Category Archives: Reading

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October 21, 2010 · 6:48 am

Anger management

As I was ranting yesterday about the careless Cadillac driver who hit my car and then lied about it, I realized I used a phrase that I didn’t fully understand.

I said that something stuck in my craw. I made a mental note to investigate the origin of the phrase and then never got back to it. I was so steaming mad at myself for being so steaming mad.

I don’t want to be an angry blogger. So I packaged up all the anger I’ve expressed on this blog and filed it under a new Category called “Rants and Raves.” This way, maybe my toxic tantrums can stay tucked tightly away where they can’t infect the other posts.

Eventually I looked up “stick in one’s craw” and confirmed that it meant what I thought: to cause one to feel abiding discontent and resentment.

One source said the phrase comes from something you can’t swallow, based on the literal meaning of craw, which refers to the throat of a bird.

Another source claims “sticks in my craw” is incorrect. She said, “The correct phrase is ‘sticks in my crow.’ ‘Craw’ is a modern corruption of the word ‘crow,’ as in the frequent use of ‘craw’ as verb to describe the sound of crows.” She cited the Oxford English Dictionary.

A blog called Phrase Finder also likened the phrase to having difficulty swallowing something, but elaborated. Citing the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson, the site explained that “The craw is the crop or preliminary stomach of a fowl, where food is predigested. Hunters centuries ago noticed that some birds swallowed bits of stone that were too large to pass through the craw and into the digestive tract. These stones, unlike the sand and pebbles needed by birds to help grind food in the pouch, literally stuck in the craw, couldn’t go down any farther. This oddity became part of the language of hunters and the phrase was soon used figuratively.” 

So many blogs, so many perspectives on one issue.

Then of course, the Urban Dictionary contained an entry or two that aren’t suitable for polite company.

I got to thinking of other sayings that express anger. For example, “This really steams my clams.” “That really burns my biscuits.” “This really grinds my gears.”

Do you have any good ones? Once I rant a good litany, we can move on. I can move on.

Tomorrow I’ll clear my craw and be so cheerful you won’t even recognize me.

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October 18, 2010 · 8:12 am

Purgatorio over the Potomac

If you’re a regular blogger, you may have noticed that, just when you think there can’t possibly anything left to write about, material happens.

It’s odd that yesterday, as with last Sunday, blog fodder presented itself on my way from church. Some might say this is reason not to go to church. My husband argued that today’s little happening is reason to never go to Virginia. He hates Virginia. Even more so, he hates Tyson’s Corner, Virginia.

Long story short, we had to run an errand in Tyson’s Corner after church. The latest round of infernal traffic redesigns would qualify the Tyson’s area as the Ninth of Dante’s Circles of Hell, which is Treachery.

We thought we would make it home with our sanity (and the important item we purchased) when, halfway home, a very large, brand new Cadillac smacked into our car on the Capital Beltway, right in the middle of the American Legion Bridge. Fender benders happen all the time; but the Beltway, which everyone and his brother takes to the Redskins’ FedEx Field, is not the place you want to block a lane of traffic on a Sunday afternoon, especially midway across the Potomac River. I dare say, a few of the motorists who were none too pleased with the delay could use a little churching themselves.

No one was hurt, except my beloved red Nissan, so the event amounts to little more than an inconvenience. But my husband spent Sunday afternoon dealing with insurance companies, which he might equate to both the First Circle of Hell (Limbo) and the Fifth (Wrath and Sullenness) wrapped into one.

One day we’ll look back on this as Divine Comedy.

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October 16, 2010 · 8:52 am

Lest we become urban rubes

At the risk of stirring the good Mr. Webster to spin in his grave, I thought today we might observe his birthday—and National Dictionary Day—with a visit to a more unconventional resource, the online Urban Dictionary.

Given that the Urban Dictionary exercises very few quality standards, I realize this might offend lexicographic purists. Even so, for the sake of balance, we might consider it beneficial, while remaining true to our values, to also remain current with the popular language and slang of our times.

I perused a sampling of the definitions contained within the online Urban Dictionary and immediately came upon one I related to. Post block syndrome (PBS): Similar to writer’s block, only in the context of social networking sites. Unable to come up with post-worthy content.

Here are a few more I found amusing:

Pre-festive: The state of premature holiday celebration by means of decorations, singing, or costume. You might say my blog post of yesterday was pre-festive.

