VOL XVI, No 4 [Spring, 1990]

The Germanization of American English

Stanley Mason, Effretikon, Switzerland

I can still remember the disappointment I felt, many years ago, when I first discovered that the phrase to be in the picture had been stolen from me. In England we had a always used this phrase to mean ‘to be in the foreground, to play a prominent part.’ If I said, “I’m just not in the picture when Boris is about,” this meant that in the presence of Boris I hardly counted, I was scarcely noticed. It was a nice, graphic way of putting it. Then I came across the American usage for the first time, the employment of the same phrase to mean to ‘be informed, in the know.’ I was annoyed, I was embittered, for I foresaw that the genuine English usage was going to be ousted by this upstart—and how right I was! I was all the more annoyed because I knew where the new meaning came from: from German, from the phrase im Bilde sein. Some German (or Swiss, or Austrian) settler in America had wrongly translated his native expression into English, the unsupecting Americans had taken it over, and now we had it round our necks, while the original, genuine English expression had received the kiss of death.

Ever since that time I have writhed repeatedly as I have seen one Germanism after another creep into the English language. I suppose most Germans who settled America, especially recently, were fairly literate people, whose sayings were easily taken as legal tender by the local inhabitants. Americans tend to be uncritical and snap up everything new, accepting the mistakes that Germans make as features of American English. Today these Germanisms do not even stay put in the United States. They are promptly exported across the Atlantic, so that all Britain now speaks pidgin German.

This must actually have begun before my time, for in the twenties of this century I was already stubling upon what were clearly Germanisms in use in America. The dumb blonde who got fresh was obviously eine dumme Blondine, die frech wurde. In British English the verb stem had always meant to ‘hold back, resist,’ as in stem the tide, for instance. My Concise Oxford Dictionary (1964) still gives only that meaning. Americans, however, had long been saying that something stemmed from something else, ‘was descended from or caused by it,’ exactly in the sense of the German stammen von.

Alas, it was only a beginning. Germans who wanted to translate their word interessanterweise into English tried “interestingly,” which in those days sounded horrible to British ears; but the Americans at once pounced on it. There followed a number of other, similar formations, such as “importantly.” Americans must have realized about this time that the German ending -weise has an English equivalent, and this was accordingly resuscitated: the old likewise and crosswise family was joined by neologisms like countrywise and stylewise. Then came hopefully, a word which had long existed in English and meant ‘in a hopeful manner’: you could apply for a job hopefully because you were ‘full of hope.’ The Germans, however, stumbled upon hope-fully because they wanted a word for their own hoffentlich, admittedly a useful word; so hopefully was soon being used in a quite different sense, viz. to mean ‘it is to hoped.’ Consequently we now have a measure of confusion, which, be it noted, is not shared by the Germans, as they have two different words for the two senses: hoffentlich for ‘it is to be hoped,’ and hoffnungsvoll for ‘hopeful(ly).’

Even during the Second World War, when you would have expected the Anglo-Saxons to react allergically to Germanisms, they continued to infiltrate the language. I remember my astonishment at hearing “It’s a bit much” for the first time. This turn of phrase became very popular in the war, though it is in fact a direct translation from the German Es ist ein bisschen viel. We did not really need it, for we had a perfectly good English equivalent: “It’s a bit too much.” In any case, it was a bit too much for me.

Another is the expression almost nothing. Had I written that in an essay when I was a boy at school, I should have been accused of tone-deafness for English idiom. It was not, in any case, a thing that any of us would have said. The idomatic English was hardly anything. Germans, however, were not to know this, and brashly translated their fast nichts. Granted, in this particular case the French and Italians might have had a finger in the pie, with their presque rien and quasi niente; but I feel pretty sure that the Germans were the main offenders. One may of course ask what is wrong with almost nothing, and the question is not easy to answer. The fact is that English is, idiomatically, an extremely subtle language, with many taboos, particularly in the area of positive/negative statements and degrees of affirmation and negation. Why can we say “I haven’t much money,” but not “I have much money”? It is hard to find a logical explanation, yet these subtle distinctions are part of the spirit of our language, and it is this spirit that is easily destroyed forever, like a delicately balanced biotope, when people walk roughshod over it.

Anyone with a good knowledge of German who finds it amusing to hunt down Germanisms in American English will soon be reaping rich harvests. I cannot go into such detail here, though I have come to the conclusion that German has been even influenced basic features of the American language. For instance, the American sailboat (for British sailing boat) is surely a copying of German word-formation (Segelboot), as is also ski school (Skischule), though what you learn in such a school is obviously skiing.

In recent times the direct translation of German phrases into English seems to have gathered strength. It shocked me when one of the leading writers of English textbooks told me in a letter that he would “come back on” one of the points I had raised. He could easily have “returned” or “reverted” to it, but the pressure of the German (zuruckkommen auf) is evidently too great. I recently heard another to “load off” is children at their grandtended to “load off” his children at their grandmother’s: German abladen.

Yet there are things that worry me far more than these examples. I strongly suspect the Germans, for instance, of having initiated—or at least aided and abetted—one of the most disturbing developments now under way in the English language: the disappearance of the verb may/might. This verb was formerly used to express possibility (or sometimes permissibility), while can had to do with ability. No Englishman, fifty years ago, would ever have been heard saying “It could rain.” It is quite obvious that it can rain when it wants to, but what we are talking about here is not ability but possibility: “It may rain,” “It might rain.” German speakers are of course far less likely to use this from in English, for in their own language they have no alternative to can: Es kann sein, Es konnte regnen. They will therefore tend to use can forms even where they are not idiomatic in English. In any case, one hardly hears anything else today but these can forms, which have somehow become the fashion: It can happen, We could be wrong. What we are therefore observing is the loss of a valuable distinction, and in fact the slow extinction of the verb may/might, an extinction which in the linguistic world seems to me just as distressing as the loss of the elephant in the zoological world. Might we not yet be able, by a united effort on the part of all lovers of the English language, to save the world may?

Another development that worries me is the employment of plurals in an adjectival sense. It has been a rule in English from time immemorical to put a noun into the singular when it is used as an adjective before another noun. Thus we have anteaters and carol singers, although they eat ants and sing carols in the plural. This rule is upheld even when a number is specified: a six-foot pole, a tenpenny stamp, a twenty-mile stretch. Yet today this rule is being broken more and more often, and the rot certainly started in America with such terms as materials handling and greetings cards. Nowdays my favorite scientific magazine talks only of drugs firms and chemicals manufacturers, though such expressions must surely grate on the ears of anyone who still has a little feeling for the English language. Do I need to mention that the German for these expressions is Drogenfirmen and Chemikalienhersteller, because in German the plural is used in such cases? Of course, we cannot blame the Germans for making these mistaked, but we can blame English speakers for swallowing them whole, and with such a blatant lack of feeling for English idiom. As it is, I dare hardly scrutinize English publications any more for fear of coming across even more barbaric examples than those we already have—“nuts-crackers,” perhaps, or “windows cleaners.”

There are, I must confess, a few cases in which the Americans have not followed the German. More and more of them—and alas, more and more Britons—can today be heard talking of “kiLOMetres.” [See IV, 3.] The other case in which Americans have not taken German as a model is a major catastrophe: in the words billion and trillion. A billion, one would think, is a “bi-million,” that is, a ‘million million,’ and that is exactly what it is in German as well as in French, and always was in British English till the American pressure queered the pitch. A trillion was equally simply a ‘million million million,” or ‘10\sub\18\sue\.’ With this system, there is also a good word for a ‘thousand million’: a milliard, as used in French and German. Alas, all clarity has gone by the board since Americans arbitrarily decided to use billion for a ‘thousand million.’ Utter confusion has since reigned. Why one earth didn’t the Americans make their old mistake and follow the German?

