VOL X, No 3 [Winter, 1984]
Learned Length and Thund’ring Sound: A Word-Lover’s Panegyric
Bryan A. Garner, Austin, Texas
That style is…most perfect, not, as fools say, which is the most natural, for the most natural is the disjointed babble of the chronicler; but which attains the highest degree of elegant and pregnant implication unobtrusively; or if obtrusively, then with the greatest gain to sense and vigour.
Robert Louis Stevenson
For many years now it has been dinned into the minds of high-school and college English students that one quality stands preeminent in the pursuit of a good prose style: simplicity. Ostensibly for the sake of clear communication, this simplicity is usually supposed to manifest itself in the choice of plain words. The corollary of this relatively unexamined precept is that the introduction of difficult words into one’s writing or speech is a grave stylistic fault. English textbooks are not alone, however, in stigmatizing whatever is not readily understandable to everyone, for one often hears complaints about the use of hard words. Recently an acquaintance of mine, a law student and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of a prestigious university, told me that she would not renew her subscription to Newsweek because the frequency of words she didn’t know irritated her.
Americans today are as averse as any nation to unfamiliar words, which seem to proclaim intellectual pretension, flaunted knowledge, or cultural snobbery—and this if they are used well! Yet hard words have a reputable literary tradition, even if a foreshortened one. English inherited two strains of literary expression, both deriving ultimately from Ciceronian Latin. On the one hand is the plain style now in vogue, characterized by unadorned vocabulary, directness, unelaborate syntax, and earthiness. (This style is known to scholars as Atticism.) On the other hand we have the grand style, which exemplifies floridity, allusiveness, formal, sometimes abstruse diction, and rhetorical ornament. Proponents of this verbally richer style (called Asiaticism) proudly claim that the nuances available in the “oriental profusion” of English synonyms make the language an ideal putty for the skilled linguistic craftsman to mold and shape precisely in accordance with his conceptions.
The bases of these two styles—now differentiated primarily by vocabulary, but also by syntax—are still firmly rooted in the public consciousness. We have not only the many old saws that bespeak the maidenly virtues of simple language, but also the books: for example, those by Gowers and Flesch, among others. Likewise our bookstores and libraries contain reference sections teeming with dictionaries of hard words and manuals on how to increase one’s vocabulary, wherein introductory essays inform us of the many advantages to be enjoyed if only we would expend the effort to learn new words. Here is the standard formula: having increased your command of words, you become more articulate, and hence will acquire a better job and gain the respect and admiration of your colleagues.
Now, the Asiaticist views the opulence of our language as providing apposite terms for virtually every conceivable context. Still, using the abundant resources of English is widely, if not wisely, discouraged. This attitude is as old as Modern English. During the sixteenth century, when our language had just begun to take its modern form, learned Englishmen who enriched their lexically impoverished tongue with Latin and Greek loanwords were vilified as “smelling of the inkhorn” or as “inkhornists.” Thus one of the more notable borrowing neologists of the Renaissance, Sir Thomas Elyot, author of The Governour, wrote in 1531: “Divers men, rather scornyng my benefite [‘beneficence,’ i.e, adding to the English word-stock] than receyving it thankfully, doo shew them selves offended (as they say) with my straunge termes.” The “straunge termes” this redoubtable inkhornist gave us include accommodate, education, frugality, irritate, metamorphosis, persist, and ruminate. He sought not to parade his formidable erudition, but rather “to augment our Englyshe tongue, wherby men shulde as well expresse more abundantly the thynge that they conceyved in their hartis (wherefore language was ordeyned) havinge wordes apte for the purpose.” In retrospect, of course, the noble efforts of Elyot and others like him were not in vain.
But sesquipedalophobia (‘hatred or fear of big words,’ aptly enough) has prevailed, even among men of learning. Writers on style often find English words of foreign derivation, like those introduced by Elyot, particularly objectionable. Thus H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler on the first page of The King’s English:
Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched.
Prefer the concrete word to the abstract.
Prefer the single word to the circumlocution.
Prefer the short word to the long.
Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.
If by “preferences” the Fowlers meant mere velleities, then the soundness of these principles is unassailable. As stated, however, they might be considered simplistic and confusing. The Fowlers' inconsistency between theory and practice is more proximate than might be obvious: the first three of their axioms contain no fewer than eight Latinisms. One is reminded of the subtle mockery of this sentence quoted by Joseph T. Shipley in In Praise of English, and perhaps inspired by the Fowler brothers: “Avoid Latin derivatives; use brief, terse, Anglo-Saxon monosyllables,” in which Anglo-Saxon is the only Anglo-Saxon word.
Sheridan Baker, author of The Practical Stylist, takes a much more reasonable approach to the Latin Quarter (or, more precisely, three-quarters) of the English language. He writes:
“What we need is a mixed diction,” said Aristotle, and his point remains true twenty-three centuries and several languages later. The aim of style, he says, is to be clear but distinguished. For clarity we need common, current words; but used alone, these are commonplace, and as ephemeral as everyday talk. For distinction we need unusual words, metaphors; but used alone, these become gibberish. What we need is a diction that marries the popular with the dignified, the clear with the sedgy margins of language and thought.
Intermingling substantial Saxon words with those from Latin gives language variety, texture, euphony, and vitality. The best writers match substance with impeccable form. They use language precisely, evocatively, even daringly. Thus one must not assume that Hemingwayan spartanism is the only desirable mode, unless one is ready to indict T. S. Eliot, Mencken, Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, John Updike, and many another masterly writer for dabbling in sesquipedality.
Having established a reputable pedigree for the judicious employment of unfamiliar words, we can approach a standard for discriminating between useful and relatively useless abstrusities. For the purpose of making such judgments, I offer a single criterion. Consider words as analogues to mathematical fractions, both being symbols for material or conceptual referents: would a self-respecting mathematician say 12/48 instead of 1/4 just to sound more erudite? Certainly not. Likewise a writer or speaker generally should not say obtund when the verbs dull and blunt come more readily to mind. Nor would one say saponaceous for soapy, dyslogistic for uncomplimentary, or macrobian (or longevous) for long-lived. In language, however, there are the additional considerations of tone and context which are largely absent in mathematics.
It is impossible to set down absolute rules about words that are and are not useful. Still, it is clearly pedantic to avoid the obvious by clothing it in befogged terminology, as one might by writing arenaceous or sabulous for sandy, immund for dirty, nates for buttocks, or venenate for poison (vb.). In the words of Coleridge, “Whatever is translatable in other and simpler words of the same language, without loss of sense or dignity, is bad.”
But what of the mathematician who arrives at 15/16? Should he, for the sake of convenience and easier comprehension, round off the fraction to 1? Not if he is concerned with precision. (One is reminded of the school district in the deep south that once decided that 3.14159 was too much for children to learn and therefore stipulated that the value of pi was 3. Or worse, of the midwestern state legislature that, in 1896, set pi equal to 4.) Likewise with the writer who, when describing an asthenic person, should not balk at using asthenic rather than the vaguer weak, for the former evokes the distinct image of muscular atrophy, which the latter lacks. And why engage in cumbersome periphrases, when a single word will neatly suffice?
One could make similar arguments for thousands of other English words. Coterie and galere have almost identical meanings—something like ‘a group of persons united for a common interest or purpose’—but no everyday word exists for this notion. The same is true of cathexis, eirenicon, gravamen, obelize, oriflamme, protreptic, or any of numberless other examples. Samuel Johnson came closest to rationalizing his sesquipedalian penchant when he wrote: “It is natural to depart from familiarity of language upon occasions not familiar. Whatever elevates the sentiments will consequently raise the expression; whatever fills us with hope or terror, will produce some perturbation of images and some figurative distortions of phrase.”
Certainly one may have occasion to flirt with abstruse vocabulary for reasons other than stylistic dignity or the lack of a simpler term. I shall adduce three. First, it is often desirable to avoid the apt but voguish word. To select one of several examples, in the days when aggravate was first coming to be widely used for ‘irritate, annoy,’ the fastidious speaker or writer could either combat the word’s debasement and use it correctly, or seek refuge in exacerbate. But now that this term has become so overworked in journalese and governmentese, he probably must eschew it altogether. Perhaps, ironically, a mere “make worse” will now have to do.
Second, big words can often have a very humorous effect, though of course the fun is limited to those who can understand them. Such jocular phrases as campanologist’s tintinnabulation ‘bell-ringer’s knell,’ galliaceous halitosis ‘garlic breath,’ pernoctative nepotation ‘riotous carousing through the night,’ bromidrotic fug ‘sweaty stench,’ and dasypygal demimondaine ‘hairy-rumped prostitute’ can be delightfully amusing.
A third reason for waxing lexiphanic is to soften one’s scurrility—to abstract it so that one’s audience does not immediately visualize an unpleasant image. A political analyst recently used fecalbuccal, an ingenious coinage to describe certain politicians, for such a purpose.
But enough of this rhapsodizing on sesquipedality. Americans have a folk saying that runs: “He is a wise man who will use a short word where a long word might do.” All right. But we should also recognize that he is a man of sapience and discernment who will use a big word where there is no adequate substitute, rather than pander his meaning to the sacrosanct monosyllable. And anyone who naysays this proposition is merely an addlepated ultracrepidarian!
OBITER DICTA: Grammar vs. Common Sense
Laurence Urdang
We all greet with great glee the discovery of what are formally called misplaced modifiers, somewhat less formally dangling participles, and colloquially danglers. Most of them are funny, like these, which I have saved from students' essays of long ago, when I was (still) trying to make my way in akademia:
Plunging one thousand feet into the gorge, we saw Yosemite Falls.
When a small boy, a girl is of little interest.
Breaking into the girls' dormitory, the dean of men surprised five members of the football team.
Although such items are, strictly speaking, not reflective of the best of English style, to maintain that they create nonsense is going a bit far. Despite their construction, we readily understand that it was not we but Yosemite Falls that was doing the plunging, that a girl is not—or, only very rarely—a small boy, and that it was the members of the football team, not the dean, who broke into the girls' dorm (though, it must be admitted, the footballers would have been surprised either way). Here is one from the august [London] Times of October 5, 1983:
Mr. Tom McNally, a Lancashire businessman attempting to cross the Atlantic in a yacht only 6 ft 10 in long, is apparently refusing to give up his lone voyage after being found, in a search involving three nations without food and water 920 miles off Land’s End.
…And no, there is no comma after nations. Yet, we all know that without food and water modifies Mr. McNally and not three nations: notwithstanding the syntax, it simply makes no sense to talk about “three nations without food and water.”
Linguists maintain that the essential function of language is to communicate, and there is little doubt that most—but, it must be allowed, not all—examples of misplaced modifiers do, indeed, communicate their meaning; however ludicrous the “technical” ambiguities, which we may continue to regard with amusement, there is no reason to express any genuine concern that language is failing to fulfill its function, especially since, in other respects, we expect it to be oblique, suggestive, metaphoric, redundant, and, generally, to allow its speakers to avail themselves of every possible rhetorical device.
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Life insurance policy analization.” [Offered by the New York Civil Service Retired Employees Association. Submitted by Milton Schorr, Syosset, New York.]
The Meaning of Personal Names
Daniel Dorff, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Personal names are often assumed to have no real meaning, at least in Western culture; but this assumption is a common oversight. While personal names cannot be defined in a lexical sense, they do communicate some ideas about the people to whom they belong. Because names reflect a parental choice and are a constant source of a person’s responses and responsibilities, they cannot be truly random or meaningless.
Starting from an infinite list of possibilities, a small choice is all that is ever considered. It is feasible to use any label for a personal name, but Tyrannosaurus, 12-54738, and Qxxzyelr are unlikely, since they do not fit the class of standard names that we take for granted. Some real names, such as Fido and Rover, are so consistently used for dogs that to name a child Fido would be highly insulting, as well as confusing. Another similar convention is the implication of gender through personal names. While some names are equally common, or at least acceptable for either men or women (sometimes with different spellings), the majority of given names are sex-specific. If I introduce John and Mary to another guest at a party, there would be no need to specify who’s who, but there would be if I were presenting John and Tom. This presupposes a traditional assigning of names. It is unlikely that John and Tom are both women, because conventions are rarely broken in this respect for various “good” reasons. Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” and Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” successfully violate the above rules to make us sympathize with their protagonists.
At this party I introduce John, Johann, Juan, Iannis, Jean, and Ian to a blind man. Without visual cues, before speaking to these people, he may assume not only that these are all human males, but also that one is German, one Hispanic, Greek, French, and British, or at least from families of these backgrounds. There is no grammatical (or other) rule preventing a Parisian from calling himself Juan, but he must expect to appear Spanish.
For exactly this reason, pseudonyms can be a constructive tool. Opera singers from Brooklyn may (and do) take Italian forms of their names, just as Giuseppe can open up a taco stand in Italy and call himself José. Giuseppe, Joseph, and José are all variants of a common model. Similarly, male-female pairings such as Paul-Paula are forms of one model. These cannot be called morphemes, because they do not describe anything in a lexical sense. For convenience, this underlying form can be called a “nomeme.” Nomemes do not have to be restricted to cross-cultural and cross-sexual variation. Within the English language, many individual names can be declined into various forms: Margaret becomes Maggie, Meg, Marge, Margie, Madge, Peg, Peggy, and, peripherally, Gretchen, Gretel, or Greta. While this example is a special case, contemporary English does have three different connotation forms common to many names: the official-formal, the short, and the diminutive. Some names decline into all three forms, such as Thomas/Tom/ Tommy; sometimes just the formal and short forms exist, as in Janet/Jan; for other names, only the formal and diminutive exist: Cynthia/Cindy; and some names, such as Lynn, don’t have the luxury of variants. These three types are not socially equivalent. When a given name is in the long form, it is often set aside in social use for a less proper version, but it is rare that someone legally named Frank will go around calling himself Francis. This illustrates that formal names are often the starting point for shorter forms, but the reverse is not true.
Perhaps this pattern comes from ideas about formality and social images. Except for popular art media (where persona is a calculated commodity), novelists, composers, scholars, etc. often sign their work with their full legal name to indicate that they take a professional attitude in these matters, although they may never use this form among friends. Shortened forms are more friendly because they are not as official and often have fewer syllables, catering to the human tendency to abbreviate. This may explain the abundance of short forms stemming from the four-syllable Elizabeth: Liz, Lizzy, Liza, Eliza, Ellie, Beth, Betty, Betsy, etc. Nonformal names can be divided into diminutives and nondiminutives, both of which have connotations. It is often safe to assume that a new acquaintance who calls himself Leonard has a more formal self-image than someone who prefers to be called Len or Leon, and also that Lenny will be more playful (or whatever else diminutives express) than the preceding choices. This explains why President Carter was sworn in as Jimmy rather than James, emphasizing his populist self-image.
An attribute of some names is nonconformity. To a first-grader surrounded by Steves and Debbies, being named Sylvia or Eunice can be a curse, because children like to tease others who stand out in any way. In contrast, bohemians often consider common names dull, but uncommon names (especially those referring to nature) and uncommon spellings are often viewed as creative and distinct. Examples include Fern, Ivy, Lynda, and Nanci. Carson McCullers’s novel. The Member of the Wedding, illustrates some of these concepts in the mind of a teenage girl. The protagonist is initially a tomboy known as Frankie but, wanting to assert her individuality, switches to F. Jasmine, and finally, when her adult femininity becomes most important, she switches to Frances.