Tongue typo:  What happens when you know perfectly well what you want to say but it comes out wrong. Not to be confused with a tongue taco, the ability to twist one’s tongue into the shape of a taco shell.

Auto incorrect: When the auto-correct feature on your iPhone tries to correct your spelling, but instead changes it to words that just don’t make sense with what you’re typing.

Lap flaps: The flaps found inside magazines that fall out onto your lap.

Finally, here’s one that went over my head for years. My son says it sometimes when we’re talking (or, I suppose, when I’m talking). That’s crazy: The perfect response when you haven’t been listening at all. It works whether the other person has been saying something funny, or sad, or infuriating, or boring….

Well, those are just half a dozen of 5 million definitions contained in the Urban Dictionary. If you have a few spare minutes after properly fêting Noah Webster, check it out. Or go in and add a definition of your own. That’s allowed. Obviously.

Please remember, Word Nymph doesn’t post on Sundays. She’ll be overcoming a bad case of PBS. See you Monday (maybe).

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October 8, 2010 · 8:07 am

An ocean worth pondering

On Wednesday I promised a post on oronyms. I intend to deliver, but first you might want to be sure you’ve had your coffee.

An oronym is a string of words that sounds very much like another, often as a result of sounds running together. For example, “ice cream” sounds like “I scream.” I believe many misunderstood lyrics, or mondegreens, come from oronyms.

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy, of “You might be a redneck” fame, in at least one routine, uses oronyms to poke fun at country folk. Using the word “initiate,” he says, “My wife ate two sandwiches; initiate a bag o’ tater chips.” He sums up the size of his live audience by saying, “Mayonnaise a lot of people here tonight.”

When we talked about mondegreens back in April, a reader brought to my attention the work of Howard L. Chace, who re-wrote “Little Red Riding Hood,” using oronyms. It begins something like this:

Wants pawn term, dare worsted ladle gull hoe lift wetter murder inner ladle cordage, honor itch offer lodge, dock, florist. Disk ladle gull orphan worry putty ladle rat cluck wetter ladle rat hut, an fur disk raisin pimple colder Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.

Wan moaning, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut’s murder colder inset. “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, heresy ladle basking winsome burden barter an shirker cockles. Tick disk ladle basking tutor cordage offer groinmurder hoe lifts honor udder site offer florist. Shaker lake! Dun stopper laundry wrote! Dun stopper peck floors! Dun daily-doily inner florist, an yonder nor sorghum-stenches, dun stopper torque wet strainers!”

If you’d like to find out how the story ends, and if oronyms strike your fancy, you might be interested in Howard L. Chace’s book,  Anguish Languish, in which you can also read all about “Guilty Looks Enter Tree Beers” and “Oiled Murder Harbored.”

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September 30, 2010 · 9:15 am

A penny saved

I don’t know why I don’t read Real Simple magazine more often. Maybe it’s because I want it to be called Really Simple. I do pick it up now and then, or visit the website and always find light-hearted yet interesting features. Today there were two I found equally stimulating: “10 Twists on a Cupcake” and “Fall Cleaning Checklist.”

I saw something else that was fun:  “7 New Uses for a Penny,” based on suggestions readers sent in. Considering that in 2007, SavingAdvice.com  already published “83 Things You Can Do with a Penny,” there now must be 90.

Real Simple reader Rachel Harrison Massa of Stamford, Connecticut, suggested a party icebreaker. “Hand out pennies at your next gathering and ask each guest to share a story that happened during the year his or her penny was minted. If the coin predates a friend, let the person improvise.”

Is there any reason we can’t play that game here? But let’s expand it. If you don’t have a story from the year of your penny, just share something interesting about where you were living or what you were doing that year and maybe name a song that was popular.

I’ll start. I just pulled a penny at random from my ceramic piggy bank.

1995. Coincidentally, that was the year I first heard Congress consider the notion of doing away with the penny altogether. In a hearing in a House Banking subcommittee, an advocacy group called the Coin Coalition was pushing to phase out the penny, as part of its proposal for producing a new one-dollar coin.

A popular CD from 1995: Love and Money by Eddie Money.

Who wants to go next?

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September 23, 2010 · 6:18 am

Vulgarity N through Z

…continued from yesterday

The following words and phrases have been picked from the second half of A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, published in 1787, for your amusement and use.

