What new words say about society

"The language most likely to continue long without alteration, would be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniencies of life; wither without books, or, like some of the Mahometan countries, with very few: men thus busied and unlearned, having only such words as common use requires, would perhaps long continue to express the same notions by the same signs.

"But no such constancy can be expected in a people polished by arts, and classed by subordination, where one part of the community is sustained and accommodated by the labour of the other. Those who have much leisure to think, will always be enlarging the stock of ideas, and every increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new words, or combinations of words. When the mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice."

-- Samuel Johnson

(Johnson)

Are you p'd off?

Jay Nordlinger writes, "Many years ago, I became aware that “pissed” meant one thing in America, another thing in Britain. One night in London, I asked a man for directions. He said, “Sir, I’m pissed.” He didn’t look angry, though. What he was, was drunk."

His readers chimed in.

My Irish relatives said: "Come on in and we'll have a wee nip and some good crack". Crack meaning conversation over there. 

The Japanese equivalent which is used to express anger, that I used below is kind of odd to us westerners.　腹(hara) belly　立つ(tatsu) to stand up, roughly it a literal translation of ちょー腹立つ！ would be "My belly is really standing up!" but it means I'm really angry (or really p***ed off!).

Another reader:

As an admiral’s aide back in 1993 — the admiral was deputy chief of staff at SACLANT [a component of NATO] — I was exposed to many language differences between the Brits and us. My favorite one: 

British Admiral to Boss’s Wife: “So, what did you like best about living in Charleston, South Carolina?” 

Admiral’s Wife: “I absolutely loved shagging on the beach. My husband is quite the shagger, if you didn’t already know!” 

The British admiral gave no response, and he managed to keep from spitting out his drink. [There’s the British stoicism we know and love so well!] Now, my admiral’s wife was a great lady with a sense of humor. When I explained to her the difference in meanings, she almost passed out, she laughed so hard.

In Britain, Nordlinger explains, for the uninitiated (if that’s the word), shagging means copulating. I wrote back to the reader, “Just to be clear: Did you mean to say that the admiral and his wife hit golf balls on the beach?” (To shag is to practice golf shots, as on a range.) He said, “No — the shag is a dance they do in the Carolinas.” I had no idea.

GE, OC

If you think texting and tweeting are bringing the language to its knees, you will be ROFL over these abbreviations used in the era of the telegram -- you do remember those, right?

ABT About

BTR Better

B4 Before

C Yes; correct

CUL See you later

FB Fine business (Analogous to "OK")

GA Good afternoon or Go ahead (depending on context)

GE Good evening

GL Good luck

GM Good morning

GN Good night

HI Humour intended

OB Old boy

OC Old chap

OM Old man

OT Old timer

SED Said

SEZ Says

TNX Thanks

TXT Text

CUL!

Why we don't say what we mean

Language is a good entrée into human nature, Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University, says. For example, why can't we just spit it out?

What I’m studying now is the interface between language and the rest of the mind – how language can illuminate our social relationships.  For example, why does so much of language veiled, or indirect, or done via innuendo rather than people blurting out exactly what they mean? Why do I say, “If you could pass the salt that would be great?” instead of “Give me the salt.”  Why does someone make a sexual overture in terms of, “Would you like to come up and see my etchings?” rather than, “Do you want to have sex?”  Why are threats so often veiled you know, “Nice store you got there. Would be a real shame if something happened to it.”

Given that the listener knows exactly what the speaker had in mind, it’s not that anyone is fooled by this charade; but nonetheless some aspect of the social relationship seems to be preserved if the request is slipped in between the lines. I’m interested in what that says about human relationships, about hypocrisy and taboo. Also what it says about the kinds of relationships we have like dominance versus intimacy, and communality versus exchange and reciprocity.

