Mongoose in a Mud Hole

PARVUM OPUS

Number 245

September 27, 2007

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Overheard in New York

Where the education is better...

White teen girl #1: Oh my god, he is, like, so caliente! Haha, I just said that like the biggest white girl!

White teen girl #2, sarcastically: What, you say that like you're not proud of being a white girl!

White teen girl #1: Haha... Well, I'm not actually white. My nationality is European, which is actually much better than white.

White teen girl #2: Yeah, totally.

Where they really care about good writing...

Man to crying woman he just chased down the street : What did you want me to do?! Lie and say that you're a good writer?

LET ALONE

Entrepreneurial quote: "We haven't had time for a vacation, let alone a day off." She had this backward. The thing you let alone is the larger thing compared to the smaller. That is, she hasn't had time for a day off, and don't even think about a vacation. Or, no time for a day off, much less a vacation.

BEATS OF COMEDY

Comedian Dennis Miller said on his radio program that comedy writers learn about the beats of comedy, and may even count the syllables of a joke. The timing and rhythm contribute to the humor. Unfortunately he didn't give an example and not being a professional comedy writer, I hesitate to take a guess. Miller was wondering if it depends on iambic pentameter but maybe that in itself was a joke. Also, when a caller asked what his favorite books were, he included Strunk & White's Elements of Style. Surprising, since as I've mentioned before he uses some words incorrectly ( e.g. nonplussed). However, style isn't always the same as vocabulary.

HERE'S TO THE JAKES

Kate's blog titled "Here's to the Jakes!" linked to her photos in the local papers covering the funerals of Boston area firefighters as well as 9/11 tributes to the firefighters who died that day. At first I thought some of the men were named Jake, but she says the word means fireman. I was confused because it's a slangy British word for latrine (meaning no disrespect). I would like to know the origin of "Jakes" meaning firefighters. Here are the links to Kate's work:

http://www.townonline.com/roslindale/news/x1136425930

http://www.townonline.com/roslindale/homepage/x942962936

http://media.townonline.com/roslindale/slideshow/ro_funeral_0906

http://www.townonline.com/somerville/news/x1649538812

http://www.townonline.com/wellesley/homepage/x1681064490

ORNRY

If you have a passel of ornry kids running around, you have a parcel of ordinary kids. Ornry or common behavior is not what we would wish from our children, which is superior behavior.

THOUSANDS OF HYPHENS PERISH

The new Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has many new entries that either change hyphenated words to single words (bumble-bee to bumblebee) or change them back to two separate words (ice-cream to ice cream). Keep in mind this is British usage.

I have had no luck in tracking down a quote from Mark Twain I vaguely remember from college, about hyphens. You'll remember his famous rule "Eschew surplusage" and he saw the hyphen as surplusage. All I found today was this:

...a word like "pains-takingly," hyphenated to reveal its etymology, is recorded first only from the 1860s, while a much older word like "hap-hazard," again hyphenated by Twain, takes on a new and perhaps poetical feeling, when paired with the term "shadings."

(An excerpt from Inventing English, A Portable History of the Language by Seth Lerer.)

WHY PINS?

Dave DaBee asked why are they called clothes*pins*?

The root is penna, meaning feather ~ something long and pointed or sharp. I guess that's the common identifying characteristic of all kinds of pins and pens. But they have to be small. Not swords or spears, for instance.

Did you know a growing young pin feather can bleed?

ANALOGIES GONE WILD

Recently the Reichstag fire keeps cropping up in my listening and reading. Hitler was responsible for the burning of the German Parliament building, which he blamed on communists and used as an excuse to introduce repressive laws in the new Nazi Germany. Some people compare the destruction of the World Trade Towers to this fire, saying Bush et al did it in order to create an excuse for oppressive laws, etc. (Have you been oppressed lately, and if so, how, specifically?) Rosie O'Donnell said it was the first time in history steel burned. How does she think they make steel? I've been re-reading some essays by Tom Wolfe. In "These Radical Chic Evenings" the Black Panthers' lawyer vaguely compared their trial to the Reichstag fire ~ an attempt to remove all political opposition. Which didn't happen then and isn't happening now. In "The Intelligent Coed's Guide to America" Wolfe quotes Jean-Fran çois Ravel, "a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe."

