [12/27/2008] it [Pakistan] did not want war and was committed to fighting terrorism — a move apparently aimed at reducing tensions after Pakistan moved troops toward their shared border.
I’m thankful for the specificity of the last two words there, because so many countries have unshared borders. Maybe the writer thought that the Pakistanis were playing “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon Geography.” Pakistan has a border with Afghanistan, which has a border with HardyOliverandLaurelStan, who starred in Sons of the Desert, which is often misspelled as dessert, which is often served at Thanksgiving, a celebration at which families usually serve turkey, a country that has a city named Isparta, which is the place that first grew organic iPods, which were subsequently made in China, which has a border (likely shared) with India.
Glad we cleared that up.
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12.28.08
Posted in Shakespeare, assorted weird crap at 11:05 am by Bill Brohaugh
Another year down, and another year without getting a tattoo. I’m aiming for a perfect record in this regard—an unblemished record, if you will. No body art, no body instructions, no body sight gags. No body mottos. No body quips. No body short stories.
I’m not kidding about the last one. A few years back, writer Shelley Jackson set out to inscribe a 2,095-word short story not on the head of a pin but on a head. A few heads. Human heads. 2,095 heads, by tattooing one word of the story on each one. I’ve been staring at this paragraph for about 20 minutes now, trying to resist the “writer’s blockhead” pun, but now that I’ve succumbed to it, let’s move on.
I ran across this project when I recently spotted a web photo slideshow displaying celebrity tattoos, and feeling overwhelmed by popular culture deprivation, I paged through idly. And stopped when I spotted Megan Fox. Not for the reason you suspect (well, not only for the reason you suspect), but because of the Shakespeare misquote she showed off: “We will all laugh at gilded butterflies” (actual quote from King Lear: “we’ll live,/ And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh/ At gilded butterflies”).
This literary skin game, ol’ untattooed me came to learn on further investigation (of literary tattoos, not of Megan Fox), is relatively popular and considerably well-chronicled. Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos brings examples of textual and illustrative body decoration based on books, poetry, songs, and other arts (ranging from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to To Kill a Mockingbird). Yuppie Punk has similar range, with a concentration on book illustrations (ranging from, yup, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to Curious George to a portrait of William Faulkner). U.K.’s Guardian reports on the practice, using Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man as a theme—made even more appropriate when you spot one of the tattoos at Yuppie Punk: The original cover art of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
The idea of a Bradbury tat is the closest I’ll come to actually considering permanent body alteration, as Bradbury is one of two writers whose work deeply motivated my love of writing (the other is Thornton Wilder, but in this context, the motivation has no connection to tattoos on The Skin of Our Teeth
). But I’ll remain tattoo-free, especially in the light of Shirley Dent’s thoughts in the Guardian:
What we seek to do when we cut literature into our flesh is to make something metaphysical physical. We take tattooed literature into ourselves in the most superficial of ways, inscribing rather than imbibing its significance. Put another way, lit tats really are only skin deep, vainglorious and shallow all at once.
To paraphrase, you can’t judge a book by its cover, and neither can you judge a book by who it covers.
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12.27.08
Posted in grammar, language change, myths and misconceptions, verbing, word history at 10:10 am by Bill Brohaugh
I spent a good number of my growing-up years on a farm. My uncle raised chickens, milked cows, and grew corn, oats and wheat. I grew intransitively; my uncle grew transitively.
This subject came to mind when I was writing my post about gift as a verb. I had found a list of “Words you don’t need to use,” and gift (presumably as a verb) was among them*, which was what had led me there. Not in the list but in the comments was this: “I hate it profoundly when ‘grow’ is used as a transitive verb!”
My first thought was of my uncles and my cousins and my grandfather out in the fields not growing corn, oats and wheat. But I quickly realized that the profound hatred was likely directed at a more modern transitive use of grow. The growing my farm-employed family was synonymous with raise, cultivate, nurture. (The OED’s first record of this use is from 1774.) The profound hatred was likely reserved for the transitive use synonymous with expand, as now often heard in corporate jargon-friendly situations, such as “We must grow the business.” (Oh so modern. The OED’s first record the sense of “To cause to increase, to enlarge” is from 1481, though interestingly the OED labels this use as obsolete. So it’s not modern after all. It’s archaic.)