A more specific case of names having meaning is by direct reference. Many Hispanics are named Jesus (taboo in other cultures, and irrelevant outside of Christianity) but almost no one is named Judas. Helen may refer to Helen of Troy, which is quite a compliment, but for a similar reason it would be cruel to name one’s daughter Jezebel or Medusa, and Jews don’t name their sons Adolf. Personal identities can be expressed by choices of names, either by parents or the beholder. Mickey Mantle wrote, in The Quality of Courage, that he was named after Mickey Cochran, his father’s favorite baseball player. As a boy Mantle felt he owed it to his father to live up to the image. In this case the outcome was very favorable, but an uncoordinated child might have felt he was letting his father down.
Some nicknames such as Stretch, Red, and Groucho are direct labels of personal characteristics, the term nickname coming from an eke name, which “ekes out” the spirit of the named person. While usually coined by friends, these usually stick only when accepted by the nicknamed person.
It is common to name a child after a deceased relative (or a living one in some religions) to rekindle the spirit of that ancestor. This can go unnoticed, but a sensitive child growing up through role models may feel extra kinship with the source of his name. This can be good or bad, inspiring or frustrating, but in any event, it is in this way that a common name like John can mean “Nobel Prize-winning Rhodes scholar” or “alcoholic, philandering gambler who deserted his family.” In either case the child would be aware of the association.
In short, every personal name must suggest something or be conspicuously nondescript (like Lee), which in itself is also meaningful.
Answers to Paring Pairs No. 12
(a). Does he slide on a rug? (23,9) Carpet Slipper
(b). Act of affectionate podiatrist. (27,17) Sole Kiss
(c). Penultimate test of topless show. (30,6) Undress Rehearsal
(d). Cockney beauties at the prow? (18,14) Bow Belles
(e). Needed for crystal-gazing. (29,1) Glass Eye
(f). Film clips about Atlantic resort. (24,10) Bermuda Shorts
(g). Is this where to keep escape stash? (20,35) Flee Bag
(h). Complete reversal by Briton of treatise on seabird. (33,2) About Tern
(i). Caravanserai for aggressive youngsters. (26,16) Youth Hostile
(j). Amazing but not shocking that older actresses demand it. (19,8) Surprise Pink
(k). Three kings and famous pair find no room at the inn. (31,3) Full House
(l). Are these kids clockwatchers? (28,12) Hour Gang
(m). Bury the delegation between the acts. (25,7) Inter Mission
(n). Footwear for fisherman in the Serpentine. (32,13) Water Moccasin
(o). Jazzy means for cleaning cathouse. (34,15) Tiger Rag
(p). When the windows are bare. (21,5) Curtain Time
(q). No more than is expected from Avis, rara or not. (22,11) Bird Brain
(r). Diet food. (36,42) Vanity Fare
(s). Wheelright. (40,37) Felloe Man
(t). Depart after the third. (43,41) Go Forth
(u). You chaps practise pretense. (44,52) Guys Youse
(v). Counterfeiter in flimsy airport building. (48,54) Paper Hanger
(w). Besotted beneficiary. (45,39) Polluted Heir
(x). Dammit! The sluice. (53,46) Eau Chute
(y). Farmer’s play with a camel. (50,38) Drama Dairy
(z). Needed to elevate U.S. composer’s tunes? (49,47,51) Berlin Air Lift
The correct answer is (4) Bottle. The solutions are given below. The winner of No. 12 was Mr. R. J. Howard of Lisle, Illinois.
More Than Just Manitou
Robert Devereux, Falls Church, Virginia
In the course of his article “Indian File” [VII, 4], Norman Ward makes these interesting statements:
Few of them (i.e., European settlers in North America) were interested in native religious beliefs beyond, perhaps, knowing what should be suppressed.
Native-language words that are specifically associated with human beings are even rarer in North American English than those related to animals.
Manito stands almost alone as a word of native origin in the contemporary North American vocabulary which does not deal with a live or concrete object.
These three statements and the contents of the article as a whole more or less force the reader to come to the following conclusions:
a) Manitou (the preferred spelling according to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (NID3); manito and manitu are recognized variants) and totem are the only Amerind loanwords in English that concern religion.
b) Squaw, papoose, cheechako and sachem are the only Amerind loanwords that denote human beings.
c) Manitou, nitchie, potlatch and chinook are the only Amerind loanwords that do not denote a live or concrete thing.
Actually, none of these three statements is accurate. There are at least several dozen Amerind loanwords that are relevant to one or more of the three categories. To be sure, they are not as widely known as totem or squaw, and many of them have to be termed obscure in the extreme; but since they all command the same separate entry in NID3, they clearly have status as equally good Amerind loanwords in English.
Religious Terms
There are, first of all, chindi, a Navaho evil spirit of the dead; orenda, an extraordinary invisible power believed by the Iroquois to pervade in varying degrees all animate and inanimate natural objects as a transmissible spiritual energy capable of being exerted according to the will of its possessor; gahe, grotesque masked dancers with yucca crowns representing mountain spirits in Apache ceremonies; and kachina (or katchina, katcina, cachina), one of the deified ancestral spirits believed among the Hopi and other Pueblo Indians to visit the pueblos at intervals (as to bring rain). Next to be mentioned are the loanwords for various Indian ceremonies, which include:
busk a Creek festival of first fruits and purification that was celebrated when the first green corn was edible and that marked the beginning of a new year.
cantico a ceremonial dance of the Algonquian Indians of the Atlantic seaboard. (The word also denotes any lively social gathering or dancing party.)
hako a Pawnee ceremony representing the union of heaven and earth and the birth of life, which was performed with prayers, invocations by pipe, and eagle dancers to ensure long life and prosperity to the participants.
huskanaw an Algonquian initiation rite for youths at puberty, which included fasting and the use of narcotics. (NID3 lists the word both as a noun and a verb.)
powwow an Algonquian ceremony (as for cure of disease, success in hunting, victory in war, etc.) often accompanied by great noise, feasting and dancing. The word also denoted a conjurer or medicine man. (NID3 describes the word as being akin to pauwau, a Natick word for conjurer, as well as meaning a tribal council or conference with an Indian leader or group, whence its modern meaning.)
shalako a Zuñli ceremony which celebrated the advent or departure of the kachinas (see above) and in which dancers inpersonating a Zuñi mythical being of extraordinary stature played a central role.
yeibichai a Navaho initiation or curative ceremony performed by masked dancers representing a supernatural being.
Two other obscure but relevant loanwords are koyemshi and midewiwin (or mide, midewin), which are the names of Indian societies. The former was the name of a Zuñi clown society, whose members wore the mask of mudheads and were credited with curing illness by their dancing and clowning. (NID3 defines a mudhead as a member of a Zuñi ceremonial clown society appearing in tribal rites in mud-daubed masks symbolizing an early stage in the development of man.) Midewiwin was the name of a once-powerful secret society among the Ojibwa and neighboring tribes which aimed at a prolongation of life by herbal, magical, and ritual techniques.
Among the Pueblo Indians, ceremonies were likely to be performed in a kiva, a usually round structure, at least partially underground, with entrance and lighting usually from the roof; it included a fireplace, altar space, and a sipapu. The last was a hole in the floor of a kiva symbolizing the place where the mythical tribal ancestors first emerged from the primordial underworld region into the earthly realm.
Finally, in the realm of religion, there are at least three loanwords in addition to totem that relate to concrete objects having religious significance: kisi ‘a bower of interwoven branches used for keeping snakes before a Hopi snake dance’; paho ‘a Hopi plumed prayer stick’; and xat a carved pole erected as a memorial to the dead by some Amerind tribes.'
Terms for Humans
Some of the loanwords cited above are also valid here. Kachina, for example, also denotes one of the elaborately masked dancers who impersonate a kachina at agricultural ceremonies, and yeibichai and shalako similarly have the same kind of dual usage. Koyemshi denotes a member of the Zuñi society as well as the society itself. The alternative uses of powwow have already been mentioned.
Perhaps more pertinent for this section are klootchman (or klootch) and mahala, both of which are essentially synonyms for squaw, the first among tribes of northwestern America (it derives from Nootka lotssman ‘woman, wife’), the second among tribes of California’s San Joaquin Valley and adjacent Sierra Nevada slopes (it derives from Yokuts mokel ‘woman’). Sannup, derived from the Abnaki senanbe, is a little known opposite of squaw; NID3 defines it as “a married male Amerind.”
Aside from sachem, there are at least three other Amerind loanwords denoting a chief, namely, mico (Muskogean); mug-wump (Natick), whose political meaning dates only from 1884; and sagamore (Abnaki).
Finally, there is mohock, which, by any standards, must be considered a linguistic curiosity since it is an Amerind loanword in English that has meaning only in a British, as distinct from an American context. A corruption of the tribal name Mohawk (an Algonquian word akin to Narragansett mohowauuck ‘they eat animal things’), the word became current in 1711 (according to the Oxford Shorter English Dictionary) as the name for one of a gang of aristocratic ruffians who assaulted and otherwise mistreated people in London in the early 18th century. Cf. Apache.
Nonconcrete Things
Color is certainly a nonconcrete object or, if you prefer, an abstract idea. There are at least four Amerind loanwords that denote color. The first is persimmon, an Algonquian word, akin to Cree pasiminon ‘dried fruit,’ and Delaware pasimenon. The word is relatively well known as the name of a fruit, but it also denotes a moderate reddish-orange color that is yellower and duller than crab-apple or flamingo, or a strong brown that is redder and deeper than average russet and duller than rust. The other three color terms are tribal names that have been pressed into English service as color names:
catawba a very dark to blackish red and, of textiles, a dark purplish red that is bluer and paler than dahlia purple and bluer and duller than pansy purple.
mohawk a Tuscan brown. (It might be noted that the word is also used for a skating maneuver, which is also a nonconcrete object.)
navaho a strong to vivid orange that is redder and darker than orpiment orange and slightly redder and darker than Big Four yellow.
Other terms for nonconcrete things relate to a variety of fields. In the realm of sports, for example, there is baggataway (or bagataway), an Algonquian game from which lacrosse developed. Caucus, a frequently used word in today’s politics, comes from the Algonquian caucauasu ‘elder or counselor,’ and the Abnaki kakesoman, ‘to encourage, arouse.’ Meteorologists utilize not only chinook, already mentioned, but also pogonip (literally ‘white death’), a Southern Paiute or Shoshone word meaning ‘a dense white winter fog containing frozen particles’ that is found in deep mountain valleys of the western United States. In the realm of medicine, there is piblokto (or piblockto), an Eskimo loanword denoting ‘a winter-induced hysteria,’ which occurs among women especially. (Contrary to the statement made in “Indian File,” the word Eskimo is of native origin. Although the English word derives from the Danish Eskimo and the French Esquimau, the latter came from the name applied by the Algonquians to the tribes north of them, for example, Abnaki esquimantsic ‘eaters of raw flesh’ and Cree askimowow ‘he eats it raw.')
A greeting must certainly be considered a nonconcrete object, and in this area at least two Amerind loanwords are relevant. The first is how, which is not merely a shortened form of the standard English amenity “How are you?” or “How do you do?” but a derivation of the Dakota hao and/or the Omaha hau. The second is netop ‘friend,’ often used in salutation to an Indian by the American colonists. The word is Algonquian in origin, akin to the Narragansett netoup ‘my friend’ and Abnaki nidanbe.
NID3 defines the word money as “something generally accepted as a medium of exchange, a measure of value, or a means of payment.” In short, money is both a concrete object and an abstract idea. In that context, several Amerind loanwords are relevant. There is, first of all, wampum, a relatively well-known word, which derives from Narragansett wampompeag, from wampon ‘white,’ api ‘string,’ and ag, plural suffix. NID3 has separate entries for wampumpeag and peag (variant peage). NID3 also lists hawok, Californian Indian money consisting of shell disks or buttons, and roanoke, from the Virginian Algonquian rawranóke, an alternative term for wampum.
Finally, there is zonta, from the Siouan zon’-ta ‘honest, trustworthy’ or, literally, ‘he is to be trusted.’ The word has survived in English, and merits a separate entry in NID3 as the name of a women’s business and professional service organization.
The writer makes no claim that the loanwords cited above are all the relevant ones that exist in the English lexicon. He submits, however, that they are sufficient in number to prove his thesis that Amerind loanwords relating to religion, human beings, and nonconcrete objects are more numerous than the average English speaker is aware and that Ward worked from an insufficient data base.
Frederick’s Formal Family
Dorena Marshall, Newton, Iowa
Hi! (er, I mean HELLO!) My name is Frederick and I want to introduce you to my Very Formal Family. We are not allowed to use nicknames at our house, which seems a little awkward at times. My mother’s name is Margaret, and no one has EVER called her Peg or Marge—it just is not done. My father’s name is James—never Jim or Jimmy. Oh, and I almost forgot; there’s also my little sister, Elizabeth.
As I walked home from school one evening, I was thinking about supper, hoping we might have hamburgers. I even thought I would surprise Mother (never “Mom”) by offering to shape the patricias. But, as I walked in the back door, I could smell the simmering vegetables, and knew it was beef stuart. One of my duties around home is setting the table. Mother asked me to put the place matthews around the table, so we could eat at our usual time, six o’clock on the dorothy. She said if we all ate a good supper, she would treat us to some homemade candace. Did I eat!
Our family isn’t all that richard, but Father announced after supper that his williamfold was in pretty good shape; and that we could go somewhere special. Of course Elizabeth wanted to go to the beach, but Father said he wasn’t too crazy about the sandra mess there would be in the car afterwards. Also, Mother remembered the beatrice sting Elizabeth got there once.
Then I asked if we could go climbing at Cooper’s Clifford, just a few miles outside town. Mother reminded us of the charles horse she had after last time. Father said his archibalds would never be the same after our last adventure there.
Since no one could agree, we decided to spend a quiet evening at home. Mother put on her old terrence robe, Elizabeth got her theodore bear, and we all played games. We all ate our philip of homemade candace and went to bed.
The Pop Grammarians— Good Intentions, Silly Ideas, and Doublespeak
Charles Suhor, Deputy Executive Director, National Council of Teachers of English
The pop grammarians mean well. All they are asking is that people stop talking and writing in nonstandard usage, clichés, jargon, and other unworthy language. Never mind that they disagree wildly among themselves as to which usages are nonstandard, what constitutes a cliché, where legitimate technical language leaves off and jargon begins. Never mind that when they quote scholarly sources at all, their sources disagree on the very points in dispute. The pop grammarians mean well in that they believe that somewhere, out there, there is a best way to say just about everything, if people would only listen to reason.
To describe the pop grammarians as naive, to expose their erroneous historical arguments, to point to their inconsistencies and flimsy logic is to invite being called a linguistic anarchist. But, my goodness, they do say some silly things. John Simon described the use of I in the objective case as a fickle linguistic innovation, despite the thoroughly respectable history of that usage, easily found in the Oxford English Dictionary, among other places. Thomas Middleton denounced the content of John Mellon’s research summary on writing and grammar because he found the style jargonish; indeed, Middleton suggested that Mellon leave the profession. The late Theodore Bernstein, alone a language scholar among the pop grammarians, denied that he called nonstandard usages “good” and “bad,” even as he used those very terms in his syndicated column, “Bernstein on Words.” Richard Mitchell claimed a direct causal relationship between nonstandard usage and the Three Mile Island accident, reasoning that someone carelessly schooled in grammar probably would be careless enough to muck up a nuclear reactor.