THE PLIGHT OF THE ENGLISH MAJOR

I was happy to learn that Miss Manners (Judith Martin) was an English major. Recently she received a letter that said,

I am a college student working toward a degree in English teaching. My classmates and I find ourselves facing the following comments in a social setting:

"Oooh, you're an English major, I better watch what I say!" or when we slip up and say something grammatically incorrect, many around us laugh hysterically and holler, "I thought you were going to be an English teacher!"

The one I hate is, "English was my worst subject," although recently the man at the barbecue wagon I patronize said it was his favorite. And I didn't say to him, "Ooh, I'm such a mediocre cook." Miss Manners sensibly pointed out that many professionals receive unwelcome comments.

PERFORMATIVE VERBS

I just learned a new grammatical term in a British workbook, but presumably British and American grammar are the same. A performative verb does the thing it names. For example, if you say "Thank you" ("I thank you") you are thanking. Same with "I apologize". Saying "I'm sorry" is not the same, because "sorry" is not a verb, it's an adjective; you are describing your state of mind.

MONGOOSE IN A MUD HOLE

Another one of those road mysteries: a pickup truck with "MONGOOSE IN A MUD HOLE" on the back of the cab.

OUTSIDE THE COMPUTER

What do you see when you're at your computer? A robin outside the window behind our computer is eating red berries from the honeysuckle bush. I'd call him a fat robin but that's such a cliché. He's a tall, husky robin. The bright red berries are making him quite cheerful, but they look poisonous, and in fact are toxic to humans and animals. The word robin comes from the French name Robert, which became Robin Redbreast in England, sort of like Jack Frost.

It's hazardous outside the window, though. Saturday I found a lame chipmunk by the tomato plants, probably thanks to one of the cats, and I wanted to move him to a better location. When I picked him up he panicked and sank a tooth into my finger. I gave out a bloodcurdling (which must be a lot like blood-freezing or clotting) scream, but it wasn't my blood that curdled or froze, at least not right away. I had to pry the beast off my finger, which bled copiously. The chipmunk, or one very like him, is now reposing in a container in the refrigerator pending autopsy for rabies, but I think he was just scared because I picked him up. He passed away peacefully, apparently from internal injuries. The word chipmunk is an alteration of the obsolete chitmunk, perhaps from Ojibwa ajidamoon, meaning red squirrel, or treacherous pain-dealing rodent.

And, it's raining at last.

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SPECIAL!

I have a collection of new western-style leather belts for sale on eBay, some plain and some flashy. To see them, go to http://www.ebay.com/, click on Advanced Search, click Items by Seller, and type rondacity in the box.

This Is Your Brain On

PARVUM OPUS

Number 244

September 20, 2007

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THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON...

MUSIC

The other evening I chanced upon a book signing with Daniel J. Levitin, who wrote This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, and I bought the book although I know little to nothing about music. I had him inscribe the book to son Foy, the drummer, but he’ll have to wait till I finish reading it. So far I’ve learned that ho bina is the Sesotho phrase for singing as well as dancing; in many languages the words are the same for singing and dancing. I also learned that the use of the words high and low for certain notes or pitches is arbitary. The ancient Greeks, for example, referred to a high-frequency sound as low because some of their musical instruments placed the short strings that produce what we call high notes closer to the ground, and vice versa. And it won’t do to say high notes represent things that are high in the air, such as birds, because thunder also comes from the air and sounds quite different.

Foy, by the way, sent a couple of good items:

... my new boss ... spoke of her "softmore" year in college. The "T" was pronounced painfully clear and my brain shut down, missing everything she said after that. I guess she has a PH Imbalance. Oh, in case I forgot to get back to you on the previous word tragedy; it was someone referring to a one-shot-wonder as a "Flash in the pants". ouch

What was she doing her entire softmore year? Not reading much. And flash in the pants is brilliant. I made CafePress T-shirts with that one (also, of course, pants ~ boxers and thongs).

