10.31.08
Posted in English origins, Greek sources, Xtreme Etymological Stasis, language change, myths and misconceptions, persnickitors, redundancy, word history, word misuse at 7:45 am by Bill Brohaugh
A moment of appreciation for someone who has navigated tricky linguistic waters—using correctly and with piquant contrast some words easily confused because of sound:
The Republicans’ attempt to make the case that Barack Obama is hoity-toity and they’re hoi polloi has fallen under the sheer weight of the stunning numbers
That’s Maureen Dowd. Hoi polloi from the Greek literally means “the many.” Hoity-toity, a duplicative (think flimflam, dillydally, etc.) means, to put it informally, “all uppity and stuff.” And Dowd gets them both right.
Hoi polloi is often misused to mean the phrase’s very opposite—”the elite”—likely because of comparison or confusion with the similar-sounding hoity-toity. In an odd way, hoity-toity has experienced a similar reversal, though in the opposite direction. Hoity-toity, meaning “putting on airs” in a mocking sense, results from the verb hoit, which means, roughly, “to act the hoyden”—to be rude and boorish. Which is an accusation that the hoity-toity might be prone to assign to the hoi polloi.
(And if you persnickitors are going to grouse that “the hoi polloi” is redundant, bring it on. I’m ready for you.)
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10.29.08
Posted in English origins, misspelling, slang at 7:24 am by Bill Brohaugh
How poetically satisfying to razz the misspelling of raspberry.
I spotted this concession item list on my recent BBQ travels (note the tea flavor at the top):
I’m not going to simply make fun of the misspelling. I’m going to razz it. Because razz is ultimately a shortening of raspberry, as in “giving misspellers the raspberry,” which is in turn a shortening of “raspberry tart,” rhyming slang for fart. A raspberry tart is a description of the mocking fart sound you create by sticking your tongue out between otherwise closed lips and blowing.
So, raspberries to rasberry tea . . . though as we consider the bodily sources of words, I wonder. Is a side benefit of drinking lots of rasberry tea avoiding the need to P?
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10.28.08
Posted in assorted weird crap, eponyms, grammar, language misuse, verbal stupidity at 6:31 am by Bill Brohaugh
Some news stories speak for themselves. And poorly at that.
When asked whether she and her husband had any more unusual names up their sleeves, the politician [Sarah Palin] said: ‘We did. We never got to get our Zamboni in. I always wanted a son named Zamboni.’
Her husband Todd, however, seemed less than impressed with the suggestion. ‘I don’t think that would have flied,’ he said.
What wouldn’t have “flied”? Zamboni the name or Zamboni the machine? This sounds a bit like Henry Ford naming his son after a car—the Edsel. (Yes, I know it was the opposite—Edsel the human came before the premiere of My Son the Car starring Jerry Van Dyke, or something like that.)
I’ll give Palin the gov a pass on the Zamboni name claim—it was probably a joke. (On the other hand, she characterized as a joke her comment in the pre-VP-selection days that someone would have to tell her what the vice president does—then subsequently proved that she really didn’t know in her odd description of job duties to young Brandon Garcia. So maybe we can anticipate a grandchild named Zamboni or John Deere or Ski-Doo at some point.)
But Todd, man! First dude! Get yer grammar on! Your grammar done slud off the trail!
On the other hand . . . What does a vice president do? “Not only are they there to support the president . . . ”
The vice president they? Plural? Is Sarah including Todd as part of the office, the way she included Todd in her Alaskan administration? We saw how well that little singular/plural misconception flied, now didn’t we?
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10.26.08
Posted in humor, puns, wordplay at 3:51 pm by Bill Brohaugh
My wife and I are just back from 20th Annual Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue, a little disappointed—in the context of this blog, at least. I devoted a full chapter of my book The Grill of Victory: Hot Competition on the Barbecue Circuit
to clever team names. With 60+ teams BBQ gathered in Lynchburg, Tennessee, for this prestigious competition, I fully expected to be collecting a pigpun full of additional daring, inventive BBQ team names. Especially considering that the teams hailed not only from across the continential U.S., but also from across the world—including Canada, England, Ireland, Estonia, Germany, Switzerland, Turkey and Poland.
