From Macrons to Macaroons... too many similar words!

On Facebook the other day, I posted:

Mmmm, for an evening snack, I had a single tasty lemony macaron! (Not to be confused with a macaroon, which is coconut, or a Macron, which is a president of France.)

One friend responded with this helpful image, for those who are visual:

Other comments added to the entertainment value of words whose spelling and/or pronunciation are reminiscent of each other, so the final list (at least, so far) is:

• Macarena (a dance)
• Macron (the president of France)
• macron (a mark indicating a long vowel)
• macaron (a layered cookie)
• macaroon (a coconut cookie)
• maroon (color)
• maroon (as in Bugs Bunny saying, "what a maroon")
• moron (similar in meaning to what Bugs is saying)

I'm sure that there are more.  No wonder young children can easily become confused when learning new vocabulary--and adults, too!

Vocabulary from Other Places and Times

One fun thing about reading books written in different times or places is the vocabulary. Sometimes I scribble the interesting ones down. Some I've heard before but not often; some I haven't. From Northwest Passage (so far), written in 1937 about life in New England and elsewhere in North American in the latter 1700s:

• ropewalk 
• mensurations 
• towcloth
• furbelowed 
• gundelos with lateen sails 
• "as thick as bones in a shad"

And more fun words and phrases, from Nevil Shute's Pastoral, written in England in 1944:

• deal (noun used as an adjective, as in, "the deal wash stand", "a deal chair")
• batwoman (not Batwoman)
• hutment 
• roach bag (I think this was literal, as in bait for fishing)
• gentles (in relation to fishing)
• "it had been wizard!"

Internet will reveal all--relax and enjoy the searches and all the fun things you'll learn within just a few minutes!--good places to start are:

• https://www.onelook.com/, a whole collection of dictionaries.  Merriam-Webster particular for American and Collins particularly for British/Commonwealth
• Wikipedia, info on so very very many things

What interesting words have you encountered lately while reading?

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

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

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

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!

Misheard English--Intensive Purposes

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

Vocabulary test

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?

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.

Dictionaries are Infallible

Aren't they?

Time Flies Like an Arrow, Fruit Flies Like a Banana

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):

• quotationspage.com
• wikiquote.org

Oxford Word of the Year

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.

Updates, July 2019:

• podcast: Pretty much everyone now knows what a podcast is and pretty much everyone seems to do them from time to time. (I might be exaggerating on the latter part.)  Many dictionaries now list the word.
• bird flu: also appears in many dictionaries. This year, however, the world has been turned topsy turvy in no uncertain terms by a phrase, "novel coronavirus," and a word, "COVID-19", that no one had ever heard of before (so, "coronoviruses" have been around for a while, but most people wouldn't have heard the term; and the novel coronavirus COVID-19 simply didn't exist before Dec 2019, and now it has wreaked havoc with the world economy, changed the way people live their lives, and sickened and killed millions worldwide. Want to bet these will possibly be the next word of the year? Or "social distancing"? So, bird flu? Pfft. Old story.
• sudoku: Yeah, I've been doing these off and on for many years now. You can often find more Sudoku puzzle books in the magazine section than you can find crossword puzzle books, which astonishes me no end. 

Of Teachers, Baldness, and Aurals

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?