Is it "healthy" or "healthful?" Or just nauseous?

R.L.G., whoever that is, at The Economist's Johnson blog, gives us a healthy, or maybe healthful, dose:

I just remembered how irritating I find the distinction a strange minority of English-speaking natives insist on: that "healthy" can only mean "in a state of health", and that "healthful" must be used to describe green vegetables, exercise and other things that make a person healthy.

Both norma loquendi and slightly more rarefied usage tests back me up: "healthy food" is about 20 times as common as "healthful food" on Google. And Google's N-Gram Viewer shows that while "healthful food" (the red line) was about as common as "healthy food" (the blue line) in books until 1980 or so, "healthy food" has been the overwhelming usage since.

I think the insistence on "healthful" is an over-eager application of the principle that one word can't mean both "causing X" and "experiencing X". Many sticklers don't like "nauseous" for the state of feeling nausea. But plenty of words do such double-duty, like "suspicious" and "doubtful", without raising ire. Both a criminal and a detective can be suspicious (in very different ways), and both a piece of evidence and a sceptical judge can be doubtful.

But "nauseated", at least, is fighting a decent rear-guard battle. "Healthful food" is particularly obnoxious to me because it flies in the face of overwhelming native English practice.

I hate flies in my face.

Ptahhotep: a craftsman in speech

"Be a craftsman in speech that thou mayest be strong, for the strength of one is the tongue, and speech is mightier than all fighting."

-- Ptahhotep

Are book shelf makers the new buggy whip makers?

The publishing tide is shifting fast: E-book sales in February topped all other formats, including paperbacks and hardcovers, according to an industry report released this week, CNNMoney reports.

E-book sales totaled $90.3 million in February, up 202% compared to the same month a year earlier, according to a study from the Association of American Publishers. That put e-books at No. 1 "among all categories of trade publishing" that month -- the first time e-books have beaten out traditional publishing formats.

Blame it on Santa Claus.

The AAP report attributed February's strong numbers to a post-holiday e-book buying surge by consumers who received e-readers devices as gifts.

Even bigger changes are coming, one industry insider says.

Earlier this month, Barnes & Noble executive Marc Parrish forecast that traditional book retailers have just two years to adapt to an e-book-centric industry. 

"The book business is changing more radically now, and quicker, than movies or music or newspapers have, because we're doing it in a matter of months," Parrish said at GigaOm's Structure Big Data conference in New York. "[The] next 24 months is when this business will totally shift."

What am I going to use to prop the door open?

What (the right) words can do

(Thanks, Pat)

You can read this, or you can set your house on fire

A false choice is a type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options. It is also called a false dilemma, a false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice, black and white thinking or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses.

Look for this when politicians are speaking. Ruth Marcus notes:

As a rhetorical device, particularly as a political rhetorical device, the false choice has outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any. The phrase has become a trite substitute for serious thinking. It serves too often to obscure rather than to explain. 

The false-choice dodge takes three overlapping forms. The first, a particular Obama specialty, is the false false choice. Set up two unacceptable extremes that no one is seriously advocating and position yourself as the champion of the reasonable middle ground between these unidentified straw men.

Thus, Obama on health care, stretching back to the presidential campaign: "I reject the tired old debate that says we have to choose between two extremes: government-run health care with higher taxes - or insurance companies without rules denying people coverage," he said in 2008. "That's a false choice." It's also a choice that no one - certainly no other politician - was proposing.

Or Obama on financial reform: "We need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people." Again, please find me the advocate of either extreme.

Another thing to look for when politicians are speaking: if their mouths are moving, they're lying.

It's always about you

Novelist Howard Jacobson, writing about writing, stumbles upon something even bigger. He writes:

For some of us, part of the ambition to be a novelist is the desire to blot out the ignominies of youth. That's a mistake. The ignominy of being young is a wonderful subject. I would even go so far as to say that consciousness of early embarrassment is indispensable to a novelist. It militates against the biggest sin in novel writing—especially in the writing of novels that excavate the self—which is grandiosity. 

Take yourself too seriously and you're sunk. Me, me, me, me. There's only so much of that a reader can tolerate. A periodic "I" count is always a good idea, though it's not the number of them that matters; it's the spirit of their employment. Catch yourself writing an "I" too many times (and this, too, is a decision about rhythm, again like tap-dancing), and you should either start crossing out or make the self-obsession ludicrous in itself. A first-person comic novel that doesn't know there's something preposterous about a first-person comic novel is already not a good first-person comic novel.

