Those Damn Homophones Are Taking Over

Anyone well-grounded in English knows about certain tricky words that sound alike but have different meanings. An example is ‘lead’ (a mineral) and ‘led’ (the past tense of the verb ‘to lead’).

The worst, for most of us, is the three-fer, there/their/they’re – I know the different uses of these three quite well, thank you, but when I get typing fast, I often insert the wrong one (or at least that’s my alibi whenever I screw up).

These sound-alikes are called ‘homophones‘. Which turned out to be an unfortunate label for a guy who wrote for a certain English as a second language school last year.

Just ask a blogger … named Tim Torkildson. For three months in 2014, Torkildson was a social media specialist and blogger for the Nomen Global Language Center, a Utah-based English-language school for non-English speakers. In July of that year, as part of that job, Torkildson wrote a blog post … for Nomen’s official blog. Titled “Help with Homophones #1,” the missive was hardly a manifesto — it simply instructed readers about a few trap words which sound alike but are spelled differently.  (A screenshot of the post, cached, can be found here, via the Daily Mail.) It seemed entirely appropriate for the job Torkildson was hired to do, and innocuous nonetheless.

His boss didn’t see it that way. As Torkildson recounted on another now-deleted … blog post, the first chapter of his homophones work would be his last:

“I’m letting you go because I can’t trust you” said Clarke Woodger, my boss and the owner of Nomen Global Language Center.  “This blog about homophones was the last straw. Now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality.”

Swearing Maps

Jack Grieve is a linguist who has been mapping the frequency of use of different swearwords by geography, tracking words ranging from 'gosh' to things that might offend some of my readers..

Here's the 'damn' map – the others are here. I don't know about you, but I find this sort of thing damn interesting. Which I guess makes me a linguistic Southerner.

Was Shakespeare Catholic?

This didn’t entirely convince me, but there’s some interesting information here. I ended up almost convinced that his family was mostly Catholic; as for Will himself -- maybe, maybe not.

A Thought for Memorial Day

I don't want to get too heavy today, but it's worth noting, on a day when we honor those who died protecting our freedoms, that there are a great number of our fellow citizens who would be perfectly happy to give away one of our core freedoms – freedom of speech.

A Question about Words and Propriety

The word 'thug' having been declared racist, am I allowed to use it to describe the bikers who just shot up a sports bar (and each other) in Texas?

All the thugs bikers I've seen in pictures of the scene appear to be white, but if the word has been banned, then perhaps that isn't sufficient grounds to use it.

Enriching the Language

I've decided that 'eat' is a boring word. Henceforth, I intend to replace it with 'become enfooded'.

Why Not 'Very Good', 'Good', and 'Good Enough'?

In my sixty-seventh year of life, I still haven't figured out the US Department of Agriculture's beef grading system. The problem is that the three grades that one finds in the supermarket – Prime, Choice, and Select – all sound top-of-the-line. I can never remember which is really the top grade.

I went to the USDA website and read this, though I will no doubt forget by the next time I'm sent to the store and told to buy something – with, no doubt, the final admonition, “And this time, don't screw up and buy some piece of crap.”

Prime beef is produced from young, well-fed beef cattle. It has abundant marbling (the amount of fat interspersed with lean meat), and is generally sold in restaurants and hotels. Prime roasts and steaks are excellent for dry-heat cooking such as broiling, roasting or grilling. 

Choice beef is high quality, but has less marbling than Prime. Choice roasts and steaks from the loin and rib will be very tender, juicy, and flavorful and are suited for dry-heat cooking. Many of the less tender cuts can also be cooked with dry heat if not overcooked. Such cuts will be most tender if braised, roasted or simmered with a small amount of liquid in a tightly covered pan. 

Select beef is very uniform in quality and normally leaner than the higher grades. It is fairly tender, but, because it has less marbling, it may lack some of the juiciness and flavor of the higher grades. Only the tender cuts should be cooked with dry heat. Other cuts should be marinated before cooking or braised to obtain maximum tenderness and flavor.

