Word Whirled

Idiomatic English Expressions--Learning Through Comic Strips

2011-01-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

Great idea: This person is teaching English conversation in Brazil, and he has set up this blog (Natively Speaking Comic Strips) to clarify idiomatic expressions that appear in comic strips. He says: "Every day you will be able to learn a phrasal verb and an idiomatic expression in context through a comic strip on my blog... and if you have a Facebook account you will be able to write a practice sentence in a post on my wall... and then I will correct it in a comment to you."

He also has a facebook fan page for the blog.

The Dangers of Slang: Hork, Horking Up

2010-12-08T12:10:00.000-08:00

I've always used the phrase "horking up" as in these examples:

The cat horked up a hairball into the spaghetti *again*?
Nothing like waking up in the middle of the night to a dog horking up undigested rawhide all over the carpet.
That wild driving trip in the mountains made me hork up my Wheaties.

To my surprise, in a FaceBook post, someone I know who lives on the opposite coast (2800 miles [4500 km] from here, FYI) used it like this:

Just horked up some cashew chicken, which I haven't had in ages, as a gift to myself. I wonder if this is why I can't seem to lose weight?

I was a little stunned; horking up--as in vomiting-- doesn't strike me as something that most people would do as a gift to themselves. Her second sentence, though, clued me in: She must have meant that she *ate* the chicken. Curiouser and curiouser^Note1.

Hork does not appear in my Webster's, nor in my OED.

I went to my favorite online word-lookup site, Onelook.com, which searches through many online dictionaries. It provided me with a link to this page, which shows the following meanings:

(slang) To foul up; to be broken.
(slang, regional) To steal.
(slang) To throw.
(slang, offensive) To snort from the sinuses. (Similar to hocking.)
(slang) To vomit.
(slang) To gobble.
(slang, transitive) To move; specifically in an egregious fashion

So, the same slang word has opposite meanings (#5 and #6)--as well as a host of others meanings to truly confuse the befuddled listener.

And that's the danger of slang: There is no "real" or "official" definition, and so it means whatever the user intends it to mean, which might change from person to person, neighborhood to neighborhood, state to state, or region to region.

So, I'm curious--do YOU use "hork," "horking," or "horking up"? What do YOU mean when you say it?

^Note1 If you're not familiar with "curiouser and curiouser", see it in context here. But that's the beginning of chapter 2; start here to read the whole thing. Cultural literacy, you know, that's important, too.

He and I, Him and I, He and Me, or Him and Me?

2010-10-30T14:03:00.000-07:00

Question 1:
When you and JoeBob are telling mom where you'll be on this fine afternoon, do you say:

A. Him and me are going to the movies.
B. Him and I are going to the movies.
C. He and me are going to the movies.
D. He and I are going to the movies.

Question 2:
OK, now if you're asking mom for money for popcorn, do you say:

A. Please give him and me $20.
B. Please give him and I $20.
C. Please give he and me $20.
D. Please give he and I $20.

Write down your answers now. You'll get a chance to answer a second time and then compare and contrast your answers.

I've never quite grasped why these are so hard for so many people--even many very well educated, literate people sometimes pick the wrong ones. My puzzlement peaked when a friend posted this week on Facebook: "I already dropped off Joe Bob and I's absentee ballots." "I's"?! Wow. The friend blamed it on doing Facebook before ingesting the morning coffee dose, but still--

I think the inappropriate use of "I" goes back to so many childhood episodes where you say, "Joe Bob and me are going down to the creek to look for frogs," and Mom would say for the thirty-seven-hundredth time, "Joe Bob and *I*." And so children grow up thinking that any grouping involving another person and oneself ALWAYS requires "I," which just isn't true. (Although, in the example given here, Mom was, of course, correct.)

The reason I don't find it complicated is because--well--it isn't. When in doubt, simply figure out which word you'd use if it were SINGULAR--that is, there's only one person involved.

Question 3:
I'll bet everyone will choose the right answer from among these two:
A. I am going to the movies.
B. Me am going to the movies.

and from these two:

C. He is going to the movies.
D. Him is going to the movies.

If you answered A and C, you are, of course, correct, and voila, now you know, when saying who's going to the movies, that it is "I" and "He," even if you're both going. So go back to Question 1 and see how you answer now.

Question 4:
So now, do the same thing here: pick the word that you'd use if the sentence were singular--involving only one person. Bet you get this right, too:

A. Please give me some money.
B. Please give I some money.

and this:

C. Please give him some money.
D. Please give he some money.

The answers are, of course, A and C. So now you know how to answer Question 2.

So that there's no confusion, the correct answers are:
1. He and I are going to the movies.
2. Please give him and me $20.

Remember: Pause and think which word you'd use if only one person were involved, and you'll then have the correct word to use even when there's someone else involved.

P.S. The same strategy works for other pronoun forms. For example, it would be, "I already dropped off my absentee ballot" and "I already dropped off Joe Bob's absentee ballot," hence, "I already dropped off Joe Bob's and my absentee ballots."

Lying Down Off the Job

2010-10-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

Vocabulary: What's the difference between prone, supine, recumbent, prostrate, lying down, and lying around?

This morning, lolling in bed, it occurred to me suddenly, as I'm sure it would occur to many of you on an ordinary morning, "Huh, I'm prone in my bed." Then I rolled over so that I could say to myself, "I'm now supine in my bed." At that point in my smug self-congratulatory mood, the dogs insisted that, if I were going to play vocabulary games, I was awake enough to get up and get to playing some REAL games, and that put an end to that. So I didn't have a chance to ponder whether I was also prostrate or, furthermore, recumbent.

First: Quick, without thinking too hard: when I was prone and then supine (pronounced suh-PINE or SOO-pine), which is face down and which is face up? I'll bet most people get this without realizing that they knew it. I'll answer in a moment, but next:

All four words mean lying down. (And there's another interesting phrase--would you ever be caught lying up? But I digress.) Ah, yes, the beauty of the English language--so many subtle variations on certain words to get exactly the nuance you're searching for. Is it scary that we have so many synonyms for just lying around?

Recumbent implies sleeping or resting; think of the recumbent bicycle, where one is in a relaxed, nearly horizontal position, although hopefully not sleeping, at least not while operating near heavy traffic.

Prostrate is not to be confused with one's prostate gland, although i wonder whether some people have a prostrate gland that makes them more inclined to spend time recumbent, say, when they should be washing the family pony? This word implies lying down full-length in defeat or submission.

Meanwhile, prone is, yes, you probably guessed it, face down. If you pay a little attention to the Latin sources of words, you might guess that "pro", meaning forward, plays a part in this word's formation. It's from the Latin pronus, meaning to lean forward. So imagine falling forward onto the ground; now you're prone.

And supine is the opposite; you're facing up. If you want a mnemonic for that, think sUPine. Also most likely from the Latin supinus, related to the prefix sup meaning, among other things, up (by means of being under)--think supplant which is equivalent to uproot.

Now, the next time you're snuggled up to someone special in bed, you can whisper fondly but knowledgeably into his or her ear, "I wonder whether there's a special word for 'lying on one's side'?" In my case, the dogs will most likely growl and go back to sleep.

Words for today: Metonym and Synecdoche

2010-08-11T13:37:00.000-07:00

Metonym is a new word for me--and I thought I knew all the --nyms! You know, homonym, synonym, antonym... Per Lexic.us, metonym is:

A word that denotes one thing but refers to a related thing. "Plastic is a metonym for credit card."

Websters elaborates on that:

A figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated, as "crown" in "lands belonging to the crown."

These are metonyms because:

Credit cards are made of plastic.
The king (or queen) wears a crown.

Trying to think of some other metonyms to make it stick in my brain. How about these:

The White House called today. (Someone who lives or works in the White House called.)
I'm thirsty for some suds. (Beer has suds; I want a beer.)
You can rent some fancy wheels. (Cars have wheels; you can rent fancy cars.)

Synecdoche is a specific type of metonym. (That is, synecdoches are metonyms, and apparently some people don't distinguish between them.) The distinction is this:

It is a synecdoche if it is an actual component of the thing referenced (like "plastic,", "suds," and "wheels," above).
It is a metonym if it is closely associated with the thing referenced but isn't actually a part of it (like "crown" (I think--although one could maybe argue it's a synecdoche also) and "White House").

Wikipedia provides great reading in these articles:

Metonymy
List of metonyms
Synecdoche, which includes several examples

Now, go thee forth and metonymize!

Language and its relationship to our thinking patterns

2010-07-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

This interesting article ("Lost in Translation," By LERA BORODITSKY) discusses how very differently people with different languages may perceive the world and react to it.

End-of-the-line Hyphenation

2010-02-22T15:40:00.000-08:00

One has to pretty much be at the end of one's line to want to hyphenate words in the middle when they don't already have hyphens. Literally and figuratively at the end of the line. People used to have to know how to break words effectively back when we were all using typewriters to produce business documentation--do you remember in typing class learning about the maximum number of spaces to leave at the end of a line without it looking stupid and then figuring out the appropriate place to hyphenate a longer word, but to never hyphenate a word with fewer than so many letters even if it had more than one syllable? There were entire dictionaries published with nothing in them but proper hyphenation locations. Sometimes picking the hyphenation spot was not as obvious as one might have thought.