Just to be concrete, why do you say, “If you could pass the salt that would be great.” Well, in issuing an imperative, you’re kind of changing the relationship. You’re turning it into one of dominance. You’re saying to a friend or to a stranger, “I’m going to act as if I can boss you around and presuppose your compliance.” You may not want to move the relationship in that direction. At the same time you want the damn salt. So if you say, “If you could pass the salt that would be great,” it’s such a non sequitor that the intelligence of the listener can figure out that it really is a request.  But both of you know that you haven’t actually turned the relationship into a superior-inferior.  I think that’s the key to understanding all of these.

That the sexual overture, the veiled threat, the veiled bribe and so on are ways of preserving one of several kinds of relationships at the same time as we transact the business of life such as requests, such as sexual overtures that might be inconsistent with the relationship that we have with the person.

It would be kinda nice if you would comment on this and share this blog with others. Just saying.

Everyday expressions

(Thanks, Lainey)

Circle the wagons!

Metaphor Alert!

Chris Wallace: "And you hear about Democrats talking about House races pulling back and basically throwing some incumbent Democrats under the bus, saying, 'You know, we're just not going to spend money on those races because they're going to lose,' and circling the wagon, building their firewall tighter and tighter, while Republicans are pouring money into an expanding battlefield." Brit Hume: "That is the trajectory of the race. There's no doubt about that, Chris."--"Fox News Sunday," Oct. 17

-- Best of The Web Today

On the verge

Metaphor Alert!

"With the Democratic Party on the verge of sinking to the bottom of the barrel, I think it's time that African-Americans supporters jump ship and find themselves a new mode of transportation. . . . African-Americans have been the backbone of the party and its most loyal supporters. Like the orchestra that played on the Titanic, blacks have always gone down with the ship while everyone else is scrambling to find a safety net or a lifeboat. Even in the good times, Africans-Americans [sic] still find themselves on the short end of the stick."--Adolph Mongo, Detroit News, Oct. 14

-- Best of The Web Today

Metaphor alert!

From The Wall Street Journal's Best of The Web Today blog:

Metaphor Alert

• "As their political lives flash before their eyes, House Democrats who marched in lockstep with the president and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are now running from the sinking ship."--Jennifer Rubin, Commentary website, Sept. 20

• "I think the American people feel that too many programs have come down. There are so many rocks in our knapsack now that we're having trouble carrying it. I think the president has to, like a, like a, like a razor blade, just go right after the single issue that is uppermost in the minds of the American people and that's employment."--Colin Powell, "Meet the Press," Sept. 19

The single best blog post ever

The public editor of The New York Times, Arthur S. Brisbane, starts a new blog with a post on superlatives. He discusses a news article about medical research that used the term "100 percent."

There's a red flag, Junior Editor Man!

My take is that danger awaits stories that venture into the land of 100% — or any other absolute, for that matter. Stories that report on something that is a “first,” a “biggest,” an “only”; stories that employ “never,” and stories that predict with absolute certainty are often headed for trouble. Yes, sometimes an absolute is absolutely right, but many, many times there is a crack of imperfection there.

Good point. There's only one bestest mostest of anything, as this blog proves, and you have to be sure you've got the real McCoy.

Think of the word "cat"

Alix Spiegel at NPR asks us to think about symbols:

In order to have language, any language, you need to be able to think symbolically.
Think of the word "cat."

Even though the written word C-A-T looks nothing like a cat, and the spoken word "cat" sounds nothing like a cat sounds, when someone says the word out loud, you're able to conjure up an image.

Language, says Alison Brooks, an anthropology professor at George Washington University, is entirely composed of these arbitrary symbols.

"Every sound that comes out of my mouth has some kind of arbitrary meaning assigned to it," she says. "I could just as well be talking to you in another language and making totally different sounds and saying the same thing."

The miracle is that these arbitrary sounds — these symbols — allow us to see what's going on in other people's minds and also allows us to share what's going on in ours.

For example, if I say the word "bead" you immediately have a picture in your mind of what I'm talking about. If I said beads, you'd generate a slightly different picture in your mind, that I have made your mind form. If I said glass beads — using an adjective to modify the concept — you'd immediately see something different than if I said gold beads. In this way, I make you think in your mind of a thing that I have in my mind.