TASER

Wikipedia says,

The name Taser is an acronym for "Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle". Arizona inventor Jack Cover designed it in 1969; naming it for the science fiction teenage inventor and adventurer character Tom Swift.

Regarding Tased student University of Florida student Andrew Meyer (zapped for preventing free speech at a John Kerry forum), UF President Bernie Machen called the confrontation regretful, by which he meant regrettable. I guess he wasn’t an English major.

I didn’t read the Tom Swift books, but if you did, you might like a new book by Gonn and Hal Iggulden, The Dangerous Book for Boys. It has a gorgeous red and gold cover, and teaches kids how to do things that don’t involve microchips.

BLASTS

:-) anniversary: 25 years ago inventor Carnegie Mellon Professor Scott E. Fahman has won the Yahoo Smiley Award for inventing :-). (You may consider the period at the end of the previous sentence a pimple or a dimple.)

Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. Sept. 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly.

Fred thinks I need to use emoticons to make sure people get my humor. Is he kidding? Anyway, who invented the word emoticon?

And Dave DaBee asked who invented the phrase blast from the past, which opened an article by Dick Cavett about a bizarre Nixonian episode that’s just come to light.

MILLER TIME

I’m a fan of the Dennis Miller radio program. He’s not only funny, but intelligent and well-read in history. Nevertheless, he repeatedly makes peculiar vocabulary blunders, like using nonplussed to mean something like “not upset”. It comes from Latin and means something obvious like “no more”. That is, if something disturbs you, you don’t want any more of it. Miller uses it as if plussed means upset or confused. He has also used desultory to mean derogatory. You just can’t always figure out words from context. On the other hand, I was amused when he said changed his pronunciation from investigative to investigative because it made him feel more grown up.

MOM AND APPLE PIE

At the Emmy Awards, Sally Field said that if mothers ran the world, there would be no wars. I’m a mother and the daughter of a mother, and I know a lot of mothers, and I feel safe in saying that is not true. But I wouldn’t send my sons, I’d do it myself.

TOTAL QUALITY + LOGISTICS = ?

Company name on building: Total Quality Logistics. Quick, what do you think the company does? Here’s its online description with the key words omitted:

Total Quality Logistics (TQL) is a premier non-asset-based third-party logistics provider that works with thousands of companies nationwide in facilitating their ***. We constantly strive to be the most trusted and reliable * provider in the business.

Could be anything, could have come straight out of Dilbert’s Mission Statement Generator.

STATES OF COLOR

In the last election, I wondered why the media called primarily Democratic voting states blue and Republican voting states red. It’s confusing because for so long red has been associated with communism and the far left, ergo, it would make more sense to call the modern Democratic party at least reddish. Dennis Prager thinks somebody did it just so people wouldn’t think of Dems as being communist. But it’s hard to switch a century (well, not my century but a century of history) of word association.

PLENTY OF NOTHING

Sometimes I can’t resist opening spam (by the way, my Yahoo spam problem mysteriously resolved itself), and I found this plaintive cry from a young miss who longs for companionship: “I have nothing to do at night a lot.” Perhaps she would like English lessons to fill up her lonely hours.

MOBIUS STRIP

Reader Caleb Stone (who is a Brooklyn artist, not the Caleb Stone of Atlanta porn fame) responded to my

Descriptive studies of language as it is spoken are interesting and revealing, but if we had no standardization at all, we couldn't understand each other.

with

Such pure marble mash that I must charge forth, bleating the ever colorful, "Mashed peacock potatoes!" Dalíesque discourse dictates dissent.

Moi: Point taken, and other point also proved.

CS: It was intended to be a linguistic mobius strip sort of response to your point. Along the lines of "I agree completely! But on the other hand...."

I just wish that I'd come up with something better, but then why would email be fun if it couldn't, at times, be completely impulsive and bring out the most silly aspects of our personalities including, but not limited simply to, ridiculous run on sentences? To me, it simply wouldn't.

Moi: I'm glad you're having fun. If it's a mobius strip, does that mean it has no end?

CS: Of course. There's always another hand.

Moi: According to Tevye, you can run out of hands eventually.