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: The Logodaedalian’s Dictionary of Interesting and Unusual Words

George Stone Saussy III, (University of South Carolina Press, 1989), xii + 339pp.

This book appeared originally under the title, The Oxter English Dictionary (Facts On File, 1984), then as The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Words (Penguin, (1986). As oxter means ‘armpit,’ the original did not appeal to me and, if I was sent a review copy, I didn’t bother to open the book. I did not receive a review copy of the Penguin edition. The present edition, atrociously overpriced considering it is a reprint (albeit with some addenda) is worthy of mention as a dictionary of hard words with citations. The editing has been rather careless, though, as the opening line of HOW TO USE THIS DICTIONARY bears witness in referring to itself at The Penguin Dictionary of… when it clearly has become The Logodaedalian’s…

There are some other curiosities, not confined to the unusual words selected but to their usage by the author: in the Introduction he refers to an episode in which his father completed his Bachelor’s degree “at the behest of the Marine Corps.” The day the US Marine Corps issues “behests” for Bachelor’s degrees is not yet here. Another item in the same section refers to “forebearing” friends, who I assume are those who had offspring before the author (clearly a woman using a nom de plume).

The situation scarcely improves in the dictionary itself. Saussy III does not know what hysteresis means and missed Pynchon’s metaphor by a mile; horripilating does not mean ‘shuddering’ (though the rest of the definition is correct); houghmagandy is defined as ‘fucking as a pastime,’ the last three words of which make in inaccurate; the usual spelling of gallimaufrey is without the e; gibbous, usually applied to the three-quarter moon, is here defined as “hump-backed, arched” with the citation, “…her upper lip gibbous…as the moon—,” (from pynchon) in which it means ‘swollen’; guddle, “to use a fishing technique involving the use of only the hands, to grope” is not quite correct: it is ‘to (try to) catch a fish (esp. a trout) by tickling its underbelly’ (which is actually easier than it sounds); and gurn, girn, is incorrectly defined as “to snarl, to show the teeth in anger”: it really means ‘to make faces.’

So much for the relative value of the definitions, of which the preceding are only a sample. The interesting thing in the book is its words list, taken from a relatively small corpus of books including ones by Burgess, Vonnegut, and (especially) Alexander Theroux (Darconville’s Cat), all of them writers who enjoy playing with the language. The last-named book is largely a spoof on linguistic pedantry, and I fear that Saussy III has been drawn in. It is a pity that he made so many unwarranted assumptions about the meanings of words he did not understand, could not divine from the context, or failed to find elsewhere.

There may be some readers who enjoyed the two earlier editions and are craving more. If so, they might be induced to buy this edition because it contains 55 pages of words, definitions, and citations not previously published. There are, I suppose, worse things that could happen to you than buying and reading this book, but it is hard to think of any at the moment.

Laurence Urdang

The Glamour of Grammar

Richard Lederer, St. Paul’s School

Grammar and glamour are historically the same word. Back in the eighteenth century one of the meanings of grammar was “magic, enchantment”; the Scots let slip the r into an l, and lo, came forth glamour. In the popular mind, grammar is anything but glamorous. Whatever magic resides in the subject is felt to be a sort of black magic, a mysterious cauldron filled with creepy, crawly things.

At St. Paul’s School we are convinced that the study of grammer need not be an arcane, in vacuo ex- ericise; and all of our students explore the structure of English, from the parts of speech to the phrases and clauses, ultimately applying their knowledge to usage, punctuation, and sentence creation.

“Every self-respecting mechanic,” said John Dewey, “Will call the parts of an automobile by their right names because that is the way to distinguish them.” Thus it is with the writer. If Alexander Pope is correct in asserting that “True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,” a nameing of the grammatical parts, we believe, will reduce the chance and enhance the art, even if the names are one day forgotten. And if students are slipping structural cogs, we need a common language to communicate these problems: “John, you should use the possessive form before the gerund”, “Mary, try combining these two sentences by using an appositive.”; “George, your sentences are repetitious; try varying your sentence openings with introductory adverbs, phrases, or clauses.” Ultimately, though, our initial and primary assumption is that, in the words of structuralist Paul Roberts, “the best reason for studying grammar is that grammer is interesting.” Grammar may not be glamorous in any glittery Hollywood sense, but grammar can be very interesting, even enchanting.

After our scholars have completed their study of descriptive English grammar, they are frequently assigned the writing of a “supersentence”—a single sentence that includes one example of each of the four phrases and three subordinate clauses that are indentified in English grammar. These are: prepositional phrase, participial phrase, gerund phrase, infinitive phrase, adverb clause, adjective clause, and noun clause. These units may occur in any order in the sentence.

One afternoon, while grading a batch of super-sentences, I decided to try writing one myself, using the fewest words possible. (Before continuing, the reader may wish to try this feat, too.) An hour of intense industry produced the following:

1 When people 2 who swing want 3 to see 4 what’s happening, they try 5 attending parties 6 given by hipsters. (16 words)

The numbers in the above sentence indicate the beginning of each phrase and subordinate clause— (1) adverb clause: “When people who swing want to see what’s happening” modifies the verb try in the main clause; (2) adjective clause: “who swing” modifies the noun people; (3) infinitive phrase: “to see what’s happening” acts as the direct object of the verb want; (4) noun clause: “what’s happening” acts as the direct objective of the infinitive “to see”; (5) gerund phrase: “attending parties given by hipsters” acts as the direct object of the verb try; (6) participial phrase: “given by hipster” modifies the noun parties; (7) perpositional phrase: “by hipsters” modifies the passive participle given. In subsequent sentences I shall provide numbers but leave the reader to identify the structures, which will appear in varying orders, so as to avoide cluttering the discussion with labyrinthine explanations like this one.

I proudly presented my 16-word concoction to my departmental colleagues and to my students, and a few days later I was summoned by an emissary from a Fourth Form (tenth grade) English class that met a few rooms down the hall from my class. I entered this strange territory, and thereon the chalkboard was inscribed:

Fred, ' 1 wanting 2 to win 3 by 4 playing hard, practised more 5 than I, 6 who knew 7 he stank. (15 words)

Among the triumphantly glowing faces in the alien classroom was that of Bruce Monrad, the finest young linguist in our school at the time. Bruce, it turned out, was the author of the 15-word super-sentence—a creation that not only contains an elliptical adverb clause of comparison, “than I [practised],” and a hidden noun clause, “[that] he stank,” but compacts the four phrases into the subordinate part and the three clauses into the main part.

not to be outdone, I laboured mightily for a few days and came up with:

1 stung 2 by 3 what happened, Lederer began 4 trying 5 to write better 6 than Monrad, 7 who fainted. (14 words)

The next morning I marched into the rival classroom and confidently wrote my new sentence on the blackboard, only to be instantly one-upped by young Monrad, who stepped forward and inscribed:

1 Helping 2 win 3 by 4 scoring more 5 than I, 6 who thought 7 he stank, Fred overcome. (13 words)

Here Bruce’s Brilliant excision of one word is accomplished in his second phrase, the infinitive, in which he lifts out the to: “Helping [to] win by scoring….”

Now I was growing desperate. Word of the contest had spread throughout St. Paul’s School. How could I ever again face my colleagues and my students if I were to be defeated by a mere stripling? The whole affair was beginning to give the lie to William Cobbett’s resigned admission: “The study of grammar is dry. It engages not the passions.” Resolving not to give out, up, or in, I closeted myself for the entire weekend and finally emerged with “Eureka!” on my lips, for I had written:

1 Helping 2 win 3 by 4 overcoming 5 what threatened, Lederer, 6 who persisted 7 when challenged, triumphed. (12 words)

In addition to being eminently readable, my super-sentence is characterized by two clever strokes: a clause within a phrase within phrase within a clause within a phrase in the first five words, and the distillation of the adverb clause into a two-word cluster, “when [he was] challenged,” instead of the previous three words, “more than I.” Not only are all the structures as concise as they can be, but, with the exception of the subject, Leadere, all nouns, adjectives, and adverbs are now replaced by phrases and clauses. This sentence was traveling at the speed of light. I could become no smaller. Or so I thought.