In some word-watching quarters, the transitizing of verbs (as in this case, grow intransitive being grown into grow transitive) seems to attract as much ire as the verbing nouns (hmm—is verb as a verb transitive, intransitive, or both?). But here again, conventions and preferences and everyday usage shift over time.
It is a matter of, shall we say, growing the language.
*Other words not included in “Words you don’t need to use” are utilize (which I defend as the right word in the right usage), and impact as a verb, which I cheer. Words appropriately not included in “Words you don’t need to use” are flange, carburetor, chartreuse, Brobdingnagian and plotz—and just about every other word anyone has spoken, because, as with utilize, it’s a matter of using the right word at the right time. The only words you truly need to use, as both your mom and mine told us, are please and thank you.
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12.25.08
Posted in onomatopoeia, word history, writing craft at 8:49 am by Bill Brohaugh
“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoon of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”
He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there: perfectly winded.
“There’s the saucepan that the gruel was in!” cried Scrooge, starting off again, and frisking round the fireplace. “There’s the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered. There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present, sat. There’s the window where I saw the wandering Spirits. It’s all right, it’s all true, it all happened. Ha ha ha!”
Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs.
“I don’t know what day of the month it is,” said Scrooge. “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!”
He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell! Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!
Celebrate the season, and celebrate the joy of Dickens’s wording in A Christmas Carol: Laocoon, a legendary Trojan priest famously depicted (unclad) in a Vatican statue; frisk in a largely abandoned verb use; sentences jamming onomatopoeia against nouns, and boisterous boisterous boisterous repetition.
“A merry Christmas to you.” And Scrooge said often afterwards, that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.
Whoop! Hallo! Whoop! May blithe sounds ring in your ears this day, and all days.
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12.24.08
Posted in myths and misconceptions, persnickitors, verbing, wordiness, writing craft at 8:07 am by Bill Brohaugh
On this glorious eve, I’m going to play the Ghost of Christmas Past to the Scrooges who would penuriously deny us the gift of gifting.
I’m talking about the the Scroogely denial of English’s gifted ability to bestow life to nouns, creating verbs in the process. Gift-noun begats gift-verb begats whining from the persnickitorial language Scrooges, who have real misgiftings about such conversion.
Do these people challenge the word gifted as applied, for instance, to prodigies? Should those endowed with special abilities instead be givended? Or something? Should the relay-baton present be regifted or regave? In each case, I believe I’ll stick with the former.
The American Heritage Book of English Usage notes:
Unfortunately, the use of gift as a verb in Modern English is tainted by its association with the language of advertising and publicity (as in Gift her with this copper warming plate).
Fair enough, particularly when commercialism has tainted the strings-attached noun gift so often that the phrase “free gift” is an almost required redundancy. But the real tragedy of the above example is the possibility of someone thinking a copper warming plate might be a romantic gift.
The language Scrooges are a bit more pointed than American Heritage. For example: “Using gift as a verb is a sign of stupidity, laziness, and verbal sloppiness.” And denying its use as a verb is a sign of not just persnickitorial intolerance but also of denying a basic writing principle: The right word is the right word. Certainly, using the lightning-rod gift when give is the right word is frown-upon-able. “Don’t gift in! I’ll gift you a call later!” But there are instances when gift, with its almost legal nuance, can be a more precise and powerful word than its suggested synonyms. Consider:
- Smith will gift the deed to the university. Formal, with implications of recorded transactions and tax benefits.
- Smith will give the deed to the university. “Here ya are. Don’t need it anymore.”
- Smith will bestow the deed to (upon?) the university. With puffed-up chest and “Pomp and Circumstance” playing in the background.
- Smith will bequeathe the deed to the university. Hinting of magnanimity, but without quite the formality of the first instance.
- Smith will donate the deed to the university. Comments similar to that of bequeathe.
- Smith will make a gift of the deed to the university. Only if Smith is trying to compensate for failing the writing course that instructed students to avoid passive, wordy and, yes, verbally sloppy phrasings.
And so this Ghost of Christmas Past turns back a page or two to quote not Dickens but Henry Fielding in Tom Jones, A Foundling (Book 1, Chapter 5): “As this is one of those deep observations which very few readers can be supposed capable of making themselves, I have thought proper to lend them my assistance; but this is a favour rarely to be expected in the course of my work. Indeed, I shall seldom or never so indulge him, unless in such instances as this, where nothing but the inspiration with which we writers are gifted, can possibly enable any one to make the discovery.”