And once we have this ability for symbolic thought and language then all kinds of things become possible. Through language we can pass down what we've learned, organize larger and larger groups of people who can do more and more complex things like build bridges and schools and computers and practically everything else in modern life.

Use short words

“Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.” 

-- Winston Churchill

A style guide at The Economist has this to say:

Use them. They are often Anglo-Saxon rather than Latin in origin. They are easy to spell and easy to understand. Thus prefer about to approximately, after to following, let to permit, but to however, use to utilise, make to manufacture, plant to facility, take part to participate, set up to establish, enough to sufficient, show to demonstrate and so on. Underdeveloped countries are often better described as poor. Substantive often means real or big.

You really don't want to be this:

sesquipedalianism \ses-kwi-PEED-l-iz-uhm\, adjective:

1. Given to using long words.
2. (Of a word) containing many syllables.

It is very true that when the experiment of dictating is first tried, the luxury of the ease it gives is apt to be so great, that it tends to looseness and verbosity of style; for there is no better check on sesquipedalianism than the necessity of writing down one's sesquipedalian words for one's self.

-- Christian Examiner, Volume 72

History: 1615, from L. sesquipedalia verba "words a foot-and-a-half long," in Horace's "Ars Poetica" (97), nicely illustrating the thing he is criticizing, from sesqui- "half as much again" (see sesquicentennial) + pes "foot"

-- Dictionary.com

Your editor has a word for you

illeism / il-lee-iz-êm / noun


1. The use of a third person pronoun (he or she) referring to oneself or someone expected to be addressed as you.  
2. The use of third person expressions in referring to yourself as, "Stop asking me the same thing. Your dad has (= I have) said 'no' and that is the end of it."

Dr. Goodword:

My favorite illeist remains Rumpole of the Bailey in the BBC series of the same name. Horace Rumpole, played admirably for several seasons by Leo McKern, refers to his wife as "She who must be obeyed": "Yes, She who must be obeyed has spoken and I can but submit to her will," is a paraphrase of many of his responses to her requests. We also hear illeisms, though, in children who haven't quite mastered the shift of the pronouns I and you. Children cannot make out early on why they are sometimes I, sometimes you, so they are likely to say things like, "Mikey want to play outside" rather than, "I want to play outside." 

History: It is a little odd to create an English word out of a pronoun (nouns, verbs, and adjectives are usually objects of our borrowing) but illeism is based on the Latin third person singular pronoun ille "he" (illa "she", illud "it"). We see the remnants of ille and illa today in words like French il "he" and elle "she" and Spanish él and ella. The word originally meant "that" and, just as unaccented that became the in English, Latin ille and illa became "the" in French (le, la) and Spanish el, la.

Mark my solecisms

solecism / SOL-uh-siz-uhm / noun:

1. A nonstandard usage or grammatical construction; also, a minor blunder in speech.
2. A breach of good manners or etiquette.
3. Any inconsistency, mistake, or impropriety.

Her English is good, apart from a few stubborn idiosyncrasies of preposition and tense, but these are music to me, sung solecisms -- how else to describe "I am already loving you," her first declaration of feeling for me, now two years old?
-- Ronan Bennett, The Catastrophist

History: Solecism comes from Latin soloecismus, from Greek soloikizein, "to speak incorrectly," from soloikos, "speaking incorrectly," literally, "an inhabitant of Soli," a city in ancient Cilicia where a dialect regarded as substandard was spoken.

Reading or listening

John McWhorter writing for TNR.com:

"Why does Sarah Palin talk the way she does? . . . [She] is given to meandering phraseology of a kind suggesting someone more commenting on impressions as they enter and leave her head rather than constructing insights about them. . . .

The easy score is to flag this speech style as a sign of moronism. But we have to be careful—there is a glass houses issue here. Before parsing Palinspeak we have to understand the worldwide difference between spoken and written language—and the fact that in highly literate societies, we tend to have idealized visions of how close our speech supposedly is to the written ideal.

