The Dangers of Slang: Hork, Horking Up

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:

1. (slang) To foul up; to be broken.
2. (slang, regional) To steal.
3. (slang) To throw.
4. (slang, offensive) To snort from the sinuses. (Similar to hocking.)
5. (slang) To vomit.
6. (slang) To gobble.
7. (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.

Which or That?

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.]

Does She or Doesn't She?

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."

1. Soja is a dog. So is Pico.
2. 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."

We Know What They Mean, But--

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?

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.

Duck?

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).)