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ATOM

By the Way

That and which in English grammar...

Recently someone IM'd me about the grammatical distinction between "that" and "which". While there are lots of nuances involved (language is fun but messy), to me the main difference is that you use "which" in phrases where you'd naturally say "by the way", whereas you use "that" in phrases that are directly descriptive of something. Consider a few sentences:

The burrito that I had this morning was the best I ever tasted.

vs.

The burrito that I had this morning, which (by the way) cost only two dollars, was the best I ever tasted.

A "that" phrase can also naturally set up a comparison to another such phrase, such as:

The burrito that I had this morning was the best I ever tasted, but the burrito that I had yesteday was awful.

In spoken English we often remove the "that" as unnecessary:

The burrito I had this morning was the best I ever tasted, but the burrito I had yesteday was awful.

Sometimes people use "which" in such sentences, but only because they know that "which" is proper sometimes (but they don't know when to use it, so they use it all the time just to be sure):

The burrito which I had this morning was the best I ever tasted, but the burrito which I had yesteday was awful.

Posted on 2007-05-28 at 20:59. File under language.

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Ish

Yet another suffix...

In yesterday's post about bricks I said that my wife and I had moved a largish pile of them (today I counted and came up with 896 bricks, which I'd warrant is a largish pile!). What's up with this "-ish" suffix? As far as I can see, there are several meanings of "-ish" in English adjectives:

• Well I just used one, meaning "of a certain nation" -- as in English, Swedish, and Netherlandish.
• Another is "having the qualities of" -- as in childish, foolish, and sheepish.
• We also have "preoccupied with" -- as in bookish and selfish.
• The meaning in largish is "somewhat" or "to some degree" -- often used with color words such as greenish and reddish, but also with size words such as largish, smallish, and tallish.
• With adjectives of time, "-ish" means "approximately" -- as in fortyish and noonish.

English is fun.

Posted on 2007-05-28 at 17:17. File under language.

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Measure This

A confusing genitive...

In my last post I used the phrase "a few months' hiatus". Here are some more examples of this construction:

• A day's work
• The Hundred Years' War
• A few minutes' wait
• A week's vacation

What's going on here? What's with the apostrophes?

Welcome to the genitive case. The grammarian Charles Fries would say that these phrases are examples of the genitive of measure, but it seems to me that we use this genitive mostly with regard to duration. For instance, we don't say that baseball is "an inches' game", but we do say that home runs were "all in a day's work" for Babe Ruth. You can think of it as "the work of a day" (or "the war of a hundred years" or "a wait of a few minutes" or "a vacation of one week" or "a hiatus of a few months"). Just remove that "of", modify the word order, and add the apostrophe.

English is fun, eh?

Posted on 2007-05-15 at 21:57. File under language.

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Triskaidekalogophilia

Wordie fun on Friday the 13th...

I just added two more words to my Wordie list: omphaloskepsis and ultracrepidarian. Are they cool or what?

Omphaloskepsis comes from the ancient Greek words for navel and sight, thus resulting in a fancy word for navel-gazing.

The roots of ultracrepidarian are a bit more complex (well-explained here), but the meaning has more bite: "going beyond one's area of knowledge". Thus we could say that Al Gore was a classic ultracrepidarian when he made "An Inconvenient Truth" -- just because he invented the Internet doesn't mean he's an expert on climatology. ;-)

Posted on 2007-04-13 at 21:13. File under language.

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Dumb

Describing stupidity.

Have you ever thought about what it's like to be dumb? I know that I am not the smartest person on the planet, but sometimes you meet someone and you look into their dull vacant eyes and (as Gertrude Stein said about Oakland) you realize that there's no there there. Probably there are incredibly smart people who have the same feeling about me (yes, you know who you are -- I've seen that look). The experience must be quite common, because we have so many phrases for stupidity in the English language. Indeed, a guy named Dan Hersham has collected them and his list runs to 127 entries! Here are some of my favorites:

• The lights are on but nobody's home.
• The elevator doesn't go all the way to the top.
• Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
• Not the brightest light on the Christmas tree.
• A few screws short of a hardware store.
• A few sandwiches short of a picnic.
• A few fries short of a Happy Meal.
• A few clowns short of a circus.

But he's missing one of my favorites, which we used back in Maine when I was growing up: "Only got half a cord in the woodshed." :-)

And another: "The elevator goes to the top but the doors don't open."

Posted on 2007-01-17 at 19:41. File under language.

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Frith

The bonds of friendship and freedom.

By wandering through the blogosphere, I've just been introduced to the Old English word frith. Quite a fascinating word, and one that shares the same root with "friend" and "free". I'll post more on the idea upon further reflection.

Posted on 2007-01-04 at 22:13. File under language.

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Accentuation

Am I from Philadelphia?

According to this quiz, my regional American accent is "as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington."