Today, with the wonders of proportionally spaced fonts, most of us never have to worry about hyphenating words; we don't care whether there's space at the end of the line. But we poor technical writers (or anyone publishing actual documents) still need to make the work look professional, which still means not leaving huge empty areas at the end of a line (when left justifying) or between words (with automated right/left justification).

Luckily for us, most good desktop publishing tools allow you to set your hyphenation preferences. For example, you can turn it off entirely. This is safe but not always pretty. You can specify the minimum word size to hyphenate when needed, although it usually has a good default.

But there are some things that software just has a rough time with. The other day, when reviewing my earlier writing, I found this word break:

[text filling up the line and then ] rear-
range

An astute reader soon realizes that this was just a bad hyphenation choice for "rearrange," but it takes a moment of thought. There has been much speculation on what "rear range" might refer to, but I think I shall leave that as an exercise for the reader. My point is simply: Don't rely on automatic hyphenation to be correct, any more than you rely on your spell-checker to give you the correct spelling or to find incorrect words.

Always or Ever?

2009-06-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

Another request from a comment on a previous post--which demonstrates that I'm more easily prompted into making more posts when people ask questions than when left to my own easily distracted devices^note. The question is:

I would like to know what is the difference in use between "ever" and "always", for example, in sentences like these:
"This is the experience I have ever wanted"
"This is the experience I have ever dreamt".

In short, the distinction is:
* always: at all times.
* ever: at any time.

Consider the difference between these:

Have you ever eaten ketchup on vanilla ice cream? [Have you, at any time in your life, eaten ketchup on vanilla ice cream?]
Have you always eaten ketchup on vanilla ice cream? [I notice that, each time you have vanilla ice cream, you put ketchup on it; have you done so at all times in the past?]

Therefore, when you have wanted something at all times in your life so far, it is "the experience that I have always wanted" or "the experience I have always dreamed of [dreamt of]."

OK, now you actually have the experience, and it is better than expected. Here, the difference between ever and always is still useful, but more subtle:

If, every time you imagined the experience, you imagined it in basically the same way (at all times, you imagined it the same way), you might say that it is "better than I always imagined."
However, if you imagined it in several slightly different ways, and it is better than any of those ways, you might say that it is "better than I ever imagined" (better than, at any time, I imagined it).
Or even--if you could never in your wildest dreams have imagined how good it would be--"better than I ever could have imagined".

So here's wishing all of you the experiences that you have always wanted and hoping that they are better than you ever imagined. And, if you ever put ketchup on your vanilla ice cream, write and let me know whether it is worse than I ever could have imagined.

^noteMaybe someday I'll look into the origins of the idiomatic phrase "left to my own devices"--if it ever occurs to me again to do so, because I almost always forget these things the next day.

Which or That?

2009-06-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

The which-or-that battle is another of angst-ridden debates over which purists will commit hara-kiri--or murder.

One argument is that "which" or "that" doesn't matter, as they have become interchangeable in very common usage, and since language evolves, well, that's that. (But not which's which. Ha.)

I prefer the rule (possibly more of a guideline) that says that "which" precedes an incidental comment about the subject (that is, it's not important to understanding the sense of the sentence), while "that" precedes something that is crucial to understanding the sense of the sentence.

For example, someone compliments you on your hat. You can respond: "This hat, which I love dearly, came from Afghanistan." The meaning of the sentence "This hat came from Afghanistan" is changed in no way at all by the "which" clause. It doesn't restrict the subject--"this hat"--because there is only one hat on your head and you can say anything you want about it but there's still just one hat on your head.

Compare to someone complimenting you on your collection of hats, none of which you are wearing at the moment. You can respond, "The hat that came from Afghanistan is my favorite." The sentence "The hat is my favorite" does NOT make sense without the "that" clause, because no one will know which hat you are discussing. It restricts the discussion to a specific hat out of many.

If you want the official terms, you use "that" for a restrictive clause--it restricts the discussion to the specific thing described (from the pile of hats, we're restricting the discussion to the one from Afghanistan), and you use "which" for a nonrestrictive clause--it doesn't restrict the original subject of the sentence in any way (the hat on my head is my favorite; the fact that it is your favorite doesn't narrow it down or restrict the discussion in any way.)

"Which" and "that" are complicated because they are used in a variety of ways that depend on context. (Hmm, you say, why did she use "that depend..." in this sentence rather than ", which depend..."? Yes, it gets subtle. My primary point is that the usage depends on context; I don't want someone to discard that clause as irrelevant. If I wanted merely to emphasize that they are used in a variety of ways and merely point out in passing that context matters, I could have said, "...in a variety of ways, which depend on context.") Yes. Here, the difference is indeed subtle; you have to decide what it is that you're really trying to say and see whether removing the clause changes the essential meaning.

Compare:
Which house did Jack build? -- "This is the house that Jack built."

Is this the house where we're meeting? "Yes, this is the house, which Jack built." (The fact that Jack built the house has nothing to do with where the meeting will take place; it's just an interesting side note.)

The original question was posted as a comment to this post:

(1) This is a unique post THAT is an unusually useful one?
or
(2) This is a unique post, WHICH is an unusually useful one?

First, note the use of the comma with "which" as a nonrestrictive clause.

Next, to know which is correct, you have to figure out the writer's primary meaning. In fact, in this case, it's hard to tell. If you removed "an unusually useful one" from the sentence, leaving "This is a unique post," is the main meaning still intact?

I'd interpret the writer's underlying possible meanings as:

(1) This post is both unique and unusually useful. [Perhaps compared to other unique posts, many of which might not be useful, or useful but not unusually so.]
(2) This post is unique. By the way, it's also useful. [I admire the fact that it's unique. But I ought to mention in passing that I also found it useful.]

Conforming versus Conformant: Which Conforms?

2009-03-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

OK, what is it with "conformant" for products that conform to a standard? What's wrong with "conforming"? If something conforms, it is conforming (if something deforms, it is deforming (the deforming pressures...not deformant pressures).

I've had to use that foul nonword in various documents and web pages because the organization for whom I'm producing these things has ignored my argument that, since conformant wasn't in any actual dictionary, it didn't count as an actual word. At about that time, interestingly, it showed up in Wiktionary). Apparently the argument is that, because it appears in a zillion pages on the web, it is now a real word. Dagnabbit, it's just a lazy back-formation from "conformance". Nerds.

Jules Verne and the Internet

2008-12-12T20:39:00.000-08:00

I just read the intriguing short story "In the Year 2889," written by Jules Verne in 1891. It follows a day in the life of a news mogul 1000 years in Verne's future, and it sounds for all the world to me as if he's describing the World Wide Web...a hundred years before Al Gore invented it!

This is a lovely example of how a creative writer can take an infant technology or two (the phonograph had become publicly available really only in the previous year or so, the telephone had become available in only a few localities in the previous decade) and extrapolate some fantastically prescient uses.

Enjoy these excerpts or read the whole thing courtesy of Project Gutenberg):

Every one is familiar with Fritz Napoleon Smith's system--a system made
possible by the enormous development of telephony during the last
hundred years. Instead of being printed, the Earth Chronicle is every
morning spoken to subscribers, who, in interesting conversations with
reporters, statesmen, and scientists, learn the news of the day.
Furthermore, each subscriber owns a phonograph, and to this instrument
he leaves the task of gathering the news whenever he happens not to be
in a mood to listen directly himself. As for purchasers of single
copies, they can at a very trifling cost learn all that is in the paper
of the day at any of the innumerable phonographs set up nearly
everywhere.

....

The first thing that Mr. Smith does is to
connect his phonotelephote, the wires of which communicate with his
Paris mansion. The telephote! Here is another of the great triumphs of
science in our time. The transmission of speech is an old story; the
transmission of images by means of sensitive mirrors connected by wires
is a thing but of yesterday. A valuable invention indeed, and Mr. Smith
this morning was not niggard of blessings for the inventor, when by its
aid he was able distinctly to see his wife notwithstanding the distance
that separated him from her.
.....

In one corner is a telephone, through which
a hundred Earth Chronicle _littérateurs_ in turn recount to the public
in daily installments a hundred novels.
......

Mr. Smith continues his round and enters the reporters' hall. Here 1500
reporters, in their respective places, facing an equal number of
telephones, are communicating to the subscribers the news of the world
as gathered during the night. The organization of this matchless service
has often been described. Besides his telephone, each reporter, as the
reader is aware, has in front of him a set of commutators, which enable
him to communicate with any desired telephotic line. Thus the
subscribers not only hear the news but see the occurrences. When an
incident is described that is already past, photographs of its main
features are transmitted with the narrative. And there is no confusion
withal. The reporters' items, just like the different stories and all
the other component parts of the journal, are classified automatically
according to an ingenious system, and reach the hearer in due
succession. Furthermore, the hearers are free to listen only to what
specially concerns them. They may at pleasure give attention to one
editor and refuse it to another.

