Tag Archives: word usage

October 13, 2010 · 8:15 am

Wishing well

I have a little peeve I hope you don’t mind my airing. Actually, it’s something I’d love your help in eradicating if you’re game. Maybe if we all do it by example, we can put a decent dent in a common misuse.

I hesitate to pick at this one because I do not wish to criticize those who wish others well. But here goes.

“Happy Belated Birthday.” This is wrong. The birthday is not belated; it comes on the same day each year. It is the wish that is belated, which makes the correct greeting “Belated Happy Birthday.”

I blame card merchants in part for the confusion. Those cardboard markers installed in the stores’ greeting card racks point out Anniversary, Get Well, Birthday and Belated Birthday. What they mean is “belated birthday wishes” but the phrase has become interpreted, annoyingly, as “Happy Belated Birthday.” Even the card designers and manufacturers have slipped into the sloppiness.

If one really wanted to nitpick, “Happy Belated Birthday” purports to take the snoozer off the hook. “My greeting isn’t belated; your birthday is.” That, of course, is silly.

Can we all pledge to stop wishing people a Happy Belated Mother’s Day, Happy Belated Anniversary and Happy Belated Birthday and instead express our wishes belatedly yet correctly?

Of course, remembering on time is nice too.

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October 6, 2010 · 8:09 am

Word Nymph’s ’nym words

Yesterday’s auto-antonym is just one in a large class. We already know about synonyms, homonyms, antonyms, pseudonyms, and acronyms. As of yesterday, we can also name a few auto-antonyms, or contranyms.

Did you know there are literally dozens of other ’nyms?

Just a few examples:

Aptronym. An aptronym is a name that describes or aptly suits its owner. German Psychiatry Professor Jules Angst. BBC Meteorologist Sara Blizzard. Here in the Washington area we have a podiatrist named Dr. Ronald Footer and, believe it or not, an OB/GYN, Dr. Harry Beaver.

Capitonym. A capitonym is a word that changes meanings when it is capitalized—Lent and lent, Polish and polish, Job and job, May and may and on and on.

Toponym. Toponyms take on their names based on where they originated. Examples include champagne, cashmere, and perhaps the two most famous, hamburger and frankfurter.

There’s another one I plan to share another time because it’s just too fun to lump in with other ’nyms. It’s the oronym. I’d describe the oronym as a cross between a homonym and a mondegreen. I’ll show you why later.

In the meantime, are there other ’nyms you’d like to explore or share?

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September 21, 2010 · 7:11 am

A reaching offense

Adding to the growing commentary on the steady decline of the English language as we once knew it, The Washington Post Magazine’s Gene Weingarten has written one of the cleverest pieces to date.

Please read “Goodbye, Cruel Words” for yourself because I will most certainly fail to do it justice here. Readers, this figurative obituary of the language is right up our alley with real-life examples of ridiculous errors in grammar, usage and syntax committed by some of the most highly regarded newspapers.

Please note: the piece calls attention to a once-trendy, now overused phrase to which I ashamedly plead “Guilty.”

I probably picked it up 10 years ago in my corporate days; my dealings with corporate clients since that time have etched it ever more deeply into my lexicon. And, truthfully, I’ve always liked it.

As Weingarten introduces it, “[no] development contributed more dramatically to the death of the language than the sudden and startling ubiquity of the vomitous verbal construction ‘reach out to’ as a synonym  for ‘call on the phone,’ or ‘attempt to contact.’” He calls it “a jargony phrase bloated with bogus compassion – once the province only of 12-step programs and sensitivity training seminars…”

Bingo.

I wonder if “reach out” started with AT&T’s tear-inducing television commercials of the 1980s, “Reach out and touch someone.” As Weingarten points out, reaching out was a gesture of sensitivity or support. It probably derived from “outreach.”

Looking back on the countless meetings I’ve attended in the last 25 years, I can almost trace the phrase’s road to ubiquity, including a U-turn in its meaning. Reaching out has gone from a gesture of good will to one of asking a favor or, in the extreme, groveling.

Come to think of it, I have “reached out” quite a bit over the years.

“We need to get Sen. Smith on board with this.” “I’ll reach out to him.”

“I’ll reach out to XYZ Corp. for a $50,000 sponsorship.”

“I’ll reach out to Mary to see if she’ll be the closing speaker for the conference.”

Guilty as charged. Not because I’ve spent my career calling people to ask them for things, but because I’ve done so using a vomitous verbal construction.

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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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September 8, 2010 · 8:13 am

Painful contraction

I have long wondered about the phrase “aren’t I?” As contractions go, it runs afoul of the norm and this bothers me.

It was only recently that it bugged me enough to do some digging.

Logic would dictate that the proper phrase be “am I not?” But how would it be contracted?

“Are you not?”  is really “are not you?”and is contracted as “aren’t you?” This makes sense.

But here’s the problem. “Are” does not agree with “I” in a sentence. “Am” does:  I am. I am not. Am I not? Am not I? So then why not “amn’t I?”

Well, I consulted a lot of sources, and each took me deeper into obscurity.

This might not be the absolute truth, but what I gleaned from all I read is that “aren’t I” is incorrect but accepted. Just like plenty of words and phrases we’ve talked about here.

It also seems that, at one time, “amn’t I?” may actually have been considered correct in contemporary Scottish-English as an informal contraction of “am I not?”

Further, some say “ain’t” may have first come about as an attempt to contract “am I not” and later became used colloquially in lieu of “are not” and “has not.” Ain’t that something?

There is also a theory that “amn’t” made appearances as “an’t” in 18th century texts but, when pronounced by the British, sounded more like “ahnt” and later became “aren’t.”

I’ll bet there are readers who know the answer to this mystery and would be willing to share it with the rest of us.

Aren’t I just opening up a can of worms?

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September 1, 2010 · 7:10 am

Word mixer

(I wish I had thought of that as a blog name.)

Do you know that game where you change one letter of a word to make a new word? It’s played everywhere from kindergaren to the Internet.

I’d like to try a variation, in which replacing a letter in a word makes its use in a sentence correct.

For example:

Incorrect:  wind one’s way home. Correct:  wend one’s way home. Unless the way is winding, we’re wending. Some say “wend” has become obsolete but, until it’s off life support, it’s correct in my book.

Incorrect:  hone in on the problem. Correct:  home in on the problem. We hone (sharpen) our skills so we can better home in on our prey. I am surprised at how many serious publications misuse “hone.”

Incorrect:  He yields a lot of influence. True, perhaps; but before he can yield it, he must wield it. 

For a slight varation on the game, insert three letters, take out one:  “I’m not one to mix words.” I am! But when I want to be polite and diplomatic, I “mince” them. Otherwise, I just serve ’em up whole.

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August 6, 2010 · 8:13 am

Sounds easy enough

You’ve seen me refer to the Fake AP Stylebook before. The group puts out funny little comments about language every day on Facebook and Twitter. If you don’t use these, you can go elsewhere to see some great examples. Some really get me thinking.

Case in point:  A recent post observed, “there/their/they’re – What, seriously? This confuses you?”

I have never had trouble distinguishing among the three. I don’t find it confusing at all. But it’s not because I’m good at remembering rules necessarily; otherwise, I’d have gotten this bring-versus-take thing down long ago.

What I realized is that it says something about the way my brain works.

When I hear and when I speak, I see the words written out. I suppose this means I am a visual learner or perhaps a visual thinker. I envision words as they are spelled. Maybe that’s why I have such a sensitive ear when it comes to pronunciation. If people saw “sherbet,” maybe they wouldn’t say “sherbert.”

Like the Fake AP Stylebook, when I see there/their/they’re confused, I am tempted to wonder how anyone can get it wrong. I also wonder how anyone graduated from second grade without mastering it, but perhaps I’m too quick to judge.

“There,” “their” and “they’re” are homonyms. They sound exactly the same. It’s no wonder people who are not visual learners might be homonymphobic.

If we had to spell according to how words sound (“sound it out,” we were always told), especially in this confusing language we call English, how can we be expected to commit the difference to paper?

Maybe I can offer some tips.

Let’s start with “there.” “There” is often the answer to “where?” “Where are my glasses? There they are.” On top of my head, usually. So that one’s easy:  Where?  There! Spelled the same (after their respective consonant digraphs).

“They’re” is a contraction of “they” and “are.” Until I had a baby, I thought contractions were easy. You begin with what you are (you’re) trying to say and shorten it; for example, “They are” doing something. With a contraction, typically a letter and a space come out, an apostrophe goes in and, voilà, two words become one. In a sense, they’re getting married. To use song lyrics as a prompt, “They’re Playing Our Song” or, for readers of my generation, “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa.” By now they probably are.

I haven’t come up with a tip for “their.” Maybe you have one. For now, let’s just say it’s the other one, and remember, “i” before “e” except after “c.”  Oops, and except in “their.”

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July 20, 2010 · 7:53 am

Beware of age

Yesterday’s disappointing news from the Gulf of Mexico has had me fixed on a particular word, one that seldom appears in good news. 

Not long after it seemed the cap on BP’s spewing oil well was going to hold and finally begin to contain the massive spill, something troublesome was discovered—seepage.

Seepage is never good.  It’s unintentional.  It’s messy.  It often means something is going somewhere it’s not supposed to.  If seepage is in your story, chances are, you’re in trouble.  Just when the higher-ups at BP were looking forward to exhaling, along came seepage.  The last thing the poor citizens and businesses along the Gulf Coast want to hear is seepage.

Yesterday, for whatever reason, the word leapt off its prominent spot on the front page and created little puddles in my brain.  But with every lame attempt to blot them up, more disturbing words ending in “age” came at me. 

“Age” is a common suffix, used, among other ways, to turn verbs into nouns, such as seepage.   It is also used to turn singular nouns into uncountable nouns, such as signage and plumage.  Signage and plumage are good things, and, if you were delivering news, you wouldn’t mind them in your story.  Acreage, coverage and cleavage are also nice things to have.

But all I thought about yesterday after reading about the seepage were all the other “age” words—most, oddly, beginning with “s”—that one would not want to have to use in his or her story, nor want to hear when receiving news.

Sewage isn’t something you want to hear about.  Steerage isn’t a desirable place.  If you are relying on your work or the product thereof, a stoppage is bad news, as is a shortage.  Don’t tell me about spillage, spoilage or soilage.  Slippage is unacceptable.  And absolutely no one wants to have to explain shrinkage.

Those are the “s” words.  Please don’t send me back to the beginning of the alphabet or we’ll have to talk about blockage, bondage, breakage and carnage.  So let’s not go there.

Before we move off yesterday’s front page story, let’s add “burbling” to the list of words that aren’t usually used in good news.

Note:   I first thought burbling was a portmanteau for bubble + gurgle, because isn’t that what the seepage is doing?  As it turns out, burble is also a scientific term.  It’s a turbulent eddy in fluid flow caused by roughness near the boundary surface or loss of energy in the laminar flowing fluid.  But then you all probably knew that.

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July 9, 2010 · 7:55 am

In a perfectly tense mood

While we are on a grammar roll, here’s another one. 

My interest comes about, as it often does, as a result of an aural assault by a well-meaning speaker.  Typically, once the bristle passes, I look up the pertinent rule to be sure I understand it.

This one has to do with a mishmash of subjunctive mood and conditional perfect and past perfect tenses and the errors people are prone to making with regard to these verb uses.