Some of this silliness is laid bare in the pages of journals like Esquire and Saturday Review. Other examples were included in letters from the pop grammarians themselves, in response to my queries over the years. Writing letters to pop grammarians isn’t just a matter of intellectual jousting; it is a way of lowering the ego stakes in discussion of the volatile issues at hand. Without a wide public audience to dazzle, a flamboyant writer will sometimes approach questions with a bit less swagger. This was certainly the case with Theodore Bernstein and Thomas Middleton. (In fact, Middleton apologized for his comments about Mellon’s work.) At the very least, the pop grammarians who respond to well-reasoned letters are forced to whip up newer and ever more tenuous rationalizations for their positions.
So far, though, I have been dealing only with good intentions and silly ideas—neither of which is doublespeak. By definition, doublespeak involves “deliberate distortion”—or in Bruce Reeves’s phrase, “active use of language to hide the truth.” If the pop grammarians were merely earnestly dogmatic and grossly inaccurate, I would be annoyed but not contemptuous. I will concentrate on six doublespeak techniques used by pop grammarians, citing examples along the way. An element of deceit or conscious retreat from rational investigation is embedded in each of the techniques. They are (1) the overloaded metaphor; (2) bogus ambiguity; (3) cubing the opposition; (4) the lucky exception; (5) the unfortunate exception; and (6) antiscience.
In the overloaded metaphor, the pop grammarian uses analogy—certainly a legitimate rhetorical device—but tries to invest it with disproportionate argumentative power. Cleverness, not a demonstration of the aptness of the analogues, must carry the argument. For example, there is some wit in John Simon’s comparison (in Paradigms Lost) of nonstandard English to a life-threatening fever; of a rhododendron, sprouting flowers in accordance with its nature, to a flawless speaker spouting nominatives where nominatives belong. But Simon fails to show, through historical analysis or logical argument, that the terms of his metaphors relate to the circumstances he is trying to characterize.
Richard Mitchell, the Underground Grammarian, actually invents a bungling primitive tribe called the Jiukiukwe to warn his readers about the dangers of using the passive voice. I hesitate to call this extended metaphor clever, but Mitchell is clearly having one hell of a good time with it. Because the nincompoops in his allegory use the passive voice, they are a passive people. They lack technology, sophistication, and common sense. So it will be with us, if we continue our wasty, passive ways instead of putting those agent-subjects up front.
The bogus ambiguity technique is the pop grammarians' way of demonstrating that usages they don’t like will create semantic ambiguity. In Strictly Speaking, Edwin Newman claims to be baffled by a sentence such as “Hopefully, something will happen.” Who, he wonders, is doing the hoping in such an utterance? Will something happen in a hopeful manner? Is a puzzlement. No native speaker can honestly pretend that such a sentence is ambiguous. The sentence is as clear (and structurally as valid) as “Certainly, something will happen,” which apparently doesn’t bother Newman. He just happens to dislike hopefully as a sentence modifier, so he cooks up some ambiguity to justify his position. When I debated John Simon at Tulane University in 1981, he invented an absurd sentence in which failure to observe the standard forms of lie and lay supposedly lay to an obscene interpretation: “Last Sunday I laid in bed for several hours.” I sometimes think Simon receives sentences one at a time from random sources, or finds them tucked individually in envelopes on his doorstep. In any real communication setting, the context would clearly reveal, even to Simon, whether the laid of his sentence meant rested or screwed.
The question of clarity in human interaction is an important one, so the pop grammarians are wise to try to link essentially irrelevant questions of usage to problems of ambiguity. But their methods of doing do are fraudulent. Garbled syntax is confusing; so is poor development of ideas in a conversation or essay; so are pronunciations from unfamiliar dialects, at least until one’s ear grows attuned. But only in the world of textbook examples and pop grammarians' analyses do we find rampant cognitive confusion over “misuse” of words like hopefully, lie, and lay.
In cubing the opposition, one makes a point; the pop grammarian ridicules it by raising it to the third power. Cubing involves adding amusing features to the opposing argument, features that were not there in the first place, to achieve a humorous distortion. Theodore Bernstein was one of the first to cube the legitimate feminist arguments against sexism in language. In a 1976 “Bernstein on Words” column, he evoked images of a chaotic world in which, among other things, Ann Speakman would technically have to change her name to “Ann Speakperson.” I have since heard other examples of the manhole/personhole, woman/woperson variety—but always from people who don’t like to pursue problems of sexist language beyond jocular attempts at cubing the opposition.
At the Tulane debate John Simon, I praised a third-grade student’s stunning image—“Flowers feel like rain”—as a creative response to a bland writing assignment, and I criticized her teacher’s niggling red-pencil tactics. Simon cubed the point by saying that the child’s metaphor should not prompt us to “proclaim her the new Marianne Moore” and “fall at her feet in adoration.” I have to admit that his comment was amusing, but the idea of declaring the child a genius was his, not mine. By exaggerating my modest claim in an erudite way, Simon avoided addressing the issues I had raised—viz., children’s capacity for creating metaphor and the effects of empty formalistic feedback.
The lucky exception is the pop grammarian’s way of dealing with evidence that speakers designated as “unskilled” can actually express themselves with clarity and invention. If a third grader creates an interesting figure of speech, John Simon calls it dumb luck. If nonstandard dialect speakers come up with good metaphors or unusual turns of phrase, if they advance ideas cogently in their own dialects, the pop grammarians explain these events as isolated incidents or charming flukes. For them, nonstandard English is ipso facto unsuited to the expression of complex ideas and sensibilities. There is no empirical basis for the lucky exception claim, and it is clear that John Simon and Edwin Newman do not spend a great deal of time sampling the nonstandard language of, say, jazz musicians or ghetto youth. But Simon does have an overloaded metaphor to explain lucky exceptions. A clumsy dancer, he says, will in the course of inept fumbling sometimes stumble luckily over a new step. This is different from the experienced dancer who, working from a deep understanding of the art, acts consciously to expand its horizons.
The metaphor is interesting, but its terms are not referential to their analogues, i.e., the way people make language in the real world. Teachers and researchers have long known that many students from nonstandard dialect communities are capable of thoughtful, powerful expression in their native dialects and that command of standard usage in no way guarantees clear or imaginative use of language. Edwin Newman treats lucky exceptions with patronizing good humor. In Strictly Speaking he is tickled, really, over colorful expressions uttered by a union leader, a cab driver, Harry Truman, a gardener, and other no-class types. Their deviant language— sometimes errors, sometimes highly memorable personal statements—is in the world for Newman’s entertainment and smarmy commentary. When a bozo talks to Newman about teachers and says “Them is my chief dread,” Newman remarks, “There is no way to improve on that.”
The unfortunate exception is alter ego to the lucky exception. In Paradigms Lost, John Simon speaks of “the giants of the English tongue who preceded us, all of those great writers and speakers who were … in the ballgame that counts.” (The ballgame metaphor refers to a comment earlier in his essay.) When someone points out to Simon that these giants used virtually every nonstandard form that the pop grammarians consider to be destructive of civilized communication, Simon talks about “slips” and “lapses,” atypical events that can be dismissed as if they had never occurred. In a different context, I once tested the unfortunate exception idea. After noticing that several well-known essayists used clichés now and then, I decided to find out whether or not these apparent slipups were truly unusual. So I proceeded to analyze some of my favorite prose stylists disrespectfully, i.e., as if they had punched me in the face the night before. My cliché hunt revealed that E. B. White’s essays were well laced with phrases like “when I first laid eyes on it” and “a tremendous shot in the arm.” I found that William Buckley used clichés like “passing along the torch,” “an air of finality,” and “we look forward to the experience.” Tom Wolfe saw things “as clear as day,” was “profoundly moved,” and was willing to “stand up and be counted.” It would seem, then, that respected writers from both the past and present use language far more playfully and freely than we normally admit. Excellent writers apparently are confident enough to use nonstandard forms and commonplaces when doing so works well within the overall texture of a work.
Pop grammarians, being committed to the notion of perfect expression, often feel obliged to indulge in public breast-beating when “unfortunate exceptions” show up in their own speech. In a gathering of language purists on The Dick Cavett Show, Simon, Agnes de Mille, and Edwin Newman were reduced to continuous self-correction as they became increasingly analytical about each sentence they uttered. Instead of exchanging ideas about language in a fluent way, the pop grammarians were gagging on their own obsessions with perfection, unable to admit that the inevitable unfortunate exception is a function of the dynamic qualities of human expression, not an effect of Original Sin.
Anti-Science is a recurring theme in John Simon’s writing and speech. Sometimes the theme is expressed subtly, as in his Paradigms Lost swipe at the lengthy scholarly bibliography appended to CCCC’s Student’s Right to their Own Language. At Tulane he declared that language is an art, not a science. He was consistent in this. His talk was artful, but he made scant reference to scholarship. He expressed a fond hope that research like William Labov’s studies of dialects would be discountinued. He pooh-poohed the idea that useful bibliographies of language research exist. It has often been said that you can prove anything by citing research. Simon’s counter-principle appears to be that you can prove anything as long as you ignore research. Richard Mitchell’s contempt for scholarship is revealed in dozens of ways. He shows slim understanding of the purposes, history, and procedures of holistic and primary trait test scoring, even as he condemns them. His program for teaching young children to write, described in Instructor magazine, flies in the face of virtually all research. (“First, children must learn all the conventions of writing: punctuation, capitalization, spelling….”) To him, intellectual rigor is a matter of enforcing the purist view of language and closing one’s eyes to linguistic scholarship and the uses of language in the real world.
It is ironic that the pop grammarians, who claim to be champions of high standards in language, often operate as saboteurs, subverting the communicative functions of language with trashy argumentation—sly irrelevancies, curmudgeonly posturing, and outright grandstanding. Joseph Epstein put the situation in perspective when he said that people like John Simon give standards a bad name. He recommended, moreover, that the language purists stop quibbling over minutiae and turn their guns on the real enemy—namely, “deception in its various forms, deliberate, unconscious, and self-. With … the wondrous cant from politics and psychology and education, we have all the means at hand to be lied to or to lie convincingly to ourselves.” In other words, they should be joining in the war against doublespeak.
EPISTOLA {Norman R. Shapiro}
Philip Howard’s allusion to the many suggested (and discredited) origins of O.K. [IX, 3] has jogged me into lobbing yet another hat into the etymological ring. To wit, the Scottish expression och aye, ‘aye yes.’ With its guttural “ch,” unnatural to American uvulas, this common phrase would easily have reduced to O.K. It certainly wouldn’t be the lone Scotticism in the early American lexicon.
I can’t even come close to “proving” this etymology, but it seems so logical and reasonable that I can’t believe I’ve never seen or heard it put forward. I think it is, at least, a worthy challenger to the rather fanciful “orl korrect” (which, by the way, I originally saw ascribed to Andrew Jackson’s alleged semi-literacy). On semantic grounds, it would imply that the expression began as a general affirmative exclamation (e.g., “Be off with you!” “O.K.”) before becoming adjectival (e.g., “These plans are O.K.”). But the reverse can’t be proven, even if the earliest written evidence were to suggest it.
Orl things konsidered, I think och aye is a kwalified kontender.
[Norman R. Shapiro, Wesleyan University]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Gardyloo—‘formerly, in Edinburgh, a cry warning people below that slops were about to be thrown from a widow onto the street.’ ” [From the Thomasville, Georgia Times-Enterprise, 2 September 1983. Submitted by David B. Guralnik, Cleveland, Ohio.]
An Architectonic of Verbs
Charles M. Young, Claremont Graduate School
In many natural languages, verbs can be determined along as many as six distinct dimensions: mood, number, aspect, person, voice, and time. It happens that there is an attractive logic to this congeries of features. The six dimensions themselves are, I take it, familiar. A verb’s mood may be indicative (as it is, for example, in “Brutus is stabbing Caesar”), subjunctive (“If Brutus were stabbing Caesar …”), optative (“Would that Brutus stabbed Caesar!”), or imperative (“Brutus, stab Caesar”) in mood. Its number may be singular (“Brutus is stabbing Caesar,” “I am stabbing Caesar”) or plural (“You conspirators are stabbing Caesar”); some languages have optional dual forms for use when the subject of the sentence is a pair of items. In aspect, verbs can be simple (“aorist”) (“Brutus stabbed Caesar”), progressive (“Brutus was stabbing Caesar”), or perfect (“Brutus has stabbed Caesar”). They may occur in the first person (“I stabbed Caesar”), the second person (“You stabbed Caesar”), or the third person (“Brutus stabbed Caesar”). A verb can be active (“Brutus stabbed Caesar”) or passive (“Caesar was stabbed by Brutus”) in voice; some languages have, in addition, special middle forms. Finally, the time of a verb may be past (“Brutus stabbed Caesar”), present (“Brutus stabs Caesar”), or future (“Brutus will stab Caesar”).
It is less well known that these six dimensions are primary, in that other features of verbs can be defined in terms of them. A tense, for example, is specified by two determinations, one as to time and another as to aspect. The present perfect tense (“Brutus has killed Caesar”) is present in time and perfective in aspect; the past tense (“Brutus killed Caesar”) is past in time and simple in aspect; and so on. An intransitive verb (“Caesar died”) is one with no passive determination as to voice, while a linking verb (“Caesar was ambitious”), is said to be “voiceless,” i.e., undetermined as to voice.
The order in this array of dimensions is seen most clearly in the basic sentence, which consists in a speech act regarding some subject’s involvement in some action. If for example Brutus says to the crowd, “Caesar has been killed,” Caesar is the subject of his sentence, the killing of Caesar is the action, and his saying that Caesar has been killed is the speech act. In such a sentence, the first three determinations—those as to mood, number, and aspect—give information about one of these three components. Mood defines the speech act, indicating whether it is meant as an assertion, as contrary to fact, as a wish, as an order, or whatever. Number quantifies the subject, as one or more than one. And aspect specifies a perspective taken on the action, the verb being simple, progressive, or perfective in aspect, depending on whether the action is seen as a simple occurrence, as ongoing, or as completed.
Person, voice, and time also give information about speech act, subject, and action, but this time taken in pairs. Person reflects a connection between speech act and subject. The verb is in the first person if the subject is the author of the speech act; in the second person if the subject is the recipient of the speech act; and in the third person, if the subject is some third party. Voice reveals a relation of subject to action: the verb is active or passive, respectively, if the subject of the sentence is the agent (patient) of the action. Time, finally, dates action relative to speech act: the verb is past, present, or future according as the action is prior to, contemporaneous with, or subsequent to the speech act.
Figure 1, which connects each of the six dimensions to the component or pair of components of the basic sentence that it concerns, helps to make the underlying structure clear:
As the figure indicates, mood, number, and aspect define speech act, subject, and action in themselves, while person, voice, and time define one of the three possible relations among them.
A few remarks on certain anomalous or otherwise interesting cases are in order. First, in languages in which the progressive aspect can be expressed without auxiliaries, the use of a progressive tense is (syntactically) ambiguous as to whether it is an action, or a practice, or an activity, which is represented as ongoing. In English, these ambiguities are generally resolved, typically through the use of auxiliaries. Thus “Brutus is stabbing Caesar” and “Brutus was stabbing Caesar” depict an action as ongoing, while “Brutus used to stab Caesar” and the “habitual” reading of “Brutus stabs Caesar” concern a practice. “To keep (on)” can be used as an auxiliary indicating the progressive aspect, but whether the verb in such a construction concerns an action or a practice turns on the number of its object. “Brutus kept on stabbing Caesar,” for example, is about an action, while “Brutus kept on stabbing people” is about a practice. A second point concerns stage directions, like “They stab Caesar.” To a cast, of course, stage directions function as if they were imperatives, but their real mood is indicative. This is true even of “Exit,” which is a Latin indicative, not an English imperative. And, like other remarks about what happens in plays, stage directions count as simple or progressive in aspect, depending on whether a play is seen as a single production or as a sequence of productions. Finally, the mood of certain verbs is often difficult to determine. Whether “Drop dead” expresses an order or a wish, for example, depends upon the spirit in which it is uttered.
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“AUTO REPAIR SERVICE. Free pick-up and delivery. Try us once, you’ll never go anywhere again. Emergency service available.” [From a classified advertisement in TV Facts, week of June 19, 1983. Submitted by Dennis Wepman, Bronx, New York.]
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Anathema! Medieval Scribes and the History of Book Curses
Marc Drogin, (Allanheld & Schram, 1983), xx + 138 pp.
When rebellious Abbie Hoffman published Steal This Book!, in 1971, he was cursed by bookstore owners everywhere. Placing an anathema—in earlier times the curse of excommunication and death, not just a vehement curse—upon those who damage or steal books can be traced back at least 28 centuries. The oldest known book curse in Drogin’s charming work was inscribed on a Babylonian clay tablet of the 7th century B.C. The temple curse is even older. Temples housed the library; thus, a curse designed to protect the temple and its contents may be the oldest curse of this genre. We have an example from 3800 B.C., engraved on the door socket of the temple of Ba’al by King Sargon I.
Book curses are just one kind of many ecclesiastic, royal, and legal damnations upon anyone who would try to rob coffins (May you be without seed!) or disobey legal decrees (May a donkey copulate with you and your wife!). Marc Drogin presents a beautiful, illustrated history of book curses ranging from formal Babylonian damnations to an informal 20th-century reaction to an anathema.
Approximately half of the book treats related matters: the life, craft, and toils of medieval scribes, how books were written and cared for, and the value of medieval books, all leading up to the book curses meant to protect the results of a scribe’s labors. A glossary of medieval and ecclesiastic book terms, from accentuarius to weax-bred, as well as a list of sources, complete this volume. The design, layout, and illustrations are tasteful. Many book-related quotations and nearly 90 book curses, often in other tongues, with English translations, are woven into the essays and commentary.
Mr. Drogin’s interests are divided between the world of the medieval scribe—born 1000 years behind his time, he works as a medieval calligrapher and illuminator—and the book curse proper. This may explain why he missed Lawrence Thompson’s “Bibliological Maledictions Revisited” in Maledicta (1978), featuring a dozen multilingual book curses that would have rounded out this introduction with such unusual macaronic curses as … in ventrem illius I’ll stick my scalpellum / And teach him to steal my little libellum, or William Barnes’s four-line curse in Italian, Latin, French, and English. Thompson also shows the decline of afterwordly punishments by citing the contemporary Do not steal this book of knowledge / Or you’ll be sent to Sing-Sing College.
As long as manuscripts and books have been around, they have been stolen. Thompson tells us that in the 19th century G. Libri, as inspector of libraries in France, stole hundreds of priceless manuscripts. In September 1983, Cees Post reported in the Dutch NRC Handelsblad that the remaining copies of Maledicta, at the University of Utrecht are watched especially carefully because they are “a desirable booty among the kleptomane bibliofielen.” College and public libraries, who lose tens of thousands of dollars' worth of books every year, know that callous modern patrons can’t be scared with eternal damnation and thus are forced to install expensive electronic devices with locking gates and sirens to deter book thefts.
Our callousness toward curses is best illustrated by Marc Drogin’s experience: Professor Harvey, a classics scholar at the University of Exeter, England, sent him an envelope with precious references upon which he had inscribed PLEASE DO NOT BEND. If anyone shall bend this, let him lie under perpetual malediction. Fiat. Fiat. Fiat. Amen. The envelope arrived bent, with a British postal worker’s printed reaction to the anathema: Fart.
Book curses often are short poems (Christ’s curse upon the crook / Who takes away this book); others range from single lines (Whoever steals this book, may there be anathema upon him) to a dozen lines telling us to whom the book belongs, its contents, and what will happen to the book thief. The scribes scared potential book thieves with all sorts of threats: They will be erased from the Book of Life; suffer violent bodily pains; receive a blow upon their fundaments; be hit with a rod, mightily; hang from gallows; get a knife into their bellies; be drowned; be cleft by the sword of a demon; have their eyes gouged or picked out by ravens; be consigned to the depths of hell; endure fire and brimstone; have their souls rot away; be boiled in a cauldron, seized by epilepsy and fever, and broken on the wheel; be tied by the chain of excommunication; be accursed unto their seventh generation; or be ripped apart by swine.
Today’s mild-mannered librarians threaten us with a bloodcurdling fine of 5 cents a day. I wonder whether a large anathema above our libraries' exits, such as IF YOU STEAL A BOOK, MAY YOUR HEART BE RIPPED APART BY SWINE!, would not be as effective as a $40,000 electronic gate….
The publishers, a division of Littlefield, Adams & Co., apparently are not yet owned by an oil company with shifty-eyed executives watching the bottom line. How else would a commercial press dare publish such a lovely work, the kind of treat for one’s mind and soul nowadays produced only by university or private presses? This book should be required reading for all medievalists, librarians, and book-lovers. Libraries ought to forgo one trendy title and instead acquire this book of lasting value. Anathema upon them if they don’t!
[Reinhold Amar, Waukesha, Wisconsin]
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: A Mania for Sentences
D.J. Enright, (Chatto & Windus, the Hogarth Press, 1983), 211 pp.
What is criticism for? The British are generally anti-intellectual and suspicious of the higher criticism that claims to be a science or tries to pursue some autonomous business of its own. They go in for it less than the Americans, the Germans, or the French. They tend to dislike literary theory, and prefer a good read.
Enright is a poet, a fully paid-up member of the intellectuals' club, and that chimera, a serious British literary critic. His book consists of essays that began life as reviews of new books, and he sees himself as a practical critic: that is, somebody whose criticism, when it comes off, is of practical use to readers by describing, drawing out, comparing, concurring, or quarreling with the work it is discussing. The practical critic, the book reviewer, may be a hand-maiden or a cup bearer, but he or she serves in a family of gods. Or sometimes of demons. And more often of clowns and cranks, from all of whom something may be learnt.
Do not be deceived by his depreciation of literary theory. His principles and views of literature protrude through the prose without being formally stated. He is a witty and immensely well-read man. With British diffidence Enright may shrink from the label; but he is one of our splendid and rare masters of the higher criticism.
That is why a collection of his old reviews, revised and expanded, is worth publishing as a book. How many other book reviewers can we say that about? Lionel Trilling and Bernard Shaw, yes. But there are not many critics writing today whose pieces are worth reproducing between hard covers. Anthony Burgess, yes, but for the liveliness of the writing and the extravagance of the ideas rather than for the coherence of the literary theory. Enright is worth preserving because there is hardly anybody else writing in Britain who surveys the literature of the world from The Tale of Genji to Max Frisch, takes a characteristically urbane British view of it, and remains a pleasure to read. Even the higher criticism ought to be more accessible, at any rate not (as it often is) less accessible, than what it is commenting on.
The essays relate both to particular books and to language as it appears (and disappears) in writing and speech. The writers and the linguistic phenomena selected for discussion are chameleonic. The writers because they evade fixed identity and contrive, as Keats expressed it, to “live in gusto, be it foul or fair, rich or poor, mean or elevated.” The linguistic features are chameleons because they change color according to their surroundings or have their color changed forcibly by those who use or abuse them.
The first section of the book deals with German writers, who are more admired than read by the British intelligentsia. They include Mann, Musil, Brecht, Max Frisch, Grass, and Böll. Enright is an exception to the British resistance to German literary classics. He knows them as old friends and in his essays discusses such tricky literary questions as fantasy (is it real?) and modern biography (history or fiction?). Next comes a group of essays on Eastern and other European works, chiefly novels, which, through the intercession of the excellent translators they have attracted, can claim to be classics of world literature.
The final section is more specifically linguistic in theme. It is concerned with “sexistolinguistics” or the His and Hers of words, clichés and the philosophical and social significance imputed to them, the cleansing of dirty words and the dirtying of clean ones, and the use of language by children in self-expression and self-protection. The boy asked by his teacher to use a familiar word in a new way came up with: “The boy returned home with a cliché on his face.” When asked to explain himself, he answered: “The dictionary defines cliché as ‘a worn-out expression.’ ”
The book ends with concise appraisals of several writers, including Anthony Burgess, E. B. White, and Raymond Queneau, who are more than usually involved in serious games with language.
Here is Enright in typical form: “Maledicta calls itself ‘The International Journal of Verbal Aggression,’ but the worst thing about it is its editorial huffing and puffing. It sees itself as a band of frank, gallant and daring intellects battling vigorously against the ‘envious, mindless, cacademoid prissy pricks’ of some putative stuffed-shirt Establishment. In truth Maledicta (the best thing about it is its name) is the old Teutonic philologizing shakily transferred to the dark side of the tongue: the sort of volte-face so popular when once safe.”
Enright is a journalist and an intellectual. His tone is a characteristic fusion of light-heartedness and gravity. The best literature, he believes, entertains, astonishes, and strengthens, but also rebukes, warns, and sometimes terrifies. It is the sort of book that might give literature a good name among the British. And that would never do.
Philip Howard
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Language of the Teenage Revolution
Kenneth Hudson, (Macmillan, 1983), 137 pp.
Kenneth Hudson’s thesis is that since the last war, rising to a climax in the sixties, there has been a social revolution in the United Kingdom, which has produced a self-conscious and aggressive teenage culture. British society has stopped being a pyramid, with the elders and betters at the top, and become more like a pear, a pear tending to become an apple. Englishmen, perhaps even more Englishwomen, stopped looking upwards as they had in the past; outward looking began to replace upward looking. For the first time in history the young had enough money to live their own lives and set their own style. This instant pop culture differs radically from the life styles of the parents and ancestors of the new people, and it expresses itself in a hermetic jargon, which is a badge of revolution as surely as the jeans and the hair-styles. At some time around the sixties young Brit males leaving school started to say: “I don’t need to wear a tie; I don’t have to cut my hair short; and I can make up my spelling and grammar to suit myself and my contemporaries. We are not going to be bound by the conventions of the past in the way we dress, or the way we talk, or the way we live.”
Because it is largely a spoken culture rather than a written one, this linguistic revolution, according to Hudson, has eluded the conventional lexicographers, who are not equipped to deal with the spoken word. With courage above and beyond the call of duty, Hudson has gone hunting for this language of the teenage revolution in magazines such as Rolling Stone, New Musical Express, My Guy, and Honey. He has come back with much interesting matter of detail about the tone and register of the language of the British young, working class and black, and in particular with a theory that the new young speak with irony, between quotation marks, giving a quite new flavor to old words.
What are we to say to all this?
First perhaps that it is a common old delusion that the world is going to the dogs, that the changes in style and language that have happened since one was taught English oneself are more radical than anything that has happened before. The language of the teenage revolution is a recurring phenomenon. You have only to read Vanbrugh and Sheridan to hear the middle-aged complaining about what the young dogs and fops were doing to the King’s English, and indeed to their hair-styles and clothes.
Second, I think Hudson exaggerates the difficulty that lexicographers have with the spoken word. It is not a matter that is susceptible to proof one way or another, but I think that new words and meanings in English are written down somewhere, probably in Rolling Stone, almost as soon as they come into the language. Using their old-fashioned written sources, the lexicographers of the Oxford English Dictionary have traced cunt back much earlier than Hudson supposes, to a street called Gropecuntlane in the City of London circa 1230; Dunbar used fuck in a poem in 1503, without any noticeable hesitation or timidity. They were going through another brave new revolution against the fuddy-duddy establishment at the time. The lexicographers of the Collins English Dictionary, using the old-fashioned methods, seem to me to have got kinky dead right as long ago as 1979. Hudson says that in the sixties kinky implied deviation, with a strong hint of sadism: a kinky person was a deviant or pervert of some kind. Soon after this the whole business of whips, high boots, and leather clothing began to appear laughable, rather than sinister, to those people—the great majority—whose own tastes did not incline in that direction, and it is now close to being a joke word among the young. Collins makes all these points, somewhat more economically. So does Volume II, H-N, of the OED Supplement, with a wealth of exemplary citations from a wide variety of written sources.
Third, the habit of talking in quotation marks is by no means as new as Kenneth Hudson supposes. The young have always used irony and intonation and accent to send up the grown-up language they are inheriting, and to send coded messages to their peer-group. There may be more of it around today than in the conformist generations between the wars, when grammar was still taught in schools and you could get a hot dinner with wine for half a crown… yawn, yawn. But these things go in cycles. And teenagers have always, even in the most conformist generations, been prolific and inventive sources of slang. I think that the Bright Young Things of the twenties spoke a language of shibboleths and ironic accent and quotation marks quite as much as today’s teenagers.
Kenneth Hudson has made an intrepid foray into the jungle of teenage slang. It is not as novel or unexplored a jungle as he imagines. But he has brought back some interesting samples. It is a pity that the explorer disapproved so strongly of the jungle he was exploring and had so little taste, for example, for pop music that he can dismiss its lyrics as almost always gibberish. But his book is a useful little contribution to understanding the way that some of us speak now.
Philip Howard
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: A Treasury for Word Lovers
Morton S. Freeman, (ISI Press, 1983), x + 333pp.
Edwin Newman’s “Foreword” consists of a page of listings of slips in grammar, style, and spelling that he doesn’t like, with a one-sentence blurb at the end.
Morton S. Freeman’s book consists of an alphabetical listing of the usual sort of thing one finds in a usage book, though he goes somewhat further than most in providing synonym distinctions and cogent comments on usage. Why he has seen fit to add cutesy and obvious clichés to the entries is beyond me—BROAD, WIDE: Take a Wide Berth; BURGLAR, ROBBER, THIEF; Who Steals My Purse…; BOURGEOIS, PROLETARIAT: One Burgher to Go, etc. But there they are.
Freeman is former Director of Publications, American Law Institute—American Bar Association (almost ALI BABA), and his remarks are generally tempered by a sober judiciousness. His style is didactic and tends toward the peremptory, and he makes good sense; but occasionally his coverage of a topic is sparse (FOREIGN WORDS, where rules for italicization are virtually ignored), or nonexistent (the split infinitive is not discussed at all), or unnecessary (Do people really confuse shortfall with windfall?), or improperly described (“As a verbal modifier following a verb, either wrong or wrongly is permissible, though wrong is preferred.”)
This last comment characterizes the nature of the approach: when linguists use the word preferred, they mean ‘more frequently found in the language of educated native speakers’; they do not contrast it with “permissible,” which is more like the approach Newman, Simon, and others might take. Permissible to whom? Surely not to linguists or other language professionals or to society. Otherwise, Freeman’s advice seems rather bland. If you collect such books, you might find some justification in adding this one to your stock; as a guide, there are others that are more interestingly written, more authoritative, and more thorough in their treatment of those bothersome ambiguities and unresolved questions of style that, sooner or later, nettle us all.
Laurence Urdang
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Sic-Sac, The Original Motion Sickness Bag… moistureproof and not affected by extreme temperature changes.” [Submitted by A.M. Kinlock, University of New Brunswick, Canada.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Police said the shooting stemmed from an argument between one of the victims and had nothing to do with football rivalry.” [From The Orlando Sentinal, October 2, 1983. Submitted by Richard E. Langford, DeLand, Florida.]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“St. George Catholic Church Perish Picnic… Mass followed by picnic.” [From the Cotton, South Dakota Shopping Guide, September 7, 1983. Submitted by James Swanson, Madison, South Dakota.]
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Native Tongues
Charles Berlitz, (Grosset & Dunlap, 1982), xi + 340 pp.
“A unique storehouse,” gasps the blurb, “of surprising, thought-provoking, fascinating, and useful facts about the human speech and the written word.” Translation: a stale potpourri of exotic tidbits and snippets, whose accuracy needs continual checking against references the author does not provide. Experts may merely be irritated; layfolk, for whom this exercise in multilingual Schlamperei is meant, will trust the Book-of-the-Month Club selectors and the Berlitz name (though the author disclaims connection with the schools) and be deceived.
Take the one Berlitz idea that is new and could really be helpful: a “rock-bottom basic 8-word vocabulary” (p. 224) for survival in 15 European and 10 Asian languages plus Swahili. Learn to say excuse me, please, thanks, where is?, how much is?, yes, no, and good, and your foot is in the door; many a phrase book shows less sense. But in Japanese, the word given for ‘excuse me’ is moshi-moshi, which is used almost exclusively for ‘hello’ on the phone. (To attract attention, try shitsurei desu ga or anone; to apologize, gomen nasai or sumimasen—a distinction Mr. Berlitz’s list ignores.) And if the author can butterfinger one out of eight in Japanese, what is his average likely to be for Thai, Hindustani, Turkish, or Polish?
Indeed, of 36 pages indexed under “Japanese,” at least 15 contain errors—up to 7 per page; and though some may be misprints, that is no help when the non-polyglot reader can’t catch them. Mispronunciation abound, including an attempted latrine-wall pun on fuku (really pronounced rather like English “hook”). Still in Asia (to excerpt and spitlist running four pages single-spaced) the author confuses alphabets with syllabaries (115-117), misnames days of the week (105), misinterprets the Chinese for revolution (260), and mis-romanizes Generalissimo Chiang’s name in pinyin (262); heading West, he ends Stalin’s Christian name with a “p” (215), leaves the ICHTHYS acronym incomplete (250), and thinks Yiddish schwanz means simply and purely “tail” (179); at home, he derives Reno, Nevada, from the Spanish for—believe it or not—‘reindeer’ (166). So much for common sense and standard sources!
Outside languages as such, Mr. Berlitz sometimes displays mere ignorance, as when missing the point of “owls to Athens” (205) or characterizing the egregious Frederick the Great as a ladies' man (249); more often he adopt Von Däniken’s Method (if it makes good copy, print it and let documentation wait), resurrecting such pinchbeck oldies as the myth that “German almost became the official language of the United States” (43) or the pedantic misdiagnosis of Cindrella’s slipper as “really fur” (239). Then there’s the chapter entitled “There Were Others Before Columbus,” which ransacks Amerind languages from Patagonia to Puget Sound for verbal similarities “proving” visits here by everybody from Japanese through Sumerians to Berbers. In previous works, Mr. Berlitz has employed such arguments ad ignorantiam and ad captandum to promote belief in a lost antediluvian civilization centered on Atlantis; and his methodology is worthy of his thesis. As my 14-year-old points out, there are only so many sounds available; given wide enough vocabularies, you can prove relationships between and languages you like.
Previous works by Mr. Berlitz fall into two groups: here, such straight pedagogy as Spanish Step by Step; there, such flights of fancy—really a single flight, continually, buoyed up by new hot air—as Doomsday 1999 A.D., Mysteries From Forgotten Worlds, and The Mystery of Altantis. The latter list is the place for Native Tongues.
[Gordon B. Chamberlain, Corvallis, Oregon]
Antipodean English: A Pet Avoision
G.W. Turner
I have just returned from Canberra and the first “National Word Festival,” a weekend gathering of writers and those interested in words. A well-known poet, Judith Wright, hearing of the National Word Festival, asked “What is the national word?” Since it had already been decided to run a competition as part of the festivities, it was clear what the competition should be: Find the national word.
What would you answer if asked for the national word in the USA or Britain? In Australia plenty of words suggest themselves, to be quickly rejected usually. There’s bloody of course, long known as the great Australian adjective, a necessary device in a male-dominated society for giving emphasis without raising the voice in a feminine way. But it has faded with use and any emphasis it gives now is pretty bloody faint (and you’ll notice it is not only an adjective). Kangaroo is too obvious; ornithorhyncus too remote. Transcontibloodynental is too long, emu a bit short. All are obsessed with the outback and flora and fauna.
In fact most Australians never see the outback; they live in cities dividing their time between working and voting in elections. There are lower and upper chambers in the parliaments of all states except Queensland, and there’s a Federal Government as well. In theory parliaments run for three years; in fact there are frequent early elections or snap elections as parties strive for electoral advantage or try to make bicameral legislatures work. Saturday mornings sometimes seem to be more or less alternately divided between the garden and voting. The national word has to be a political one.
Max Harris, a columnist in the Australian (our own Murdoch newspaper), recently lamented that we have no political words of our own but take over terms like pork-barreling from the USA. He was wrong. We have informal vote to start with (a spoiled or invalid vote elsewhere), and because of our preferential voting system and resulting long lists of candidates, along with compulsory voting, the donkey vote. This is simply numbering the list of names from top to bottom without paying attention to policies or parties. The donkey vote can be worth as much as two percent of a total vote, so that candidates await the ballot for position on the voting paper with some trepidation.
In the past year the dominant political term has been bottom of the harbor, used to describe shady schemes just within the law or a bit outside it for avoiding tax. Already the origin of the term seems to be disappearing in the mists of recent antiquity; perhaps it hints that the records of evanescent dummy companies have been conveniently dumped where they can’t be found.
A preoccupation with taxation has led to a fine distinction between tax evasion (the illegal practices of others) and tax avoidance (the quite legitimate minimization of tax one feels one ought to pay attention to oneself for the sake of one’s family). Everyone saw the need for a distinction of this kind until our new Prime Minister (I am told) in a speech allowed the carefully separated terms to coalesce in a slip of the tongue. Or it may be, as some say, that our new Prime Minister (already becoming something of a legend) does not make slips of the tongue. Be that as it may, the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate ways of not paying tax to the Government has been shattered at a blow and the winning word in the competition and our new national word is avoision.
Language Crimes: The Case of the Purloined Negatives
Richard L. Faust, New York, New York
It was the first day in May and I had a terrible case of spring fever. As I approached my office door, a honey bee was buzzing against the glass panel, nuzzling my painted name, AHA, as if it were a flower. It ignored the other two words: PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. With a smile, I brushed it away, unlocked the door, and entered.
The office was bathed in fresh spring light, the kind of glow that smooths out cracks and blemishes (like a dowager’s facelift) and turns the water cooler into a crystal grotto. The day was starting out as positively perfect.
But my oriental ancestors always warned, “When the clock shows noon, it also shows midnight.” I remembered their wisdom when exactly at noon there was a knock on my door. It plunged me into a case that would take me into the deepest reaches of man’s psyche.
“Come in!” I said, and the day turned around.
He looked like Hollywood’s version of a doctor—bright eyes peering through wire-rimmed glasses, a small goatee and moustache, strong, scrubbed hands, and although he was wearing a conservatively cut suit, you could swear he was in a white smock with a stethoscope around his neck. And he confirmed my impression by saying in a firm, comforting voice:
“I’m Dr. Logomann of the Verbal Psychiatric Institute. May I sit down?”
I had heard of the place. It took on hopeless cases, socially unacceptable misfits, and gave them “Negative Removal Therapy.” What they did exactly, nobody knew, but there were some notable successes, such as the famous lawyer Reed Tractable.
“What may I do for you?” I said, tempted to say, “Open your mouth and say ‘Aha.’ ”
“We have a problem at the Institute. Just this morning I discovered that some of our negatives have been stolen.”
“Do you mean film negatives?”
“No, these are our stored negative elements, the ones we remove from our patients.”
“Why haven’t you called the police?”
“I prefer to handle it quietly, since it is clear that only one of our patients could have taken them.”
“Where were the negatives kept?”
“In an unlocked room in the East Wing, where all of our present patients now live. It is not generally known, but the Institute has fallen upon hard times. We have only five patients now, and I have had to let all the other doctors go. Those five are still with me because, and I tell you this confidentially, they may never be able to go back into society. It is something we therapists did not foresee. With their negative elements removed, they are still unacceptable to the vast public. Here is a list of their names; you will see that their positive characters are unorthodox.”
The list was neatly typed: Bob Gruntled, Marvin Kempt, Vic Seemly, Jack Descript, and Bill Ruly.
I read the list again. What’s in a name? In this case everything was.
“You see now why people would never employ them in normal circumstances. In a sense, their positive characters don’t exist in the real world. It is quite a dilemma. By taking away their negative elements, we made them better, but they can only live at the Institute. And if business continues to get worse, I will have to let them revert and release them. Now you know why I don’t want the police or the press to learn about this.”
“Why were the negative particles not destroyed?”
“Part of our therapy is to let the patients have easy access to their former selves, the way reformed alcoholics often keep a bottle of whiskey around. It removes a lot of the early anxiety. The negatives were neatly labeled and kept in clearly marked files. The negative elements of all former patients are locked away in our basement vault as soon as each patient rejoins society. The vault has not been touched.”
“Tell me, doctor, what use could someone make of a negative particle?”
“That’s what you must discover. I want them back right away. This could precipitate a crisis.”
I decided to take on the case. My first stop, as usual, was to talk with my old friend Billy Emerald, lex guard at the Oakland dictionary depot.
“Billy,” I asked, “why would someone want to steal some negative language particles?”
“Aha,” he said, “haven’t you heard how much parts are selling for on the black market? It’s big business. First, the plagiarists steal the prose and sell it to the strippers. These days there are gangs of rogue grammarians roving around out there who can break down a sentence into its component parts in less than a minute. Nouns are most in demand, but everything has its price—prepositions, particles, articles. I’ve heard of secret assembly plants where whole new books are forged out of words the plagiarists have stolen. They do such a good job that Lincoln wouldn’t be able to recognize his Gettysburg Address after they have rearranged the parts.”
“Who’s the big dealer in these parts?”
“A guy called Smithy is the best. He’s a pro, a wordwright.”
“Thanks, Billy.”
Could Dr. Logomann be selling off the negatives to raise money for the Institute? But why hire me, then?
I knew I could find Smithy in the Village at a bar called The Spreading Chestnut Tree. I hadn’t been to the Village in a long time. It was a sink of porno palaces and sleazy hotels where you could get anything you wanted in the way of sex or drugs. And now they had added the parts business.
The Spreading Chestnut Tree was a dive. Going from the bright sunlight into the dark bar was like descending into Hell. Red lights from the juke box in the corner turned the atmosphere to flame. The place smelled of booze and broken hearts. It was too early for the night people; only the bartender was there, and when I asked for Smithy, he nodded toward the side room.
I walked deeper into the murk. There he stood—Smithy was a tall black man with large sinewy hands. The muscles in his forearms looked strong as iron bands.
“Aha,” he said, “you oriental devil you. What brings you here?”
I had once saved Smithy from a forging charge. He owed me a favor.
“Did you buy five negative parts last night?”
“Why?”
“I need to get them back. Can you arrange it?”
“Will this make us even?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. But I got only four parts from the guy; that’s all he was selling.”
“Four parts! What did he look like?”
“Sort of ordinary, nothing special. Just a guy. What did you expect him to look like, Rasputin?”
“Deliver the parts tonight at nine to the Verbal Psychiatric Institute. Address the package to me.”
I came up into the light and heaved a sigh of relief. I had solved the case. I knew who did it, and the returned parts would prove it.
That night they were all assembled in the Staff Lounge— Dr. Logomann and his five hapless patients, all of whom looked quite ordinary and normal; but one was a diabolical thief.
“They have all been told about the disappearance,” said the doctor.
The package had arrived. Time to begin the show.
“The thief,” I announced, “made one mistake: he sold only four of the negative particles—and I have them here. Why? Because he needed the fifth as his disguise. He assumed his previous character in order to go unremembered in the outside world. Only one of you could do that.”
I opened the box and took out one of the labeled parts. It was UN, and Seemly, when he saw it, made an obscene remark. The second was also UN, and Ruly knocked over his chair. The third was another UN, and Kempt kicked off his shoes and loosened his tie. The fourth and last was DIS, and Gruntled grumbled something and squirmed. The missing part was NON. We all turned toward the guilty one.
“That’s right; I did it,” said Jack Descript. “You all don’t know what it’s like to be nondescript all your life. All of you had some strong personality trait—people noticed you wherever you went, even if they didn’t like you. But I was no one, no one until I came here. It has been the best time of my life. When I saw the hospital closing down and the doctors leaving, I feared the worst. I was afraid we might be forced back into society, and I didn’t want to leave. I tried to get rid of our negative parts so that Dr. Logomann would have to keep us here forever, all five of us. I don’t want to go.” He started weeping.
The doctor thanked me and said he would take over from there. They found the NON particle, slightly singed, lying in the rubbish where Descript had thrown it that morning after trying to burn it.
As I approached my office door, I looked for the bee, but it had gone to its hive hours ago. I switched on the desk lamp and started to write up the case, feeling very depressed. My oriental ancestors often said, “To enjoy the dawn you must first know the darkness.” At midnight I turned off the lamp and headed home to sleep. All those negatives had positively exhausted me.
Hwat, Hwere, Hwen, Hwich, … and Hwy
Henry M. Truby, South Miami, Florida
If one consults any reputable contemporary dictionary regarding the pronunciation of what, where, when, which, and why, one is certain to find, respectively, HWUT/HWOT or WUT/WOT, HWER or WER, HWEN or WEN, HWICH or WICH, and HWĪ or WĪ. Earlier in this century, and in previous centuries, only the hw- varieties were reported—or “authorized”—in dictionaries. Historically, in Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) times, i.e., c.450—c.1150, hw- was the prevailing orthography for the beginning of each of the above terms spelt wh- at present.
One cannot pronounce the sequence wh-. One either pronounces hw- or merely w-, or merely h- (as in, e.g., who, whom, whole, or whore). The result, in our time, of the wh-/w- coalescence, is a new set of homophones including: when/wen, where/wear, which/witch, why/Y, whale/wail, whet/wet, wheel/weal/we’ll, whether/weather, whey/way/weigh, while/ wile, whine/wine, whinny/Winnie, whip/Wip, and whit/wit, among others.