More Misheard English and Folk Songs

2008-10-14T15:57:00.000-07:00

Here's another tricky phrase: "Dog eat dog," usually used in "It's a dog-eat-dog world," meaning that the competition is fierce and only the strongest and fittest survive. Thanks to Lucy and Walter, we've realized that the pronunciation sounds almost exactly like "doggy dog." "It's a doggy dog world" doesn't convey any meaning at all, really, but we can understand how someone might hear it that way.

Which reminds me of a folk tune, Sarah the Whale. (For another intriguing exploration of language, left as an exercise for the reader, do a web search for "Sara whale teeth miles" (some of the more-common words) and see how many variants there are.) One of the stanzas as I learned it is:

When she smiles, she just shows teeth for miles and miles,
and tonsils, and spare ribs, and things too fierce to mention.

I was surprised about 4 years ago, when perusing some of the lyric variants, to discover that one site spelled it out as "and things to fierce dimension," I suppose along the lines of "to [a] great degree". Once again, "to mention" and "dimension" can sound amazingly alike, especially when sung.

There are plenty of sites (and books) about misheard lyrics, as discussed in my 2005 post, The Lady Mondegreen Sings Christmas Carols.

Misheard English--Intensive Purposes

2008-08-02T17:06:00.000-07:00

Have you heard this one? "...for all intensive purposes..."

It's certainly an interesting, and unintentional, twist on the phrase "for all intents and purposes." And, apparently, not an uncommon mistake. For more discussions:

Wiki.Answers.com

Answers.com

Another blogger comments and gives more links

More Bad Translations

2008-06-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

I've just added another interesting example of "Engrish" to Why Copy Editors Aren't Useless.

The Cambist and Lord Iron

2008-04-29T16:45:00.001-07:00

If you want to read a good story, by a fellow Clarion Wester, nominated for a Hugo, follow this link. It's from the anthology Logorrhea, where each writer had to choose from a list of unusual words and write a story about it. All good stories, too, but this one's particularly good. IMHO.

Vocabulary test

2008-01-11T14:29:00.000-08:00

Thanks to reading another dog-agility blogger's site, I spent a minute on this quickie test for bragging rights:

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary!
You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

And, for Christmas, friends gave me The Gilded Tongue, a real treat of a book. Not only is it one of my favorite topics (Words words words!), but its cover is purple. What more could one ask?!

What is a Babylon candle?

2007-09-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

Saw Stardust yesterday. In it, Babylon candles play an important role. These candles, when lit, whisk the bearer instantly to wherever he wants to go--which isn't explained outright in the film, merely demonstrated (a good example of showing, not telling, BTW). However, given that there's no explanation, I rather assumed that Babylon candles were an established if perhaps obscure fantasy trope--like ten-league boots. Why "Babylon"? No idea. Didn't think too hard about it.

My sister, however, just figured it out: Remember the old nursery rhyme?

How many miles to Babylon?
Three score miles and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again.

Spell-Checker Joy

2007-08-27T11:49:00.000-07:00

I usually rail against spell-checking software because it's so easy to rely on it and thereby miss blatant errors. (For example, my eyeballs just caught in my Taj MuttHall blog the typo "...right of the bat," which is a bit different from "right off the bat.") However, sometimes they make the effort of using them completely worthwhile. Like this example from a coworker:

Plug for a Great Book (Series?)

2007-07-28T20:50:00.001-07:00

I'm trying to decide whether I'm more excited about the next Bourne movie opening in a week or so, or about the second book of Daniel Abraham's The Long Price Quartet coming out in September. I recently read A Shadow in Summer (I was trying to wait until the whole set came out, but the reviews were too good and I've been waiting for 8 years since reading a short story that became part of this book), and it was a stay-up-all-nighter for me. (Which, incidentally, the Harry Potter books haven't been.) It's a wonderful, imaginative fantasy. A Betrayal in Winter will be out in September, and for those of you near Albuquerque, he'll be doing a signing at a Barnes and Noble on September 8.

His web site is here: danielabraham.com/, and you can actually read the first couple of chapters of Winter here.

Full disclosure: I know Daniel and attended the Clarion West workshop with him. That's probably the only reason that I know about his work, but he's been doing very well, selling in good markets, has already won an award for one of his short stories. And, dammit, it's a great book! FWIW, George R.R. Martin likes his stuff, too. :-)

Opening Lines

2007-07-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

My fiction-writing has been on hiatus for some time, since I realized that I was getting more out of doing dog agility (in many ways but not all ways) than writing. I have a deep passion for writing that I keep thinking some day will resurface. I try hard to keep it suppressed because I just don't have time for that kind of passion with everything else in my life. ...Boy, that sounds crappy.

OK, I mention this only because a fellow Clarion-Wester (1998) posted the openings to his sold novels. That was in response to Tim Pratt's similar post.

Which got me thinking about my own writing, which I haven't decided whether 'tis good or bad (the thinking, not the writing).

I've never written a novel (well...not worth ever trying to send out), but I have sold two short stories, and one that got accepted by one editor and rejected by the next before it was published.

Here are the openings:

She couldn't find the good bluestone teapot. How she hungered for a simple sit-down tea, with fresh-baked crumpets slathered in strawberry jam, crusts broken open to moist, buttermilky interiors. If the muffin man came by, she could get them, still warm, from under the linen towel on his tray. (James James Morrison's Mother, written 1994)

He rode into New Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. Beneath the rising Florida sun, he rode to meet his destiny, and they laid down palm fronds before him to cover the oil-splattered pavement. (Passover, written 1988)

"Here's the junction," said the driver in German, pulling his vehicle over to the boulder-strewn shoulder with a tight, apologetic smile. "Sorry I can't drive you up myself, but the road is very bad from here on."
Sure it is, thought Rolf. (Time Enough, written 1990?)

And then, just for fun because I can, here are the openings to the stories I wrote at Clarion in June/July 1998:

Nan turned the pickup down Hicks Road, eyes aching from the slow, careful drive back from Richmond. She pulled wide around the corner to avoid the top of the old hemlock sprawled across the intersection from the Smythes’ yard, more of Bella’s random litter. She and Sarah Smythe had built a treehouse in that tree in fifth grade and had watched the Millennium fireworks from it in seventh. (Disaster Area)

My life has not been ordinary. I have left my footprints in a thousand more places across the face of the earth than most women; I have lunched with princes and artists and whores; I have exposed myself to temperatures and heights and depths far beyond those that most people can even imagine. Life is uncertain; that is not a new idea but rings true for me and so risk is my chosen companion. But alone of all my experiences, only one has come into my life with the grandeur and portent of a comet, lingering briefly but with such silent intensity that one cannot but assume that one’s life has been altered forever by its passing. And that one thing was Jo. (Jo)

The icy spring melt had swollen Sentinel Creek to a roaring insanity. As it plunged from the high Sierras down its ancient granite defile towards Yosemite Valley, it smashed itself into a continuous spray that rained down on the steep trail winding uphill alongside it. (Untitled)

A woman sits in a public place.

You see how little this tells us? There is no scene, other than
public, no time, no season. She could be anywhere. She could be doing anything. There are so many options, so many ways to create a story with an ending that will fulfill us. Perhaps she is a young woman, in a park, pretending to read, waiting for her lover.

Or she could be an old woman, hands quivering, dressed in black, sitting outside the government building, waiting for the Public Assistant, who never comes. When businessmen walk by without looking at her, she calls out to them, "Calzone! Your mother makes Calzone!" And she spits. (Montage)

Jazz, she the woman. She preen afore the the glass-alas, her braid so long so gold, her face so smooth so pale. "Lower," say the Jazz. Glass-alas it lean from wall, it show her naked tum so flat. She thrust her shoulders back, she smile; boobs white, so firm so high where Mar-man, he like put his hands--she almost feel they heat. He young, her Mar, he twenty-five; she love that touch, that voice a-song when Mar he make rejazz for her, for Jazz. He young, that Mar, and so must she, and so must she. (DeLeon Redux)

The heat consumed Davidson's energy with uncaring voraciousness. Somewhere across the transformed Redknot Forest waited the conditioned air of base camp, the only human outpost on this planet's only continent. Somewhere behind him, hours or weeks--he couldn't recall anymore--lay the charred and shattered remains of the recon hover, half-buried by gottem vines before he had even staggered away into Primara's newborn jungle, following Reuben. (Reuben in a White-Hot Heat)

Ariella plunged her sinuous delicate white fingers into the delectably tempting display of bananas. Her mouth went dry with longing. Each fruit's ready hardness welcomed her touch. Perfect for another romantic breakfast with Pierre, she thought, her expressing turning blasé. Quickly her delicately muscled arm grabbed and thrust a bunch into her grocery basket. (Forbidden Pleasure)

When they hit the mine, Artie had just swerved to keep from running over a body half-tumbled from the undergrowth. As the explosion lifted the rear of the jeep up and over and dumped him beneath it, his gorge was just rising from the unexpected sight of a green-clad corpse. (Anything But the Brain)

Marla sat at her makeshift desk, staring at a pile of sample llama-hide pot holders instead of at the stack of unpaid bills next to them or at her nearly blank computer screen. A thin stream of mulberry incense wafted across her vision. Maybe if she had taken the pot holders down to Gloriosa’s Miscellany Mart last Saturday she could have sold enough to at least pay the rent. (Why Nothing Ever Gets Done Around Here)

Does She or Doesn't She?