Well. I admit that I lived in New Hope, Pennsylvania for a few years before moving to Denver. But I grew up on the North Shore of Long Island and moved to Maine when I was ten, then went to college in New York City, taught English in Czechoslovakia, worked in Atlanta for two years, and relocated to northern New Jersey for three years before Pennsylvania and then Denver. Maybe if you average that out you end up with Philadelphia, but I doubt it. :-)

(Then again, according to this, I'm 97% Mainer. I guess I just don't talk like one...)

Posted on 2007-01-02 at 22:37. File under language.

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Wordie 3000

Language addiction redux.

OK, I've hit 3000 words at Wordie. My 3000th word is thrive. I think I'll leave it at 3000 for a while because it's fun to see that big round number on the homepage. :-)

Posted on 2007-01-02 at 21:19. File under language.

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Snipperdagen

Some days off.

I'm playing hooky this week. The Dutch word for a day off playing hooky is snipperdag -- one of my favorite Dutch words, along with stippeltje ("polkadot") and the nearly-impossible-to-pronounce verschikkelijk ("terrible").

Posted on 2006-12-26 at 19:17. File under language.

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Ensconced

A lexicographical excursus.

A call came in over the language line last weekend regarding "ensconced" ("hidden away") -- in particular, is it related at all to "sconce" (in the sense of "a lantern-like wall lamp")?

Well, I'm glad you asked! It turns out there may be a relationship here, but it's a tangled tale of linguistic evolution punctuated by prefixes and suffixes, lengthening and shortening, addition and subtraction, derivation and projection. It all starts with those crazy Romans and the Latin word "do", meaning "to give" or "to put" (the English equivalents have hundreds of meanings, and so does the Latin original). Add the prefix "com/con" ("together") and you have "condo", meaning "to put together" or "to stow" (is that what people do with their condos?). Add another prefix "ab/abs" ("away") and you have "abscondo", meaning "to stow away" or "to hide away" (thus English "abscond").

So much for building up, now we start taking away. The Latin "absconsa laterna" was a "hidden lantern" or "dark lantern" (i.e., a portable lantern with a screen for protecting the flame). The medievals lopped off the "laterna", calling it "absconsa" and, eventually, "sconsa" (in Old French "esconse"). Thus the modern English "sconce" (I suppose eventually folks stopped carrying those lanterns around and attached them to a convenient wall -- or at least the design was similar).

That's one kind of sconce. A second meaning of "sconce" is a small earthwork or fort, or a shelter or screen that protects one from weather or fire. Does that kind of sconce enable one to "hide away" (thus deriving from the Latin "abscondo")? Well, maybe. But probably this meaning comes from the Dutch "schans", meaning "brushwood", "bundle of sticks", "earthwork made with gabions" (familiar to those of us who have visited the famous Zaanse Schans) -- with the spelling modified to conform to Romanized English expectations.

What of "ensconce" (sometimes formerly "insconce")? It originally meant "to be in a sconce", where "sconce" was used in the second sense of a protective fortification. Thus to be ensconced was to be safe from harm or attack; eventually the meaning was extended to less martial situations, so that today "ensconce" is used mainly to denote the act of settling into a place that is warm, cozy, and comfortable (what the Dutch call "gezellig").

Language is fun, eh? :-)

Posted on 2006-12-26 at 18:57. File under language.

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Double Consonants

Orthographical confusion.

English spelling is a morass of rules, semi-rules, and exceptions. One semi-rule is that a vowel before a single consonant is long, whereas before a double consonant it is short -- contrast snipe with snipped, rile with rill, abate with batten, and so on. But when a word has three or more syllables that rule seems to go out the window. So for instance the last two syllables of "shipper" and "worshiper" are pronounced exactly the same. Why don't we spell the latter "worshipper"? Personally I do, but "worshiper" is acceptable and seemingly preferred -- see also marvelous vs. marvellous, traveled vs. travelled, etc. Yet "prefered" is wrong and "preferred" is right. Those who learn English as a second language must find such phenomena endlessly frustrating...

Posted on 2006-12-23 at 21:21. File under language.

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Wordie(st)

Language addiction.

I wasn't kidding when I said I was smitten with Wordie (ooo, smitten is a good word, I think I'll add that one!). With a little scripting help from Joe Hildebrand I was able to upload my existing personal word list. The result is that my list now contains over 2300 words. So it seems that I'm now the wordiest of the wordies (well, at least until someone like colleen adds some more words). What fun!

Posted on 2006-12-07 at 21:51. File under language.

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Getting Wordie

For the love of words.

Dizzy recently pointed me to Wordie, a social networking site for those who love words (they advertise themselves as "like Flickr, but without the photos"). Those who know me won't find it hard to believe that I've taken to this service like a duck to water. Indeed, some years ago I came up with a long list of my favorite words -- words that I like for their sound, their style, their rhythm, their look, their meaning, or any feature I happen to find attractive. So I've begun transferring my favorite words over to Wordie; I've gotten up through words beginning in the letter E (with a few outliers that have struck my fancy more recently), resulting in 450+ words to date. I'll be inputting more as time allows...