Sure, there are plenty of ways to abuse gift. But sometimes, like the noun at Christmas, it’s best to accept it with grace and gratitude.
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12.21.08
Posted in acronyms, grammar, verbal stupidity at 5:03 pm by Bill Brohaugh
Following is an ad that appeared on one of my Yahoo emailbox web pages. I have no idea what the ad is for. And I will do nothing to find out—in particular, I refuse to click on the damn thing. FUBAR may be a product, may be a slogan, may be an unfortunate acronym for the Federation of Ultimate Bastions of Altruistic Reward. I doubt it, as I know the actual origin of the word fubar*. That origin coupled with the spammish illiteracy of “a insider” have Fouled Up Bill’s Attitudinal Response.
(* Fubar is an acronym of “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition,” in case you haven’t encountered it—with Fouled generally considered to be another word in the F-initial family, one that I hesitate to use only because it’s the holiday season and I’m feeling double-F family-friendly.)
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12.19.08
Posted in assorted weird crap, eponyms, future of the language, humor, misspelling, pronunciation, verbal stupidity, write tight at 7:41 am by Bill Brohaugh
The Ridger weighs in with a great comment on my post yesterday about the potential eponym value of Madoff-pronounced-MadeOff:
It’s considerably more Dickensian than Blagojevich, that’s for sure. Kathleen Parker said in the Washington Post last Wednesday:
Among his other activities, Blagojevich — whose Dickensian name rings nearly eponymous — allegedly has been busy trying to get certain members of the Tribune’s editorial board fired by threatening to withhold state assistance for the financing or sale of Wrigley Field (Tribune also owns the Chicago Cubs).
I’m REALLY not sure what she means by “rings nearly eponymous”.
Agreed, Ridger. One characteristic of eponyms we use today—boycott, bowdlerize, maverick, as examples—are (like, oh, at least a handful of words in the language) pronounceable. Machiavellian and Celsius give us a challenge, yes, but we can still get them out of our mouths without counting the syllables and mentally watching where our tongues go as we slog through the syllables in slow motion, as we would do with Dag-nab-o-glitch, or however it’s pronounced. I believe we should all pronounce the eventual near-eponym with a Jerry Lewis jabber, the way Jon Stewart does.
And what would a Dag-nab-o-glitch be, anyway? Someone who tries to sell political appointments? Someone who attempts outrageous indiscretions and denies them equally outrageously? A hairstyle that protects your face like an awning?
I would suggest that we brohaugh the notion (mock with silly suggestions), except for that little pronounceability factor . . . and the fact that the meaning wouldn’t be significantly different from “stewarting the notion.”
Let me use this as a jumping-off point for some verbal silliness on The Daily Show last week. Stewart shows a clip of an unnamed reporter referring to the DagwoodSand-o-Wich affair as:
This political drama played out on the national stage is much more than that. It’s human soap opera, as a matter of fact.
Stewart responds, “I see. So this would be like a soap opera except—and this would be the twist—with human roles.” As a matter of fact.
As a capper, the unnamed reporter is jabbering over a display of the words “GOVERNOR’S FAMILY FUED.”
Check out the episode of the Daily Show, enjoy this and some other wordplay there (the czar schtick is fun), and then join me in wondering: What the hell does “nearly eponymous” mean?
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12.18.08
Posted in eponyms, humor, puns at 8:32 am by Bill Brohaugh
When I first saw the name Bernard Madoff (playing the Ponz in that Wall Street sitcom Unhappy Days), I read it as “Mad-off,” short A. A day or two later I heard the last name pronounced: MAY-doff. I wondered why this revelation had taken so long to reach me, because “Made-Off with my money” was a perfect pun no one had, to my knowledge, yet executed. It’s such a delicious pun that I’m certain that we’ll eventually see some bullshitternet notymology claiming that the phrase “made off” is a Bernie-inspired eponym. So if some wags have already mounted that pun, I apologize for my lack of perceptiveness. If I’ve beaten any of you to the punch, shame on your punsterish hides.
I did see an elegant literary reference to the punnish potential of the name recently, though. In his Time.com article “How I Got Screwed by Bernie Madoff,” Robert Chew writes:
Of course, we never heard the name Madoff — which has a peculiarly Dickensian ring now . . .
Poor investing, Mr. Chew, but some damn good phrasing.
Me, I’m going not for the literary but for the cheap shots. Says the Ponz,
“Made-Ay!”
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