"Namely, linguists have shown that spoken utterances—even by educated people (that is, even you)—average seven to ten words. We speak in little packets. And the result is much baggier than we think of language as being, because we live under the artificial circumstance of engaging language so much on the page, artificially enshrined, embellished, and planned out."

If you can't say something nice

From Maggie's Farm:

"Euphemisms are about creating an illusion of a nursery school pretty pony and rainbow view of the world in which evil does not exist, in which we can all get along if only we wanted to, and in which we can all be anything we want, if only we would label things properly.

"Rabid Jihadists and criminals become "the oppressed," kids who cannot read well become "learning disabled," klutzes become "hand-eye coordination impaired," the socially-awkward become "Asperger's," global warming becomes "climate change," housing developments in swamps become "Riverview Estates" - and Killer Whales become cuddly "Orcas" (so as not to offend their delicate sensibilities, no doubt)."

Squad helps dog bite victim

Classic newspaper headlines:

“Giant Waves Down Queen Mary’s Funnel,”

“MacArthur Flies Back to Front”

“Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans” 

“Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim"

“Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge”

For years, there was no good name for these double-take headlines, Ben Zimmer writes in The New York Times. Last August, however, one emerged in the Testy Copy Editors online discussion forum. Mike O’Connell, an American editor based in Sapporo, Japan, spotted the headline “Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms” and wondered, “What’s a crash blossom?” (The article, from the newspaper Japan Today, described the successful musical career of Diana Yukawa, whose father died in a 1985 Japan Airlines plane crash.) Another participant in the forum, Dan Bloom, suggested that “crash blossoms” could be used as a label for such infelicitous headlines that encourage alternate readings, and news of the neologism quickly spread.

Zimmer has more:

“McDonald’s Fries the Holy Grail for Potato Farmers”

“British Left Waffles on Falklands”

“Gator Attacks Puzzle Experts”

How do we explain crash blossoms?

Zimmer: Nouns that can be misconstrued as verbs and vice versa are, in fact, the hallmarks of the crash blossom. English is especially prone to such ambiguities. Since English is weakly inflected (meaning that words are seldom explicitly modified to indicate their grammatical roles), many words can easily function as either noun or verb. And it just so happens that plural nouns and third-person-singular present-tense verbs are marked with the exact same suffix, “-s.” In everyday spoken and written language, we can usually handle this sort of grammatical uncertainty because we have enough additional clues to make the right choices of interpretation. But headlines sweep away those little words — particularly articles, auxiliary verbs and forms of “to be” — robbing the reader of crucial context. If that A.P. headline had read “McDonald’s Fries Are the Holy Grail for Potato Farmers,” there would have been no crash blossom for our enjoyment.

There's a bathroom on the right

When she was a child, the American writer Sylvia Wright recalled, her mother read aloud to her from "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," and one of her favorite poems began, as she remembered:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl O'Murray,
And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is, "And laid him on the green."

In an essay in 1954, "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," Wright  explained the need for a new term. "The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original."

Among the more well-known mondegreens:

• Surely Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life ("Surely goodness and mercy…" from Psalm 23)
• Gladly, the cross-eyed bear(from the line in the hymn, "Keep Thou My Way" ("Kept by Thy tender care, gladly the cross I'll bear")
• 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy (from a lyric in the song "Purple Haze", by Jimi Hendrix: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky").

And, of course ...

There's a bathroom on the right (the line at the end of each verse of "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival: "There's a bad moon on the rise") 

And a few more:

• "The girl with colitis goes by." (Real lyric: "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes," Beatles)
• "Olive, the other reindeer." (Real lyric: "All of the other reindeer.")
• "The ants are my friends, they're blowing in the wind." (Real lyric: "The answer is blowing in the wind," Bob Dylan.)
• "There's a wino down the road." (Real lyric: "And as we wind on down the road," Led Zeppelin.)
• "In a glob of Velveeta, honey." (Real lyric: "In-A-Gadda Da Vida," a.k.a., "In the garden of Eden," Iron Butterfly.)