On Monday morning I strutted into Bruce’s classroom and hubristically engraved my “ultimate” supersentence on the enemy’s board, delivering a learned lecture proving that we had reached the end of the road supersentencewise. As I wheeled to leave, Bruce giggled, “Not so fast, Mr. Lederer.” He then explained that he too had discovered the formula for the two-word adverb clause and that, moreover, he had been able to replace all nouns, adjectives, and adverbs with phrases and clauses. He then chalked up:

1 Whoever rebels, 2 dafring 3 oppose 4 by 5 fighting 6 when oppressed, 7 which overcomes, conquers, (11 words!)

While reaching the theoretical limit for super-sentences, Bruce’s creation is rather awkward, with the adjective clause, “which overcomes,” emerging as a dangling modifier. Still, I have never been able to improve on Bruce’s effort, and I invite VERBATIM readers to submit more graceful and coherent super-sentences of eleven words. Like two boys choosing sides for a baseball game, Bruce and I have run our hands up the bat, and there isn’t any wood left. Actually, we have both won; and when the game of grammar is played with a sense of enjoyment and humor, everyone can be a winner.

If you move, please tell us. Send old and new addresses to address listed on page 2.

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Bernstein’s Reverse Dictionary

Theodore M. Bernstein, rev. David Grambs, (2nd ed., Times Books, 1988), 278 pp.

As a practicing lexicographer (I have complied two Arabic bilingual dictionaries with illustrative sentences), but more important, as one who continually has trouble retrieving certain English words from my mental lexicon, I consider this book a real gold mine. The blurb on the back of has it absolutely right: “A new and expanded edition of the popular ‘reinvention’ of the standard dictionary first created by legendary New York Times language expert Theodore Bernstein.” Although I seldom work crossword puzzles, this is a must book for the crossword-puzzle addict or even the occasional player.

I like this dictionary because, like most people, I often find myself groping for words that are right “on the tip of my tongue.” How many of you, like me, cannot always remember that a rhinologist is the medical specialist dealing with nasal problems? (Why not a nasologist?) Even after memorizing osteologist (skeleton), heterologist (tissue), or helcologist (ulcers), I have difficulty in remembering these particular words. I have occasionally confused a hematologist (blood) with a hepatologist (liver). And many of my students in introductory linguistics courses confuse etymology (word origins) with entomology (the study of insects). Now that I have succeeded in getting you to see that a reserve dictionary is much more than a thesaurus with which, of course, it shares some similarities, its purpose is really to list definations in alphabetical order which, in turn, will give you the word that you have forgotten, confused, or just plain do not know or cannot recall.

One can quibble, as always, with some of the definitions presented in any dictionary, so this work is not different from many others in this respect. For instance, a ‘wrestler or boxer over 175 pounds’ is called a heavyweight (p.274). I do not think I have ever seen (on TV’s professional wrestling) a heavyweight wrester who weighted 175; most of them weight over 200. Although this is a picayunish point, consider that wrestlers are also divided up, according to the author, into lightweight, featherweight, welterweight, middleweight, and heavyweight, as are boxers. To my knowledge, these terms are not normally used in professional (dare we call it “entertainment”) wrestling as they are in professional and amateur boxing.

Under language expert (p. 133 and p. 271), one finds logogogue whereas I would have thought the proper choice to be linguist or perhaps even the awkward linguistician (a term to be avoided). Also, I fail to see how polyglot (p.133) can be defined as ‘language mixture’ since it merely refers to a multilingual person. ‘Language mixture’ may refer to what linguists call pidginization and creolization of languages, a process of language simplification (although even this is misleading and not the entire story).

To illustrate how useful the volume can be, let us assume that you have heard the two common Yiddish loanwords used in English, schlimazel and schlemiel. How do you find them in a reserve dictionary? You have to remember that both refer to a bungler or bungling person, and that is indeed what you have to look under to find them.

Bernstein explains in the introduction (p. vii) how he got the idea for the book in the first place. He was chatting with a friend about Chinese food, and in the course of the conversation he remarked that the words won ton (a Chinese dumpling used as an ingredient in a soup of the same name) “made perhaps even more sense if they were read backward.” His friend immediately replied “— just like in Madam, I’m Adam.” And neither one could retrieve the word for something which read the same forwards or backwards. (Palindrome, of course!) If you are still addeled, addle-brained, or addlepated (p. 49), do not be: look up ‘confused’ in this dictionary! If you like words (and are looking for a great game to play at your next coctail party), this book is definitely for you. About the nicest compliment I could give Bernstein (and Grambs) for producing this excellent work is to remark, why did I not think of doing it first?

[Alan S. Kaye, California State University, Fullerton]

BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Words That Make a Difference

Robert Greenman, (2nd ed., Farragut Publishing Co., 1988), 385 pp.

This book was first published in 1983 by Times Books as Words in Action. Although that is a better title than the new one, something more apropos would be Words to Impress Your Friends By. Its main goal is to increase your vocabulary. As any reader of VERBATIM knows, there are many books on the market designed to do exactly this; however, one can rarely get through more than the first few chapters of such tomes. This volume, I am happy to report, is different. I recommend it for those (as the book’s cover observes): “—who want to speak more effectively, write more colorfully or be better prepared for the SAT” (the verbal portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, a widely used instrument for university admission).

The reason that most books of this type (How to Increase Your $5 Words in 7 Days or Double Your Money Back [Satisfaction Guaranteed]) fail is that they are boring, or mundance, or both. The reader gets the book home and proceeds to memorize polysyllabic words by the dozens, with their lenghthy definitions coupled with made-up sentences which often make little sense or, if they do make sense are dull at best. Then the student gets through the mechanical task of taking multiple-choice examinations or fill-in-the-blank quizzes, which are usually a waste of time because the words and its meaning are usually forgotten within a day or two.

How does this book then differ from the competition? For one thing, the author has taken as illustrative examples many important words and expressions from the rather lively and well-composed pages of The New York Times (1,455) lexemes, to be exact, although we can quible about some of the entries). For another, the definitions are, on the whole, well written and to the point. For example, consider the word electic, which is defined as: “composed of material or ideas gathered from a variety of sources.” Its meaning is illustrated quite nicely by the following New York Times passage:

Live artillery shells, a dead sea turtle half the size of a Volkswagen Bettle, a drowned giraffe, antique crockery, pocketbooks, chemical sludge, raw sewage and about 5,000 cords of driftwood a year—the waters of New York Harbor yield a strage and eclectic bounty.

Most of the 1,455 examples are excellent choices, and Greenman’s definitions and illustrations are well done; there are, however, some significant errors to report.

Under the term lingua franca (p. 196), for instance, we learn that “the original lingua franca (Italian, Frankish language) was a hybrid language… spoken…in the 17th century. It consisted mostly of Italian words without their inflections.” Linguists have demonstrated that the first lingua france (called Mediterranean Lingua Franca by many linguists) was actually spoken before the first Crusade began in A.D. 1096. There is a document written in it from Djerba, Tunisia, dating from A.D. 1353. In addition to Italian vocabulary, the language also included many items from another Romance language, Proven\ccedil\al. As mediterrancean Lingua Franca was used on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, there were many words that it borrowed from Spanish and Portuguese. In fact, one such word is savvy (‘shreed; in the know’), which Greenman erroneously derivers (p. 284) from Spanish sabe usted ‘do you know?’ The word came into Mediterranean Lingua Franca from Portuguese. That is not such a serious error, however, since Spanish and Portuguese are closely related.

Some of the book’s lexical entries are questionable. I see no reason to include, for instance, the following words: antiseptic, novel, nosh (‘snack,’ from Yiddish), novice, theorem, threshold, or tycoon. I believe all of these, with the exception of nosh, are fairly well known by the average college freshman, though readers may decide for themselves if I am wrong on this point. I do not consider the word nosh important enough, or for that matter frequent enough, to have been included. Certainly, it is doubtful that one would encounter it on an SAT examination. I have exactly the same sentiment for chutzpah ‘brazen nerve’ (from Herbrew via Yiddish), which is also included (p. 62), as well as bubkes ‘something trivial’ (from Russian via Yiddish, p. 46). However, one must remember that The New York Times is read in New York, which has a sizable jewish population, and these three examples are probably known and used by most New Yorkers (even gentiles, such as the late authour and raconteur Alexander King, one of my all-time favorites and a regular on the old Jack Paar Show, who used them regularly in speech as well as in writing).

I am delighted to report that the special diacritica are shown for the common European loanwords like French nat\i2dot\veté ‘artlessness; ingenuousness’ (p. 218), or German Gemütlichkeit a ‘feeling of warmth and congeniality’ (p. 145). These diacritical marks are now, unfortunately, left off in many publications, so we must praise Greenman’s efforts here. Alas, the way things are going in many periodicals, diacritics in English will soon be a thing of the past.

One can also find some definitions here and there that are not entirely wrong yet with which one might disagree. Kamikaze (p. 187), for example, is defined as: “a suicide attack by a Japanese airplane pilot in World War II; the airplane or pilot in such an attack.” In my own semantic system (and English is my native language), Kamikaze does not usually mean ‘a pilot’ because I have to say ‘Kamikaze pilot’ to refer to someone who is involved in a kamikaze mission.

The pronunciation transcrition system (see the Key, pp.3-4) the book uses follows the N.B.C. Handbook of Pronunciation (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1964), Which is imprecise and hard to interpret in many places. I have never understood why the International Phonetic Alphabet is not used in English dictionaries of all sorts, but this is beyond the scope of our remarks in this review. I would certainly recommend the I.P.A. here.

An extra treat ends the book (pp. 343-379). Short essays on verbs of action, puns, slang (we are told that wimp was popular during the 1960s and ’70s, p. 348; how about the ' 80s where it was very frequently used in the 1988 election campaign?), nuance words, and how to use the colon, semicolon, dash, and parentheses.

I found the last two essays the most entertaining and particularly useful: 1) “E Pluribus Unum: The Melting Pot of English” (pp. 362-365) deals with the many languges that have served as sources for English vocabulary, and 2) “Usage: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” (pp. 366-379) comments on such common errors as carat for karat. In case you do not see the point with these two words, the book is probably for you. (Even many dictionaries have this wrong, as carat is not a free variant of karat, although both derive from Arabic q\itilde\r\atilde\t. “Gemstones are weighed by carats…the fineness of gold is measured in karats” [p. 371].)

As you have no doubt already surmised, this is not (to use another Greenman word) a schlock (p.1) book. It is worth buying and reading for fun and, you never know, for profit too.

[Alan S. Kaye, California State University, Fullerton]

EPISTOLA {Philip Stein}

I lived David Galef’s “Backwords and Newances” [XVI,2], but he certainly is not a techie (from technician, usually electronic technician ‘one familiar with and capable of dealing with technology’)

There are three ways of transmitting a desired telephone number from your telephone (instrument). The first is pulse. This is the method used since the invention of the automatic telephone exchange by Strowger and others early in this century. It operates by electrically acting as if the receiver (handset) had been rapidly and repeatedly replaced on the little pushbuttons (hook switch) inset into the top recess (cradle) of the main portion of the telephone (base). Phone freaks sometimes dial by rapid jiggling (jiggling) of the hook switch, which is the same action as far as the telephone exchange (central office) equipment (switch) is concerned, but I’m getting too old and can’t do this fast enough any more.

The second “dialing” method is tone (DTMF or dual-tone multi-frequency). The trademarked name, by AT&T, is touch-tone®, which operates by sending more-or-less musical tones from your instrument to the switch to specify the number desired. Pulsetone, as mentioned in Galef’s footnote, is the label (placard) on an instrument for a switch that adjusts the instrument to operate on one or the other. “Pulse-tone” is not a technical term.

Rotary phones have the familiar dial, with a circular motion and finger holes. They invariably dial by the pulse method; although it is certainly technically feasible to arrange for them to dial with tones, nobody has figured out why anyone would want to do so. Pushbutton phones have pushbuttons (sometimes techies are not terribly imaginative with language—it’s not usually their strong suit). Pushbutton phones often are arranged so that they may generate either pulses or tones (thus the switch). Some switches cannot handle tones, and often there is an extra charge for touch-tone® service so some users must have pulse phones.

The third method is digital, and I’m not going to go into that. It’s too techie.

[Philip Stein, Pennington, New Jersey]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Instead of their usual Friday collections on December 25 and January 1, Friday customers will be picked up on Saturday, December 26, and Saturday, January 2.” [Holiday garbage schedules in the San Francisco Examiner, 18 December 1987. Submitted by Randy Alfred, San Francisco.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“We’re going to pay now, or pay later. Now, we’re paying later.” [Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-Fla), commenting on the need for prenatal care for poor women, NBC Today, 26 January 1988. Submitted by William Johnston, Boulder, Colorado.]

Crossword Puzzle Answers

Across

1. BEA (RING O)UT.
6. s-TOW.
10. CAR-TIER.
11. ED-IF-ICE.
12. ON THE AIR (anag.).
13. ADO-R.N.
15. CO (MRA)DE (ARM rev.).
17. HEEDING (anag.).
18. S(ADD)LED.
21. PAT-RIOT.
23. A(D.A.)GE.
24. L(AND)LORD (DROLL rev.).
27. EXI(S)TED.
28. COM(PET)E.
29. SAG-E (rev.).
30. ASCERTAINS (anag.).

Down

1. BUC-K (rev.).
2. A-CRONY-M.
3. IRIS-H.
4. GAR(B)AGE.
5. UNEARTH (hidden).
7. TRIP-OLI (OIL anag.).
8. WEE-KNIGHTS.
9. F-I-LAMENT.
14. ICE SKATERS (anag.).
16. AILMENTS (anag.).
19. DRA(WIN)G.
20. D(EL)UDES.
21. PAN-ACHE.
22. IS-RAEL-I (LEAR anag.).
25. L(I’M)IT.
26. SEAS (homophone).

Solution to Verbal Analogies IV

1 : Ptarmigan
2 : Sublimation
3 : Brinell
4 : Hebdomadal
5 : Thyrsus 6 : Presidial
7 : Maillot
8 : Ouagadougou
9 : Mob
10 : Cheliform
11 : Cow
12 : Wasp

EPISTOLA {John S. Howland}

I enjoyed David Galef’s definition of backword to mean the modifier added to a previously specific word which has been made generic by the advent of a new technology. I cannot add anything to his excellent treatment of the etymology but can respond to his uncertainty in one of the technical areas.

The generic term, computer, was extended beyond its human meaning to refer to computing machines during World War II. All these machines were, indeed, what are now known as analog (or analogue) computers. They were mechanical analogs of the objective processes, used in such devices as gun aiming systems and bombsights.

The advent of the digital computer, after the war, necessitated the modifying of the old term by the backword, analog, to distinguish it from the new digital computer.

The analog computer does not compute by means of discreate voltages or any other physical quantity. Rather, it embodies a continuous physical process that is an analog, often in a different medium, for the process for which information is desired. By measuring the instantaneous value of quantities in the analog, we can determine the value of their analogous quantities in the object process.

The digital computer, on the other hand, simply performs arithmetic operations by counting very quickly. When dealing with a continuous process, it can only compute its state at discrete instants of time, since it only manipulates discrete numbers.

Analog and digital timepieces are, in fact, computers where the object process is the continuous motion of the Earth. The fact, however, is that both are analog computers. The analog process in a mechanical watch is the motion of the pendulum or balance wheel and, in quartz watches, the electrical wave produced by a crystal oscillator. Both count the oscillations to determine the passage of time and transform the analog signal into a digital one. They differ only in the method used to display the results. The analog watch converts the digital counts back into a more or less continuous movement of the hands. The digital watch simply prints out the numerical count in proper format.

It is my belief that those who originally coined the terms analog and digital watch intended only to describe the display, not the underlying physics or any relationship to computers. An analog display moves continuously, like the Earth or time, and a digital display shows numbers.

To my knowledge, the only timepieces that are truly digital are the atomic “clocks” used as time standards that operate by counting discrete particles emitted by a radioactive substance.

Returning to etymology, clock in the above paragraph is incorrect in horological usage. Strictly speaking, clock should only be used when referring to a timepiece that also incorporates a striking mechanism to sound out the time at regular intervals. The word stems from the German word for ‘bell,’ Glocke.

[John S. Howland, Danville, New Hampshire]

EPISTOLA {David W. Porter}

[We apologize for a typographical error in Mr. David W. Porter’s EPISTOLA [XV,3], written in comment on Joseph Hynes’s “Do Mistake—Learn Better” [XV,1]. Mr. Porter had written “These difficulties produce such monstrosities as sutoraiki for English ‘strike’—one syllable in English, five in Japanese.” Inadvertently, we printed sutoraike for sutoraiki, which prompted a critical comment from Mr. G. Sharman [XV,4]. After pointing out our error, Mr. Porter continues in response to Mr. Sharman…]

As for Gone with the Windo—a mistake it certainly is, but just as certainly not mine. This mistake, as the others in the same paragraph of my letter, was culled directly from the writing (in English) of Japanese speakers. “Gone with the Uindo”? Wind would be correct! Offhand, I do not recall the proper way to transcribe the unrounded Japanese u.

[David W. Porter, Baton Rouge]

EPISTOLA {Miles D. Ehrlich}

I unfortunately missed the review of Family Words in XV,3; referred to by Donald Morris in XVI,1.

My grade-school art teacher, Mrs. Cook, was apparently familiar with the phenomenon. I recall her telling my class about the time she had asked another group of pupiles to draw Christmas pictures. One youngster drew a recognizable manager with the baby Jesus, accompanied by Mary, Joseph, and an enormously fat man. The student was rather surprised that Mrs. Cook had to ask who the man was. He was, of course, “Round John Virgin.”

[Miles D. Ehrlich, Tustin, California]

OBITER DICTA: The Lot of Malarkey

Milton Horowitz, Jackson Heights, New York

The derivation of malarkey, a term still frequently heard in New York, is nowhere to be found. The first edition of OED does not list it. The second OED, like Webster’s Third, seems to have tried to find the derivation but given up, as have other standard references.

Suggestions that the word came from an Irish name—a Professor Malarkey, for example—lead nowhere. A Ugandan prophet called Malaki or Madam Misharty, a 1930s’ fortune teller known for her exaggerated claims and predictions, did not seem worth pursuing. But an examination of Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1937) yields the Greek malakia, defined as “masturbation” and “tricky.”

So directed, one can peruse a number of Greek dictionaries—especially Creighton’s “Mega Hellano-Anglikon Lexikon, p. 919)—and read definitions emphasizing delicacy, softness, effeminacy in men, homosexuality, and masturbation. Malacia is used in pathology for an abnormal softening of part of an organ. (Incidentally, for whatever reasons, dictionaries published by Oxford University Press either do not list malakia or show it but avoid including any reference to masturbation.) Another, apparently related, Greek word, malaka, is defined by Creighton as “softening of the brain, stupidity, and imbecility.”

The 1988 World Almanac cites these cities and population centers of Greek-Americans: Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, D.C., in order of highest percentages. Considering all that I have examined, I suggest the following background to a derivation:

Around the time of World War I (before or right after), Greeks came in numbers to the United States, settling mostly in the cities mentioned. The term malakia was commonly used in popular (i.e., not polite) speech, much like our Don’t give me that jazz or Quit jerking me around. How did the term spread around the country, if indeed it did? VERBATIM readers may be able to contribute further suggestions and comments.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Attractive, divorced Jewish woman 41. Reubenesque, professional.” [From a personal ad in the White Plains Reporter-Dispatch, 29 September 1988. Submitted by Bernard Witlieb, of White Plains who suggests, “Maybe she wears dotted Swiss.”]

Jingo Lingo

Harry Cohen, Brussels

Twenty-five years ago, the French scholar René Etiemble launched his now classic Parlez-vous franglais? It was the cri de coeur of a single-minded patriot beset by the idea that the purity of his mother tongue was being corrupted by the Anglo-maniac leanings of his countrymen. Disgustedly, he pointed at words like cockpit, bowling, snack, and hundreds of others, constantly used by French technicians, sportsmen, youngsters—in fact, everybody. Lest the national language be eventually supplanted by le sabir atlantique (the Atlantic pidgin), he urged the government to set up a system of penalties to divert the linguistic polluters from the path of sin.

Feelings of bitterness did not keep the author from presenting his admonitions in an easily digestible style. All the fire and brimstone were wrapped in a lighthearted tone and padded with humorous remarks. The book became enormously popular, and the term Franglais entered the world’s dictionaries. But most people happily went on introducing words like le workshop, le tour-operator (they insist on the hyphen), le self (self-service restaurant), le must (the thing to wear), le pick-up (the truck or the record player, not the girl), le hi-fi (pronounce: “eefee”). Even now, it becomes a bit easier each day for an English speaker to read a French newspaper.

However, Etiemble’s appeal caught on with the powers that were. In 1966, only two years after the publication of the book, General de Gaulle, then president of France, established a High Committee for the Defence and the Expansion of the French Language. Through subsequent legislation each government department was equipped with one or several terminology commissions with the responsibility of compiling lists of “approved terms” in their respective spheres. The use of these terms is statutorily required, not only in official documents, but also in all business correspondence and advertising (including labels, catalogues, waybills, etc.), employment contracts, radio and television programs, notices in public places, and certain schoolbooks. Replacing such a term by a foreign equivalent is a penal offense, and may cost the offender anything from $90 to $200.

The Office of the Commissioner General for the French Language, a supervisory body, has recently published a new edition of the Dictionnaire des Né ologismes Officiels, which lists the 2,000-odd terms so far approved (plus some 400 “recommended” ones whose use is obligatory for certain publications only). To judge from this batch, the purge is going to be less radical than one would expect from a system professedly resting on the tenets of linguistic protectionism. Indeed, quite a few of the listed terms are identical to their English counterparts (in spelling, that is: this regime rarely interferes with pronunciation). Examples: adobe for ‘adobe,’ management for ‘management,’ drone for ‘drone’ (in military avionics). More than that, the Dictionnaire gives its blessing also to several words of blatantly English stock, such as hall, drugstore, and pipeline (pronounce: pea-PLEAN), even including portmanteau words (bit, pixel) and acronyms (laser, radar).

Along with these outright borrowings came hybrids composed of an English root and a French suffix, such as clonage for ‘cloning,’ scorer for ‘to score,’ nurserie for ‘nursery’ (‘fish-breeding plant’), and supporteur/supportrice for ‘supporter.’ In some cases, slight spelling changes have been applied, but the English origin remains unmistakable: chalengeur for ‘challenger,’ dribler for ‘to dribble,’ média (mandatory plural: médias) for ‘media,’ astronaute for ‘astronaut.’ (The last term seems, in both languages, a rather hyperbolic denomination for a person who travels less than two light-seconds away from his home planet. But then, it is modest compared to the Russian cosmonaut.) Some of the Dictionnaire’s Anglicisms have undergone more drastic transcriptional surgery, e.g. gazole for ‘gas oil,’ fioul for ‘fuel’ (oil), roquette for ‘rocket,’ bipasse for ‘bypass.’

All this seems a far cry from the uncompromising overhaul Etiemble must have hoped for. To his mind, French was a rich enough language to meet any new requirements from domestic resources. He might even have snubbed the many Dictionnaire entries created by literal translation of the imagery embodied in the corresponding English term, as souris for ‘mouse’ (of a personal computer) or retombées for (nuclear) ‘fallout.’ Application of this method to compounds results in calques like banque de données for ‘data bank’ or atterrissage sur le ventre for ‘belly landing.’ However, since French compounds tend to be rather explicit, and their components are generally strung together by all kinds of grammatical particles (conjunctions, prepositions, articles), this method often leads to tapewormish constructions, such as espace extra-atmosphérique for ‘outer space’ or boucle en épingle à cheveux for ‘hairpin loop.’

Etiemble would probably have warmed more readily to entires which in no way derive from an English model, like logiciel for ‘software,’ axénique (‘without foreign matter’) for ‘germfree,’ or suramplificateur for ‘booster.’ The Dictionnaire offers many such ingenious coinages but they generally lack the pithiness and sprightliness that enliven such a great deal of scientific and technological terminology in English. Vibreur sonore for ‘buzzer,’ tireur isolé (‘lone rifleman’) for ‘sniper,’ and mitraillage au sol (‘machinegunning towards the ground’) for ‘strafing’ are of course correct, but they sound like punctilious definitions rather than handy appellations. Even more ponderous are exposition inter-professionnelle for ‘trade show,’ transport maritime á la demande for ‘tramping’ (the activity of tramp steamers), and véhicule lourd de dépannage for ‘wrecker.’ The heavyweight champion is perhaps contrat á terme d’instrument financier for what they call ‘financial futures’ at the Stock Exchange. Unsur-prisingly, the French law shows little patience for the charming onomatopoeias which the technical people have invented for audio equipment and its tantrums, like ‘tweeter’ and ‘boomer,’ or ‘wow’ and ‘hum.’ The renderings imposed by the latter-day index expurgatorius are, respectively, haut-parleur d’aigus (tolerated second choice: tuiteur), haut-parleur de graves (ditto: boumeur), pleurage (‘weeping’), ronflement (‘snoring’).

To be sure, the Dictionnaire does not consist exclusively of naturalized or Frenchified alien words and wordy phrases of bureaucratic facture. Many an entry had already had a life of its own before a ministerial decree raised it to its present status. Some of them are real gems: tableur (‘tabular operator’) for ‘spreadsheet’ is concise, precise, and original; baladeur (‘stroller’) for ‘walkman,’ although basically a loan translation, adds a fresh nuance to the imagery; best of all perhaps is ordinateur for ‘computer,’ the French term (current since the 1960s, adopted by the Dictionnaire in 1983) meaning something like ‘methodically arranging agent.’ Since the machine is not, as generally believed in former years, a new kind of calculator but rather a high-speed symbol manipulator, ordinateur hits the mark.

Whatever the merits of all those novelties, the French seem to have a relaxed attitude to the disciplinary aspects. They use both prescribed and proscribed terms, depending probably on efficiency, personal preferences, and ‘what others do.’ In one respect, however, they are unanimous. They stick to an odd collection of English words which have a different meaning or are nonexistent in English-speaking countries. As in Etiemble’s days, they say smoking for ‘dinner jacket’ and slip for ‘underpants.’ The choke in an automobile is still referred to as starter (the real starter is called démarreur), and a female radio or TV announcer as speakerine. And they have lots of men in France: rugbymen, tennismen, taximen, recordmen, comingmen, etc. When the streets of Paris were still enlivened by streetcars (French: tramways), there were even wattmen.

ETYMOLOGICA OBSCURA: Conquering Conch

Charles G. Mendoza, North Miami, Florida

A people’s culinary eccentricity has often determined the name by which the rest of humanity comes to know them. The predilection for the flesh of Strombus gigas, the queen conch, by the white Bahamians and their relatives on the Florida Keys is cited by many etymologists in explaining the origin of the appellation Conch for a ‘native or inhabitant of the Florida Keys’ or a ‘Bahamian.’

I am a native of the Florida Keys, as was my father, but I was never called a Conch in my home town. Only since moving to the mainland have I been tagged a Conch, and, as some dictionaries now define any native of the Florida Keys as a Conch, I no longer demur. But can a black native of the Florida Keys be a Conch? I have never known of the word being used in this way except when referring to a member of a team fielded by Key West High School (the Key West Conchs).

I was told by a black Bahamian that the origin of the word Conch came from Conchy Joe which is the black Bahamian equivalent of ‘whitey.’ You see, the inner surface of the queen conch shell has a color that approximates that of the epidermis of the Bahamians of British ancestry. While folk etymology might be at play here, this explanation certainly seems possible and may explain another etymological puzzle.

Two of my dictionaries inform me that the origin of the term honky is unknown, and Mr. Beresky’s articulate arguments for “hunky” [IV,4] have not swayed me. Now honky means ‘whitey’ and rhymes with Conchy. May I suggest that honky was (I no longer hear it!) a corruption of Conchy (Joe)?

EPISTOLA {Galina H. Carter}

As an addendum to Milton Horowitz’s letter [XVI,2] about the depiction of Moses with horns, I want to come to the defense of St. Jerome. That holy curmudgeon is usually chided for translating Exodus 34:29 incorrectly in the Vulgate Bible. Alas, I have few scholarly works to which to refer, but I looked confidently into my battered copy of Edward Robinson’s A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (25th Edition, 1888). This is a translation and amplification of Gesenius' original Latin work.

Of the entries under qaran (pp. 943f.) only the use in this passage is translated without some reference to “horn.” Robinson notes initially with regard to this verb that the primary syllable should be compared to the Sanskrit carnis ‘horn,’ from car ‘to bore.’ The derivative forms (qeren, etc.) are all translated with some reference to “horn,” except the dual form, qarnaim, which is translated “rays of light, splendour.” But Robinson goes on to note even with this form: “So Arabian poets compare the first rays of the rising sun to horns; and hence call the sun itself the gazelle….”

Even more illuminating is an entry (p. 944): “Hence in prophetic vision, horns are” symbolic of “kings, powerful princes…” Daniel 7:24 and 8:21 are cited. And then Robinson bids us compare “the Arabic epithet of Alexander the Great” which he translates as the Latin word, bicornis ‘two-horned.’ He goes on to observe that this is “the symbol of power, might; so both Alexander and the Seleucidae are represented on coins with horns….”

The Septuagint translates qaran, in the passage of Exodus 34:29, with a Greek verb used in the New Testament to mean: “to praise, extol, magnify, celebrate; to honor, do honor to, hold in honor; to make glorious, adorn with lustre, clothe with splendor; to make renowned, render illustrious, i.e., to cause the dignity and worth of some person or thing to become manifest and acknowledged; to exalt to a glorious rank or condition…” (Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament). How readily St. Jerome might associate these meanings of the more philosophical Greek with the horn imagery of power in the more ancient Hebrew.

The symbolism of power conveyed by horns and horn-related Hebrew (and other Semitic) words as portrayed on the aforementioned coins (or some others, which might have used the same imagery but which are no longer extant) may well have led St. Jerome to his translation.

In any case, his translation, in light of the foregoing, seems as plausible to me as the exceptional usage given approval by the “accepted” translations. So, before we fault St. Jerome for a blunder, let us consider that so impressive a linguistic scholar as he may have chosen to give Moses horns deliberately by using cognate imagery he understood to stand for dignity and power. Roy B. Flinchbaugh, Jr. York, Pennsylvania

[By the way, Michelangelo’s statue of Moses (with horns) is in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli (“St. Peter in Chains”) on the Esquiline in Rome. It was spelled incorrectly in VERBATIM.—Editor]

Lysander Kemp reminded me of a malapropism in Spanish which I created for myself. When I was eight my family moved from London to Buenos Aires. My Mother, who believed that children should learn languages as early as possible, dropped me into the local Argentine school where I absorbed Spanish by a kind of osmosis—except for one phrase. In school we sang a song the first line of which was: “En los patios de la escuela la cesando el gran rumor.” (In the school patios the great noise—‘hubbub’—is ceasing). I happily sang: “En los patios de la escuela va Cesandro, el Gran Rumor.” who “Cesandro” was or why he was the Great Rumor, whatever that was, I hadn’t the faintest idea but obviously he was out in the patios while we were in class. It was very many years before, remembering this, I realized what I had been supposed to be singing.

[Galina H. Carter, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire]

OBITER DICTA

Laurence Urdang

I recently purchased a new computer, and, because it operated on a system different from the one of my old computer, I asked a few friends to recommend a word-processing package that I might find useful. I was particularly interested in one that would allow me to designate a variety of typestyles during keyboarding, ideally one that showed the styles on the monitor as the text was being typed. That is called WYSIWYG, pronounced “wizzywig,” for ‘What You See Is What You Get,’ in other words when you designate text to print in boldface or italic type, it appears in boldface or italic type on the screen. For those who are unfamiliar with computers and the need for a word-processing package, I should explain (with what I hope is merciful brevity) that when you buy what is fondly called a “personal” computer, you get three pieces of equipment (though they may be combined in some models or makes): a rectangular box with some slots in the front and sockets in the back, which is the computer; a monitor, which is a small TV set without the usual buttons; and a keyboard, which looks like an ordinary typewriter keyboard but, in many models sold today, has a number of additional keys alongside those for the familiar alphanumeric characters. On mine, nestled among some control keys on the right side is what is called a “number pad,” which resembles the key arrangement one sees on an adding machine or calculator; on the left side is a double bank of five keys marked F1 through F10 which, when pressed alone or in combination with another key, perform certain functions, some of which are useful, others of which are evidently thought useful by the manufacturer but which I never use.

These boxes come with wires (called “cables” in the trade because that sounds more impressive) that allow them to be connected to one another and into a power source. The trick is that they will not do anything unless and until the Disk Operating System, which comes with the machine, is installed. After that, the DOS, as it is called, performs certain functions, though seldom any that anyone but a computer specialist would want to perform. In order to do something useful, you have to buy a program, which is a package consisting of a number of diskettes and a manual. A diskette is also called a “floppy”; the reason for the name is not immediately apparent (nor why the item is called a “diskette,” for that matter), but all becomes clear. The so-called diskette is a flat black square sealed envelope of rather tough plastic with a hole in the middle and an oblong slot on each of the flat sides; it is said to be 5¼ inches square, but that is a lie: as the only person who probably ever measured one of these things, I can tell you it is 5 3/16 inches square; that may seem irrelevant, but it is only the beginning of the Great Deception. Inside this square plastic casing (which you should never open) is a flimsy flat black plastic papadum. If the diskette is placed in the slot of the machine, a motor engages the center of the disk inside and spins it around at a great speed so that portions of it are exposed through its oblong slot, allowing them to be “read” by some device inside the box. The diskettes that contain programs have information on them that the computer “understands” and translates into a number of commands that make the machine do certain things. The things done depend on what kind of program is on the diskette.

I bought a word-processing program called FRAMEWORK II. It is quite versatile and, as I required, allows me to create certain kinds of files in which I am able to style the text as I wish. (In case you are interested, it allows me to mark text in any of the following styles, which appear on the monitor screen in a close approximation: roman, bold roman, underlined roman, underlined bold roman, italic, bold italic, underlined italic, and underlined bold italic. I acknowledge that no self-respecting typographer would ever have anything to do with underlined italic, underlined bold italic, or some of the other styles described, but you have to remember that those are merely regarded (by me, at least) as a means for discretely coding styles that I do want—like small capitals—that are not provided by the program.)

FRAMEWORK II is sold by Ashton-Tate, a silicon-valley concern that makes quite good programs but, like most of the software companies, produces such abominable manuals with directions for using the programs that they have to maintain a staff of several dozen “technical personnel” who are on duty about 12 hours a day, beginning at about six in the morning (California time) merely in order to answer the questions of confused customers. This failing appears to be epidemic throughout the industry: I recently spoke with an executive of Okidata, a manufacturer of a very good computer (laser) printer, who told me that his technical staff answers 60,000 telephone queries a month. I pointed out to him that if he made available a proper manual he could probably reduce the calls by a factor of 10. Only the telephone company is profiting from such ineptitude.

But the foregoing is all preliminary and background to the main theme. One of the services performed by FRAMEWORK II is in a program subroutine called the Spelling Checker. I do not need a spelling checker, but I have found it extremely useful as a means for proofreading text that has been keyboarded and stored. The way it works is this: after completing an article, chapter, or what-have-you, you press a few keys and the program automatically scans every word of text, comparing each with a “dictionary” contained in the program. It is not really a dictionary, of course, because it lacks definitions; it is merely a word list. You cannot display the entire word list to examine it, but, from the directory of programs I can invoke on the monitor, I know it contains about 223,000 characters, or about 37,000 words. Being a computer, the machine performs this comparison checking very, very rapidly: it takes only a minute to “proofread” a file containing about 7,000 words. If it encounters a word that is not in its repertoire, it offers a choice of actions: at the stroke of a key or two you can ADD the word to the list; GO ON and ignore the word entirely; or EDIT the questionable item (by correcting a typo, for instance). There is another option called SUGGEST, which, if invoked, lists up to seven or eight words that you might have had in mind when you wrote the one that offended the machine, and this brings me to the point of this article.