2007-06-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

In today's lesson on the complete clarity of the English language, I received the following email from a friend:

"On Late Night with David Letterman, Soja's daughter Pico appears to do dock diving."

Soja is a dog. So is Pico.
Is Pico really doing dock diving, or does she just appear to do dock diving?

Perhaps she's the canine incarnation of Uri Geller, fooling a gullible audience into believing she's doing astonishing feats when in fact she's lounging on a couch in Peoria, eating popcorn.

Perhaps she meant:
"On Late Night with David Letterman, Soja's daughter Pico appears and does dock diving."

Dictionaries are Infallible

2007-05-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

Aren't they?

Crosswords Updated

2007-04-25T12:22:00.000-07:00

Reading back through some old posts, I comment on how I could usually complete the SJ Mercury daily crossword in 10-15 minutes. I must be getting better, because now it's typically 7 to 9 minutes. This year, I have twice broken the 5 minute barrier, getting them done in 4 minutes and some large number of seconds. Very exciting. But those were the Monday or Tuesday ones, which I think tend to be easier.

Although, interestingly, Saturday's are often easier for me than some other days'. They look hard because they have lots of long words and phrases, but in face those long ones are crossed by much shorter, usually fairly easy, words, and the long ones themselves are not too challenging.

For many years, I just did crosswords without realizing that there was a pattern, until somewhere I read or heard that the New York Times puzzle starts out easiest on Monday and then gets harder through the week until the Sunday brain smasher. I started paying attention to the Merc's puzzle, and indeed in general they're easier earlier on and take longer to complete as the week goes on; Saturday's typically has the long words/phrases; and Sunday's--well, they resort to socking us with the NY Times Sunday puzzle.

And now...back to dogs. Or work. Or both.

-------

Update October 4, 2007: Being the obsessive data-gathering sort that I am, for the last 5 months I've tracked how long it took me to do the puzzles. Apparently my subjective impressions are completely unreliable. (Wait--don't quote me on that--) Each day of the week averages about 9 minutes for me; Saturday averages about 11 minutes. I hit 4:33 this last week on one puzzle--woo hoo. And I attempted the Sunday New York times puzzler, also, and did it in what must be (for me) a new record time of an hour, looking up only six words. But these successes don't pay quite as well as understanding (and writing about) the difference between blitting and alpha blending. ...sigh...

Grammar Quiz

2007-01-23T11:03:00.000-08:00

I don't know how long these things stick around on gotoquiz.com, but for now, you can test your grammar here.

False Friends

2007-01-18T21:28:00.000-08:00

A short article in Uncle John's Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader reminded me about false friends, which are words in one language that resemble words in another language but that have different meanings.

For example, "kill" in mideastern languages (not sure which) means "friend"; "pies" in Polish means "dog"; "king" in Estonian means "shoe."

For more information, Wikipedia has a fine article about the subject and also an extremely extensive list of false friends.

To Of or Not To Of

2007-01-15T19:45:00.000-08:00

A fan writes:

For 53 years I've believed the phrase was "a couple of.....", now, everywhere it is "a couple....".

Did "of" become extinct? Or are we in a new phase.....

HELP. please! Inquiring minds must know!

I respond: A group of, a flock of, a team of, a couple of... It's just another case of idiomatic speech being a little sloppier than what's grammatically correct. And it goes only so far; you wouldn't hear this response:

"I've got a couple sets of weave poles."
"I've got a couple them, too."

Them Ferrin Words

2007-01-14T10:56:00.000-08:00

I was struggling for the right phrase the other evening to describe something that is the best of its kind. I found that I didn't know whether sine qua non or ne plus ultra was the more apt phrase. Then, as I was about to spew out "ne plus ultra", I realized that I wasn't sure that I had ever heard either phrase pronounced. Ah, the challenges of having a larger written vocabulary than spoken! (Which as I understand it is normal for literate people, but I'll be danged if I can quote a source for that.)

sine qua non: Late Latin; literally "without which not"; meaning something essential. As a mathematician, I wanted to pronounce "sine" as in "sine and cosine", but I know that in Latin that arrangement of vowels and consonants should be two syllables. I'll invent my own typology here to avoid diacritical marks-- "i" is short as in "tip"; "a" is as the "o" in "bother" or "cot": si' ni qua nan' preferred by Webster's but a long I as in sigh' ni qua non is also used.

ne plus ultra: New Latin (OK, next question--what's difference between Late Latin and New Latin? some other time, perhaps) for "no more beyond"; meaning the highest point capable of being attained or the most profound degree of a quality. Use "u" as in both the a and u of abut and A as in "day" or "fade": nA plus ultru.

In any event, I was glad to confirm that I had picked the right one and had pronounced it reasonably close to the correct manner. Another vocabulary faux pas avoided!

Verbing Nouns Again

2006-12-12T18:57:00.000-08:00

I've been a long-time fan of Vaseline Intensive Care Fragrance-Free Hand Lotion. Now, however, they're selling a newer formulation that is--ta-da--unfragranced! (If you can't update the scent--Now, newer, fresher, nothing!--might as well make up your own words!)

Name Play

2006-12-12T09:40:00.000-08:00

Google often has fun with their name on days that they feel are special in one way or another. If you happen to hit their site on one of those days, you're treated not only to fun art like this one,
but also clicking on the image often takes you to more, related info, like this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=edvard+munch

and it makes people like me want to read more, for example by looking in Wikipedia, like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Munch

So, simply by having a little fun, Google can spread culture and knowledge to those who choose to look. It's a cool idea.

Is It the Puzzles or the Brain That's Getting Harder?

2006-11-28T08:56:00.000-08:00

For a long stretch over the last 2 to 3 years, I've felt that I've been getting better and better at doing the San Jose Merc daily crosswords, faster and faster completion time, almost never leaving any blanks and having to look things up less and less often.

But recently they seem to have gotten hard again. I don't really want to spend 20-30 minutes in the morning doing the crossword--7 to 10 is fine with me. But I seem to be creeping back up there. Today's puzzle took me 22 minutes, including looking up words in the crossword dictionary. Now, really:

Black currant liquer: cassis

Munich's river: Isar (maybe if you've been to munich you'd know this? Why have I never heard of it?)

Swenson of "Benson": Inga. Inga? OK, I don't watch TV. That's a TV show, right?

Green finch: serin. (You'd think that, as a Finch myself, I'd know. But no.)

Long stole: Tippet (that wasn't even in my crossword dictionaries.)

Cell body: Soma (should I have remembered that from biology? I don't think I heard it before--)

Carolina rail: Sora (yeah, right)

Whole: Unitary (unitary? Jeez, we're stretching here)

Stubby, erect tail: scut (even with all the dog-related research I've done, I've never heard this term)

Russian chess great: Tal (OK, chess players might know this. I've never heard the name, that I know of)

Communion plates: patens (maybe if I'd ever had communion I'd know this. Do communionators know this, or do they call them "communion plates"?)

OK, I DID know that a black cuckoo is: Ani (from doing crossword puzzles only), that a grain beard is: Awn (from doing crossword puzzles), that an inverse math function is: arcsine (after filling in 3 or 4 of the letters first), and that a Flemish map maker is: Mercator (ditto), but this one just really seemed to have more than its share of obscure terms.

All Those New, Creative Xmas Shows

2006-11-28T08:40:00.000-08:00

Ah, how sweet it was, every year in the years of my TV-watching childhood (we never had a TV until I was 5 or so), when the new Christmas cartoon special came out. I didn't realize that I was in the prime of Christmas cartoons! Never before--or since, apparently--has there been such a successful run of watchable, endearing holiday shows. And, since they happened in my lifetime, of course they're *new* shows, not "classics" (which is what Miracle on 34th Street or Holiday Inn are, sorry, mom & dad!).

So here's when all these brand-new holiday cartoons made their appearances:

Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, 1962 (what fun to have watched Mr. Magoo on Saturday mornings all my life and then to have him star in his own Christmas movie!)

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, 1964 (what fun to have sung that song all my life and then for them to finally make a TV show out of it!)

A Charlie Brown Christmas, 1965 (what fun to have read the comic all my life and then for them to finally make a TV show out of it!)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas, 1966 (what fun to have read the Seuss book all my life and then for them to finally make a TV show out of it!)