For whatever reason, I never fully appreciated things like mood versus tense  until I studied foreign languages.  And still, I know them more intuitively than by the rules themselves.

If the following phrases make you bristle, then you don’t need the review.  If they sound perfectly fine, read on.

  1. “I wish I would have kept the appointment.”
  2. “If I would have known you were going, I’d have offered you a ride.”
  3. “If I was in your shoes, I’d be worried.”
  4. “If I would have went to the party, I would have had a good time.” 

You could drive yourself crazy reading all the rules.  But feel free.  They are long and involved and I’d probably miss some nuance in explaining it anyway.  I’ve included the relevant Wikipedia links above because they are the simplest and most accessible online sources for this purpose, in my opinion.

Or, you could simply train your ear to pick up on the errors and correct them before you speak.  Often, it simply means taking out “would” or changing “was” to “were,” but not always.  Here are some tricks you might use to keep it straight.  Maybe you have some of your own.

If you are tempted to say “I wish I would have . . .,” think about The Rolling Stones’ “I Wish I’d Never Met You” and remember to say, “I wish I had . . .”   No would.

If you are tempted to say “If I would have known . . .,” think of the 1950 song, “If I Knew You Were Comin’, I’d’ve Baked a Cake,” then say, “If I knew” or “If I had known…”   For you younger readers, the song was also sung on Sesame Street, so you’ve probably heard it.  Just try to get past the double contraction.

If you are tempted to say “If I was,” think of Fiddler on the Roof and the song, “If I Were a Rich Man.”  It’s were, not was.  Subjunctive mood, conditional perfect tense.  Or some might call it imperfect past subjunctive.

Finally, if you are tempted to utter the double whammy, “If I would have went,” then you are probably not reading this blog anyway.

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June 22, 2010 · 7:50 am

Behind the curve

Where have I been, under a rock perhaps, that I have never heard of “lingua franca?” 

Do you ever notice a word or phrase for the first time and then, all of a sudden, you read it everywhere? 

Recently, I was rushing to finish my June issue of Vanity Fair, as July had just arrived, and I ran across this phrase, lingua franca.  Because I was on a plane, I was unable to look it up.  My guess at a literal translation was “French tongue,” but that didn’t seem to make sense.

In an article called Playing for the World, preceding the start of the World Cup, A. A. Gill wrote, “It isn’t music or movies or pizza that is the lingua franca of the globe. It’s the Beautiful Game.”  Then, I confess, I lingered unduly on the 12-page photo spread of the World Cup athletes.  Annie Leibovitz, I want your job, if just for one day.  But I digress.

I later noticed, in the same issue of the magazine, in different places and in different contexts, lingua franca appeared twice more.

Yesterday I remembered to look it up.  An hour’s worth of cursory research confounded me further. 

You may already know this, but lingua franca is the term for a hybrid language, like pidgin, that is spoken by persons not sharing a common native language, to communicate with one another.  There seem to be dozens of different forms spoken in Europe, the Middle East and South America.

Okay, so I got that.  But now all of a sudden it’s a simile.  It’s a metaphor.  And it’s everywhere.

Again, my research was cursory, so my findings may not be exact, and the sources are obscure.  Either way, here are some examples I dug up.

“The Dow is certainly Wall Street’s lingua franca.”

“T-shirts are the lingua franca of Silicon Valley.”

“Movies are the lingua franca of the twentieth century.”

“Sarcasm is the lingua franca of the Internets [sic].”

More literally, in some faiths, a language called Adamic “is the lingua franca of Heaven.”

I read further that Lingua Franca is the name of a literary magazine that closed down in 2001, one I think I would have liked.  It’s also the name of a band out of Flint, Michigan; the name of a CD by an Australian group called The World According to James; and the names of lyrical movements in several countries. 

I hate it when something is cliché before I ever become aware of it.  Reminds me of the “What’s In and What’s Out” list that comes out every January 1st.  Far too often, it’s already Out before I knew it was In.

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