A fellow I know, who led a job networking group and was knowledgeable about job searching, was seeking a position in a non-profit organization. He tried to write a letter without using "I" once. I tend to think that's impossible, but the sentiment is quite valid. Employers don't care as much about what you need as what they need.

It's a lovely, sunny Sunday afternoon, with a crisp chill in the air, so perhaps we should make even more of this, something about humility in dealing with others. Then again, perhaps not.

Surrounded by newspeak

Roger Kimball writes:

When I wrote about what Obama’s minions are calling our “kinetic military activity” in Libya, I noted that the folks presiding over Orwell’s Newspeak would have liked the phrase “kinetic military activity.” As a mendacious and evasive euphemism for “war” it is hard to beat. But Orwell is not the only important thinker the Obama administration’s assault on the English language brings to mind. There is also Confucius. 

Asked by a disciple how to rule a state properly, Confucius replies that it begins with rectifying the names: 

“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be conducted successfully. When affairs cannot be conducted successfully, propriety will not flourish. When propriety does not flourish, punishments will not be properly meted out. When punishments are not properly meted out, the people will not know how to conduct themselves.”

That was written about 475 B.C. When will we catch up with its wisdom?

Uh, when the teleprompter breaks?

Something is always imminent

But it's not always eminent.

Robert Beard, PhD, Linguistics, who runs alphaDictionary.com, clears up the confusion.

Imminent means impending, about to occur, just around the corner.

Eminent means "outstanding, towering above others", as an eminent linguist or eminent businessman.

Immanent (with an A instead of an I) means "inherent, indwelling", as immanent rather than externally enforced goodness.

Emanant, with two As, is rarely used these days but remains fair game. It means "issuing from some source", as the emanant goodness of the heart or an emanant cloud on the horizon.

Eminem is a rapper. I just threw this in to see if anyone is paying attention. 

One might say that this blog's eminence is immanent. Then again one might not.

Play ball!

advertent / æd-vêrt-ênt / adjective

Attentive, heedful, aware.

This rarely used word, Dr. Goodword writes,  is the adjective of the verb advert "take heed of, pay attention to" (as opposed to avert "turn away from"). Its negative correlate, inadvertent "inattentive, heedless" is used so much more frequently, it is often taken as an orphan negative, a negative without a corresponding positive. The verb is also related to advertisement, a noun which the British reduce to advert, too. Americans trim it all the way back to ad.

If you studied Latin, as I did, you'll know something of the history of this word.

Advertent  comes to us from Latin advertere "turn toward," from ad "toward" + vertere "to turn"—hmm...adds up, doesn't it? Both the English words versus and adverse are related to this Latin stem. The root that morphed into this Latin verb came into the Germanic languages as *werth, which ended up as English -ward "in the direction of", heard in words like toward, westward, and homeward. We should also be advertent of the fact that the E and R traded places at some point in a process known as metathesis, so that the same root gave us writhe and wreath, both involved somehow with turning.

If you're in a lurch, what exactly are you in?

Yes, you're in a difficult position without help, but where did this word lurch come from? A nifty site called The Phrase Finder explains.

First, we dispose of two common ideas.

Dying to lie in a lych.

There are suggestions that lurch is a noun that originated from lich -- the Old English word for corpse. Lych-gates are roofed churchyard entrances that adjoin many old English churches and are the appointed place for coffins to be left when waiting for the clergyman to arrive to conduct a funeral service. To be 'left in the lych/lurch' was to be in dire straits indeed. 

Another theory goes that jilted brides would be 'left in the lych' when the errant bridegroom failed to appear for a wedding. Both theories are plausible but there's no evidence to support either and, despite the superficial appeal of those explanations, 'lych' and 'lurch' aren't related. 

Oh dear. Let's move on.

In fact, the phrase originates from the French board game of lourche or lurch, which was similar to backgammon and was last played in the 17th century (the rules having now been lost). Players suffered a lurch if they were left in a hopeless position from which they couldn't win the game. The card game of cribbage, or crib, also has a 'lurch' position which players may be left in if they don't progress half way round the peg board before the winner finishes.

This gets interesting, especially for you lefties out there.

The game came to England from continental Europe and its name derives from the word 'left', which is 'lurtsch' in dialect German and 'loyrtz' in Middle Dutch. Why call a game 'left'? The most plausible explanation (and regular readers will know that, in etymology, plausibility isn't everything) is that it relates to the bad feeling against the left hand that was then commonplace in many cultures. In English we have held on to this with the word 'sinister', which derives from the Latin for 'left', whereas 'dextrous' derives from the Latin for 'right'.

Everything is coming clear. I mean, didn't you always, you know, suspect something about lefties?