Frosty the Snowman, 1969 (well--OK, it was a good try but I never liked this one as much as all the others. It was a latecomer to the crowd, and anyway by then I was in high school, so I'm sure I wasn't its target audience.

And then--that's it! No more! How can one beat such successes! So no kids today are having the experience that I had, year after year, of having old favorites given new life.

Those Spam Email Subject Lines

2006-10-07T15:46:00.000-07:00

Some of the subject lines that show up for spam in my inbox truly perk up my jaded brain cells from time to time. Don't you want to know more when you read these? Or at least don't they conjure images you hadn't previously considered having conjured?

Hurry! Limited time only!, nose ape
"And it smells of sulfur still today."
Niminy-piminy
Absentee crockery
Apparel computers
Cloak-and-dagger imminently
Crucial bagpipes
Digression contraption
Feel young, moss-bordered
Gold medalist harmlessly
Heroin layaway
How to make 1,566% throwing darts
Humanist shoplifting
Insensitively bodice
Joyriding Pyrex
Never sleep for it causes early death
Perpendicular roman numeral
The detergent that stays in your washing machine
(As to this last, I wonder about the opposite, perhaps detergent that leaps from the washing machine despite all attempts to nail it in place during the wash cycle.)

Words Lose Some Allies

2006-09-26T18:46:00.000-07:00

The news has not been of the best the last two days. Among those lost to lovers of words and language:

John M. Ford, one of my favorite science fiction writers and one of the most versatile around. He was younger than me.
Esther Martinez, a prime contributor to the preservation of the Tewa language, a Pueblo language threatened with extinction. She created the first (and only?) Tewa dictionary, for example. Killed by a drunk driver, at age 94.
Norman Lewis, author of 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary, one of the most enduring of vocabulary books ever published. (He was also a long-time columnist, author (63 books), and professor, and "one of the nation's foremost authorities on vocabulary and language skills".) Age 93.

National Punctuation Day

2006-09-24T18:38:00.000-07:00

It's National Punctuation Day. Visit the official site for details, including interesting discussions about various punctuation marks and photos of stores who don't spend enough on proofreaders.

Arrr, Matey

2006-09-19T18:40:00.000-07:00

Avast! It be, again, Talk Like A Pirate Day. Besides a-viewin' the official web site, ye can get some larnin' with this instructional video.

Seal Those Leaks! Cuckoo!

2006-09-12T12:09:00.002-07:00

Fortunately I don't have to go to such great lengths as the now-disgraced Hewlett Packard Board went to to seal its leaks; mine are simple ones under the kitchen sink and in the bathtub.

When I find that ideal man, he should know what I'm talking about when I wander around the house muttering "The plummer is a cumin in." Or, when trying to track down the original spelling, finding that PDQ Bach has recorded a song titled "Summer is a cumin seed."

Now, back to singing Cuccu...

Read about "Summer Is Icumin In" on Wikipedia.

Another Corny Experience

2006-09-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

When handed several ears of corn the other evening whose outer covering needed removing, I realized that I used both the verb "shuck" the corn and the verb "husk" the corn to mean the process of removing the outer covering and cornsilk. Naturally I had to look it up.

To shuck means to remove the shuck.

To husk means to remove the husk.

Are you feeling as enlightened as I did?

Both shuck and husk refer to the outer covering of something, the former specifically nuts or "Indian corn"; the latter, a dry or membranous outer covering of various seeds and fruits (such as corn). Husk, the noun, comes from roughly 14th-century Middle English and the verb form from the mid 1500s, whereas shuck, the noun, dates back to at least the 1600s and shuck, the verb, to the late 1700s, but has unknown origins.

So I dare say that you can either shuck or husk your corn without danger of doing the wrong thing.

What Happens When Amateurs Use Language

2006-09-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

I think you should have to have a license to use the English language. It's so badly abused.

I've been alternately amused and puzzled by the man in a particular radio ad, who states that "I am the father of two small girls, and a wife of sixteen years." Is he a father and wife? Is he the father of a wife? Who can tell?

What Can Taste?

2006-08-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit puzzled by this wrapper on my Weight Watchers Snack Bar:

Sweet Crisp flavored

Is it sweet-flavored, or is it crisp-flavored? Last I knew, neither sweet nor crisp were flavors. And I don't think that "sweet crisp" is an entity in an of itself.

Sweet is a taste sensation, along with sour, salty, and bitter. It either IS sweet or it ISN'T.

And crisp isn't even a taste; it's a texture. Otherwise, you could have lattice-flavored, smooth-flavored, chunky-flavored...

Writing and Painting

2006-08-07T08:49:00.000-07:00

The final painting as it was given to me.

Why you shouldn't always trust Photoshop's (PhotoShop Elements anyway) automated color correction, although often it does an amazing job.

At my agility trial this weekend, the spouse of one of the competitors sat working at an artist's easel all weekend. On Sunday I finally asked whether he minded if I looked over his shoulder, and he said not at all, and then kindly asked my opinion. We chitchatted about the painting off and on over the next few hours. I started out by saying how amazing it was that he could create a wilderness scene while sitting at an agility trial with a big barn in front of him, but then quickly amended that to muse that, in fact, when I'm writing fiction, all I have in front of me is a keyboard and monitor, and I'm using words to paint a scene that might or might not exist anywhere in reality.

Every time I stopped by, the scene had changed. At first, there was a road winding off through the hills. By the end of the day, it was a stream flowing down into the foreground. In the morning, there were bluffs in the background to the left and the right; by the end of the day, there were several sets of differently shaped hills and bluffs at different distances in the background. The cabin and the log across the stream didn't appear until the very end.

Early in the day, it was a bluish sky and a mostly vaguely populated foreground and background. During the day, trees came and went, grassy areas came and went, the shape and makeup of the large dead tree on the right varied gradually.

It reminded me more and more of what writing is like. If you're lucky, the words and scenes and characters flow directly onto the page exactly as they need to be, but more often you discover more about a character as you write, and go back to earlier parts of the story to tweak here, erase there, add paragraphs somewhere else, to strengthen the story that you want to tell. The background might change, too. Perhaps you hang a gun on the wall in the first scene, intended the character to use it later, but eventually you omit the gun from the plot, and so you erase it from the wall. Or, vice-versa, you add it as it becomes necessary to the later story.

It has me thinking about writing fiction again.

About Jargon

2006-06-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

A friend emailed about science fiction:

...the authors usually assume you read a lot on the genre and throw in tons of jargon that you are supposed to know...

So of course I had something to say (hmm--I almost ALWAYS have something to say--), in which I used jargon from dog agility to pontificate about jargon in SF and TV sitcoms:

This reflects an interesting challenge in writing for any specific community: the assumption that most readers in that community are, in fact, already familiar with what has gone before and don't want to keep seeing the same things explained over and over.

On the opposite side, you see SF editors tearing their hair over story submissions that go into great deal explaining concepts or terms that were originally described in the '40s or '50s and have been explored at great length since then and sometimes have even been abandoned as being outdated, overused, etc. and that most readers can identify easily with a single word or phrase and have all that context already in their heads.

It's a little hard to draw parallels with dog agility, but it would be like someone wanting to write an article for Clean Run explaining what each of the pieces of agility equipment is. Someone who's never done agility and picks up the magazine for the first time might be mystified by what a dogwalk is (like I foolishly dropped into my conversation with someone just the other day about trying to fit a dogwalk into my yard, and he interjected, "whatever that is"), but most readers don't want to have to read a definition or description or see a simple picture of a dogwalk every time they read the magazine. And someone who tried to sell an article about how they have an obedience dog and just heel the dog on the left through agility obstacles or lure them through with a goodie in front of the nose would probably get laughed out of the magazine's office forever. And imagine a newcomer to agility coming to class and being told to do an RFP or lead-out-pivot or blind cross without an explanation...most of us would tune out the ensuing conversation because we already know it.

So there is a bridge between someone who's never had any experience with any science fiction and the current state of the literature. It's not an easy thing to resolve, but it's not really (IMHO) all that different from coming into a TV series halfway through the season and having no idea what everyone in the room is laughing about (because you don't know the character's histories or where they work or who they're married to or people they used to date or that they're fanatic about nascar or whatever). If one thinks it's worthwhile, one explores more and reads (or watches) more and gradually learns.

In other words, if one is baffled by the terms and concepts and so doesn't read much in the field to avoid being baffled, one will continue to be baffled...

Same or Different?

2006-06-21T14:39:00.000-07:00

Today's entry for best redudant duplication of information is this subject line from some spam that squeaked through again:

look-a-like replica watch

I'm waiting for the follow-up "look-a-different replica watch". Don't you think replica watches that didn't look anything like what they're replicating would be hot sellers?

Hyphenating Compound Adjectives

2006-06-16T10:02:00.000-07:00

A friend asks:

Is the hyphenation correct in the following:

They currently operate a number of credit-card based and other loyalty programs in the US and elsewhere around the globe.

My response: "credit-card-based" all modifies "programs," so hyphenate the whole thing. It's confusing only because the noun "credit card" is two words; if it were, say, "money-based programs" it would be obvious that there's a hyphen before the "based".