This reminds me of my time working in a department store, where I learned that one popular brand of pantyhose, to avoid the horror of telling any of their customers that they were large, sold their product in four sizes: Extra Petite, Petite, Medium, and Dutchess.

A similar case is England's soccer leagues, where the top level, as most folks know, is the Premier League. The second level, though, is the Championship League. Championship of what -- mediocrity?

And then there are the states (Arizona used to be one, but reformed recently) where the high school sports leagues are all variations of 'A': the lowest level is A, then AA, then AAA, etc. Illinois went to AAAAAA, as I recall it, or maybe AAAAAAA. God forbid that any kid be told he or she is playing in a B or C league. It might traumatize them for the rest of their lives.

Getting back to the USDA, there actually are some other grades:

Standard and Commercial grades of beef are frequently sold as ungraded or as store brand meat. Utility, Cutter, and Canner grades of beef are seldom, if ever, sold at retail but are used instead to make ground beef and processed products. 

Still, I think my suggestion would be much clearer.

A Great Einstein Quote

From a newsletter I get (by Carl Cannon of RealClearPolitics):

… after his work in particle physics helped end World War II by reducing Nagasaki and Hiroshima to rubble, Einstein was asked why it was that human beings could discover the secrets of the atom, but not control them. 

"That is simple," he replied. "Because politics is more difficult than physics."

Things TJ Never Said: Dissent Is the Highest Form of Patriotism

The quote referenced in the title is very popular among protestors, most often, it seems among the left, though not exclusively.

There is a good deal of truth to it, in my opinion, but it's certainly not always true; dissent, it seems obvious to me, may be either patriotic or not, depending on circumstances and, most importantly, motivation.

The quote is generally attributed to Thomas Jefferson (as are a great many things he didn't say). Monticello.org offers a list of spurious quotes, as well as info on their true origin. This one seems to be no older than 1961, where it appeared in this form:

"If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?" 

As Monticello notes, it came to wide attention during the Vietnam era. I remember hearing it used often (and no doubt used it myself) at that time.

In any case, that is all irrelevant, since dissent is no longer patriotic – it's racist.

'Kathleen' Isn't an Irish Name

Reading about smithereens (see next post below) motivated me to look up the source of my daughter's name, and to a surprise.

Though words/names spelled in English with an -een ending are typically Irish diminutives, I found that Kathleen, a very popular Irish name, is not. (In my semi-Irish family, we have three generations of Kathleens – my daughter, my sister, and my aunt).

However, Wikipedia says:

Kathleen is a given name, used in English and Irish-language communities. Sometimes spelled Cathleen, it is an Anglicized form of Caitlín, the Irish form of Cateline, which was the Old French form of Catherine. It ultimately derives from the Greek name Aikaterine, the meaning of which is highly debated 

Greek?

Smithereens

I had come across this at least once before, but a recent newsletter from World Wide Words reminded me of the derivation of 'smithereens' (as in, “I smashed it to smithereens.”

The -een ending at once makes us think of Ireland and of colleen, poteen , shebeen and other words that derive from the Irish diminutive ending -ín. (A colleen is a young woman, poteen for illicit alcohol is literally a little pot and a shebeen, in which such liquor was sold, takes its name from the Irish word for a small mugful; but note that tureen, canteen, velveteen, sateen and some other words aren’t from Irish, but from French.) Most dictionaries assert that smithereens is indeed Irish, from smidirín, a diminutive of smiodar , a fragment.

The newsletter adds a note that although it is derived from a word meaning 'fragments', it cannot be used as a singular; i.e., a fragment is not a smithereen.

The newsletter goes on to cite an interesting early example of a threatening note posted on a door and quoted in the Dublin Evening Post in August 1810.