There were a couple of inventive names I’d not seen before. “Moonswiners,” “Charlotte’s Rib,” “Pellet Envy” and “The Will Deal Catering and BBQ Co.” tested the limits of punning, and “Carcass Cookers” and “4 Legs Up BBQ” brought a bit of smokey poetry to the game. Other than those, and others I’ve already chronicled (such as “Natural Born Grillers”), the names weren’t nearly as delightful as I’d hoped. But then again, these teams were in Lynchburg to compete in Jack Daniel’s cooking competition, not my private wordplay competition. And 4 Legs Up BBQ won the competition they had set out from Great Bend, Kansas, to win.
Word-roasting aside, I was happy with our days visiting friends, sampling BBQ, quaffing beers (but no Jack Daniel’s—how did I let that happen?). How happy? Happy as one of the teams that’s been around for a while. Happy as:
By the by, you can read my chapter on competitive BBQ team names, at “Sing a Song of Pig Puns, Pocket Full of Wry.”
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10.23.08
Posted in assorted weird crap at 10:28 am by Bill Brohaugh
OK, off for a long weekend break to visit the 20th Annual Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue, as barbecue is one of my passions (he says to shamelessly plug his The Grill of Victory: Hot Competition on the Barbecue Circuit).
So, no snarkitations here for a bit, but there’s plenty to keep you informed, entertained, etc. etc. with a few links:
JohnnyB and “Late for the Sky,” with a ridiculous tale of disrespecting your elders gone modern. JohnnyB and I are generational co-equivalents (howz that for a bizarre phrase?), from a time when there was this thing called “common sense.”
“Comics Curmudgeon,” always fun, but in this installment includes still another needed blast at lame verbal puns used by cartoonists who think that Steven Wright needs to be illustrated.
“Fritinacy” tempers my grumptions about the campaign “discourse” with a marvelous collection of light-hearted campaign ads.
“SoupAddict’s Blog” veers deliciously from food focus to snark at mall kiosks (and I lubs me some snark). But if you’re also a foodie like me (see BBQ ref above), you’ll love the blog in general.
“The Onion.” Lubs me some onion, particularly “Press Secretary’s ‘Zumtrel Flooby’ Answer May Be Attempt to Evade Question”
“The Daily Show.” Lubs me some comedy, some reasoned attitude toward the overall personality of a publication (as I’ve spent some years developing magazine personalities), and some attitude toward, as Buckley says, “blog postings” (later in the show).
A reprise: Elections. Punctuation. You may have missed it before. Enjoy, and we’ll see you next week: the candid’ate
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10.22.08
Posted in English origins, French sources, myths and misconceptions, word misuse at 11:11 pm by Bill Brohaugh
Let’s pause in our verbal travels—let us sojourn—to examine a line from a David Brooks editorial:
They say we are products of our environments, but Obama, the sojourner, seems to go through various situations without being overly touched by them.
Despite their similarity (and common origin), sojourn and journey are not synonymous. A sojourn is a pause in a journey, a temporary stay. A sojourner is a visitor, a temporary lodger. Is Brooks using the word sojourner correctly here? I tend to think so, though I can’t say for certain, as the context could allow either interpretation of the word. Brooks likely means that Obama pauses to visit each situation, though “go through” tends to imply otherwise.
Either way, the word gave me pause and an excuse to linger over another interesting word, so to invite a brief stay by you, my fellow sojourner.
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10.21.08
Posted in assorted weird crap, grammar, language misuse at 7:45 am by Bill Brohaugh
I’m rooting for the Philadelphia Phillies in the upcoming World Series for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with logic, such as the fact that Shane Victorino is my Fantasy Baseball League center fielder. Philly might also supply an important outfield position in my Fantasy Language League: the out-of-left fielder, given a catchphrase that has quickly surfaced as something of an unofficial slogan of the team: “Why can’t us?”