If you want to be *really* technical about it, because of the "stacked" hyphens, in this case the credit-card hyphen would be a regular hyphen but the -based would be an en dash.

Something I Was Thinking In My Head

2006-06-14T15:57:00.000-07:00

Recent crossword puzzle clue: "Mental telepathy." So, tell me, what other kinds of telepathy are there? Is there physical telepathy, for example? And, if so, which body part would be communicating extrasensorily, and could it communicate only with other like body parts?

Then there was the radio announcement about an "explosionary device" that was found at a local school. Hopefully that sort of vocabulary isn't what they're teaching at that school, or maybe that's why someone wanted to explodify that particular school.

A Treasured Keepsake

2006-05-25T11:13:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity--not offered to just anyone--to obtain, for a mere $3.95 (what a bargain!) "The beauty of poetry--a treasured keepsake for a child you love." Now, aside from figuring out whether I in fact love all my nieces and nephews, or love them equally, or in fact whether any of them are worth $3.95 plus postage and handling, let alone whether they can truly appreciate the beauty of poetry reproduced on 8x10 parchment weight paper, ideal for framing, I thought I'd share their two examples with you:

MATTHEW
M is for manly, so handsome, grand.
A is for amiable, friendly li'l man.
T is for treasure, talented, smart.
T is for thoughtful, caring heart.
H is for happy, so full of fun.
E is for expressive, devoted one.
W is for wonderful, an ideal boy,
that's Matthew, pure pride and joy.

JESSICA
J is for jewel, heart of pure gold.
E is for expressive, a happy soul.
S is for special, beauty that's rare.
S is for sweet, loving and fair.
I is for intelligent, bright as the sun.
C is for caring, thoughtful one.
A is for angel, a joy from Above,
Jessica, so precious, and so loved.

So I have a friend whose daughter's name is "K". Do you suppose we get a discount off our $3.95 for having only one letter? Or would it come out something like this?

K is for knowing, missing some letters,
frankly, I could've spelled Kay much better.

And I'll have to think for a while about the beauty of this particular poetry--"friendly l'il man"? Frankly I think it's the beauty of making the line fit on 8x10 parchment weight paper.

Because you're my personal friend, I'll let you know that you can go here to order your own treasured keepsake.

It's Always Too Young

2006-05-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

Tragic news today--but aren't most deaths tragic?--a woman I knew casually for many years just died in a motorcycle accident. I mention her here because she was a classically trained musician who loved good folk music; she was in her own performing group(s) and wrote her own lyrics and music in the "Celtic rock" vein, which ranged from poignant to rollicking fun. She was also a writer. A lively woman of many talents.

Leigh Ann Hussey of Annwn and Brazen Hussey, so long. Goodbye.

Get an Education Instantaneously

2006-05-08T19:52:00.000-07:00

Just got this email:

Subject: Attention To Your Eductaion [Word Whirled notes: spelling not required!]

Attention Potential Candidate:

You may now qualify for our unique University Education Program. For a limited amount of students - No tests, classes, books, or interviews required*

Yourself, and a limited number of other candidates are invited to take advantage of this Special Enrollment [Word World notes: grammar and punctuation also not required! In particular, periods are 100% optional!]

Bachelors, Masters, MBA, and Doctorate (PhD) available in the field of your choice - 100% Verifiable Documents will be shipped to you within 2 weeks. [WordWhirled notes--not 50% verifiable, not 99% verifiable, but, Yes! 100% verifiable! Dare I ask who exactly is verifying what exactly?]

Thank You
-Internet Admissions Office

*Education awarded on life and past work experience. Pleast note, this loophole won't last. [Word Whirled notes--Ah, ha, you thought that you ALREADY had an education based on your life and past work experience? No, you merely had the life and experience; you must be AWARDED the education! And you must pay dearly for it, too! (And it's good that they include only "past work experience" and not, say, "future work experience," which might in fact be very educational but is probably not at this time 100% verifiable.)]

Ization, What Goes Around, and beerhandedness

2006-04-27T15:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, language evolves (sometimes in a pathetic, tortured way) as people create the words that they need (or that they think they need):

Heard on KCBS today, a spokesperson for some organization in San Francisco, discussing the "condominiumization" of apartments. Frankly, "condominiumizing" would have at least had one fewer syllables.
As a writer and editor, I often give people grief over their sloppy/casual use of language. You should have heard the roasting I got last night (in agility class) when I mentioned that "I attend an annual party every year..." Now, note that in fact the party could be an annual one that I don't attend every year; none-the-less I chose to let them have their say and then moved on to the real purpose of my blathering, which was to discuss:
- Beer-handedness: The ability of one to play challenge croquet while holding a full beer cup in the other hand.
- This goes in line with the agility people discussing the various subjobs assigned at agility trials when rebuilding rings of equipment, such as the Table Taker-Offer.

Crosswords Sometimes Evoke Cross Words

2006-03-09T08:29:00.000-08:00

Most crossword puzzles are not merely vocabulary tests. They're also trivia tests. Sometimes moreso than they are tests of one's working lexicon. What's really annoying is when they are tests of language trivia--words that normal people would never know and that even crossword afficionados would never have occasion to use in even the most extreme intellectual emergencies.

On the other hand, a year or so back, the San Jose Mercury did use the word adit in an article about closing old mine entrances in the Almaden-Quicksilver area. (Adit being a mine entrance...sure, it's quicker, but who understands you when you use it?) But I've never yet had anyone say to me, "Hold on, I don't seem to have my etui" (needle case or ornamental case); and maybe it's only because we live in a monogamous society that I've never had occasion to ask where the oda (harem room) is. Perhaps when I become ambassador to Bahrain (capital of: Manama; or--capital of: dinar).

The San Jose Merc's crossword puzzle is a comfortable speed for me. It takes me 15-20 minutes to complete, and I can almost always eventually fill in the whole thing, although it's challenging enough that I have to work across and down and across and back again and in and out and puzzle a few things out. Still, it is interesting to note how much one needs to know to be able to get through it.

For example, aside from what I'd consider "normal vocabulary" (and nontricky clues), to do this morning's puzzle, one had to know:

People: Meg Ryan, Elvis's middle name (Aron), Nanette Fabray (never heard of her), Willie Mays, Edna Ferber (never heard of her before I started doing xwords. Still don't know what she's known for except having a first name that's popular in crosswords), Edna Best (ditto), Len Dykstra (who?), Raoul Walsh (who?), Yoyo Ma, Lenin's love (Yoko Ono)
Places: Florida city (yeah, like there's only one... Ocala, in this case), Laguna Beach (CA), San Miguel (CA), Uru. neighbor (know what countries border Uruguay), French city (yeah, like there's only one... Caen in this case), Las Vegas, where Nova Scotia is
Other languages: Spanish lariat (reata or riata), Seine sights (Seine is a french river containing islands, hence iles), Corrida cheer (olé), modus operandi, Alain's affirmative (Alain being a French name, hence oui)
Esoteric vocabulary: Eosin (ink ingredient), cote (dove shelter), eclat (great brilliance), tael (Old Chinese money), oda (harem room)
Miscellaneous: Madonna hit "La ____ Bonita", three-letter names of Greek letters, characters in Lohengrin,who and what Scrooge is, Hawaii Five-0 villain

Some of these were easily within grasp in the parts of my brain that I never knew were devoted to trivia, but many weren't. And you surely know some that I didn't. What a balancing act for a crossword puzzle creator and editor, to aim at a reasonable audience without knocking them backwards in a dead swoon after half an hour (like the NY Times Sunday xword does to me--usually I can get most of that one if I work at it for a couple of hours. But who has that kind of time? And it becomes frustrating when I have to look up half the words in a crossword puzzle dictionary, thesaurus, atlas, almanac, or encyclopedia).

A Pun is Worth a Thousand Words

2006-03-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

It's hard for me to imagine people who love language not also loving puns, but --gasp-- it's true, some folks are like that. But I'm not like them and I like them (there's a turn of phrase for ya). So here are some nice, short ones I've found or remembered recently:

What did the bald man say when given a solid-gold comb?
Thanks, I'll never part with this.

A dog walked into a saloon wearing a gunbelt and with one foot in a bandage. He said:
"I'm looking for the man who shot my paw."

What do you call a fish with no eyes? (Note: This is a tricky one. The answer is much clearer when written, but the pun in the question really works only when spoken (hint--think of homophones for "eye").)
Fsh.

License Plates

2006-03-04T22:52:00.000-08:00

Ah, the American dream: Expressing oneself through your very own license plate and frame.

Today's intriguing combination on a car:

License: BYAVOWL (or maybe BYAVWEL)

Frame: M_T_RC_CL_ / Thanks Pat and Vanna!

Soooo... did they win the car on Wheel of Fortune? Did they win a motorcycle on Wheel of Fortune? Are they simply fans of WoF? I wanted to leap out of my car, run forward (we were stopped at a light), pound on their window, and ask. But I didn't. So I'll probably never know.