Mr Pounden, — Sir, we gave you notice some time ago to quit this country, for you are making a rebellion here — we tell you now again, that if you do not be of directly, by the gost of William, our deliverer, and by the Orange we wear, we will break your carriage in smithereens, and hoch your cattle, and burn your house — so mind yourself — you will soon hear again from your friend, TRUE BLUE.

Now I want to know what they mean by "hoch your cattle"; is it an early form of 'hock', meaning that they will steal the cattle and pawn them?

Graffiti Grammar Nazis in Quito

A small group in Quito who call themselves Accion Ortografica Quito (rough translation: Spelling Action Quito) is on a quest to correct the grammar and spelling errors that are rampant in the city's graffiti.

Since last November [the group has] been working to correct the spelling and grammatical errors of Quito’s graffiti artists. All three are anonymous (charges of

A successful mission.

vandalism in Quito can result in a fine and up to five days in jail ...) and they take stealth very seriously. Each operation begins with a reconnaissance mission to the scene of the grammatical crime, where one team member will take a picture of the offending work. Then, typically while sharing of beer (so much for “write drunk, edit sober”), they gather to debate the graffiti’s many grammatical failings: Where should the comma go? Is this letter supposed to be an “O” or an “A”? This can take a while — the team once found 13 mistakes in a simple, two-line message. 

The final edit always happens after dark. Clad in hoodies and ski masks, they sneak out in pairs — one to act as lookout, one editor — to complete their operation. Because the three agentes are grammar nerds and not actual secret agents, these missions don’t always go according to plan. 

“The first time we went out and corrected something, I was on lookout and I was supposed to whistle if I saw something,” Ponto Final recalled in a phone interview with The Washington Post. “But the very first car that went by was a cop car, and all of a sudden I couldn’t whistle, so I yelled ‘caw caw’ instead.”

Read it all – it's fun.

Another One Is Getting Ready to Bite the Dust

Another liberal magazine looks like it's going into a death spiral. Newsweek died (or 99% died – I think it's still kinda hanging around) a couple years ago. Now, The New Republic appears to be falling apart.

On Thursday, the venerable Washington institution announced it is shifting its headquarters to New York, amid a shakeup that saw the resignation of its highest editors and promised to redefine the identity of a century-old institution that once served as liberalism’s leading voice. 

Franklin Foer, the top editor, sent a memo to staff in the afternoon announcing that he would be quitting due to differences of vision with the magazine’s owner, Chris Hughes, a 31-year-old Facebook co-founder who bought the magazine in 2012 and now aspires to reposition it as a “digital media company.” The move came, sources said, after Foer discovered that Hughes had already hired his replacement, Gabriel Snyder, a Bloomberg Media editor who formerly ran The Atlantic Wire blog.

Further down, we learn that twelve senior editors and 'at least 20' contributing editors have resigned, and that the once-weekly magazine is cutting its publication frequency to less than monthly, planning ten issues per year.

As an aside, being a fan of good euphemisms and linguistic misdirection, I applaud this effort to avoid saying, “We're gonna be laying people off.”

“Given the frequency reduction, we will also be making some changes to staff structure,” Vidra wrote. “This is not a decision we make lightly, but we believe this restructuring is critical to the long-term success of the company.” 

Those who haven't already quit will no doubt be sending out lots of resumes.

As was not the case with Newsweek, I would be really sorry to see TNR die. Newsweek was always a POS (I used to say that,at its best, all you could say for it was that it was almost as good as Time). TNR, on the other hand, was often very good. It was a resource that could provide an intelligent exposition of the liberal viewpoint, and would even sometimes question liberal orthodoxy.

Unknown Writer Shouts, "Look at Me! Look at Me!"

Somebody named Will Self thinks he's a better writer than George Orwell.

He probably also thinks he's a better writer than Bob Houk. He may well be right on the latter point, but on the George Owell/Bob Houk spectrum, he's probably well over on the Bob Houk side.