As explained by Yahoo sports blogger Kevin Kaduk . . .
The slogan was taken from a grammatically-challenged sports radio caller — yes, I realize that is redundant — and it has already grown so large that Scott Van Pelt reportedly dropped it on Sports Center last night [Thursday, 10/16.]
Such cultural phenomena lead—of course!—to T-shirts, which I’m quick to point you toward not because they promote inevitably-bad sports grammar but because proceeds are going to a good cause.
I can now imagine a Philly player coming to the plate—bottom of the ninth, two out, one man on—and thinking, “Why can’t us?” And after he wallops the walk-off home run, he circles the bases, taunting the opposing pitcher with the classic “All your base are belong to us!”
Which, I kid you not, is the name of my Fantasy Baseball League.
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10.20.08
Posted in grammar at 7:30 am by Bill Brohaugh
There’s bad grammar, and then there’s Freudian grammar. “Weighing three tons, I was lucky that I didn’t collide with the truck” is at the very least distracting, as well as potentially confusing. The truck weighs three tons, not me. I—svelte guy that I am—weigh in at just under half that weight, thankyouverymuch. That’s bad grammar (well, it’s not technically bad—it’s more a missed opportunity for effective writing through clear connection).
Then there’s Freudian grammar. As recently reported:
Asked if Gov. Sarah Palin has become a drag on his ticket, McCain said, “As a cold political calculation, I could not be more pleased.”
Mr. McCain is a cold political calculation? As I said, there are failed communications. And then there are Freudian slips.
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10.19.08
Posted in English origins, Latin sources, language change at 6:36 am by Bill Brohaugh
Over at the Editrix blog, I found some discussion about which is the better word choice: “The data is stored on a computer,” or “The data is stored in a computer.” Editrix sided with on, and posted a poll for readers—with a provocative third choice: “They’re both wrong. It should be ‘data ARE,’ damn it. ‘Data ARE!’”
I voted for on myself. The results? I was on the winning side in this poll, though now I’m being subjected to the election-year game of investigating voter registration fraud—because I registered surprise at the results:
Over 31 percent? Excuse me while I pry open my computer to try to count all data there. Oh, there’s a datum. And that particular datum tells me that, like such words as couple or trio, data can function as a group noun. “The couple is” emphasizes the group; “the couple are” emphasizes the individuals in the group. “The data is” emphasizes a body of information; “the data are” implies—to me at least—a collection of individual facts, perhaps not particularly connected.
I’ve babbled about this before, of course, but let’s now move on and get back to that group noun couple: datum sounds like an activity the couple is engaged in. “We’re not serious. We’re just datum.” (And I’m not serious, either.)
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10.18.08
Posted in English origins, Latin sources at 10:09 am by Bill Brohaugh
One of my persistent rants in Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
is that “We don’t speak Latin” (with an implied dammit! at the end). This particular grumblus is directed at persnickitors who fume that data must take a plural verb, who imply that the debauched tendency to incorrectly split (oops) an infinitive will bring Zeusian wrath because Latin doesn’t split infinitives, or who demand that Latin baseball players must shout “Vos es caecus, ump!” after called strike 3, because they’re, well, Latin. OK, maybe not the last one.
On the other hand, maybe we are about to be speaking a bit more Latin, if for no other reason than to be able to carp whiningly about having no bread at the promised American bread and circuses. Columnist Maureen Dowd is sufficiently convinced that the U.S. is on one of the many roads that don’t lead to Rome but instead to Roman collapse that she has written a column half in English and half in Latin. (By the way, a translation appears here.) Bless her heart, Dowd doesn’t once misuse the word data.
I mention this because I find Dowd’s column to be a fascinating exercise in multi-lingualistic cross-connotation Latinesium vox yaddayaddus blahblahblattus . . .
Well, I really mention it because I love the column’s title: “Are We Rome? Tu Betchus!” (With, I suspect, an implied dammitus! at the end.)
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