And what a cultural phenomena, that even I, who almost never watch TV and have probably never watched Wheel of Fortune, still know that it's Vanna White and Pat Sajak and that contestants can "Buy a vowel" to complete a mystery word... Is there anyone in America today who does NOT know that? Is the program even still on? Who knows?

Unclear Pronoun References

2006-02-23T09:04:00.000-08:00

Another entry found in Wikipedia (and that I fixed): "These dogs are very loving with children, provided they do not tease them." Who's teasing whom?

Important Is Sentence The of Order A

2006-02-18T22:04:00.000-08:00

Here's a good one that I just excised from Wikipedia:

"Game show host [[Bob Barker]] is known for advising viewers of [[The Price is Right]] to help control the pet population, to have their pets spayed or neutered at the end of each episode."

My own personal dog would likely become exhausted being spayed at the end of each episode, not to mention the ongoing cost. But it would certainly give the vet something to do to keep him off the streets, committing random acts of veterinarianism.

Time Flies Like an Arrow, Fruit Flies Like a Banana

2006-02-08T16:41:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's been 3 weeks since I posted something here. It seems like only yesterday--or maybe 1996. I have trouble realizing that it's--like--2006 already! I still have trouble believing that I'm still not in the 20th century. January til March hardly seems like an aphid on the leaf that is my life on the plant of time (OK, I just felt the need for a bad metaphor).

For other Groucho Marx quotes (as in today's title line):

Word Play

2006-01-19T12:34:00.000-08:00

I happened to notice that, in yesterday's Mercury News, three of the comic strips were based on plays on words--yes, puns!--although milder forms than some: The Duplex, The Quigmans, and to a lesser extent, Family Circus (http://www.familycircus.com/), where Jeffy? asks, "When did cowboys and start ridin' horses instead of cows?" Today, only one squeezed in wordplay.

Hmm, I'm thinking I'm going to make a point about the prevalence of wordplay in the English language because of so many "overloaded" words and phrases (those with multiple meanings), but I don't have time to do any research. Hate when THAT happens, too. Meanwhile, you can entertain yourself by reading Wikipedia's articles on word play and paronomasia (there's a word for ya).

Voodoo, Hoodoo, You Do...

2006-01-18T21:13:00.000-08:00

Juju. It seems to have inserted itself violently into my current working vocabulary sometime in the last year or so. "Weird juju" or "bad juju" seem to be the sole phrases in which it's used. And I'm not the only one; it pops up everywhere in conversation. I got to wondering what it meant really (I know that in my mind it means sort of like voodoo or some hint of dire magic, but really what did it mean) and where did it come from and how long has it been a current slang?

I had an odd experience about 10 years ago where I encountered the phrase "sea change." Wow, thought I, what a lovely and creative way to express something that has altered profoundly. What a unique, original way to express it! And then--I encountered the phrase somewhere else. And somewhere else again. And in yet another place. And I heard it on the radio. And someone used it at work. And it was in magazines, fiction, newspapers. Everywhere. As if the world had undergone a sea change in its vocabulary overnight. But, in fact, I learned, the phrase had been in common use for a very, very long time, and most anyone I asked was familiar with it. Somehow for 40 years I had managed to completely avoid noticing a phrase that probably appears at least once in every novel or magazine ever published.

I tell you that story to tell you that juju has not only been around for longer than the last year or so, and that it is in fact in the dictionary, and to boot dates back to at least 1894 in American English. It originated in the languages of west Africa, probably related to the Hausa word jùju meaning fetish--as in the charm type of fetish. Its modern meaning is synonymous with charm, voodoo, fetish, or the supernatural power ascribed to such things.

Sooooo has the word been in hiding for all these years and is just coming into popular use? Or have I been sea changed again?

Zzzzzzzzz

2006-01-15T14:43:00.000-08:00

The English language doesn't make a lot of use of the letter Z. The whole Z section of my Merriam-Webster's 1459-page Collegiate Dictionary is 4 pages. Zs in the middle of words aren't common, either, but they seem to follow a pretty predictable pattern of pronunciation; consider: puzzle, muzzle, guzzle, nuzzle, fuzzy-wuzzy wuzza bear, buzzer, defuzzer. So if a shopping mall offers "Kiddee Kruzzers" for the kids to ride, how WOULD you pronounce that?

Someone I was with—perhaps My Sister(tm)(*)— suggested that they meant it to be pronounced as cruiser...kroozer...like that. My belief is that some nonnative-English speaker came up with the phrase and the executives in charge laughed so hard about Kiddie Kruzzers (not Kroozers, mind you) that their resistance to common sense was overruled. Or perhaps they're meant to be Kruzzers, not Kroozers. After all, they spelled it to be Kruzzers, not Kroozers, and one has to give some credit for intelligence to someone who had the creativity to come up with little red car-shaped doohickeys for kids to be pushed around in in shopping malls. Right.

I always fantasize about going down to the mall office and asking what a Kruzzer is, and arguing ingenuously that I don't want a Kroozer, I want a Kruzzer and can they explain what one is.

But I probably never will.

* (My Sister (tm)--this phrase gives me a lot of leeway in blaming things on someone other than myself, but no one can become particularly steamed because it can apply to so many people, so I can argue ingenuously that I wasn't referring to her but rather some other sister.)

Said Word Order Is Important Who?

2006-01-12T16:38:00.000-08:00

I left myself a note about the Wikipedia article on Doberman Pinschers ("Dobermann" is the title). The note said:

Dobermann needs editing badly.

The problem, of course, is that it has already been edited badly. What it badly needs is editing.

Who invented this language anyway?

The moral of the story is that your adverb should always be placed so as to modify the verb that you intended to modify. Elsewise modifications happen at random, and good not random placement word is.

Voice

2006-01-12T08:54:00.000-08:00

I learned about this while skimming the questions at the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk:

You've heard of active voice (I hit the ball), you've heard of passive voice (the ball is hit by me); now, how about passive-aggressive voice (your butt will be kicked by me)? Just a thought--

Plenty of Bread

2005-12-22T15:28:00.000-08:00

The loaf of bread I bought yesterday is labeled "Extra Sourdough Bread." Does this mean that you can buy it only if you already have some bread and need some extra? Or does this mean that they had a lot of leftovers at the factory? (OK, I'm guessing that bread isn't really made in a factory, but it's funnier than "bakery.")

So how would one correctly point out that the sourdough bread is extra sour? It would have to be "extra-sour sourdough bread," neh? I'm not sure that "extra-sour bread" would convince anyone that it was tasty, plus what happened to the dough?

OK, back to real work--

A Unique or An Unique?

2005-12-21T11:10:00.000-08:00

Just another note about the challenges of the English language. Why "a unique..." rather than "an unique..."? When a "u" word is pronounced as though it begins with a "y" (yoo nique), it's treated more like the consonant sound of the y. So, a university, an umbrella, a usual day, an unusual day.

Here Am I

2005-12-17T20:43:00.000-08:00

On Wikipedia, someone asked on the language reference desk about the difference among "I am here," "Here I am," and "Here am I." Other people had input; I added the following.

I usually see "here am I" in a more poetic or philosophical sense rather than in a physical sense; "here am I, pondering the vagaries of the English language once again." It puts more of an emphasis on the "I" part. Here's part of a favorite poem:

Shadows creep up the mountain,
Mountain goes black on the sky,
The sky bursts out with a million stars
And here, by the campfire,
Am I.
(Kathryn and Byron Jackson)

I'm thinking about this even more and actually the first two phrases can have different emphasis depending on the situation:

"No one showed up for this meeting!" "Hey, *I*'m here."
"You're daydreaming again instead of being mentally here with me!" "No, I *am* here."
"Where are you exactly?" "I am *here*."
"I give up, I can't find you!" "*Here* I am!"
(Upon entering a party, late, where you're expected:) "Here I *am*."
"We were all supposed to meet here at 2:00, well, here *I* am."

(So, in looking at those examples, you can see that ... putting "I" first places more importance on the person (note that importance isn't necessarily emphasis) but "here" first puts more importance on the location.) But I can't think of any more than one general usage for "here am I", which is the metaphysical or philosophical sense of one's existence as I mentioned earlier, or a poetic variation on "here I am".

(In response to question as to whether "here" is a preposition in these sentences:) Actually here is an adverb in most standard uses (as is there). Prepositions usually have an object (not sure that's the right term), explicit or implicit, as in "over the fire", "through the tunnel". Here is describing the ''am''.

We Know What They Mean, But--

2005-12-14T19:06:00.000-08:00

Heard on the radio (often): "Thanks to Ron of the KCBS phone force, there's a tremendous backup on 101..." Gee, yeah, thanks a lot, Ron...

Who Needs Conjunctions Anyway?

2005-12-13T19:40:00.000-08:00

Ahhhh, the joys of technical writing. On a daily basis I get to read enlightening engineering-written phrases like these:

This can be appended with C/C++ style structure member selection syntax.