Self objects to Orwell's passion for simplicity and clarity. Given that the the starting point of writing is (or should be) to communicate, one suspects that Self has yet to master an understanding of his trade. This lack of understanding, unfortunately, seems to be widespread among current writers. He summarizes his own limitations in what appears to be an attempt to mock Orwell.

I like Orwell's writing as much as the next talented mediocrity.

A bit of attention to clarity might have saved Self from calling himself a mediocrity.

To be fair, this is probably just an attempt to get people to pay him some attention, and it seems to have succeeded.

Great Moments in BS – III

As you might tell from the title, this is an ongoing personal obsession series. Recent previous entries (in the unlikely case that you're interested) can be found by clicking on 'Words' in the Labels column to the right.

'Gaming' is one of those euphemisms that really annoy me, because it's an obvious attempt to make an activity respectable by changing the word that describes it. “Hey, guys, 'Gambling' has a negative connotation with the public, so we'll call it 'gaming' and then everything will be okay.”

Sorry, the proper word is 'gambling', and that's the one I will continue to use.

Since I'm into quoting myself these days, I'll refer to a previous post in which I discussed the obfuscatory use of 'Children in Conflict with the Law'.

One of the really hilarious things about do-gooders is that they seem to honestly think that changing words changes reality; that if a thing or situation or group is negatively perceived by the public, that changing the name will change the perception and solve all the problems associated with the thing/situation/group.

This instance (gambling/gaming) is a reminder that this practice is not peculiar to do-gooders.

Sinister Buttocks

I have some friends who are interested in the book and movie series, Left Behind.

I haven't read the books or seen the movies. I have, however, an interest in words and how they are used or misused.

Believe it or not, there is a connection (of sorts) between these two subjects. I receive a weekly newsletter called World Wide Words. This week it contains the following item, which I will quote in its entirety:

Synonymising fallacy. An article dated 7 August in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) introduced me to the new word Rogetism. Its creator is Chris Sadler, a lecturer at Middlesex University. 

He had wondered about mysterious out-of-context phrases such as tarry forth of the conquest, modern store guides, bequest mazes and Herculean personalised liturgies, which kept appearing in student essays. Eventually he twigged that they were plagiarising online material but trying to hide it by changing some of the words using a thesaurus. Unfortunately, they were using what they’d looked up without caring about its meaning. 

The phrases above resulted from applying this process to, respectively, stay ahead of the competition, new market leaders, legacy networks and powerful personalised services. 

Sadler’s favourite Rogetism (coined, of course, from the most famous of all thesauruses, that created by Peter Mark Roget) is sinister buttocks, which he has entered for this year’s THES exam howlers competition. The original was left behind.

Great Moments in BS

I think I may make this a regular feature. As I mentioned in a previous post about Gwyneth Paltrow announcing that she and her husband were getting a divorce undertaking a 'conscious uncoupling', I love really good bullshit.

That may be because I'm interested in politics and government, which could not exist without BS (where else would we get such gems as 'enhanced interrogation' for torture, 'police action' for war, or 'undocumented persons' for illegal aliens).

I should point out that I could have titled this something like “Great Euphemisms”, but I don't think euphemism is the right word for this sort of thing. To me a euphemism is saying “I need to go to the bathroom” when I mean “I need to piss.” The sort of thing I'm discussing takes the practice to a higher level, at which point 'euphemism' itself becomes a euphemism for bullshit.

OK, that was a long lead-in to a short item. I was out walking today and passed an apartment complex on Indian School Road (aside: I wonder when they'll rename it 'Native American Road'). The apartment management had put out banners advertising various features of their apartments, such as WiFi.

And then there was this one. I guess the marketing folks decided that advertising their security guards might cause potential tenants to think, “Why do they need guards? There must be a lot of security problems.” So therefore, the complex doesn't have guards, it has a 'Courtesy Patrol'.

If You Disagree with Me You're Not Just Wrong ...

... you are "immoral, unethical and despicable."