And per se and

The ampersand -- & -- has an interesting history.

The ampersand can be traced back to the first century AD. It was originally a ligature of the letters E and T (”et” is Latin for and). If you look at the modern ampersand, you’ll likely still be able to see the E and T separately.

The first ampersands looked very much like the separate E and T combined, but as type developed over the next few centuries, it eventually became more stylized and less representative of its origins.

You can see the evolution of the ampersand below (1 is like the original Roman ligature, 2 and 3 are from the fourth century, and 4-6 are from the ninth century).

The modern ampersand has remained largely unchanged from the Carolignian ampersands developed in the ninth century.

And there's more:

The word ampersand is a corruption of the phrase "and per se ("through itself") and", meaning "and [the symbol which] by itself [is] and".

Traditionally, in English-speaking schools when reciting the alphabet, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself ("A," "I," and, at one point, "O") was preceded by the Latin expression "per se" (Latin for "by itself"). Also, it was common practice to add at the end of the alphabet the "&" sign, pronounced "and". Thus, the recitation of the alphabet would end in: "X, Y, Z and per se and." This last phrase was routinely slurred to "ampersand" and the term crept into common English usage by around 1837. 

And that's it.

Block that metaphor

From James Taranto and Best of The Web Today:

Metaphor Alert

"[Harry] Reid, 70, is fighting for his political survival. He has been a fixture in the state for 40 years, and he's worried that the last thing voters want is a Reid dynasty. . . . Instead of getting credit for putting down insurrections and wrangling his fellow Democrats into passing a health-care reform bill on Christmas Eve, Harry Reid is getting hosed for it. Republican leaders were licking their lips at the prospect of picking him off. And that was before Reid had to activate a one-man phone tree of apology this weekend for what he called 'improper comments' he made during the 2008 presidential campaign about Barack Obama's light skin and absence of 'Negro dialect.' "--Washington Post, Jan. 12

Are you saying what you really mean?

Here are some common phrases that don't mean what we think they mean.

1. I could care less
What you think it means: "I couldn't care less."
What it actually means: You actually do care.

2. It begs the question
Would you think it means: To ask or raise a question
What it actually means: To use an argument that assumes as proved the very thing one is trying to prove.

3. Let's table this
What you think it means: To discuss something later
What it actually means: This is tricky, because in the United States, it means what you think it does. But it means the exact opposite -- "let's discuss this right now" -- in most of the rest of the English-speaking world. Best not to be used in any international setting.

4. I did a 360
What you think it means: Completely changing your opinion.
What it actually means: Your opinion changed, but then changed back to your original opinion.

5. PIN number
What you think it means: A non-repetitive way to refer to your personal identification number
What it actually means: That you're being redundant. Especially when you use your PIN number at the ATM machine.

6. Lion's share
What you think it means: The greatest of multiple shares
What it actually means: You're not technically incorrect, because, over time this has become one of the phrase's definitions. But the phrase originally comes from an Aesop's Fable in which the lion took all -- not the largest -- of the shares. Because that's what lions tend to do.

7. The exception that proves the rule
What you think it means: Any counterexample to a rule proves the rule. For example, if you said you only date blondes, but somebody pointed out the time you dated a brunette, you might say that it is "the exception that proves the rule." This popular usage makes no sense at all.
What it actually means: The idiom actually does make sense -- but you have to think about it along the lines of the exception proves that a rule exists. For example," No parking on Saturdays" would mean that you can park in the spot any other day of the week.

8. I am nauseous.
What you think it means: I have a sick feeling in my stomach.
What it actually means: It depends. Prior to World War II, you'd have been clearly saying, "I make other people sick," and the correct term would have been "I am nauseated." However, over time, the usage has shifted to the point that many language experts have deemed "I am nauseous" as an acceptable explanation of your own queasiness. Just be careful using that term around the old folks' home.


(Thanks, Lainey)