Posted on 2006-12-03 at 22:33. File under language.

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Off Of

From the department of excessive redundancy.

In this post, the great Instapundit saith:

The problem with the term "Christianist" isn't that it adds "ist" to the end of a religion. It's that, by parallelling "Islamist," it is a deliberate attempt at conflating people who oppose gay marriage -- or, apparently, Madonna's schlocky posturing -- with people who blow up discos and mosques, and throw gay people off of walls.

I can't say that I disagree with him about Islam, but I sure don't like his grammar. "Off of" is straight from the department of excessive redundancy if you ask me, since "off" was originally the emphatic form of "of" (see the OED for details). Sheesh!

Thanks for letting me get that off [of] my chest... ;-)

Posted on 2006-11-26 at 19:51. File under language.

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Got Nouns?

Further insights into Anglospheric thinking.

Sometimes you can glean a lot of folk philosophy from language. Here are the 25 most common nouns in English, which I think reveal quite a bit about the Anglosphere sense of life:

1. time
2. person
3. year
4. way
5. day
6. thing
7. man
8. world
9. life
10. hand
11. part
12. child
13. eye
14. woman
15. place
16. work
17. week
18. case
19. point
20. government
21. company
22. number
23. group
24. problem
25. fact

I'd like to see this list compared to lists from other languages...

Posted on 2006-06-22 at 09:53. File under language.

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Nothing Words

Cutting out the filler.

Back when I worked as an editor, I used to be especially hardnosed about what I like to call "nothing words", such as "very", "really", "just", and "actually". These words add nothing to a sentence and are mere filler. Consider the difference:

Very few people really understand just how worthless these words actually are.

vs.

Few people understand how worthless these words are.

I find it hard to remove these nothing words from my speech because that's how people talk nowadays, but I've been working to ruthlessly remove them from my writing.

Posted on 2006-01-16 at 08:39. File under language.

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The Gift of a Common Language

Churchill on English.

Herewith a quote from Winston Chuchill (speech at Harvard, 1943):

The great Bismarck -- for there were once great men in Germany -- is said to have observed towards the close of his life that the most potent factor in human society at the end of the nineteenth century was the fact that the British and American peoples spoke the same language.

That was a pregnant saying. Certainly it has enabled us to wage war together with an intimacy and harmony never before achieved among allies.

This gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance, and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship. I like to think of British and Americans moving about freely over each other's wide estates with hardly a sense of being foreigners to one another. But I do not see why we should not try to spread our common language even more widely throughout the globe and, without seeking selfish advantage over any, possess ourselves of this invaluable amenity and birthright.

Posted on 2005-12-08 at 21:43. File under language.

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This and Next

A consistent temporal confusion.

The temporal distinction between "this" and "next" can be confusing to those who are learning English, as I found out today by trying to describe it to someone. Consider the following exchange between two co-workers on the morning of Thursday, December 8:

Do you have time to meet this week? [Translation: Thursday or Friday, December 8 or 9]

Nope, I'm booked up, now about next week? [Translation: Sometime between the following Monday and Friday, December 12-16]

That won't work, I'm at a conference in New York all next week. How about the week after next? [Translation: Sometime between December 19-23]

OK, the week after next works for me, let's talk next week to set up a time.

Got it? This week means "the week we're in right now". Next week means "the next week that will happen after this week we're in right now". The week after next means "the week that will happen after next week".

I think we talk this way because we divide time into weekends and weeks. So this week is the Monday through Friday of the week we're in right now, but "this weekend" is the weekend that directly follows this week -- in our example, Saturday and Sunday, December 10 and 11. By contrast, "next weekend" is the weekend that directly follows next week -- in our example, Saturday and Sunday, December 17 and 18. (Just like "this year" is the year we're in right now whereas "next year" is the year that follows this year -- thus the silly habit of saying "see you next year" on December 31.)

It may be confusing, but at least it's consistent.

Posted on 2005-12-08 at 18:29. File under language.

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Of Course

Eradicating lazy phrases.

In the passage from Alexander Baumgarten that I quoted earlier today, the author asserted "it is entirely evident that...." In my youth I accepted such statements, but over time I've found them more and more irksome, since I think they are merely a substitute for reasoned argument. The lazy thinker (and writer) says that "of course", "certainly", "obviously", "evidently", "indubitably" his position is correct and that of his opponent is wrongheaded; the clear thinker and writer never uses such lazy phrases. (I must admit that I sometimes use the word "naturally"; but I think that some things are indeed natural, whereas nothing is obvious.)

Posted on 2005-06-19 at 19:57. File under language.

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English

Language and liberty.