Homophones (by definition: ‘same sound, different spelling’) spawn oral-aural ambiguity, but the wh-/w- phonetic coalescence to w- has also harvested doubt among “poor spellers” as to how to spell, e.g., whack, whacky, wham, wharf, wheat, wheedle, wheeze, whelp, whelm, whence, whim, whimper, whimsy, whirl, whisk(e)y, whisper, whistle, white, whittle, and whiz. [Homonyms are ‘forms of different origin with same sound and same spelling,’ e.g., bear ‘endure,’ bear ‘carry,’ bear ‘animal,’ etc.; bear/bare are homophones.]
I am among those who admittedly lament the pronunciation loss of this initial *h-*sound in our *wh-*words previously pronounced hw-, though I am aware that this particular elision has been under way for centuries. For instance, early American diaries reflect confusion among diarists as to “wich whords whould be spelt with w- alone and wich whith wh-.” (For there were no dictionaries lying about the Colonies to look things up in, it should be recalled.) And the phonetic and orthographic history of initial- h-sounds in combination, and of corresponding initial-h spellings, reflects the steady disappearance, phonetically and orthographically, of h- in English: OE hraf became ModE roof, hreaw became raw, hræfn became raven, hreod became reed, hreol became reel, hrer became rare, hring became ring, hlaf became loaf, hlæder became ladder, hlæn became lean, hlæfdige/hlafdie became lady, hlid became lid, hlot became lot; and, analogously, human (though of Latin ancestry) is as often “YOOm’n” as it is “HYOOm’n” across the English-speaking population, as is English huge both “YOOJ” and “HYOOJ.”
As for the hw-/wh- terms which in Modern English are pronounced with initial h-, OE hwa and hwam came to be spelled with wh- (as who and whom) in unsophisticated analogy with the other hw-/wh- terms. This particular *h-*sound is almost unique with the who family and its offshoots (whose, whoever, whosever, whomever, whosoever, whomsoever, etc.), except for a few words which were misspelled with wh- by false analogy with the who family, as OE hal and hore, which became, respectively, whole and whore.
The fixing of this orthographic metathesis from hw- to wh- coincides with the advent of the English printing press [Caxton: 1476], AT WICH TIME THERE WHERE NO BOOKS TO CONSULT… and printers, following their own practices, printed those *w-*terms they were “sure of” with initial w-, and those *hw-*terms they were “sure of” with initial wh- (but which for them were also pronounced as if they were w-terms), thus inadvertently mistransposing orthographic hw- for all times to wh-. Even present-day Cockney bears anything but silent testimony to the “instinctive confusion about initial h among English speakers,” hwether or not in combination with other consonants.
The term two (OE twa) bears an analogy with who (OE hwa) in eliding the historically functional *w-*sound [more accurately, the *-w-*sound]. (All the other *tw-*terms related to ‘two’ retained the *-w-*sound: twice, twin, twig, twain, twine, twenty, twelve, twelfth, twill, twist, and betwixt and between.)
Language change is an inevitable, ever-ongoing process. All the “living language” aspects—pronunciation, meaning, grammar, spelling—are caught up in this flux, most often without warning, and certainly often “without rhyme or reason.” But once in a while, a prospective change is, in some measure, predictable. For instance, with impetus from such advertising contrivances as Redi-Wip and Cheez-Wiz to speed us on our way, a century down the road will find our language with wut, were (homophone of wear), wen, wich, and wy. Who will be the last to go, orthographically … and nobody alive will even remember “whom,” with the exception of a few linguists and grammarians and lexicographers… (It is hard enough to imagine a “new” ho (rhyming with to, two, and do), much less a “new” hom (rhyming with room, tomb, and plume)! We’ll surely settle for hoo.)
I’m fond of my hwys and hwerefores, already almost anachronistic, and my very last gasps will preserve the spiritus asper (‘rough breathing’) of all my aspirating ancestors, as I wonder: “Hwat’s up? Hwere to now? Hwen’ll I get there? Hwich way am I going? and … Hwy me?!”
Say Hwen.
English Words in Italian: Florence, Italy
A Cast of Thousands, Risa Bernstein Sodi
Just this year, France has once again taken up its age-old cry to de-Anglicize the French language. The Académie Française periodically tries to weed its garden of its English creepers and American crabgrass but, predictably, to little avail. Jack Lang, the former Minister of Culture, recently took hoe in hand and lashed out at all things American: from TV shows, to computer innovations, to movies, to overseas investments. But his number-one target was unmistakably the language itself, and we language lovers know that it is indeed the root of the problem.
The French furor made me look a bit closer to home, to my adoptive subalpine home, Italy. My fellow Italians are much more laissez-faire than the French. In fact, instead of rejecting Americana, they welcome it with open arms. One even gets the feeling that, if it isn’t American, it isn’t chic. How else to explain TV ads that say, Taste the world of Cinzano on Italian state TV, bars with names like Salt Peanuts or Pop-in, and Italian-made Big Babol (pronounced “bubble”) chewing gum by Brooklyn? Every neighborhood has a selection of supermercati and at least one specialty shop selling everything from peanut butter, to maple syrup, to chili ketchup. And what self-respecting, self-styled “in” bar could possibly do without caffé americano?
But getting back to the root of the problem, everyday language is really where one sees the Anglo-American influence. Not just erudite journalists or well-traveled “jet-setters” but even the man-in-the-street is able to tell you what a blackout, a bunker, and a bestseller are. Psychiatrists speak of insight, feedback, and input, while surgeons perform by-pass (operations) or implant pacemakers. Of course, the computer industry is dominated by American jargon, beginning with hardware and software and ending with bytes; and electromechanics boasts a wide array of English terms: inverter, wire-up, and chopper, to name but a few. But there are much more insidious and widespread uses of English in the Italian language.
On Fridays at 1 p.m., I usually turn on the RAI state radio for the countdown of this week’s top ten. My favorite d.j. plays all my favorite hits from the American, English, and Italian charts: rock, country (a catch-all word that, in Italian, has come to include everything from Neil Young to Pat Boone), and easy listening. If I think a single has that special feeling or sound, I can buy the LP at my corner record store. Or, in the meantime, I can always play it on the jukebox in the neighborhood bar (that is, if I can hear it above the whir of the flippers—pin-ball machines—and the zaps of the videogames). Once I bring my album back to the privacy of my home, I can either flip it on the hi-fi or stack it in my record library.
Later on, there is a telefilm on TV (not to be confused with the South American telenovellas, or soap operas). Although it is set in Italy, I see that the main characters are going to a cocktail party for a drink (the wife says she only wants a drinkino—a small drink); all the bigs and VIPs will be there. Afterwards, there will be a barbecue with a variety of sandwiches, some sliced rosbif, hamburgers, and plumcake. The only thing that seems to be missing are the tosts, but that’s bar-fare, to be nibbled with a Coke, a 7-Up, or a Sprite (the drink with the gusto light ‘light taste’).
You may ask, what are tosts? Why ‘toasts,’ of course! But beware: this is one English loanword that parts company with its original meaning. If you order one in an Italian bar, you will be served a toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich, not the usual foil for butter and jam. There are several other examples of such altered loanwords. For instance, Marcello Mastroianni has a flirt with Catherine Deneuve, not an affair or fling. A crack is a (stock-market) ‘crash.’ Pullmans are ‘motorcoaches,’ not railway cars, and a jolly is a ‘joker,’ as in card games. Box, that most versatile word, has at least three separate Italian meanings, although only one of them (the last) is also shared in English: ‘playpen,’ ‘garage,’ and ‘stall for animals.” If you feel like kicking up your heels, a dancing ‘dance hall’ is the perfect spot, and after a few whirls, you may be ready to go home to your residence a ‘residential hotel’ in Italian.
Other English compound words are conveniently halved for pronunciation’s sake: nightclub becomes night, lipstick, a lip, and basketball, basket. The same goes for beauty(case), pull(over), and that business twosome, the holding (company). By the same token, a full is a full house in poker, and a body is a body suit.
Business has made a killing in the field of English terms. The management of an import/export firm may worry about its turnover, marketing, and stoccaggio (‘goods in stock’). It exults when there is a boom, frets when there is a boicottaggio (from the verb boicottare), and is reassured when the prime rate is lowered. Its market managers study the company’s database, exchange telexes with the holding and their off-shore banks, and then come up with the slogans for next year’s PR campaign. (One Italian firm even uses Mark Spitz as its public relation spokesmen [sic].) Then again, they may just decide to keep the business as is.
But back to my weekend entertainment….
Friday night is poker night. We all get together in a local hotel with some scotch or gin and, maybe, some popcorn or crackers to munch on. The only disturbance is the sound of the clacsons (klaxons) outside or the noise from the nearby luna park (‘amusement park’). Three of us are at the table: one drove his jeep, one rode his scooter, and I took the tranvai (the Italian rendering of tramway). Our fourth, a whiz at bluffing (bluffare), is late because his volo charter ‘charter flight’ was delayed at check-in. He called from a nearby tea room to say he is having a snack with the hostess (‘air hostess’ or ‘stewardess’) and then may do some shopping before joining us. While we are waiting, we play a quick hand of bridge and then, impatient, turn on the tivù ‘TV.’
At 8:30, there is a prime-time variety show, featuring gags, sketches, showmen, performers, and breathtaking numeri (‘numbers’) from a sumptuously appointed set. The cameramen zoom in (from zoomare) on the star as she starts her tip-tap (‘tap dance’). It’s easy to see why she was considered a pin-up during the war since she’s still quite a sex symbol even now. Suddenly, she’s interrupted by a news flash. A reporter appears to inform us that the Bulgarian connection has produced new leads (born as the caso bulgaro, this international intrigue was soon rebaptized the Bulgarian connection in homage to The New York Times). For now, the news is top secret, but the intelligence gap is being bridged. Stoney-faced party leaders say No comment during their interviste (‘interviews’), but the anchor assures us that an 11:00 special will give us full details on the scoop. Then at 9:30, the films come on. Your preference? A shocking, a thrilling, or a cult movie? Some prefer suspense— but that’s for a French word list.
Lest you think that English loanwords are limited to the mass media, let’s turn to that most Italian of occupations: calcio, or ‘soccer,’ or football. Here, the World Champions reverently tip their hats to the English influence on the modern game. Offsides, corner, and gol are used every bit as often as their Italian counterparts, fuorigioco, calcio d’angolo and rete. A typical play might run like this: drib-blaggio by Tardelli, cross to Graziani, assist by Conte, and gol by Rossi. When cross-town rivals meet, it’s a derby—not demolition, but almost. And let’s not forget the farm teams—the under 21 (read: “under ventuno”), the all-stars, and the fan clubs. Another sport has a French name and an English structure: la boxe with its thirteen rounds. In Italy, as everywhere else, a kappa o ‘K.O.’ has great crowd appeal. Skiing at Cortina is undoubtedly chic, but all the more so if you can ask for your ski-pass to the ski-lift in English. And as to summer sports (what better name for them?), tennis requires mastery of a dictionary and not just the courts: set, match, topspin, and ace are all pronounced as in English. When it comes to athletic hobbies for a bit of relax, I prefer footing (‘jogging’) to windsurfing, but only because I’m no good at the crawl.
When the mafia moved to America, it widened its linguistic as well as criminal horizons. In an import/export operation that involved more than just underworld activities, it brought back its own set of loanwords to the peninsula: racket, killer, clan, boss and revolver, not to mention their archnemeses, detectives, identikits, and fotofits [sic].
Walt Disney was the pioneer in a much more pleasant intercultural exchange. Thanks to Donald Duck, et al., bang, gulp, screech, pow, phew, tuch-tuch, eek, buzz, and even cheee-yaarge are all part of any cartoon-loving Italian’s vocabulary. (Incidentally, cartoni animati is the Italian loan translation of the English animated cartoons).
Today, Italian teenagers chew chewing gum, wear clips ‘earrings,’ and spend the weekend at the beach: bikinis for the girls, slips for the boys. Topless is one of the standard looks on the Riviera, where sexy is in and hippie is out. And don’t even mention the fricchettone look (an Italianization of freak out plus the -one augmentative ending): that’s only for latter-day figli dei fiori ‘flower children’ absorbed in poesia beat. Naturally, the Italian edition of Cosmopolitan didn’t even mention hippies in its recent classification of the modern man. In its view, men come only in four varieties: gay, macho, latin lovers and self-made.
Weekends are perfect for scouring the countryside for small-town happenings. Local Sunday fairs often provide delightful glimpses of authentic folklore, far from the stress of city life, grattacieli ‘skyscrapers,’ or shopping centers. Once among the olive groves and vineyards, you may be convinced that the grafiti artists aren’t all wrong: perhaps our urbanized world really is in tilt (‘on the blink,’ in flipper lingo).
I tend to be a bit less drastic. It is obvious, however, that the number of English words in common Italian usage is growing everyday. In this brief list, we can see an assortment of them, from straight carryovers (leader, ski-pass), to literal translations (figli dei fiori, grattacieli), to partial translations where an Italian suffix is tacked on to an English stem (such as drib-blaggio or zoomare). Then there are a certain number of English words which, when transposed into Italian, just seem to fall short of their original meanings (flirt for ‘fling,’ tip-tap for ‘tap dancing,’ or flipper for ‘pin-ball’). Lastly, some English words are used as gerunds in Italian instead of as nouns (for example, thrilling, dancing, or shocking).
In any case, whatever be their form, the fact is that the use of English words in Italian is on the rise. Fields as diverse as politics, music, and sports are all affected and are absorbing new words at an astonishing rate. The outcome—increased Anglicization (or Americanization, if you will) of the Italian language—is neither the result of scheming nor design, but instead the end product of a brisk exchange between a prolific exporter and a willing importer. It seems that no matter which way you look at it, Italy’s love story with the English language is in full bloom.
SCHOLEGRAPHIA: Option, The Double-Sided Word Game
Parker Brothers
The inevitable comparison is between Option and Scrabble. Everyone knows Scrabble, or so I assume. Option has a “board” that consists of two plastic pieces that fit together to make a plain, brownish-maroon square about 13¾” on a side, patterned with 256 rectangular holes. The set includes a plastic bag (opaque), 4 racks, and 96 letter prisms. What is a letter prism, you ask? A letter prism is a tentlike plastic prism, closed at the ends, open on one side, and bearing letters and scoring points on the other two sides. When a letter prism is placed on the board, one side faces upwards.
The play is similar to that of Scrabble: each player takes seven prisms and arrays them on his rack. At once, the player sees that one of the two letter-bearing sides has a dark brown letter on a light-beige field, the other a light-beige letter on a dark brown field. (Does one dare to suppose that the “official” colors of VERBATIM have been used?) Thus, with the prisms arrayed before him, the player can see both letters on each prism, giving him a choice of 14, rather than seven, letters from which to form words. Although the play is essentially the same as for Scrabble, the scoring is different: words of all beige or all brown letters are scored double the sum of the letter values, provided the word is of five or more letters. Also, the player has the option (get it?) to pivot a letter in a word already made (if a legitimate word is so formed) and to use it in a new word. For instance, if SEX is horizontal on the board, and the next player wants to form THERE vertically, he can flip the s tile to reveal the H, forming THERE using the H of HEX, and collecting points for both words.
