Twixt the eyes/ears and the brain

Funny how quickly one's mind can fill in words and phrases that just aren't there.

 My mother and I were traveling together last week, and she caught a glimpse of one of those highway warning signs that advertised the store Lands End. She did a double-take and realized that it really said Lane Ends.

 I'm working on a software media-relate project in which the main (core) pieces of software are stored in a folder named mediacore. No matter how many times I see it, my brain always translates it at first look to "mediocre". Which I swear the product isn't.

 Then there was the news brief on the radio a few years back, which started out, "The situation is getting worse in the Middle East, and [someone] blames it on a rock." After a moment of wondering what rock and waiting for the explanation, I realized that [someone] actually blamed it on Iraq (pronounced roughly "uh rock").

 If you're a programmer, you might understand this one: Many many years ago, I attended a software technical lecture in which the technology and terminology were way beyond me and I struggled to understand. At one point, the lecturer began talking about "K statements." I had no idea what they were, which fit in with me having no idea what most of what he talked about was. But I became more baffled as everyone around me started discussing the use of K statements as if they were everyday things. Seriously, my degree was in computer science and I worked as a developer and I'd never heard of them. My puzzlement resolved itself when I caught a glimpse of a colleague's notes, mentioning "case statements," which of course I'd heard of and used fairly regularly.

 Have you encountered any such visible or audible confusions?

Irish Noir

This movie review appeared in the San Jose Mercury News on Saint Patrick's day. However, methinks that someone had been editing too many Saint Patrick's Day stories before they got to this, thereby miswielding their hyphenator to entirely change the meaning of the word-- let there be no Irish in this color palette!

 It's a movie with a little noir flavor that has nothing to do with banning Irish.

(I posted additional discussion on hyphenation in End-of-line hyphenation.)

Idiomatic English Expressions--Learning Through Comic Strips

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

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.

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!

Language and its relationship to our thinking patterns

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

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.

I posted another silly example in Irish Noir.

Always or Ever?

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?

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?

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

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

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

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

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

The Cambist and Lord Iron

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

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.

Spell-Checker Joy

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: