January 21, 2011 · 8:57 am

Retort-challenged

Let us all take a lesson from a recent conversation at Pier 1 Imports.

I:  Excuse me, ma’am. Do you carry slipcovers?
SALESWOMAN:  No, we don’t.
I:  Would you happen to know of a store near here that does?
SALESWOMAN:  No, ever since ‘shabby chic’ went out of style, no one is making slipcovers anymore.
I:

I was in the car before I noticed my jaw was still hanging down around my neck.

What does one say after hearing a comment so mean-spirited? Where’s Winston Churchill when you need him? He was the king, rather, the prime minister, of snappy comebacks (“If I were your husband, I’d drink it”).

Driving home last night, after having been verbally assaulted at Pier 1, I suddenly remembered similar comments I’d received. This wasn’t the first time I’d been the object of a stinging, though perhaps well-meaning, insult. But my reaction has always been the same: stunned silence.

Because I’ve diagnosed myself with a watered-down version of Marilu Henner’s autobiographical memory, I can recall when each of these conversations took place.

March 1983.  After starting my first job out of college, I saved three paychecks to be able to afford a pair of shoes I wanted. They were two-toned, brown and tan Vaneli pumps. I loved them. The first time I wore them to work, a woman in the office said, “I like your shoes. I used to wear shoes like that, back when they were in style.”

August 1990.  An industry colleague approached me at a conference and asked me when my baby was due. I wasn’t expecting. It was then I started paying attention to my posture. And ditched that spongy double-breasted jacket.

April 1991. A woman seeing me try on a dress suggested, “Maybe it would look better if you wore a push-up bra.” I was wearing one.

March 2010. At a party, another guest, whom I didn’t know well, said, “You look great tonight. Not a lot of women would have the courage to wear pants like that.”

These obviously made an impression on me; otherwise I’d have forgotten them by now. Maybe now that I’ve aired them, I will.

What’s the worst candy-coated insult you’ve ever received? Better yet, who, besides Winston Churchill, can give me a snappy comeback? I’ll write it down and keep it handy for next time. It’ll be my retort card.

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January 20, 2011 · 9:38 am

Slippery salmonella

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, sometimes referred to as the “food police,” is the advocacy group we love to hate. In reality, they do mountains of good in heightening public awareness about healthy eating—by telling us the ugly truth about our favorite indulgences, from buttered popcorn to Mexican food.

Yesterday, the group released a study on food safety, showing how well each of our 50 states detects, investigates and combats food-borne illness. I am proud to say that my state was one of only seven to receive an “A.”

That’s neither here nor there.

Call it the curse of the word nymph, but what made me take notice was not the data but the delivery. A word nymph can detect a mixed metaphor faster than a wood nymph can spot a bull thistle.

In announcing the study, CSPI safety director Caroline Smith DeWaal said, “If a consumer calls and says they have a food-borne illness but there’s no one there to investigate the cause, then outbreaks are just slipping under the radar screen.”

Did she mean “slipping under the radar?” Or did she mean “slipping off the radar screen?”

I’d say, technically, the answer could be both, but not in the same sentence.

What’s the difference? The first originates from “flying below the radar,” which is to go undetected or unnoticed. To be on someone’s radar screen is to receive his or her attention. To be off a person’s radar screen means the person is unaware.

The difference in meaning is extremely subtle, so perhaps I niggle. And yet, hearing the mixed metaphor on the news last night left me with a messy mental image. When Ms. Smith DeWaal said that outbreaks are “slipping under the radar screen,” I immediately wanted to swab the radar screen, and the control panel below it, with an antibacterial wipe.

Did anyone else have the same gut reaction?

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January 19, 2011 · 8:46 am

Sargent at peace

Sometimes the smallest and simplest memories are the ones we carry most closely.

Hearing news of the death of Sargent Shriver brings to mind a sweet memory of a moment I’ll never forget.

In 1994, I was volunteering for a friend who was running for the Maryland Senate. One day, I received a call from a colleague, similarly helping a friend of hers who was running for the Maryland House of Delegates. She had come to an event for my friend and was asking me to come to one for hers. She had organized a meet-and-greet function for him in the community and wanted to ensure a good turnout. Would I show up to meet her candidate, Mark Shriver (who, eight years later, ran against my friend in the primary for a House of Representatives seat, but that’s another story altogether).

I told my colleague, no, I couldn’t attend, because my husband was out of town and I had no one with whom I could leave my five-year-old son.

She said, “Bring him,” assuring me the event would be very informal. They’d be serving six-foot subs on paper plates in a recreation hall. “Your son would be welcome.”

On our way there, I explained to my first-grader what we’d be doing. He was no stranger to political events, and I had no doubt he’d behave himself. He had, in fact, once been to the home of Ethel Kennedy, so I tried to make the Kennedy-Shriver connection. I might have even told him that Mark Shriver’s father had run for Vice President of the Unites States in 1972; I can’t recall. Still, I was a little nervous about how others would regard a young child being there.

There was indeed a very good turnout. I introduced us to a few people, met the guest of honor and shook the obligatory number of hands, while tending to my son. Then I got us plates of food and the two of us sat down at an empty table for four, trying to stay out of the way of event supporters and VIPs.

Before long, with plenty of seats open at the surrounding tables, an older couple walked over with their plates and asked if they could sit with us.

“Of course, please join us,” I said, only then noticing they were Eunice and Sargent Shriver, who were there to support their son. The room was filled with voters and potential donors and they chose to sit with us.

What I remember most is how gracious they were with my son. They asked him about school, sports and hobbies, so respectfully and with such interest. They took time to listen to him.

So often, at these kinds of events, the person you are facing is looking over your shoulder, surveying the room  for someone more important to talk to. But for those 20 minutes or so, my son and I were the only people in the room, as far as the Shrivers were concerned.

They’re both gone now. Eunice died in 2009 and Sargent joined her yesterday. My son remembers them only vaguely these 17 years later, but they made a lifelong impression on me.

Rest in peace, gentle souls. You touched millions of lives here on Earth, but I am grateful for the night you touched mine.

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January 18, 2011 · 10:12 am

Best in class

It might be irreverent to say it in this movie awards season, and I might just be a minority of one, but I wish they’d bring back the American Comedy Awards.

Everything that can be said about Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards has been said, by those far more in the know than I. To prove how out of touch I am, my favorite movies (drama and comedy) of the last two years didn’t receive significant mention; this is shaping up to be the third. Gran Torino in 2008 and Pirate Radio in 2009 went un-hyped. This year, one of my faves, Get Low, which featured one of Robert Duvall’s best acting performances to date, hasn’t really even been mentioned. Maybe Oscar will take notice.

What really baffles me about the Golden Globes is the make-up of their “Musical or Comedy” category and, specifically, why The Kids Are All Right was deemed a comedy. I watched it yesterday and didn’t laugh once, and wondered if there was simply a shortage of comedies and musicals and it just got stuffed in there for balance. I liked the movie well enough, and agreed that both Annette Bening and Julianne Moore deserved nominations for their acting, but can’t for the life of me understand the comedy designation.

Comedies don’t typically get serious nods during award season anyway. They’re often too raunchy for serious consideration. It seems that good comedies are rarer each year. Perhaps, rather than lump them in awkwardly with movies like The Kids Are Alright, comedies should have awards all their own. The question is: are there enough good ones?

I’d think that anyone with a bit of smarts and a working funny bone would enjoy two hours in a theater laughing until the tears flow—without toilet jokes,  off-color ethnic jabs or in-your-face genital humor.

In 2001, the year in which the American Comedy Awards were last held, Best in Show, perhaps the best of director Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries, took Funniest Motion Picture, Funniest Supporting Actor (Fred Willard) and Funniest Supporting Actress (Catherine O’Hara). It’s hard to find better comedy than that.

Word has it that MTV and Comedy Central are starting new comedy awards to air this April. I hear many comedic greats are involved, including Phil Rosenthal of Everybody Loves Raymond. This gives me hope that a void will be filled.

Otherwise, with no serious award to strive for, what’s the incentive to make a good comedy any more, except to entertain a country and a world in desperate need of intelligent humor?

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January 17, 2011 · 11:41 am

Much ado

It makes me sad when I hear a really interesting word, begin to adopt it into my own vocabulary and then, nearly overnight, hear it thrown about willy-nilly, having lost its distinctive meaning.

This makes me think about the first girls to wear Ugg boots. I still don’t own any because, by the time I became aware of them, they had already saturated the fashion scene and were being worn in places where they have no use, such as at formal events or in the desert Southwest.  There’s a narrow window in which to enjoy something novel before it’s over- or mis-used.

We were watching a morning news program yesterday, a story about a Tacoma, Washington, boy having been sent home from school for wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey. The Seattle-based reporter ended the piece, naming the incident a “kerfuffle.” I said to my husband, “I love that word, ‘kerfuffle.’” Just then, our local news anchor said, “I love that word, ‘kerfuffle.’”  The horse is out of the barn.

“Kerfuffle” isn’t a new word and, from what I understand, the British adapted the Scottish “cerfuffle” and made it theirs long ago. It’s just that we don’t hear it all that often. It’s fancy and delicate and best saved for special occasions, much like Grandmother’s white lace tablecloth.

Whereas “kerfuffle” has long referred to commotion, fuss, brouhaha or misunderstanding, it seems many are using it almost euphemistically, to trivialize more heated or violent incidents. One literary blog elaborates.

Other words describing social conflict have evolved over time.

I remember studying the word “altercation” for a vocabulary test in grade school. The definition I memorized was “a wordy quarrel.” Webster’s defines it as a “noisy argument.” News writers and broadcasters now use “altercation” to describe a fist fight, even an incident involving gunfire. They also describe a barroom brawl as a “melee,” a term that has typically referred to combat situations.

As we’ve observed here lately, there is a place for language evolution, though I’m sad to see distinctive words become watered down through overuse. Perhaps there’s also a place for Grandma’s lace tablecloth for Tuesday’s hamburgers; just don’t get ketchup on it.

I missed the Uggs boat and, clearly, my new favorite word is aboard a train that has left the station.

It’s just a simple observation. I won’t make a kerfuffle out of it.

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January 15, 2011 · 11:01 am

What’s your sign?

This is the dawning of the Age of Ophiuchus.

Facebook was ablaze yesterday with people renouncing their newly assigned astrological signs. I suppose people have become so comfortable with the signs they’ve had since birth–or since the 1960s, when we first knew we had signs.

Capricorns who woke up Sagittarii and Tauruses whose bull horns are now rams horns felt their identities had been stolen. Even the Today show’s Ann Curry yesterday feared that, now that she’s no longer a Scorpio, she’ll no longer be good in bed. Just think how many of our friends we’re offending, though, when we shun our new zodiac designations. The moment I read that someone didn’t want to be a Sagittarius, my hackles went up.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, it seems the Earth has tilted and, hence, requires our 12 astrological signs to be compressed to make room for a 13th.

If this is true, then I am now an Ophiuchus, the serpent holder.

When I learned this, I immediately set out to learn the traits of my new sign, pronounced “oh-FIE-uh-cuss.” For decades, I have felt so aligned with the distinctive Sagittarian traits, candor and philosophical adaptability.

I haven’t come upon much information about my new sign except that, anecdotally at least, Ophiuchus is a healer, a doctor and a scientist. He is “intellectual and enlightened — achieving high success and authority in life.” This descriptor was followed by, “If you are a woman…well…you are just badass.”

Elsewhere I read that we have lofty ideals, are seekers of peace and harmony and like to wear plaid. Alrighty then.

It all boils down to this: I went to bed a candid, yet open-minded archer and woke up a lofty, plaid-wearing badass. This might take some getting used to. Then again, some might say the new persona isn’t that far off base.

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January 14, 2011 · 10:03 am

Hearts and smarts

If the pinky-red glow emanating from Seasonal aisle at your grocery or drug store hasn’t gotten your attention, allow me to be a killjoy and remind you that there is one shopping month left until Valentine’s Day.

As you mull your options, might I suggest a gift for the wordie in your life? How about a four-pack of instructional grammar posters? You don’t even need to set foot in the Hallmark store.

I’m not quite sure how to describe The Oatmeal, except perhaps as an online treasure chest of satirical entertainment—blog posts, cartoons, quizzes and musings on assorted topics, including grammar and punctuation–and great merchandise.

For the reasonable price of $32, you’ll be sure to get a juicy Valentine smooch with a quartet of 18”x24” posters, including “How to use an apostrophe,” “How to use a semicolon,” “10 words you need to stop misspelling” and “When to use i.e. in a sentence.”

Or, if you’re expecting and haven’t chosen a nursery theme, this is the best thing to come along since Baby Einstein. Really, what’s the baby going to find more useful later in life, the theory of relativity or there/their/they’re?

Each poster includes a detailed and annotated diagram walking the viewer through the logic of the assigned topic.

If grammar isn’t your thing, you probably aren’t reading this blog, but consider The Oatmeal’s posters on other useful topics such as “15 things worth knowing about coffee,” “10 reasons to avoid talking on the phone,” “Why it’s better to pretend you don’t know anything about computers” and “6 reasons bacon is better than true love,” though you’d want to save that one for another occasion.

I’m thinking about ordering one for my home office: “Why working at home is both horrible and awesome.”

But the grammar pack is calling…

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January 13, 2011 · 10:20 am

Don’t auto-correct my fat-finger, Smarty-pants

Now that “fat-finger” is an accepted term—at least within the American Dialect Society—we have a name for what frustrates us texters. And now, smart phones, thinking they’re smarter than we are, want to offer a solution.

When my smart phone suspects I have misspelled a word, it auto-corrects it. Moreover, when I type three letters, it tries to save me time by auto-typing what it thinks is the rest of the word I mean to type.

In an effort to save users time, the smarty-pants device can cause us great embarrassment.

I know of two instances in which a smart phone changed ordinary words–face and facts–to “feces.” I saw one online, stating that “his feces lights up when you enter the room.”

I saw one example in which a person asked a colleague to “come here for a sex.”

Recently I was texting my son and told him that company was coming for dinner. At least that’s what I meant to say. On his end, my message said that Cosby was coming for dinner. This week the darned thing changed “vice versa” to “vice versatile.”

Laugh-out-loud examples are all over the Internet, including at Damn You Auto Correct and FU, Auto Correct.  

Can you top them? What’s the most embarrassing auto-correct you have had committed against your fat-finger?

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January 12, 2011 · 9:48 am

Winning words

Somehow I missed the news splash—perhaps you did too—but last Friday, the American Dialect Society announced its 2010 Word of the Year: “app.”

Apparently, the Word of the Year doesn’t have to be a new word, nor does it have to be a single word; it can be a phrase. It does have to be newly prominent or notable in the past year, much like Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

The Society wants to assure us that, in voting in these words or phrases, its linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, authors, editors, professors, university students and independent scholars are not inducting new words into the English language. Its announcement states that they are simply highlighting the fact that changes in language are normal, ongoing and entertaining.

“App” beat out runners up “trend” as a verb, “junk,” “Wikileaks” as a proper noun and one I hadn’t heard: “nom,” an onomatopoetic word connoting eating, especially pleasurably.

There was a category for most useful words, my favorite of which was “fatfinger,” a verb meaning to make typos by hitting two keys with one finger on a keypad.

There was a list of words that dominated events, such as “vuvuzela,” as well as portmanteaus that emerged from cultural phenomena–including “Gleek,” “Twihard” and “Belieber.” “Enhanced pat-down” ranked in the top four in the Most Euphemistic category.

The Society also voted on the 2010 Name of the Year: Who could forget “Eyafjalljökul?”

Read more about it and, if there are words you believe the Dialect Society overlooked, feel free to send them as comments to Word Nymph and we’ll confer our own award.

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January 11, 2011 · 9:59 am

Bottomless skit

As a native of Washington, D.C., I have always thought the nation’s capital could take some lessons from New York City. Fashion. Taxicab regulation. Pizza. Liverwurst on rye.

Unfortunately, it seems that, several years ago, Washington took a tradition from the Big Apple and planted it right here inside the Beltway. C’mon. I’d rather have the liverwurst.

Sunday afternoon, between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m., Washingtonians observed their fourth annual No Pants Metro Ride by boarding the subway and peeling off their pants. Organizers rallied riders via Facebook and other social media, instructing them to act as if nothing were wrong as they rode past all the popular tourist stops. Amusing, I suppose, as temperatures stayed mostly in the 20s. The stunt paid off for riders who took advantage of a local eatery’s offer of half-priced hamburgers for half-dressed patrons.

Those who know me know that I can’t even bear to sit next to someone wearing shorts on an airplane. The thought of spending Sunday afternoon in a crowded subway car awash in goosebumpy, pale, shivering, shrinking flesh made me glad to have been, well, anywhere else.

Now, D.C., can’t we find a more mature way to be like New York?

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