Thanks to a recommendation from Claire Wolfe, I've just read a delightful and insightful history of the English language: Our Marvelous Native Tongue by Robert Claiborne. I found several aspects of Claiborne's treatment especially interesting. First, he is not shy about celebrating the English language as the greatest vehicle for communication in the history of humankind. That's not jingoism: Claiborne points out that English has three times as many words as its nearest "competitor" (French) and continues to borrow and create words at a faster pace than other tongues, thus making possible a range and subtlety of expression that no other language can match. Second, he connects the incredible flexibility of English with the flexibilty of Anglospheric customs and institutions: for Claiborne, language and liberty go hand-in-hand. More than any other major culture, the Anglosphere has been open to emergent orders rather than imposed orders; not for the British or Americans the centralized linguistic planning of the Académie Française. No, folks in the Anglosphere are pretty darn libertarian about language, which is not unconnected with the fact that they tend to be more libertarian about society as well. Not surprisingly, Claiborne comes down closer to the linguistic descriptivists than he does to the linguistic prescriptivists. After all, our language has always been changing -- from Indo-European to proto-Germanic to the Old English of the Angles and Jutes and Saxons to the Middle English of Chaucer to the Modern English we know today. Common sense, good taste, and clear expression are always in style, but prescriptivism is mere muddleheadedness. An English settled and prescribed for all time would not be our free, living, ever-changing English.

A free folk need a living language. May we English-speakers always have our language and our liberty.

Posted on 2005-06-19 at 15:57. File under language.

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The Deep Purple

Royal origins?

Someone emailed me last night with a question about the phrase "the deep purple" -- not the rock band or the song by Peter De Rose with lyrics by Mitchell Parish, but the phrase as used, for example, in this line from a play written in the early 1900s:

I want to say mister, I've met a lot of game men in my time, but by God you're bred in the deep purple.

I would speculate that the phrase "the deep purple" is a reference to the ancient tradition of purple as a royal color. In ancient times, it was quite expensive to produce purple clothing -- the dye was mainly derived from the shells of the murex (a kind of mollusk), for example as found off the coast of Tyre in southern Lebanon (thus Tyrian purple). Thus purple clothing tended to be reserved to the royalty or nobility. This usage survives in phrases like "purple prose" to describe an ornate writing style and "purple passage" to describe writings that have gained kudos because of their noble qualities (an example might be Hamlet's soliloquy). So to be "bred in the deep purple" might mean something like being born with a silver spoon in one's mouth or, more positively, to have noble blood running in one's veins. This seems consistent with the quote provided by my interlocutor. But, again, that is speculation on my part.

Posted on 2005-05-24 at 10:43. File under language.

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Contractions

More on ain't and other English verbs.

The other day I argued for ain't as a fine Anglo-Saxon word. Herewith some further considerations.

You'll notice that we have many contractions for various forms of "to be" in English:

• We are -> we're
• We are not -> we aren't
• They are -> they're
• They are not -> they aren't
• You are -> you're
• You are not -> you aren't
• He is -> he's
• He is not -> he isn't
• She is -> she's
• She is not -> she isn't
• It is -> it's
• It is not -> it isn't
• I am -> I'm
• I am not -> I ain't (or an't if you must be an orthographic pedant)

Sure, one could insist that others use "I'm not" rather than "I ain't", but then why not insist on "we're not" rather than "we aren't", "it's not" rather than "it isn't", and so on down the line? I see no good reason to disqualify "ain't" on grammatical grounds.

(I know, accepting "ain't" may seem like lowdown linguistic latitudinarianism to you grammatical prescriptivists out there -- you know who you are! -- but personally I see it more as a return to our Anglo-Saxon roots. What's next, you ask? Will I come out in favor of "y'all"? Only time will tell...)

Posted on 2005-05-19 at 21:43. File under language.

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Ain't

A four-letter word?

You'll notice that I use the word "ain't" once in a while. Personally I think it's a fine word -- or at least a fun word -- so I decided it was time to do a bit of research. It turns out that ain't is an alternate (and more common) spelling of "an't", which is a contraction for "am not" (some dialects of English contain "amn't" but that's hard to say, which is why the "m" was dropped). Now, an't or ain't came into broad use about the same time as most of our other verbal contractions -- aren't, isn't, can't, don't, and the like. So why did ain't come to have such a nasty reputation, whereas even grammatical prescriptivists are perfectly happy with isn't and aren't? Well, Dr. Language himself has investigated the matter and his conclusion is that ain't fills a gaping void in the English language, namely as a contraction for "am not" -- but that its use is warranted only with the first-person singular. Thus "ain't English grand?" does not cut the mustard, whereas "I ain't interested in your grammatical prescriptivism!" is just fine. Try it on for size!

Posted on 2005-05-17 at 21:04. File under language.

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Singular Their

Good English.

Latinizing grammarians and other small-minded pedants claim that no self-respecting lover of the English language can use "their" as a singular pronoun -- as in: "Anyone who loves English will watch their grammar." Well, this page shows that "singular their" has a long history of use as fine English since the 1300s, having been used by illustrious authors such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, and George Orwell. And the singular their is so much more graceful than that awful "his or her" business -- ick!

Posted on 2005-05-17 at 20:43. File under language.