I played three games with friends, who prefer to remain unidentified because I won, 448 to 220, 381 to 303 and 311 to 1. Scoring should not be compared to that of Scrabble, because the method is different: placement of prisms on the board is irrelevant; the heavy scoring comes from using all seven prisms and from making words all in the same color. In other words, Option is a simple game to learn to play, which can be said about all good games. It also offers much more than double the number of opportunities for making words (though, because of the distribution of letters on the prisms, it is not a factorial function). It takes a little getting used to to have 14 anagrammatic options open to you (plus what may be on the board), and the game is somewhat slower because of the additional possibilities. It is, in some ways, more challenging than Scrabble because of the added opportunities afforded both by having 14 letters and by being able to flip prisms on the board. As I have played only three times, I cannot say how addictive Option might become, but I think it has great possibilities. My opponents and I enjoyed playing the game immensely, though I enjoyed winning more than they enjoyed losing.
I do have a couple of criticisms, however: first, the prisms, which are made of hollow plastic, are too light and are difficult to handle; second, the rack is a bit awkward. Similar to the Scrabble rack, the Option rack is tilted a little more to the vertical so that the player views the prisms edge-on, allowing him to see both letters. But it, too, is light and tended to skitter about on the smooth surface where we were playing. One might assume that, given sufficient encouragement from sales, Parker Brothers will soon offer Option sets with wooden prisms and racks—perhaps diamond-studded if business really booms. And there is no reason why it shouldn’t. Buy it—or should I say “Take the Option!”—you will probably like it and may even switch your allegiance from Scrabble.
Scrabble boards list all of the tiles and their quantities. Option doesn’t, so, in the interests of usefulness, here is the breakdown (with scoring points):
| QTY | BROWN LETTER | SCORE | BEIGE LETTER ON OTHER SIDE |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | A | 2 | E, E, I, I, O, O, R, U |
| 3 | B | 6 | D, F, P |
| 4 | C | 5 | E, M, N, W |
| 5 | D | 4 | G, M, N, S, T |
| 10 | E | 1 | A, A, H, I, I, L, N, O, S, T |
| 2 | F | 6 | K, P |
| 2 | G | 5 | E, N |
| 5 | H | 4 | E, L, N, R, T |
| 8 | I | 2 | A, E, E, L, N, O, O, R |
| 0 | J | — | — |
| 0 | K | — | — |
| 2 | L | 4 | R, T |
| 2 | M | 5 | T, W |
| 5 | N | 2 | E, S, S, T, Y |
| 7 | O | 2 | A, A, E, I, L, T, U |
| 1 | P | 6 | V |
| 1 | Q | 9 | (wild) |
| 7 | R | 3 | D, E, H, L, N, O, T |
| 6 | S | 3 | E, G, H, M, N, T |
| 9 | T | 1 | A, C, E, H, I, L, N, O, S |
| 3 | U | 5 | A, E, O |
| 1 | V | 7 | W |
| 1 | W | 5 | S |
| 1 | X | 9 | (wild) |
| 1 | Y | 7 | E |
| 0 | Z | — | — |
| 2 | * (wild) | 0 | J, Z |
and, going the other way
| QTY | BEIGE LETTER | SCORE | BROWN LETTER ON OTHER SIDE |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | A | 2 | E, E, I, O, O, T, U |
| 0 | B | — | — |
| 1 | C | 5 | T |
| 2 | D | 4 | B, R |
| 14 | E | 1 | A, A, C, G, H, I, I, N, O, R, S, T, U, Y |
| 1 | F | 6 | B |
| 2 | G | 5 | D, S |
| 4 | H | 4 | E, R, S, T |
| 6 | I | 2 | A, A, E, E, O, T |
| 1 | J | 8 | (wild) |
| 1 | K | 8 | F |
| 6 | L | 4 | E, H, I, O, R, T |
| 3 | M | 5 | C, D, S |
| 9 | N | 2 | D, C, E, G, H, I, R, S, T |
| 8 | O | 2 | A, A, E, I, I, R, T, U |
| 2 | P | 6 | B, F |
| 0 | Q | — | — |
| 4 | R | 3 | A, H, I, L |
| 6 | S | 3 | D, E, N, N, T, W |
| 9 | T | 1 | D, E, H, L, M, N, O, R, S |
| 2 | U | 5 | A, O |
| 1 | V | 7 | P |
| 3 | W | 5 | C, M, V |
| 0 | X | — | — |
| 1 | Y | 7 | N |
| 1 | Z | 9 | (wild) |
| 2 | * (wild) | — | Q, X |
Laurence Urdang
EPISTOLA {W. M. Woods}
Marcy S. Powell’s interesting article Traduttore Traditore [X, 1] reminds me of an incident about 20 years ago. I was scanning a French scientific publication, which contained abstracts, in French, of articles in several other publications written in various languages. My eye fell upon the term matelots gelés, which means ‘frozen sailors.’ The context was no help, and although I had no interest in the apparent subject, my curiosity drove me to look up the original article, which was in English.
The article was about frozen semen.
[W. M. Woods, Oak Ridge, Tennessee]
A Compound Subject
Richard Lederer, St. Paul’s School
Since the dawn of the English language, speakers and writers of English, true to the Germanic roots of their tongue, have created thousands of new words by joining together two (or more) independent morphemes to form compounds. As any page of Anglo-Saxon literature illustrates, compound words were abundant in Old English, a language that sought to express new ideas not by borrowing from foreign shores but by combining words already in the native vocabulary.
Thus, in the Beowulf poem the ocean is the sea-path, whale-road, or swan-road. A ship is a sea-wood and a harp a pleasure-wood. A warrior is called a shield-bearer, his sword a battle-friend, and war a battle-play. The body is a bone-house or flesh-clothing.
Some of the oldest words in English are disguised compounds, the elements of which have been so closely welded together that they are no longer perceived as two-morpheme entities. The word daisy was fashioned by speakers of Old English from the poetical “day’s eye.” Few people today think of daisy as containing two parts, although Geoffrey Chaucer, without benefit of any etymological elbow book, guessed well when, in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women, he referred to the sun as “the dayesyē, or elles the yē [eye] of day.”
Other words quite changed from their formerly compounded state include gospel (originally gōdspel, ‘good tidings’), husband (hūsbonda, ‘house dweller’), sheriff (‘Shire-reeve’), and answer (‘and swear’). “God be with you” has become good-bye, and All-hallow-even and Cristes mæsse (“Christ’s mass”) have turned into Halloween and Christmas.
When the spelling and pronunciation of compound elements change, meaning often does, too. Holiday comes from “holyday,” but many holidays, like Independence Day and Labor Day, are not holy. A bonfire, earlier a “bone-fire,” seldom burns bones. Even when the spelling is retained in both halves, the pronunciation may change in such a way that it obscures the compound nature of the word. How conscious are you of the compound elements in the following words, and how do you pronounce them?:
atone
background
blackguard
boatswain
breakfast
clapboard
coxswain
cupboard
forecastle
handkerchief
necklace
vineyard
waistcoat
Extensive borrowing from Latin, Greek, and French, languages that lack the compound-making enthusiasm of English, has not halted the proliferation of compound words in our tongue. We continue to yoke words together, especially in America, from the early backwoods, sourwood, butternut, and selectman to the contemporary pantyhose, waterbed, and software. In The American Language, H. L. Mencken points with great pride to our love of compound words:
In them America exhibits its habit of achieving short cuts by bold combinations. Why describe a gigantic rainstorm with the lame adjectives of every day? Call it a cloudburst and immediately a vivid picture is conjured up. Roughneck is more apposite and savory than any English equivalent, and unmistakably American. The same instinct for the terse, the vivid, and the picturesque appears in boiled shirt, claim jumper, home stretch, comedown, bottom dollar, cold snap, crazy quilt, ticket scalper, prairie schooner, and flatboat.
How can we know for certain when two words have become a compound word? How can we make precise distinctions between two separate words like black bird (‘a bird that is black’) and blackbird (‘a species of bird’) or hot dog (‘perspiring canine’) and hot dog (‘frankfurter’)? One method is to listen for the presence of contrasting stress, which, in almost all noun compounds, means heavy forestress. Say aloud the pairs of sentences below, noting how you distinguish in speech between the two separate words and the compound words:
- Walking down the street, I saw a hot dog. Walking down the street, I ate a hot dog.
- Mary lives in a white house. The President lives in the White House.
- I ride on one horse. I live in a one-horse town.
- He scolded the dumb waiter. He loaded the dumbwaiter.
In the second sentence of each pair we see the three ways that compound words may be written—open (hot dog, White House), hyphenated (one-horse), and solid (dumbwaiter). But in each example the stress falls heavily on the first element, and there is no pause between the two parts as we speak the word. This contrasting stress pattern helps to emphasize the close connection between the elements and often endows the whole compound with a special meaning.
A few more examples will serve to show how dramatically words can change meaning when they are merged into compounds. We all know what the color black looks like, but we seldom think twice about the fact that blackbirds, blackberries, and blackboards are not always black. The blackbird hen is actually brown; blackberries are red before they are ripe; and, nowadays, many blackboards are green or some other color. Similarly, fastfood eateries often dispense plastic “silverware,” hot dogs are cold in the refrigerator, the light can be on in a darkroom, homework can be done at school, cupboards don’t have to contain cups or boards, and bathrooms often don’t have baths in them. In fact, a bathroom isn’t always a room, since a dog can “go to the bathroom” under a tree.
The characteristic stress pattern and the special meaning of compounds welds the parts together into units that cannot be separated. We can talk about a “dumb, clumsy waiter,” but we cannot interpose a word between the elements in dumb-waiter. We might see a “white country house,” but we cannot insert a word in the middle of White House. Further proof of inseparability in compounds is that we can say “a very hot dog,” where “very” modifies the one word “hot,” but we cannot say “a very hot dog,” where hot dog means a sausage.
English compounds are amazingly versatile creatures that can assume any grammatical function: noun (earthquake), pronoun (herself), adjective (colorblind), adverb (sometimes), verb (dryclean), preposition (without), or conjunction (whenever). Moreover, almost any combination of the parts of speech may be used to form a compound, although some are more common than others. Focusing on the four major parts of speech, the Noun-Adjective-Adverb-Verb matrix below illustrates the diversity of compound formations in English:
| NOUN | ADJECTIVE | ADVERB | VERB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NOUN | spaceship | homesick | flashback | godsend |
| ADJECTIVE | madman | bittersweet | blackout | freeload |
| ADVERB | upshot | evergreen | henceforth | underplay |
| VERB | scarecrow | fail-safe | tumbledown | hearsay |
Independent morphemes may marry in such ingenious ways that the part of speech of a compound may be different from that of either of its components, as in the last two entries above: tumble (verb) + down (adverb) = tumbledown (adjective); hear (verb) + say (verb) = hearsay (noun or adjective). This happy state of affairs raises the question: can the third dimension of the four-by-four matrix be filled out so that each of the sixteen types functions as a noun, adjective, adverb, and verb, yielding a total of sixty-four entries? Here is my response to that burning question, in the form of a four-by-four-by-four matrix: *Even this matrix does not cover all the possible grammatical alliances. Additional combinations include into (adv + adv = preposition), whenever (adv + adv = conjunction), he-man (pronoun + noun = noun), each other (pronoun + adj = pronoun), himself (pronoun + noun = pronoun), and whoever (pronoun + adv = pronoun).
| NOUN-NOUN | NOUN-ADJ. | NOUN-ADVERB | NOUN-VERB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NOUN | spaceship | bootblack | flashback | godsend |
| ADJECTIVE | shipshape | homesick | head-on | handmade |
| ADVERB | sidesaddle | knee-deep | hands down | shell-shocked |
| VERB | tiptoe | court-martial | zero in | handpick |
| ADJ.-NOUN | ADJ.-ADJ. | ADJ-ADVERB | ADJ.-VERB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NOUN | madman | deaf-mute | blackout | slowpoke |
| ADJECTIVE | common-place | bittersweet | straight-forward | rough hewn |
| ADVERB | barefoot | northeast | moreover | roughshod |
| VERB | blackball | high-low | black in | freeload |
| ADVERB-NOUN | ADVERB-ADJ. | ADVERB-ADVERB | ADVERB-VERB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NOUN | upshot | evergreen | whereabouts | downpour |
| ADJECTIVE | offhand | overdue | never-never | income |
| ADVERB | overboard | outright | henceforth | overmatched |
| VERB | outlaw | outsmart | fast forward | underplay |
| VERB-NOUN | VERB-ADJ. | VERB-ADVERB | VERB-VERB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NOUN | scarecrow | speakeasy | diehard | hearsay |
| ADJECTIVE | breakneck | fail-safe | tumble-down | slapdash |
| ADVERB | makeshift | punch-drunk | worn out | straddle mount |
| VERB | pickpocket | blow dry | give up | make believe |
Most of the items above are self-explanatory, but some require a brief exegesis. Shell-shocked (n + v = adv), over-matched (adv + v = adv), punchdrunk (v + adj = adv), and worn out (v + adv = adv) can function adverbially in sentences like “He staggered from the ring shell-shocked, overmatched, punchdrunk, and worn out.” High-low and fast forward are recent but well-entrenched compounds in English; one who leads first the high and then the low card of a two-card suit in bridge high-lows; one who presses the cue button on a tape or video recorder fast forwards.
The shiny newness of compounds like high-low, fast forward, and blow dry (the only examples I could think of for their respective slots) indicates the experimental vigor of twentieth-century English. I sense a massive, collective consciousness among English speakers, who, it seems, would not be satisfied until the language evolved to the point where all sixty-four slots in the matrix could be filled.
LIGHT REFRACTIONS
Thomas H. Middleton, Clown Talk
Ron Jarvis, a friend of mine who is not only an actor and a professional clown, but a man with a keen appreciation of words, shared several hours, a couple of six-packs, and a trove of circus talk with me recently. I’m glad I had the presence of mind to find a tape recorder and get him to back up to where he’d begun and then keep going with a fascinating discussion about circuses and particularly about circusese. Most professions have their own jargons. Some are tedious and some infuriating to the outsider; and some are rich and colorful. The circus’s jargon, not at all surprisingly, is rich and colorful.
It didn’t come as a great surprise that circus people call the area inside the big top or other circus enclosure “the hippodrome.” One of the dictionary definitions of hippodrome is circus. Within the hippodrome is the hippodrome track. To assist in the mechanics of preparing the circus show, the hippodrome track is divided into the front track and the back track. Since the hippodrome track is round, the designations of back and front tracks are arbitrary. These are the equivalent of downstage and upstage in a proscenium-arch theater. Without this convention, it would be next to impossible to direct the circus show. Each ring in a circus usually has its track. European circuses are generally one-ring. The three-ring circus was, not surprisingly, an American innovation, America being the home of “More is Better.”
I asked Ron if he knew the origin of the expression “the big top,” a colorful but not entirely predictable term for an enormous tent. He said that in the old days, there were several tents in the regular circus setup. There was the big one, containing the hippodrome, and there were the smaller tents that contained the menagerie, the freak shows, the “balley girls,” and the other attractions on the periphery of the main show. These tents lined the midway. The midway is a thing of the past. It was a passage everyone had to go through in order to get to the big top. It offered enticements to lure cash from the crowd before they got to the main show. The big tent was called the big top to distinguish it from these smaller tents. O.K., you ask, but how come big top instead of big tent? The smaller tents were never called little tops. Good question.