Well no, I don't actually think that way, but Al Gore does. He said in a recent speech in Hawaii that anybody who doesn't believe in global warming is, to repeat, "immoral, unethical and despicable."

The 'immoral' part is particularly interesting, I think, as it is the sort of language and thinking one normally associates with religion. Global warming has become a religion for its adherents, and they seem to speak and act more and more in ways emulating religious fanatics.

Great Moments in the Annals of BS

I am a fan of good bullshit. There are few things I enjoy more than, for example, hearing a garbageman being described as a sanitation engineer.

As a fan, therefore, I want to offer homage to Gwyneth Paltrow. Though I've never seen any of her movies, she is well-enough known that even I have heard of her, and her recent addition to the world's supply of great BS will therefore no doubt bring forth additional gems, as her fans try to emulate her.

I refer, of course, to Ms. Paltrow referring to her divorce as a 'conscious uncoupling'.

What, you might ask, is conscious uncoupling? The point of good BS, I remind you, is that it doesn't have to mean a damned thing. In fact, it's better if it doesn't, since if it meant something it might lead to the bullshitter actually being held accountable for the meaning.

If you want to wallow a bit in obfuscation, however, there are entire websites dedicated to conscious uncoupling, according to Google. Here's a not particularly sympathetic article on the subject:

Paltrow helpfully followed up her initial announcement by posting a 2,000-word treatise on conscious uncoupling from Habib Sadeghi and Sherry Sami, a married couple living in Los Angeles. (Dr. Sadeghi is an osteopathic doctor who runs an “integrative health center” called “Be Hive of Healing,” pun presumably intended, and whose book Within: A Spiritual Awakening to Love and Weight Loss contains a foreword written by Paltrow. His wife is a dentist.) 

Sadeghi and Sami begin by explaining that given rapidly accelerating life expectancy, these days it’s unrealistic to expect that we’ll be able to stick it out until death do us part, which suggests we “ought to redefine the construct” of marriage. 

“Our biology and psychology aren’t set up to be with one person for four, five, or six decades,” they write. So there’s the science. Now for some New Agey jargon: “Life is a spiritual exercise in evolving from an exoskeleton for support and survival to an endoskeleton,” they write in a section entitled, “Intimacy & Insects.” They mean by this, basically, that you have to look within yourself for support and strength and healing, not to others, or, one can infer, to any kind of external deity. 

Finally, they get to the part about how to uncouple consciously and “avoid the drama of divorce.” You shouldn’t think about it in terms of your marriage having failed, because (a) as we learned, the expectation that it would last was based on an outdated construct, and (b) this is actually going to be a positive experience if you just let go of old notions and approach it in terms of building up your partner’s spiritual endoskeleton. “To change the concept of divorce, we need to release the belief structures we have around marriage that create rigidity in our thought process,” they write. The “belief structure” that marriage should be for life “is too much pressure for anyone.” 

Conscious uncoupling will bring “wholeness to the spirits of both people who choose to recognize each other as their teachers.” What’s more, conscious uncoupling “prevents families from being broken by divorce and creates expanded families that continue to function in a healthy way outside of traditional marriage.” 

They conclude that by “choosing to handle your uncoupling in a conscious way . . . you’ll see that although it looks like everything is coming apart; it’s actually all coming back together.”

To which I can only add, “Bravo – a truly marvelous piece of bullshit.”

Incumbency

I recently came across a not-new word, used in a new (to me) way. The word is incumbency, used to mean a personal obligation. In a 1966 Nero Wolfe story, Death of a Doxy*, Wolfe explains his interest in trying to clear an accused man by saying:

Mr. Cather has worked for me, on occasion, for years, and I am under an incumbency. 

It took me a few moments to figure this out, though I'm familiar with the more common form, “It is incumbent upon me ...”

* Doxy is a term I've never heard used, so it must already have been out of date, at least among younger people, by 1966.