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Kudos

Singularly wrong.

This morning over breakfast, I glanced at the cover of the Central Denver Dispatch & Cherry Creek News and was horrified to see the following headline:

Transit Solutions Gains Kudo

Forgive me for shouting, but there is no such thing as a kudo!

The English word "kudos" comes directly from the Greek κυδος, a singular noun meaning "glory" (pronounced "koo-doss", not "koo-doze"). To "gain kudos" means to win praise or glory. You don't win a single praise or a single glory for a single good deed, and then win multiple "praises" or multiple "glories" for multiple good deeds. You either win praise or you don't. I suppose I shouldn't expect much from a local monthly paper, but I get rather particular about words borrowed from Greek...

Posted on 2005-04-28 at 07:19. File under language.

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Play Ball!

Some American idioms.

The other day I was talking with someone about the funny idioms of American English, which can make it so hard for non-native speakers to understand what we're saying. Sometimes it's difficult to know which idioms are truly American and which were inherited from our English ancestors, but it's probably safe to say that our many baseball idioms originated in the New World. So as a public service I've decided to write about American idioms and phrases, starting with some baseball-related idioms.

There are so many baseball idioms (I count at least 40 of them) that it's hard to know where to start. However, in general, when you don't know where to start, it's best to start at the beginning. :-) So the first phrase we'll investigate is this:

Play ball!

Somewhere in America that phrase is probably being uttered in an official capacity right now, because they are the words that a baseball umpire shouts in order to start a game. When used on the baseball field, the words mean "The game begins now!" or "Start playing!" (you'll notice that the phrase is a command, not a request). But they are also used in normal speech in an extended sense, meaning something like "Let's get going" (or, in slang, "Let's get this show on the road" -- is that a baseball phrase, too?). However, "playing ball" is not always a competitive activity -- for example, two people can simply toss a ball back and forth. As a result, "to play ball" can mean "to cooperate, to work together". Thus one might hear a business person say something like "we tried to negotiate with that supplier, but they just wouldn't play ball". A similar phrase is "now we're playing ball" -- meaning "now things are moving, now we're making progress" (another idiom that means the same thing is "now we're cooking with gas", which comes from the days when gas stoves were a new technology, supplanting old wood-fired stoves).

See, ain't American English fun?

(BTW, with this entry I've inaugurated a new category for my musings on language.)

Posted on 2005-04-19 at 21:03. File under language.

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Homonym

Principle vs. principal.

Yesterday I read a technical document that was quite interesting but in which the author repeatedly used "principal" when he meant "principle"; so to help the author remember the difference, I came up with the following:

A law firm without principals has no managers.

A law firm without principles is typical.

Now, some of my best friends are lawyers, so I don't mean that quite seriously, but you have to admit that it is easy to remember!

Posted on 2005-03-18 at 14:21. File under language.

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Blogito Redux

A lesson in modern Latin.

Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell's article Web of Influence is quite a comprehensive exploration of the blogosphere and its influence on real life. Unfortunately, the heading for the penultimate section is "blogo ergo sum" rather than "blogito ergo sum". Aside from the latter's Cartesian overtones and the fact that I coined the phrase, a simple GoogleFight shows that "blogito ergo sum" is the preferred form. Perhaps we'll need to have the keepers of Modern Latin adjudicate this dispute... :-)

(Update: Mr. Drezner reminds me that article titles and section headings are often written by the publication's editorial staff, so the target of my nit is properly not the authors in this instance. Mea culpa.)

Posted on 2004-12-15 at 13:59. File under language.

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Blogito Ergo Sum

The spreading of a meme.

It seems that (with a nod to René Descartes) I coined the phrase "blogito ergo sum" back on October 8th, 2001 (and Google agrees). Now folks are offering customized T-shirts with that phrase -- perhaps they'll be the hot Christmas gift for bloggers worldwide. And it's as true today as it ever was: I blog therefore I am. :-)

Posted on 2004-12-01 at 19:11. File under language.

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Only

A grammar nit.

I'm a stickler when it comes to grammar. Of late, I've found it particularly irksome when writers commit the all-too-common misplacement of the word 'only'. Here's an example:

You will only keep your job if you work hard.

As an adverb or conjunction, 'only' is synonymous both with 'merely' and with 'exclusively'; but, as the OED notes, the term is best placed directly preceding or following the word or phrase it limits -- placing it away from that word or phrase "is now avoided by perspicuous writers". The inherent ambiguity of the sentence quoted above comes into relief when we move the clauses around:

If you work hard, you will only keep your job (as opposed to getting a promotion, perhaps).

vs.

Only if you work hard will you keep your job (you're on notice, Shlinker -- shape up or ship out!).

It's easy to move 'only' so that it limits (in this example) the conditional "if" rather than the verb "keep". So be perspicuous and put 'only' in its place!

Posted on 2003-12-22 at 21:52. File under language.

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Klue-Aid

A silly word.

In conversation with Lisa Dusseault last night, I came up with the silly word "Klue-Aid" -- the beverage that someone must drink in order to get a clue. Much more friendly than a cluebat, that's for sure, and perhaps even a gateway to drinking the Kool-Aid of true enlightenment. ;-)

Posted on 2003-11-11 at 21:01. File under language.

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The Word

Website addiction alert!

On the way back from a post-lunch stroll, a co-worker and I jaywalked across an intersection, which got me thinking about the origins of the term "jaywalking". A quick Google search yields the following:

Back in the 1800's, country bumpkins visiting the city were called "jays" probably because bluejays are loud, brightly-colored and not-very-bright birds. Now, before the bluejay lobby gets on my tail about that characterization, allow me to point out that "jay" has been used as a synonym for "simpleton" since the 1500's, so it's a bit late to protest. In any case, these out-of-town "jays" were famous for being clueless. They wandered all over the city, gawked at the big buildings, bought the 19th century equivalent of "Cats" t-shirts, and blundered right into traffic whenever they felt like crossing the street. By the early 1900's, paying no attention to traffic signals or crosswalks was known as "jaywalking."

The source is word-detective.com, which appears to be a highly addictive website, at least for a word maven like me. Surf at your peril!

Posted on 2003-05-30 at 13:41. File under language.

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Words4Nerds #14

On the move.

This week's words all relate to movement (yes, I was traveling this week):

• peripatetic -- given to walking around; also used to describe the philosophy of Aristotle, who reputedly walked the grounds of the Lyceum as he taught
• peregrination -- traveling or wandering
• perambulate -- to walk through or about
• hie -- to hurry or hasten
• gad -- to wander aimlessly, or to rove in pursuit of pleasure or social interaction (familiar from the term 'gadabout')

Posted on 2002-11-22 at 11:46. File under language.

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Words4Nerds #13

A visit with the Muses.

Following up on last week's theme of Greek mythology, each of this week's words relates to one of the nine Muses:

• Terpsichorean -- having to do with dance (from Terpsichore, the Muse of dance)
• Thalian -- comedic (from Thalia, the Muse of comedy)
• Melpomenish -- tragic (from Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy)
• Euterpean -- having to do with music (from Euterpe, the Muse of music and lyric poetry)
• Uranian -- astronomical (from Urania, the Muse of astronomy)

It seems we don't have adjectives in English derived from Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (lyric or love poetry), or Polyhymnia (sacred poetry). Definitely something to muse on...

Posted on 2002-11-15 at 13:23. File under language.

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Words4Nerds #12

A titanic week.

Each of this week's words is derived from the name of an ancient Greek god or hero. The characters are all mythical so take these words cum granum salis:

• Sisyphean -- Sisyphus founded the city of Corinth, but was by all accounts not a good king. In addition to murdering passing travelers, he was also a trickster figure who betrayed the secrets of the gods and chained the god of dead so that the souls of the deceased could not reach the underworld. In retribution, Hades consigned him to eternal damnation, his punishment being to forever repeat the task of rolling a heavy boulder up a steep hill. Thus the core meaning of "Sisyphean": endless and repetitious. (I wonder if this myth gave Nietzsche the idea for the eternal recurrence.)
• Promethean -- Prometheus, whose name means "forethought", stole fire from the gods and gave it to human beings. Some myths relate that along with his brother Epimetheus he was also charged with endowing the creatures of the earth with their faculties. For stealing the sacred fire and various other crimes, Zeus had Prometheus chained to a mountaintop in the Caucasus, where an eagle or vulture would eat out his liver every day, only to have it regenerate overnight. Today we use "Promethean" to refer to acts of great creativity or innovation.
• Epimethean -- Epimetheus was the less intelligent brother of Prometheus (his name means "afterthought"). He gave all the natural gifts and powers to other creatures, leaving humans with nothing until Prometheus stole the fire. He also ignored his brother's warnings about accepting gifts from Zeus, and married Pandora, whose box (or urn) loosed a flood of evils upon humankind. Curiously Epimetheus was not punished like his brothers Prometheus and Atlas -- presumably because he was an effective weapon for the Olympians against those upstart humans. "Epimethean" is used to refer to those who think too late.
• Atlantean -- Atlas was another brother of Prometheus and Epimetheus. Atlast led the war of the Titans against the Olympians, for which Zeus punished him by making him hold up the earth (or the heavens). Etymologically his name means "one who dares or endures", and "Atlantean" describes one who pursues great deeds or who carries a great burden.
• Tantalean -- Tantalus, son of Zeus and king of Sipylos, was favored by the gods and invited to dine with them. Unfortunately he either tried to share ambrosia with other mortals, or served the dismembered body of his own son Pelops to the gods. In punishment he was consigned to Tartarus, where he was immersed up to his neck in water (which immediately receded if he attempted to drink) and "tantalized" by fruits hanging from trees above his head (which were blown away by winds if he attempted to eat). Thus "Tantalean" can refer to someone who is tantalized in the same kind of way.

Posted on 2002-11-08 at 00:11. File under language.

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Words4Nerds #11

In the dark.

In honor of All Hallow's Even (or the festival of Samhain if you prefer the holiday's pagan roots), this week all of our words describe various state of darkness:

• crepuscular -- of twilight or half light (applies to both dusk and dawn)
• Cimmerian -- characterized by perpetual mist and darkness (derived from a mythical people named the Kimmerioi mentioned in Homer)
• nubilous -- cloudy, misty, foggy
• tenebrous -- dark and gloomy
• umbrageous -- shady

That's not even to mention words like caliginous (dark and gloomy), fuscous (dusky), fuliginous (sooty), and atramentous (inky black). There sure are a lot of words for darkness in the English language!

Posted on 2002-11-02 at 09:27. File under language.

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Words4Nerds #10

Color my world.

This week's words all describe colors:

• viridescent -- green
• xanthous -- yellow
• cerulean -- sky-blue (from Latin caelo for the heavens)
• amaranthine -- deep or reddish purple
• vinaceous -- wine-red

Have a vinaceous weekend!

Next week: words for various shades of black and states of darkness.

Posted on 2002-10-24 at 22:18. File under language.

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Words4Nerds #9

Some interesting characters.

Ever wonder what the official names are for some of the familiar characters on your keyboard or the less common marks you see on the printed page? This week's words fill you in....

• octothorpe - the beloved '#' character goes by many names: pound sign, hash mark, sharp, scratch, etc.; my favorite is 'octothorpe' (the story behind the name is here)
• solidus - the typesetting folks use this word as a name for '/'; naturally '\' is a reverse solidus :)
• virgule - another name for the solidus
• dieresis - the '¨' (umlaut) mark when used to note that a vowel is pronounced separately from the preceding vowel (most commonly seen in the word naïve)
• cedilla - the '¸' mark used in words like aperçu and garçon; this is my favorite, since there is a Greek connection: cedilla means "little zeta" and is a vestige of the days when a 'z' (Greek ζ) was placed after the 'c' to denote an 's' sound

Posted on 2002-10-18 at 17:19. File under language.

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Words4Nerds #8

Sounding things out.

The "words of the week" this time all have to do with sound:

• susurrus - a soft whispering, murmuring, or rustling sound
• tintinnabular - having to do with the ringing of bells
• stentorian - having a voice like Stentor, the herald of the Greek army in The Iliad, who had the voice of 50 men
• plangent - beating or reverberating with a loud or deep sound
• sibilance - the condition or quality of producing a hissing sound

Posted on 2002-10-11 at 08:56. File under language.

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Words4Nerds #7

Weird words from the dismal science.

Last week's words were as follows:

• autarky -- economic self-sufficiency, usually as applied to nations (not to be confused with autarchy = absolute power)
• praxeology -- the study of human action
• syndicalism -- worker ownership of the means of production, especially through the mediation of trade unions
• fungible -- the quality of being replaceable by like goods (e.g., bushels of wheat are fungible, since one is as good as another)
• monopsony -- the situation in which there is only one buyer for a good or service

Posted on 2002-10-03 at 22:59. File under language.

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Words4Nerds #5 and #6

Further fun with language.

I haven't posted any "words of the week" in a while, though I wrote some on my whiteboard a fortnight or so ago, and this week as well. I can't quite recall Words4Nerds #5 (I know prevaricate, dissemble, and dubiety were on the list), but this week's words, on the theme of power and authority, are as follows:

1. hegemonistic -- relating to the pursuit of dominance
2. obeisance -- an act or gesture of subservience
3. puissant -- full of strength and power
4. magisterial -- in the manner of a master or ruler; imperious
5. autarchy -- absolute power, despotism

That last word provides a fine segue to the first entry in Words4Nerds #7 (strange and obscure terms from the dismal science of economics), but we'll have to wait a week or two for those!

Posted on 2002-09-13 at 07:36. File under language.

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Words4Nerds #4

Another version of Words of the Week.

Once you start a tradition, it's hard to stop -- people have expectations! So this week I was shoehorned into creating another installment of "words of the week" on my whiteboard at work. This week's theme is words of strong emotion (well, except for Friday's word -- needed something calm and peaceful after all that Sturm und Drang):

• ululate (v.) -- to howl or wail, especially in lamentation
• dolorous (adj.) -- deeply sad or despondent
• splenetic (adj.) -- extremely angry
• apoplectic (adj.) -- ditto
• ataraxia (n.) -- mental and emotional tranquility

Posted on 2002-08-02 at 14:01. File under language.

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Beastly

Another lexicographical excursus.

Yum, I just found this page containing a big list of collective nouns for animals. Reminded me of a poem I wrote along those lines once. But really I was looking for Latin-derived adjectives for various animals. You know canine and feline and bovine and equine, but do you know lupine and taurine and ursine and porcine? I do, but until now I didn't know anguine and ranine and lapine and murine. Words are fun. :)

Posted on 2002-07-24 at 13:57. File under language.