CS: "Enough already! There is no other hand!"

I'm starting to agree, somebody snip that damn mobius strip and make dinner.

(My wife is also an artist (and brilliant web designer,) so I have to give her a plug too:

http://www.annaalfredson.com/

http://www.studioswitch.com/ )

I may not have Caleb’s creativity, but I have stamina.

YANKEE

A news article about the Amish in a Cleveland surburb says the Amish call their non-Amish neighbors “Yankees”. I’d always read (and heard in the movie Witness) that the Amish call the non-Amish the “English”. Perhaps that’s changed, at least in the United States. So Yankee means Northerner to the Southerners, New Englander to other Northerners, United States citizen to foreigners, and now non-Amish to the Amish. Yankees are the Other of the world.

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Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

Or click on underlined book links.

NEW SHOP: Scot Tartans. NEW STUFF AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop:

"Flash in the Pants";

"If you're so smart why aren't you me?";

"If you build it they won't come";

Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?;

Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse;

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag;

"I am here" T-shirt;

"Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt";

"I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron;

new kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, stein, and more!

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears http://cafelit.blogspot.com/. It is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE A MEETING OR CONFERENCE? CALL KEITHOPS.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2007. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

A Call For General Victory

PARVUM OPUS

Number 243

September 13, 2007

_____________________________________________

ARTISTS 1 WRITERS 1

Bill R. sent a link to a card designed for a copywriter’s birthday that defines the eternal war between design and editorial staff. In counterpoint, don’t miss the video about designers (from a design company), which pretty much covers the intellectual, professional, and ethical bandwidth of a couple of art directors I worked with in the past.

MUCH FROM MIKE

We’ve passed another 9/11 with six years of no major attacks in the United States. I’m reminded of an old bit by Garrison Keillor, an ad recommending the purchase of a condor for the office: he said the knowledge that a giant bird of prey is directly overhead focuses the mind wonderfully. Continuing on this note, I recently ran across a Noel Coward song from WWII that I’d never heard: “Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans” which I think has fresh relevance today. I sent the link to Mike S., who wrote:

Well I'd certainly heard it before, but it was a long, long time ago. Strange bloke Noël Coward, wrote some very witty stuff, though perhaps not quite as witty as Oscar and quite a few of his quotes have survived with a lot of younger people being unaware where they came from (e.g. "Very flat, Norfolk!", from Private Lives). .... He's probably better known for Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and The Stately Homes of England.

Other songs you could regard as propaganda as [well as] humour were the absurd We're Going to Hang Out Our Washing on the Siegfried Line, which was popular before the BEF had to beat a hasty retreat in 1940, and the maudlin There'll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover.

(Ah, but have you heard it played on banjos?)

“Very flat, Norfolk!” hasn’t survived on this side. But thankfully we have YouTube to preserve many of these bits of history.

Mike also said about boot sales:

It's actually turned into an idea I wouldn't recommend. There are areas, sometimes pub car parks, sometimes farmers' fields, where fly-by-night vendors gather to offer for sale goods of dubious provenance (forged, pirated or stolen).

No doubt because they’re selling out of a car. Your traditional yard, porch, or garage sale doesn’t allow for a quick getaway.

And he explained RAS:

The term RAS syndrome refers to the use of one of the words that make up an initialism or acronym as well as the abbreviation itself, thus in effect repeating that word. It stands for "Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome," and is itself a humorous example of a redundant acronym. Technically, this redundancy is a form of rhetorical tautology, and in many cases a pleonasm.

Finally, just this afternoon Mike wrote:

Shortly after the announcement of the death of Pavarotti, the BBC transmitted a lengthy and somewhat tedious program about his "last tour". During this, one of those interviewed said that Pavarotti's voice made his "hair stand on edge". The guy in question sounded like a New York/Italian (shades of Sopranos?), but he was speaking fluent enough.

Well, you know that very straight hair is round under the microscope, while curlier hair is flattish. Perhaps the speaker has curly hair, with edges. Nevertheless, how can it stand on edge unless it’s lying flat on the head? I’m trying to picture it, which the speaker obviously was not.