Parse it, go ahead, I dare you.

B0o5t sat1sfact!on

2005-12-11T22:05:00.000-08:00

Even with several layers of lovely spam filters, I get about 150 spams a day. I skim their subject lines because, once a week or so, some legitimate piece of email lands in the wrong place. Ergo, I am privileged to become intimately familiar with subject lines that are often boring, often schoolboy gross, usually crassly commercial--but sometimes filled with nothing but intriguing words, designed of course to get past the spam checkers that would be baffled by the vocabulary. For a while a few months back, every spammer, it seemed, found words from the hoary depths of the most obscure Scrabble or crossword puzzle dictionaries, but that trend has mostly, sadly, stopped. Yet some still arrive. Get out your dictionaries or explore at OneLook and get ready to play the dictionary game at your next cocktail party. (Which are real words? which not? can you tell before clicking the link? can you define them?):

Who knew you could learn so much from spam? I mean, other than by actually opening the messages to find out how to become twice the man you used to be, for example.

The Lady Mondegreen Sings Christmas Carols

2005-12-10T15:06:00.000-08:00

Tis the season to drape thousands of lights upon my tree and listen with half an ear to my Christmas CDs. I enjoy it all; but sometimes at this time of year I miss the companionship of a spouse or partner. Perhaps it's no surprise that, singing along with "O Christmas Tree", I found myself mouthing the words, "O Christmas Tree, you are my only lover." What a sad and lonely Christmas the songwriter must have been having, thought I. Then, sanity reasserting itself, I listened more carefully to hear what they were really singing. By Jove, it certainly sounded like "you are my only lover," no matter how carefully I listened. (The Time-Life Treasury of Christmas, 1987, Disc A, "Medley," Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops.)

This carol is interesting because it wasn't written originally in English, but in German ("O Tannenbaum"). As a result, there are no "correct" English lyrics; what you read, hear, or sing depends on the translation used. Each book of carols in which I looked it up and on each lyrics web site, the words are somewhat different. So I suppose it's possible that, in this one translation, someone slipped in "you are my only lover," although I haven't been able to verify that.

If so, I suspect it was the Lady Mondegreen's doing. For more Mondegreen Christmas lyrics, see Snopes.com. And read additional information about Mondegreen lyrics by the author of the entertaining book, Deck the Halls with Buddy Holly and Other Misheard Christmas Lyrics.

Three Times Three (and bonus jargon)

2005-12-10T13:05:00.000-08:00

We return you to today's Mercury News. Not that I'm picking on them--they just happen to be there. From an article on airport runway safety, it describes beds of crushed gravel as safety zones at the ends of runways and says that such systems "have stopped three dangerous overruns three times since May 1999 at Kennedy Airport." I'm afraid for my flying safety if indeed there have been 9 dangerous overruns in total. Don't you find it interesting that, in each of the three times when the safety beds worked, there were three simultaneous dangerous overruns? Or perhaps I'm confused—perhaps there were only three overruns, but each had to be stopped three times? (Why, didn't they get it right the first time?)

The airport industry assists in my confusion by referring to "Engineered Material Arresting Systems (EMAS)". Another example of appalling industry jargon. With an appalling acronym, as well. Picture yourself the next time you're piloting your 747 into Kennedy Airport, and your brakes are failing, and someone yells "head for the EMAS!" What the f***, you'd be thinking to yourself, does that mean? It means, gentle readers, crushed gravel beds at the ends of runways. Now, if they really felt that they had to give it an acronymizable name, why not something more obvious, like Emergency Gravel Airport Deflection System (EGADS)? Now picture yourself screeching in for the same emergency landing, and the control tower could simply yell, "Egads!" Everything would be hunky dory. See, someone should pay me for these ideas.

(San Jose Mercury News, Dec 10, 2005, "Hemmed-in Chicago runway scrutinized after fatal crash".)

Lock Them Innocents Up

2005-12-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

This one gave me pause: Are we not giving framed people tough enough sentences? If we're going to lock them up anyway, we might as well throw away the key so they can't get out to talk about it? (San Jose Mercury News, December 8, 2005.)

Or perhaps they're not talking about prison terms but about the language that attorneys use in the courtroom? Sentences such as "Your honor, we don't have another suspect, so could you please lock him up?" aren't tough enough; instead, sentences need to be more along the lines of, "You'd better lock this guy up, judge, or you're next, and believe me, we know how to frame people. So watch yerself"?

(Also see my small collection of similar examples showing Why Copy Editors Aren't Useless.)

Wrathful Dispersion as Origin of Languages

2005-12-09T08:28:00.000-08:00

Watch out, the scientific "evolution" of language is the next target:

The Wrathful Dispersion controversy

Summary: Should the "Wrathful Dispersion Theory," be taught in the public schools alongside evolutionary theories of historical linguistics? The opponents of Wrathful Dispersion maintain that it is really just Babelism... which was clearly rooted in the Judeo-Christian story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1–9); it held that the whole array of modern languages was created by God at a single stroke.

Oxford Word of the Year

2005-12-08T08:41:00.000-08:00

The Oxford American Dictionary has announced that "podcast" is its word of the year for 2005. It will be interesting to see where this word is in another year, or 5 or 10 years. It will be in the dictionary next year; at the moment, when I do an all-dictionary search (onelook.com), it shows up in no dictionaries at all. Might be worth it to keep returning to that search to see when it shows up in the various dictionaries.

Also-rans for the year include "bird flu", which has appeared in the daily paper and radio newscasts about 523 times a day for most of the year, and "sudoku", of which I had never heard until the San Jose Mercury News abruptly started including a sudoku puzzle on its puzzle page, oh, maybe a couple of months ago? I'm a word person, not a number person, so I've been pointedly ignoring it.

However, I did just now discover that you can do interactive crosswords here courtesy of the Merc.

And the Consensus Is--

2005-12-07T16:02:00.000-08:00

Although I was slowly nodding off in bed last night, I was not too far gone to notice that Discover's editors, usually excellent, let slide "the general consensus among researchers..." (January '06, pg 22) So tell me, what other kind of consensus is there?

In the same sentence, the author used "intensification," as in "the intensification of hurricanes by global warming..." Doesn't it sound made up? It's not, but doesn't it sound like it? I had to wake up enough to puzzle a bit about whether there's a better word. Decided probably not, although it maybe could be phrased otherwisely, and fell asleep.

Small Cars Back In Vogue!

2005-12-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

Pleasanton Auto Mall's ad today on KCBS radio gave me hope that giant SUVs are out and in fact auto dealers are themselves shrinking the cars in their inventories. The ad claims that "All Lexus, Infinitis, and Acuras have been reduced!" I'm not sure how--perhaps they're chopping off the trunk?

Duck?

2005-12-06T10:07:00.000-08:00

An assortment of Christmas-music CDs were playing this morning while I was running speaker wire. I was a bit distracted, but it caught my ear when the singer said, "...and the air filled with hot pumpkin pie." So could you gain weight simply by inhaling repeatedly? (Bobby Sherman, "Yesterday's Christmas," Have A Nice Christmas: Holiday Hits of the '70s (Rhino).)

Plastic Food—It's OK

2005-12-02T21:33:00.000-08:00

A co-worker at our company's office-warming party described a restaurant at which "all the food is organic." A guest popped up with the comment that he'd be interested in seeing what inorganic food consisted of. A lively discussion ensued. Organic chemistry, for example, focuses on the carbon compounds of living things and most other carbon compounds. Therefore, does organic food also consist of anything that's carbon based? People joke about that nonfat cheese that won't melt as being "rubber" or "plastic" food. It's clear that both would still be organic; rubber is derived from the sap of the rubber tree, and plastic is derived from carbon-based petroleum substances. Indeed, the Webster's definiton of plastic is "any of numerous organic synthetic or processed materials..." So, got some old, bald tires sitting in your yard? Obsolete polycarbonate items lying around? Eat up—it's all organic!

Of Teachers, Baldness, and Aurals

2005-12-01T18:43:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed (I'm sure it's constantly in your thoughts) that some puns work only aurally, not visually? My niece asked at Thanksgiving:

What's the difference between a train and a teacher?
A train says "Choo choo", while a teacher says, "Spit out that gum right now!"

You have to hear it to get it, even if you're hearing it silently in your brain. On the other hand, this one works either way:

What did the bald man say when given a solid-gold comb?
"Thanks, I'll never part with that."

While we're on the subject: Ask someone out loud to define "aurally." Will they define "orally" instead? And does the former pun work only aurally or orally? If there's an aura about the issue, is it an aural issue?--Definitely not, but what is it? Aureate indicates something of a glowing golden color, not necessarily having an aura; auric indicates something simply golden; aureus is a gold coin; aurevoir is...um...french; auricular, interestingly, is both the same as aural and something relating to an atrium of a heart. Is there a word for "having or relating to an aura"? And should we avoid all uses of adjectives beginning with aur so that we don't need to inject a dictionary directly into our brains?