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Words4Nerds, Volume 3

Another version of "Words of the Week".

After a week of hiking in the mountains of Wyoming, I decided to devote this week's lexicographical excursus to geographical terms of (mostly) Anglo-Saxon origin. Here they are:

• tarn -- a small mountain lake
• tor -- a rocky hill
• rill -- a small stream or rivulet
• bight -- a bend in a coastline forming a large open bay
• hummock -- a low, rounded knoll or hillock

Posted on 2002-07-19 at 19:36. File under language.

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Werds4Nerds

Words of the Week, Volume II.

I wrote some more "words of the week" on my whiteboard at work this week (wow, I wonder how many "w" words I can fit in a sentence!). This week's words were animadversion, otiose, prolix, preternatural, and pusillanimous. I was tempted to add susurrus but I think I'll save that for next time. :)

Posted on 2002-06-27 at 17:56. File under language.

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Words of the Week

More etymological entertainment.

My whiteboard at the office has a new use: the repository of some obscure words of the day. Today's word, for no good reason, is eleemosynary: of, giving, or receiving alms; having to do with charity. I think tomorrow's word will be pleroma: fullness, plenitude (esp., in Gnostic theology, the spiritual world as the abode of God and of the totality of divine powers and emanations). Not sure how long I'll keep this up, but it's fun while it lasts....

Posted on 2002-06-03 at 20:25. File under language.

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Playing Hooky

Net-free weekend on the way.

Yes, I'm playing hooky from work tomorrow -- a four-day weekend! We have friends coming into town, so I'll be spending time with them (they're thinking about moving to Denver, so we're going to give them the grand tour). Thus I won't be touching web, email, or Jabber until next Tuesday.

BTW, I got to talking with a non-native speaker of English today about the phrase "playing hooky" (yes, there's a web page about the phenomenon). My copy of Webster's New World Dictionary College Edition (my second-favorite dictionary after the trusty OED) reports that "hooky" derives from the slang phrase "hook it", which means "to run away". American idioms are fun.

Posted on 2002-05-23 at 21:44. File under language.

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Triskaidekaphilia

On the number 13.

Yes, today is the 13th of May. Why are humans afraid of the number 13? Weird. It's always been one of my favorites. But then again I love prime numbers.

Posted on 2002-05-13 at 10:34. File under language.

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Wordology

A lexicographical excursus.

It's amusing how a simple typo can send you scurrying for the OED. In a post about the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, Diana Hsieh writes of the "philosophical cannon". Now there's a concept! The OED notes that "the spellings canon and cannon occur side by side down nearly to 1800, though the latter is the more frequent after circa 1660". Both 'canon' and 'cannon' derive ultimately from the Greek καννα meaning "a reed". Yet the terms diverged early on, with κανων meaning "a straight [and presumably solid] rod" as well as "a rule" used by carpenters, whereas 'cannon' derives from the hollow side of the reed/rod family (Italian cannone is a large tube or barrel). Nietzsche once claimed to be philosophizing with a hammer, but to philosophize with a cannon is really to bring out the big guns!

That line from Nietzsche is often interpreted in a nihilistic sense, with "hammer" understood to be a sledgehammer (something one step short of a philosophical cannon, as it were). Yet the full quote from the preface to Twilight of the Idols reveals a lighter touch:

This essay too -- the title betrays it -- is above all a recreation, a spot of sunshine, a leap sideways into the idleness of a psychologist. Perhaps a new war, too? And are new idols sounded out? This essay is a great declaration of war; and regarding the sounding out of idols, this time they are not just idols of the age, but eternal idols, which are here touched with a hammer as with a tuning fork: there are altogether no older, no more convinced, no more puffed-up idols -- and none more hollow.

Nietzsche's talk about idols hearkens back to Francis Bacon and his discussion of the Four Idols in The New Organon (an οργανον is a man-made tool, which is why our current sense of "organic" is diametrically opposite from the term's root meaning!). Interestingly, the English meaning of idol as the image of a false god (extended by Bacon to mean a dogma) was the final sense of the Greek ειδολων to develop historically -- the term originally meant an appearance or phantom, later on an image (as in a mirror), then a mental image or idea (as in Plato's "Theory of Ideas"), then a mimetic likeness as in a statue or "graven image". In English we retain the same root notion of vacuity in the word "idle".

And a dogma is just idle words: it is what one believes or holds to be true ('tenet' comes from the Latin tenere meaning "to hold") -- usually a philosophical belief, and not always one that is justified (for Bacon a philosophical dogma was prima facie suspect, since it was not derived from nature but from the self-spun web of human ideas and language). Because karma is a Sanskrit term that means "action", when we say "my karma ran over my dogma" we essentially mean that actions speak louder than words. Tenets, anyone?

Posted on 2002-04-07 at 21:45. File under language.

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