THUGLETTS

Harry H. wrote:

Listening to Judge Joe Brown a few weeks ago, I heard him appear to coin a word which I'd never heard before. In referring to the children of the defendant, he called them "thugletts."

As the thuglett is bent, so shall it grow. I expect to see thuglett wear in the stores soon.

A CALL FOR GENERAL VICTORY

MoveOn.org bought an ad in the New York Times that called General Petraeus “General Betray Us.” Commentators have commentated that some news writers or editors are starting to spell Osama bin Laden with a U ~ Usama ~ to reduce associations with Barack Obama. There have been too many jokes and puns on the name Bush to count. This is an easy game, one we learned in grade school. No matter what your name, kids can and will make up a rhyme or a joke about it to humiliate you. Someone remarked last night that if the general were named General Pictory, the obvious connection would be ignored.

FOLK ETYMOLOGY: MEET > MATE, FAST > FACED

Something I should have figured out, but learned from Bryan Garner's Usage Tip of the Day.

"Helpmeet," now archaic, was the original form, yet folk etymology changed the spelling to "-mate," which is now the prevalent form.... “Helpmeet" is a compound "absurdly formed" (as the OED puts it) from the two words "help" and "meet" in Genesis, "an help meet for him" (Genesis 2:18, 20), in which "meet" is really an adjective meaning "suitable." Some writers still use "helpmeet" ~ e.g.: "Naturally, I am a loyal and patient helpmeet whose only reward is a smile on the lips of my beloved ~ a smile, and ceaseless extravagant praise." Jon Carroll, "Movie at Our House," S.F. Chron., 3 Sept. 1996, at D8. But "meet" was widely misunderstood as "mate.” "Helpmate" means "a companion or helper," and it need not refer to a spouse.

Garner’s quotation of the day, which I omit here, led me to look up “shamefaced,” which used to be “shamefast” from shame + fast meaning fixed (as in fasten, stand fast, etc.).

PRE AND DE

The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker is a book that I would love to read if it weren’t so long. I may have to keep renewing it at the library indefinitely. I have dipped into Chapter 12, “The Language Mavens”, which discusses prescriptive (do this) and descriptive (you’re doing this) grammar. (Pinker calls those who study language and propose descriptive rules scientists.) Certainly, prescriptive mavens make mistakes or are unreasonably rigid, while descriptive mavens seem to want to build a Tower of Babel. Descriptive studies of language as it is spoken are interesting and revealing, but if we had no standardization at all, we couldn’t understand each other. We would also lose touch with our history.

BILINGUAL

Why do certain gay men sound so identifiably gay? I was talking to a friend about someone we both know slightly, a man I’ve met and she’s spoken to on the phone, and we both had immediately assumed he was gay. This friend has a brother who is gay, but who does not sound “gay”, she tells me. Though she is German, she was able to identify this particular speech characteristic in English. Where do these speech patterns come from? They are surely learned, though not all gay men do it. Some people think it’s because the male child begins to imitate his mother’s speech, but yet ... to me it doesn’t quite sound like a woman speaking. And why don’t lesbians sound, well, like “lesbians”? In any case, it is learned, and it must be learned intentionally, perhaps for the purpose of identification. A few years ago I hired a young neighbor to help me move, and he talked nonstop all day; he talked a lot more than he worked, in fact. He sounded to me like a gay man, but he said he wasn’t gay (nobody asked him), and he would like to have a cool girlfriend, like Britney Spears. (I suppose he’s changed his mind about that by now.) Anyway, when we got to my older son’s house, where I was storing things in the basement, the young man instantly changed the way he spoke. He sounded more like an average man of his age. I think he even brought up sports. No doubt he was intimidated by my large, traditionally masculine son. He reminded me of a black woman I worked with years ago in Tuskegee, Alabama, who could switch from sounding southern/black to northern or midwestern/white. She had lived in New York City before. This natural bilingualism is why some people become good actors.

A Call For General Victory

PARVUM OPUS

Number 243

September 13, 2007

______________________________________________

ARTISTS 1 WRITERS 1

Bill R. sent a link to a card designed for a copywriter’s birthday that defines the eternal war between design and editorial staff. In counterpoint, don’t miss the video about designers (from a design company), which pretty much covers the intellectual, professional, and ethical bandwidth of a couple of art directors I worked with in the past.