Nicknackatory:  a toy shop

Nick ninny:  a simpleton

Old Roger:  the devil

Oliver’s skull:  a chamber pot

Peppered:  infected with the venereal disease

Queer rooster:  an informer who pretends to be sleeping, and thereby overhears the conversation of thieves in night cellars

Rabbit catcher:  a midwife

Roast meat clothes:  Sunday clothes

Scotch fiddle:  the itch (Scrubado has the same definition)

Slush bucket:  one who eats much greasy food

Smicket:  a woman’s smock or shift

Stallion:  a man kept by an old lady for secret services

Stewed Quaker:  burned rum with a piece of butter, an American remedy for a cold

Timber toe:  a man with a wooden leg

Uphills:  false dice that run high

Wife in water colours:  a mistress or concubine

There you have it. Thirty-three words and phrases from the days S’s looked like F’s.

Now go out there and confuse your friends and colleagues with your new vulgar tongue.

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September 22, 2010 · 8:03 am

Vulgarity A through M

Some time back, while researching for a blog post, I became aware of a book that I later ordered but didn’t read until now. I might have mentioned it. It’s called A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose.

The book itself was published for the first time in 1787, and there is text within that is much older.

One reason I didn’t read this book in earnest until now is that the print quality is so poor that it’s hard on the eye. But the content is so intriguing that I decided to adjust my glasses and give it some focus.

I’m glad I did.

It was written to compile, according to the preface, “the vulgar allusions and cant expressions that so frequently occur in our conversation and periodical publications…”  The entries are also described as “Pedlar’s French” and “burlesque phrases.” Well, I wasn’t around in the 18th century, but I can’t imagine some phrases ever appearing  in common language or publications. I can tell you a good number of the so-called “quaint allusions” used in that period are as shockingly vulgar as anything one would hear or read today. If you want to read these, you are going to have to purchase the book. But be aware–there obviously was limitless tolerance for certain varieties of ethnic and gender slurs 223 years ago.

It also struck me how many terms that I thought were fairly modern were common so long ago. I’d be too embarrassed to cite examples. 

The dictionary entries aren’t all dirty; some truly are quaint.

So I thought I’d share a few with you. Wouldn’t it be fun to drop one or two into ordinary conversation at work today and see what kind of reaction you get?

Today I’ll be giving the highlights from the first half of the alphabet. If you like them, join me tomorrow for the second half.

Brisket beater:  a Roman Catholic

Clicker:  one who proportions out the different shares of the booty among thieves

Cock-a-whoop:  elevated, in high spirits, transported with joy

Dot and go one:  to waddle, generally applied to persons who have one leg shorter than the other

Flesh-broker:  matchmaker

Frosty face: one pitted with the smallpox

Gollumpus:  a large, clumsy fellow

Hang an arse:  to hang back or hesitate

Hop the twig:  to run away

Huckle my butt:  a hot drink made with beer, egg and brandy (Five dollars to the first person I hear order that at Applebee’s)

Humdurgeon:  an imaginary illness

Irish legs:  thick legs. It is said of the Irish women that they have a dispensation from the Pope to wear the thick end of their legs downwards.

Join giblets:  said of a man and woman who cohabitate

Kickerpoo:  dead

Leaky:  about to blab, as one who cannot keep a secret

Liquor one’s boots:  drink before a journey

Moon-eyed hen:  a squinting wench

To be continued…

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September 18, 2010 · 9:17 am

Edwin Newman

It has been said one can find anything on YouTube. I beg to differ. That is, unless, I am not so adept at searching the ‘net as I thought.

Once the news broke this week of the passing of famed broadcaster, author and grammarian Edwin Newman, I wanted to do a personal tribute, if for no other reason than his devotion to the English language.

This has proven difficult because everything that can be said about Mr. Newman has already been said, by individuals far more knowledgeable and eloquent than I. (If you haven’t read the stories this week, or are too young to have seen him on the air, I encourage you to read about him. Or pick up one of several books he wrote about language.)

I even pulled out my yellowed copy of Strictly Speaking, but even that has already been mined for the best excerpts.

During the earlier half of Edwin Newman’s career as a television journalist, I was too young to appreciate his work. Still, in order to write a meaningful tribute, I wanted to acknowledge his later work as what one paper called him, “a prickly grammarian.”

In poring over volumes of obituaries and tributes, I did come across something I felt illustrated the blend of seriousness and humor for which he was known.

On February 25, 1984, Newman hosted Saturday Night Live. On this show he performed a skit with Julia Louis-Dreyfus in which he manned a suicide hotline; she was the desperate caller. As he heard her plea for help, he interrupted her repeatedly to correct her grammar.