Now let’s move on to those balley girls, also sometimes called cootch dancers or cooch dancers or kooch dancers or kootch dancers, so named because they danced the hootchy-kootchy. Balley is my own spelling. Ron thought it was probably bally, but I prefer balley, because balley makes it fairly clear that the all in there rhymes not with all, ball, and fall, but with the all in alley. “Lots of these words weren’t meant to be spelled, anyway,” says Ron, which puts us in a whole new mode of thought, bringing up a vast and complex host of questions in etymology and linguistics. Mencken, in his discussions of circusese, spells it bally, but I assert my right to balley.
Clowns are called Joeys, after Joseph Grimaldi (1779-1837), a great English clown and pantomimist.
The great American contribution to clownhood is the Tramp. That tramp face was created during the Great Depression, when hoboes rode the rails. If you’re old enough to have done much traveling on a train drawn by a coal-fired steam locomotive, you’ll remember the taste and smell and feel of the soot that permeated even the fanciest passenger cars, and you’ll have little trouble imagining the look of a hobo who had ridden the rails without benefit of closeable windows. Their faces were blackened by the soot, and when they disembarked, they’d wipe their eyes and their mouths, and that’s how Tramp clowns were born, with their faces blackened except for the clean areas around the eyes and the mouth.
Clowns, as a rule, are used as a distraction in the circus. A very few clowns have developed as circus stars, but clowns are, for the most part, sent in in a version of the Stephen Sondheim “Send in the Clowns” sense, though their routines are more often employed in covering a shift of paraphernalia than in distracting the crowd’s attention from a tragedy. Where, in the theater, a curtain is drawn or the lights are doused, in the hippodrome the clowns are sent in.
A newcomer to the circus is called a first-of-May, because the circus season starts on the first of May. “He’s a first-of-May Joey” means he’s a brand-new clown—wet behind the ears. A veteran of the circus, on the other hand, is a 30-miler or a 40-miler, from the distance normally traveled between towns in the old-time circus. Incidentally, you’ll be pegged as a first-of-May if you don’t call the calliope a cally-ope.
A clown’s shower-bag is called a douche bag. If you’re like me, your first thought is that douche bag must be a joke. A moment’s reflection, however, in the light of the international composition of the circus, and you remember that the French douche and the German Dusche both mean ‘shower,’ so the clown’s douche bag almost certainly came from the French and German clowns, and I should think the spelling comes from the English “douche,” which, in turn, comes from the French.
We all know that Hey, Rube! is the circus cry for help, shouted when there’s trouble. Ron told me about when he was with Barnum & Bailey, playing Denver—“all these Hungarian clowns, and we’re sitting in a bar with all these local cowboys hanging around, and the cowboys hear the accents and figure the Commies have landed. No shit, I heard more ‘Hey Rube!’ calls in Denver than anywhere. I did a lot of hiding under tables.”
A few more terms:
blow-off the finish of a clown’s routine. Sort of a visual punch-line.
bull any elephant, male or female.
bull-hook what the elephant-handler uses to control the bulls of both sexes.
cherry pie extra work taken on to supplement income. (Ron did laundry for the trapeze artists, acrobats, etc.)
clown alley quarters where the clowns dress and make up before the show.
dukey ticket. (Spelled “dukey,” I suppose, because it probably came from a mispronunciation of “ducat,” but it’s probably one of those words that were never meant to be spelled.)
flukum cotton candy.
mud greasepaint.
redlight to toss a cheat, thief, or other bad character off a moving train. (What is now called, I think, “piggy-back loading,” meaning putting cars and trucks on freight train flatcars used to be called “circus loading,” because the first wagons to be loaded on flatcars were circus wagons and trucks.)
working the house strategic sales of popcorn, peanuts, and other salted goodies to work up a thirst before the soda-pop is offered. (The big top has “sidewalls,” which can be raised to let in cool air when the weather is stifling. Soda-pop concessionaires have been known to tie the sidewalls down using Gordian knots.)
We recorded several others, but by that time, the six-packs had progressed to harder stuff, and some of our words are not entirely clear on my tape, so rest content with these samples, at least for now.
The Language of History
Pamela Webb, Fayetteville, Arkansas
As a student of history for the past five years, I have observed with only slight detachment the vagaries of American use of the English language (or what grammarians of the purist persuasion call the decline of the language, period). Struggling to turn out brilliant and yes, even literate, book reviews and essays proved to be a battle of the will, a Verdun in the War of the Words I encountered in graduate school. Words like concept:
Populism is a concept with roots that go back as far as Andrew Jackson and extend through the years to Jimmy Carter.
Now, the seminar I sat through passed judgment on concept by noting only, “Edwin Newman wouldn’t like it.” To be sure, calling forth an authority is a time-honored tradition, particularly in history classes, but there is, besides Newman’s no-no, a deeper meaning to a historian’s choice of words which may lead to a naked truth about historians.
To write well on a subject, historians must thoroughly understand the person or event that consumes their interest. This means absorbing the archives of a topic—the diaries, correspondence, manuscripts, the documentation of human lives. Early historians of America believed that the past would be much more vivid and come alive on the page for the reader if the historian would put down the musty documents and try to relieve the experience (in 1960s lingo, the historian was “relating” to his subject). Hence the trek of Francis Parkman in the late 19th century to that bluff overlooking Quebec where the loss of one fort cost France an empire—and all because he claimed to have “Injuns on the brain.” Almost a century later Samuel Eliot Morison offered his final words on the discovery of the New World only after directing an ocean voyage that retraced in some detail the exact route of Christopher Columbus.
But what, indeed, does the foregoing have to do with the use of the word concept? Simply this: the writer who uses that term tells us about his academic background (sociology, psychology, or better yet, education) but nothing about the past. No more than Christopher Columbus or Native Americans is Populism a concept. A body of ideas, certainly; but the late 19th-century agrarian movement that protested northeastern finance and business monopoly was no abstraction. It is hard even to conceive of Populism apart from its leading characters, Tom Watson and Mary Elizabeth (“Raise less corn and more hell”) Lease; and of course, the whole movement was so personified in the figure of William Jennings Bryan that his rise was its rise, and his demise, its. The Populists left a rich rhetoric for the historian to mull over; the fire and passion of those silver tongues is still the subject of historical debate, as are other periods in American history. But it was Populism that taught me not to crucify mankind upon a cross of concepts.
Though it may seem that I am doing battle for the Lord on this issue of concept, I am not too self-righteous to admit to a few errors of my own. Just the other day I caught myself asking a colleague if her paper had been critiqued, and I received remonstration from a professor (he wasted my high esteem earlier by referring to me as his advisee) who thought my use of hence was archaic. I’m staying in the trenches and fighting it out on that one; to quote William Safire, “I like that word.”
Hence, in training for the historian’s craft (let’s see, that makes me a trainee), I have concluded that language exposes human experience, just as history exposes the past. In essence, history and language are inseparable. History is the product, albeit sifted and sorted through the human mind, of what is revealed through the written record. Language, obviously, is the medium through which humanity records its experience; but, as the writing of history shows, historians transcend language as a medium in order to study the language, or the words themselves, in the context of the time and place in which they occurred, so that language itself becomes historical experience.
This phenomenon within the historical profession did not happen suddenly, and, not too surprisingly, it has matured along with the development and study of American intellectual history. Perry Miller, an eminent spokesman for Puritan intellectual history, described the Puritans’ “Errand into the Wilderness” by digging up the second, almost lost, meaning of the word errand. This was no short trip through the woods as the first meaning of that word implied, but a ‘commission with a message and a purpose’ as the deeper meaning expressed both in Miller’s dictionary and in the Puritan experience in America.
Historians must, by necessity, define terms for clarity and proper syntax. The greater task, however, and one in which history merges with literary art, is, as Cleanth Brooks says, to “peel off the dead skin and callosities from the language … to find the same close union between the state of language and the state of mind.” In the late 1970s Edmund S. Morgan examined the relationship between Virginia, that most fertile ground for republicanism and also a most ardent stronghold of slavery, and the new republic. By exploring the 18th-century definition of liberty, Morgan discovered the union of language and mind that accounts for this great paradox in American history. Descendants of Jefferson and Madison, from Abraham Lincoln to Lyndon Johnson, have expanded the meaning of liberty, but those who had starring roles in the birth of the republic defined liberty as a ‘state of independence that remained secure only when it was not threatened by the poor, dependent elements of the population.’ Because slavery was profitable, because it kept order, a segment of the population flourished and grew strong enough to resist the slavery of colonial status within the British empire. Morgan’s thesis, then, is that liberty in the 18th century was bound to slavery like the slaves to their masters, and his book is appropriately entitled American Slavery, American Freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the French journalist who traveled through the United States in the 1830s, was perhaps the first to notice how the democratic experience was modifying the English language:
The most common innovation is to give an unwonted meaning to an expression already in use. That method is simple, quick, and easy. No learning is needed to make use of it, and ignorance itself can make it easier. But it involves great dangers for the language. In thus giving double meanings to one word, democratic peoples often make both the old and the new signification ambiguous. A writer begins by the slight deflection of a known expression from its original meaning, and he adapts it, thus modified, as best he can for his purpose. A second writer twists its meaning in a different direction. Then comes a third, taking it off down a new track. Then, since there is no accepted judge, no permanent court to decide the meaning of a word, the phrase is left to wander free.
Those phrases, wandering free, are being rescued by historians. A recent labor undertaken by Garry Wills, The Invention of America, seeks to strip 200 years of ideological baggage and misinterpretation from Jefferson’s language in the Declaration of Independence. Again, the difficulty is the lost language of the 18th century, and from this fresh examination that historic document emerges less as a flat political statement that “all men are created equal” than as a world view, an 18th-century philosophy with specific meaning for phrases such as self-evident and created equal.
De Tocqueville understood what historians are beginning to appreciate, that “equality necessarily changes language.” Jefferson’s language circumscribed the meaning of liberty and independence for the young republic, but he would be the first, as Edmund Morgan reminds us, to insist that through the ages those terms and the institutions they represent be expanded and redefined. It may be hoped that future generations of Americans will continue to do so and that American historians will continue to glean gems of historical truth by exposing our past—word for word.
EPISTOLA {Lillian Mermin Feinsilver}
I was late in seeing Bryan A. Garner’s letter in IX, 4. May I say that it bolsters my judgment in IX, 3 that he reads too hurriedly. He quotes from my letter in the latter issue: “… the decline of standards as exemplified by two books which should have been unrepresentative of that process…,” declaring that the which should be that. Yet he ought to have seen that which is the more graceful term in a clause already containing a demonstrative that. He also should have noticed that the Bergen Evans discussion of what that he recommends (mentioned below) contains a restrictive which: “If…the meaning is ‘I heard the words which he said’ …” and that Follett, although preferring that for restrictive clauses, states: “No one could plausibly insist that which as a restrictive relative pronoun is indefensible or incorrect.”
Puzzling is the comment regarding Simon’s “What good is correct speech and writing…?” Garner repeats his assertion that the subject phrase is what good and that it demands a singular verb; and he implies that corroboration exists in Evans 1957. Not exactly so. That work notes that what as adjective may qualify either a singular or a plural noun, as in “to what green altar?” and “what men or gods are these?” but does not identify the subject in the latter quotation or in one presenting the adjective what for reference to human beings: “what child is this?” Moreover, the foregoing second and third uses are not strictly comparable to “What good is correct speech and writing?”
Further, Garner remarks that his pronouncement of what good as subject is “really supererogatory, as correct speech and writing may be seen as expressing a single idea.” That argument for the singular verb is more convincing (as I suggested earlier) than the naming of what good as subject. However, the single idea of correct speech and writing has relevance to the number of the verb only if said phrase is the subject. Otherwise, Garner’s principle expressed in IX, 2 would call for barbarisms like “What is your requirements?”; “What good is they?”; etc.
Regarding comprise, I tripped; and my shin hurts. Nevertheless, the other evidence of Simon’s shortcomings is not invalidated. In chiding me again for not recognizing “the worth of Simon’s writings” in combating the decline of standards, Garner misses two points made before: 1) it is because Simon in the same work uses so many of the locutions he condemns that the value of the book is diminished (and I was not discussing his other writing); 2) proper copyediting should have caught such lapses, which dramatically illustrate Simon’s charge that “the real culprits are the editors.” That was, of course, a major complaint of mine about both Paradigms Lost and The State of the Language by Michaels & Ricks.
[Lillian Mermin Feinsilver, Easton, Pennsylvania]
EPISTOLA {N. H. Behr}
In Richard Lederer’s entertaining article on “Prep School Slanguage” [IX, 4] there is a passage ‘Acronymania’ which calls for some comment, because it has a bearing on the meaning of the terms used by Mr. Lederer.
He defines acronym as ‘The most extreme form of shortening … in which words are reduced to their initial letters,’ and he proceeds to give as examples, at St. Paul’s School, DC, OR, OB, CC (which he calls a reduplicative acronym), and PO.
None of these is usually classified as acronyms, in the sense understood by most of your readers. In fact the only acronym among his examples is SCOPERS, a pronounceable, albeit unofficial organization, at St. Pauls.
The term acronym, although said to have originated some time in the 1940s, took time to achieve dictionary recognition. In England it only managed to get into the Addenda of the 4th edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, which appeared in the 1950s. It is entirely absent in the compendious Shorter Oxford, 1955 edition.
The enormous growth of scientific, political and institutional names in the last few decades has brought about a great increase in the number of acronyms in English and other languages. The most usual sense of acronym is ‘a word formed from the initial letters of other words, as NATO, radar’ (Oxford American Dictionary, 1980). The emphasis is on word, which makes it necessary for an acronym to be capable of pronunciation, as distinct from other abbreviations which are pronounced letter by letter, such as DC, OR, etc. as quoted by Mr. Lederer.
One of the leading tools which help the reader faced by the ever-growing number of English acronyms and related terms is Crowley’s Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations Dictionary (The Gale Research Co. of Detroit).
In the preface to the 8th edition the following useful explanation of their approach to the three terms is given:
An acronym is composed of the initial letters or parts of a compound term. It is usually read or spoken as a single word, rather than letter by letter. Examples include RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging) and LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation).
An initialism is also composed of the initial letters or parts of a compound term but is generally verbalized letter by letter, rather than as a single “word.” Examples include PO (Post Office) and RPM (Revolutions per Minute).
An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or words that does not follow the formation of either of the above. Examples include Apr (April), Ph. D. (Doctor of Philosophy), and Dr. (Doctor).
[N. H. Behr, Ramat-Gan, Israel]
Answers to Anglo-American Crossword No. 26
1. Betony (bet on y-our).
5. Depose.
8. La-borer.
9. Nourish (no, I rush—helter-skelter).
11. Verity (v-erit-y).
13. Re-type.
15. I-ron-y.
16. O-pi-ate-d.
18. Does-kin.
19. Pasti.
21. Nought.
23. Or-ache.
25. Testudo (laTEST UDOmeter).
26. Ratings (r-ating-s).
28. Cycles.
29. Mallow (froM ALLOWance).
2. Embargo (O grab me).
3. Oar (ora).
4. Y-or-e.
5. Dandelions.
6. Pouty.
7. Stipend (tips' end).
8. Love-in-a-mist.
10. Haughtiness (he hugs satin).
12. Thyme.
14. Monkshoods.
17. Taper (prate).
18. Dy-nast-y.
20. Se-con-co.
22. Usual (luauS).
24. Arum (a-rum).
27. Til (lit).