MUCH FROM MIKE

We’ve passed another 9/11 with six years of no major attacks in the United States. I’m reminded of an old bit by Garrison Keillor, an ad recommending the purchase of a condor for the office: he said the knowledge that a giant bird of prey is directly overhead focuses the mind wonderfully. Continuing on this note, I recently ran across a Noel Coward song from WWII that I’d never heard: “Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans” which I think has fresh relevance today. I sent the link to Mike S., who wrote:

Well I'd certainly heard it before, but it was a long, long time ago. Strange bloke Noël Coward, wrote some very witty stuff, though perhaps not quite as witty as Oscar and quite a few of his quotes have survived with a lot of younger people being unaware where they came from (e.g. "Very flat, Norfolk!", from Private Lives). .... He's probably better known for Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and The Stately Homes of England.

Other songs you could regard as propaganda as [well as] humour were the absurd We're Going to Hang Out Our Washing on the Siegfried Line, which was popular before the BEF had to beat a hasty retreat in 1940, and the maudlin There'll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover.

(Ah, but have you heard it played on banjos?)

“Very flat, Norfolk!” hasn’t survived on this side. But thankfully we have YouTube to preserve many of these bits of history.

Mike also said about boot sales:

It's actually turned into an idea I wouldn't recommend. There are areas, sometimes pub car parks, sometimes farmers' fields, where fly-by-night vendors gather to offer for sale goods of dubious provenance (forged, pirated or stolen).

No doubt because they’re selling out of a car. Your traditional yard, porch, or garage sale doesn’t allow for a quick getaway.

And he explained RAS:

The term RAS syndrome refers to the use of one of the words that make up an initialism or acronym as well as the abbreviation itself, thus in effect repeating that word. It stands for "Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome," and is itself a humorous example of a redundant acronym. Technically, this redundancy is a form of rhetorical tautology, and in many cases a pleonasm.

Finally, just this afternoon Mike wrote:

Shortly after the announcement of the death of Pavarotti, the BBC transmitted a lengthy and somewhat tedious program about his "last tour". During this, one of those interviewed said that Pavarotti's voice made his "hair stand on edge". The guy in question sounded like a New York/Italian (shades of Sopranos?), but he was speaking fluent enough.

Well, you know that very straight hair is round under the microscope, while curlier hair is flattish. Perhaps the speaker has curly hair, with edges. Nevertheless, how can it stand on edge unless it’s lying flat on the head? I’m trying to picture it, which the speaker obviously was not.

THUGLETTS

Harry H. wrote:

Listening to Judge Joe Brown a few weeks ago, I heard him appear to coin a word which I'd never heard before. In referring to the children of the defendant, he called them "thugletts."

As the thuglett is bent, so shall it grow. I expect to see thuglett wear in the stores soon.

A CALL FOR GENERAL VICTORY

MoveOn.org bought an ad in the New York Times that called General Petraeus “General Betray Us.” Commentators have commentated that some news writers or editors are starting to spell Osama bin Laden with a U ~ Usama ~ to reduce associations with Barack Obama. There have been too many jokes and puns on the name Bush to count. This is an easy game, one we learned in grade school. No matter what your name, kids can and will make up a rhyme or a joke about it to humiliate you. Someone remarked last night that if the general were named General Pictory, the obvious connection would be ignored.

FOLK ETYMOLOGY: MEET > MATE, FAST > FACED

Something I should have figured out, but learned from Bryan Garner's Usage Tip of the Day.

"Helpmeet," now archaic, was the original form, yet folk etymology changed the spelling to "-mate," which is now the prevalent form.... “Helpmeet" is a compound "absurdly formed" (as the OED puts it) from the two words "help" and "meet" in Genesis, "an help meet for him" (Genesis 2:18, 20), in which "meet" is really an adjective meaning "suitable." Some writers still use "helpmeet" ~ e.g.: "Naturally, I am a loyal and patient helpmeet whose only reward is a smile on the lips of my beloved ~ a smile, and ceaseless extravagant praise." Jon Carroll, "Movie at Our House," S.F. Chron., 3 Sept. 1996, at D8. But "meet" was widely misunderstood as "mate.” "Helpmate" means "a companion or helper," and it need not refer to a spouse.