I don’t recall seeing this particular skit, though I would have remembered because I too have been ridiculed for putting grammar ahead of substance, even in serious situations. So I’d really like to see the skit for myself.

For three hours yesterday, I looked for a video clip or transcript, so that I could share it with you. I came up empty.

So I issue this challenge. The first reader who can send in a link to a video clip of this skit—or can produce a transcript—wins a prize. Those of you who participated in and won my Aug. 14 Joint Marketing contest can attest that I make good on my promises.

In the meantime, let us bid farewell to Edwin Newman, a man who served his profession with excellence and integrity, who stood up against the decline and abuse of the English language as he saw it. And who didn’t take himself too seriously to appear on SNL.

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September 16, 2010 · 8:28 am

Validation at last

I cracked open the new issue of Vanity Fair, which was fresh from the mailbox. I got as far as page 96, the October 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll, and found a teensy ray of sunshine. Which, by the way, I needed after reading Graydon Carter’s unusually grim editor’s letter.

If you’re a regular VF reader, then you know it shows how Americans weigh in on the poll’s 10 or so issues each month.

This time, 847 people answered questions on topics ranging from the war in Afghanistan to the likelihood that Sarah Palin would make an effective president; whether tanning salon services should be taxed and the extent to which Mel Gibson’s bad behavior would influence moviegoers’ seeing his latest movie.

Only 37 percent of those responding to the poll said they knew who Emily Post was and what she was known for. As sad as I am about the downward spiraling of etiquette awareness, I am not going to dwell on that here.

Why? Because I am so darned encouraged by the answers to another poll question.

The third question of the poll asked participants, “Of the following, which one do you think is the most overused word in the English language today?” The choices were “like,” “awesome,” “tweet,” “organic” and “hope.”

The top choice was [drumroll] “like.” Finally, it’s not just I being critical and whiny. Others’ ears are aching too.

As if I were not pleased enough to see acknowledgement that this nothingness word has run amok, here’s the cherry on top. Among those who said “like” is the most overused word in the English language, more than twice as many respondents were ages 18 to 44 as were 45 or older. Way to go, young people. Awesome. There is hope. Organic hope. Like, I’m so going to tweet it from the rooftops.

I’ll be optimistic that all of us who believe “like” is overused will stand up and take immediate steps to curb it. Let’s begin with not using “I’m like” in lieu of “I said,” shall we? Then maybe we can aim for good stats from the under 18 crowd.

Now please don’t go and burst my bubble by telling me that 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up.

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September 14, 2010 · 6:08 am

Absolute adjectives confound absolutely

Someone recently took me up on my Red Pen Invitation, which encourages readers to point out my mistakes if they choose. By the way, she wasn’t the first.

Commenting on last Friday’s post about first jobs, the reader questioned my use of “very first,” suggesting the phrase was redundant. She was right to challenge me. There can be only one first.

After giving this some thought, I concluded that my error wasn’t necessarily one of redundancy. Redundancy occurs when both words mean the same thing, e.g., “sum total.” Rather, I was guilty of  inappropriately modifying an absolute adjective.

I should have known better. After all, I’m the first to preach about “very unique.” Something is unique or it isn’t. There’s no “very” about it. 

An absolute adjective cannot be intensified or compared. It can’t be more. It can’t be less. It can’t be very or extremely or somewhat or a little. It just is.

The problem is that there doesn’t appear to be an authoritative list of absolute adjectives, at least that I can find. Maybe it’s an abstract better left as the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart characterized obscenity (and the late Sen. Jesse Helms said about pornography), “I know it when I see it.” 

The obvious ones are: unique, pregnant, perfect, true and, of course, dead. Which won’t keep me from singing the famed lyrics of the Wizard of Oz when, upon the demise of the Wicked Witch of the West, the Munchkin coroner pronounces her “not only merely dead. She’s really, most sincerely dead.”

How well do you know your absolute adjectives? Take this quiz and find out. After you have finished that, maybe you can help me find an absolute list of absolute adjectives. Maybe it doesn’t exist.

Perhaps Theodore M. Bernstein was onto something when he wrote in Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins: The Careful Writer’s Guide to the Taboos, Bugbears, and Outmoded Rules of English Usage, “If one wishes to niggle, almost any adjective can be regarded as an absolute. But common sense tells us to avoid any such binding position.”

All niggling aside, I will add “first” to my list of absolutes.

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