Garner’s quotation of the day, which I omit here, led me to look up “shamefaced,” which used to be “shamefast” from shame + fast meaning fixed (as in fasten, stand fast, etc.).

PRE AND DE

The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker is a book that I would love to read if it weren’t so long. I may have to keep renewing it at the library indefinitely. I have dipped into Chapter 12, “The Language Mavens”, which discusses prescriptive (do this) and descriptive (you’re doing this) grammar. (Pinker calls those who study language and propose descriptive rules scientists.) Certainly, prescriptive mavens make mistakes or are unreasonably rigid, while descriptive mavens seem to want to build a Tower of Babel. Descriptive studies of language as it is spoken are interesting and revealing, but if we had no standardization at all, we couldn’t understand each other. We would also lose touch with our history.

BILINGUAL

Why do certain gay men sound so identifiably gay? I was talking to a friend about someone we both know slightly, a man I’ve met and she’s spoken to on the phone, and we both had immediately assumed he was gay. This friend has a brother who is gay, but who does not sound “gay”, she tells me. Though she is German, she was able to identify this particular speech characteristic in English. Where do these speech patterns come from? They are surely learned, though not all gay men do it. Some people think it’s because the male child begins to imitate his mother’s speech, but yet ... to me it doesn’t quite sound like a woman speaking. And why don’t lesbians sound, well, like “lesbians”? In any case, it is learned, and it must be learned intentionally, perhaps for the purpose of identification. A few years ago I hired a young neighbor to help me move, and he talked nonstop all day; he talked a lot more than he worked, in fact. He sounded to me like a gay man, but he said he wasn’t gay (nobody asked him), and he would like to have a cool girlfriend, like Britney Spears. (I suppose he’s changed his mind about that by now.) Anyway, when we got to my older son’s house, where I was storing things in the basement, the young man instantly changed the way he spoke. He sounded more like an average man of his age. I think he even brought up sports. No doubt he was intimidated by my large, traditionally masculine son. He reminded me of a black woman I worked with years ago in Tuskegee, Alabama, who could switch from sounding southern/black to northern or midwestern/white. She had lived in New York City before. This natural bilingualism is why some people become good actors.

Gitter Done

SCHOLARLY QUERY

How do you suppose the African slaves brought to America learned to speak English (or Spanish, Portuguese, or French)? Few were allowed to learn to read or write, but they must have learned to understand and speak English pretty quickly. Would the slave owners have taught them formally, or, more likely, did they learn out of necessity through listening and observing? Maybe their captors used a point-and-say method. There are studies of the entry of African words and grammar into English, but I’ve never run across anything about how the slaves learned to speak the foreign language. Is there anything in the historical records, journals, diaries of the slave owners?

ARISTOTLE, NOT

From an e-mail:

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd rather have been talking. ~ Aristotle

This sounded to me like the stuff attributed to the Dalai Lama (“Cooking and lovemaking should be approached with abandon”) which probably originated in a woman’s magazine or Reader’s Digest Quotable Quotes (not that I have anything against either of those). It turns out that the urban legend tracker, Snopes.com, has a section on quotes, but this supposedly Aristotelian quote was not listed. I suppose it’s conceivable that Aristotle said something along those lines and this is a poor translation. I wouldn’t know. (That is, I wouldn’t know what Aristotle said, but I know modern style when I read it.)

NUBUCK TWEED

Local real estate company sign: Nubuck Tweed. Its logo is a fox hunting scene, the silhouette of horseback riders, horses with bobbed or tied tails, and dogs. I wonder if the company’s owner named his or her kids Nubuck and Tweed.

MORE FROM DALRYMPLE

In Life at the Bottom, Theodore Dalrymple wrote that sometimes his patients/clients will say, “I caught pregnant” or “I caught for a boy”, as if they had nothing to do with getting pregnant. “Caught pregnant” could sound like “got pregnant” (also rather a passive expression), but “caught for a boy” is new to me. In Our Culture, What’s Left of It, Dalrymple also questions the substitution of the word or idea of depression for unhappiness. You can get drugs for depression, but unhappiness ~ you might have to change your life. A couple more linguistic notes from Dalrymple’s Romancing Opiates: the phrase cold turkey, as in sudden withdrawal from opiates, refers to the goose flesh addicts get during withdrawal. And: “The ironical argot of the addicts is one of the few even minimally attractive aspects of their way of life.” I learned that pokes means pockets, and of course in some areas of the U.S. people say poke for bag (or sack, in other areas).

A final word from Dalrymple, not on language:

I was working in a hospital in what was then still Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. I was still of the callow ~ and fundamentally lazy ~ youthful opinion that nothing in the world could change until everything changed, in which case a social system would arise in which it would be no longer necessary for anyone to be good.

MORE FROM ENGLAND

They have boot sales in England, and I don’t mean they sell boots. They call the trunk of a car the boot, so I guess a boot sale must be like a mobile yard sale or garage sale. I love finding new places to shop and I think this is an idea we should import.

GITTER DONE

I was trying to explain “Gitter done” to one of my students, a Chinese woman, who asked if it meant to get a woman to do it. Why don’t we say, “Get him done” anyway?

BACK IN THE DAY

Herb and Mike both said that “back in the day” was a line in a 1993 Ahmad song, but I wouldn’t assume that was the first coinage of the phrase.

Herb wrote, “I like ‘back in the day’ because it has style, and it doesn't mean the same thing as olden days or good old days. ... I've seen absolutely no support for the idea it's a black expression.”

But Herb, Ahmad Jones is a black hip-hop singer.

NEAR MISSES

From letter to advice columnist: “I love my friend and would find myself sorely amiss without him.” Wrong, muddled, incorrect ~ she is probably all those things, but here’s a case where tin ear meets leaden tongue.

Here’s another: “She will be dearly missed.” You can love someone dearly, but can you miss someone dearly?

OUR LADY OF CARBON CREDITS

Not long ago I mentioned that a “green” hotel out west has replaced its Gideon Bibles with an Al Gore book in each room. Now a Roman Catholic priest in England has set up a confessional booth made of recycled doors to take confessions about recycling sins. This is an easy sort of religion, once you accept it. At least, my sins of carbon emission and sins of waste commission are much easier to fix than my old-fashioned sins. All I have to do is buy some carbon credits. But as I wrote before, since I’m not actually buying them from the company that’s selling them, I do it mentally. I’m an independent. I know that somewhere in the world there’s a whole village that doesn’t use paper towels. They balance me out. You know, it would be a great idea to give carbon credits as wedding gifts, birthday gifts, and so on. Couples could sign up with the carbon credit registry, and you could start carbon credit accounts for newborn babies and add to their account on every birthday.

(Wait ~ are we headed back toward buying and selling indulgences? I smell a reformation in the wind.)

Here’s another example of the balance of the universe: I was just wondering if PETA people object to referring to pets (“companion animals”) as “it” rather than he or she. They do compare animals to people (e.g., the use of animals is compared ethically to black slavery). PETA cosmically balances out dog-fight promoter Michael Vick. There’s a weird twist of history.

COREX

Mike Sykes pointed out that it was redundant for me to say “sharia law”. Sharia is sufficient. In connection with this, he mentioned “RAS” which I believe is the Royal Astronomical Society? And I guess too many people call it the RAS Society? That’s like saying “ATM machine” (automated teller machine machine). I’m sure you can think of similar examples. But Arabic words are relatively new to us over here. Some of them may undergo the kind of adaptation that other foreign words have in English. We don’t know how it will shake out yet.

YAHASSLE

My Yahoo e-mail suddenly stopped filtering spam a couple of weeks ago, and when I try to write to the Yahoo service mirage, I only get an automated response. I may have to change my e-mail address; but I think I can continue to use @keithops.us. Any ideas about what’s wrong with Yahoo? Any suggestions for a new name?