It seems unnecessary to point out that FRAMEWORK II cannot have a very sophisticated list of words if it has only 37,000 in its memory, but I thought it might be interesting to see what suggestions it might make as substitutions for the words it “disliked.” In each listing below, the boldface word is the word that FRAMEWORK “disliked”; the words following are the substitutions it suggested. Where ellipses occur, I have not bothered to copy down the entire list of offerings, selecting only those that struck me as odd, either because of the incongruity of the choice or because I could not, in my wildest flights of dyslexic, schizophrenic fancy, imagine the criteria employed in arriving at the selections. I am fully aware that some of the words in my text are not everyday items you find about the house, but I included those anyway; your attention is drawn, particularly, to the suggestions for the more common words.

arthropods - arthropod, arthritis, arthritides, orthodox, arthritic

gallium - galling, gleam, galleon, gulling, gallon, gelling, gullying, gamily

thermionic - sermonic, thorniness, sermonize, thermoset, theorematic, thermometer

interstellar - interstate, interstitial, interstice, interceder, underscore, understate

q.v. - TV

caecum - chicane, cocaine, cocoon, caucus, caching, cactus, coaching

Myriapoda - moribund, morbidly, marriageable, marigolds, moratoria, marauding

vermiform - forevermore, Vermonter, verifiers, vermicular, formicary, forefinger

neuromuscular - murmurously

nucleic - nucleate, nutlike, neglect, knuckled, nutlet, nickeled, niggled

streptococcus - stereoptions, scrupulosities, stroboscopes

staphylococcus - sycophantically, sycophantishly

lakeside - lattice, legislate, legalized, localized, leakiest, ladyship, regicide

Algonquian - Eglantine, Halogenating, Accounting, Eglantines, Ugandans, Accountant

yellowjackets - illogicality, illogicalities

unmanageable - unimaginable, manageable, inimitable, manageably, amendable

breastfeeding - breathtaking

horseracing - resurfacing, reassuring

childbearing - …chalkboards

unemotional - …emanational, unmentionable, unanimously

nonflammable - mentionable, nonviolently, monosyllable, nonvolatile

reawakens - weakens, wakens, reddens, rattans, weaklings, walk-ins, walk-ons

Beaujolais - beguiles, bobtails, beauteous, bodiless, beauties, bellicose

Bordeaux - burdocks, bureaux, broadax, paradox, birdseed, bordellos, birdhouse

…Well you get the idea. I had some fun substituting the program’s words in my sentences and in simple sentences, too. For instance,

All arachnids and insects are arthritic.

Scientists at NASA are developing an interstate rocket that will take 20 light-years to complete its journey.

They removed his formicary appendix. (No wonder he acted as if he had ants in his pants!)

Some children are unimaginable at the age of five. Why is she still breathtaking when her child is already four!

Willie Shoemaker devoted his life to resurfacing.

(A statement applicable more accurately to Elvis Presley.)

The prisoner was unmentionable when the verdict was read out.

I certainly do enjoy some bordellos or beauties with my steak.

As if the preceding were not enough, I also noticed, assuming that the program did not stop and offer choices if the word was in its memory, that oligopsony is in, but psychoneurotic is not; Winston is in, Churchill is not; isosceles is in, scalene is not.

It is a good thing that the technical staff at Ashton-Tate is not being asked to field questions about its Spelling Checker; I am not sure I would want to hear the answers.

The preceding may be considered as an introduction to a review of Webster’s Electronic Thesaurus, Proximity Technology, Inc., 1987, $??. (I seem to have lost the information about the price but recall it was about $100.) This software consists of two disks, one labeled Installation and Program, the other Synonym Linguibase, and a manual. The manual sets forth everything with clarity, and the program is simple to install, requiring only a few minutes. Only one thing made me a little suspicious when cranking up the system: in the descriptive text that appears on the screen, the word labeled is spelt “labelled”—decidedly unAmerican. However, I went ahead, and, since I was typing—Oops! keyboarding is the word nowadays; typing is out—the text you are reading, returned to the beginning of the paragraph to see how some of these words would fare. I looked up the word preceding and was, after a brief moment, asked to type in the word, which I did. The screen bloomed forth with the following:

Query: preceding 1) adj being before especially in time or arrangement

There were also some other parts of speech: one definition for the preposition and three for the verb (participial) senses. I called up the synonyms for the adj and the following appeared:

Synonyms: antecedent, anterior, foregoing, former, past, precedent, previous, prior

The way the program works is this: one uses the cursor to highlight a particular word for which synonyms are desired. It is similar, in principle, to finding a synonym in a synonym dictionary and then successively looking up its synonyms to find their synonyms. I am not sure why, but I expected the program to “network” in the same way. However, when I highlighted antecedent, what appeared on the screen was the same list of synonyms but with antecedent missing; but preceding had reappeared. If all this is too complicated to follow, let me summarize: you look up word X and get synonyms, A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. You look up the synonyms for word A, and you get synonyms X, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Even the definition provided for the sub-listings is identical in wording to that of the word originally sought.

This is very economical of space and involves a clever computer ploy, but it does not provide a particularly useful synonym dictionary, for, as we all know, synonymy in language does not yield to the mathematical law that states, “Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other.” Perhaps the Proximity people thought that they had got round that little problem by giving the same definition for each of the items in the list; but we know that only very rarely are two synonyms bi-unique (which is another way of saying that just because ingredient means ‘constituent,’ not all meanings of constituent mean ‘ingredient,’ an ineluctable fact of language).

If a relatively limited access to a synonym dictionary is likely to be of use, then this package may be of service. It works with a hard disk or with a set of floppies and can be used with 29 popular word-processing programs. (That was the number listed when I received my copy; it might have increased.) It also has a few neat features, like suggesting a few alternatives if you happen to think that preceding is spelt “preceeding” (as some people do). It has a useful “Help” feature that can be called upon at any stage. Also, if you enter jump, you get the synonyms for that; but if you entered jumped, you get the (same) synonyms but inflected—including the variants leapt, leaped for leap. All in all, for a primitive system, it is not too bad; but you would have to be in love with your computer to use it in preference to the far more complete books of synonyms available (especially The Synonym Finder, Rodale in the U.S. and Canada, Longman elsewhere, which offers more than 800,000 synonyms, more than three times the number listed in any other synonym book).

The blurb on this book/disk package reads, “Supplies you with 470,000 true synonyms for 40,000 entries.” My guess is that such a quantity might be reached if one counted all the permutations and combinations; in reality, though, there are probably far fewer actual words. Readers can judge for themselves the validity of this numerical legerdemain.

[P.S. The foregoing was written more than a year ago. Since then, I have updated FRAMEWORK II to FRAMEWORK III to add, as they say in the trade, a few “bells and whistles,” and, because my present computer is configured with only 640,000 bytes of RAM (RandomAccess Memory) and can perform only a pitiful five zillion operations a second, I am planning to add RAM and memory to enable it to perform a few zillion more—or is that per millisecond or microsecond?—in order to have a device that can keep pace with the speed with which I change my mind. Move over! Make room in the fast lane!]

Joining the ranks of companies that ought to have the resources required to employ people (especially in advertising agencies) who are reasonably perceptive about language but appear to have lost whatever touch they might have had is the British firm, Honeywell Bull. Originally, the American concern with the well-established name Minneapolis Honeywell joined with Groupe Bull and NEC to form Honeywell Bull, not the most attractive of names. On 22 February 1989, in a full-page color advertisement in The Times, the Honeywell was severed, leaving the new company name Bull. At the same time, the big brains came up with the slogan To business problems, we say Bull, rather an unfortunate decision for two reasons: first, bull is an almost-polite shortening of bullshit, as (almost) everyone knows; second, bull (or Bull!) as a retort means ‘bullshit; nonsense; balderdash’ and, particularly, ‘Whatever you said [like, “I have a business problem”] is a lot of bullshit.’ That might be perceived as reflective of a rather cavalier attitude toward prospective customers' problems. As a vast amount of information is couched in language, and the new firm associates itself with Worldwide Information Systems, one might be given to wonder how adroit their handling of linguistic information might be.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Box 2101 Terminal Annex.” [The address of a life insurance company in Los Angeles. Submitted by George F. Muller, Rockville, Maryland.]

About £50,000 of taxpayers' money is being spent on a court case which has been brought in the Court of Appeal by the Attorney General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, to determine what the word obtained means in the context of the insider dealing laws.

The case is vital to the offence of insider dealing. It results from the acquittal of Mr. Brian Fisher, a businessman, on charges of insider dealing, after a ruling in Southwark Crown Court which threatens to severely restrict the scope for prosecutions of insider dealing.

Mr. Fisher had been charged with insider dealing in shares of Thomson T Line just before a takeover bid for the company. He had claimed to be interested in bidding for Thomson, but Kleinwort Benson, the company’s merchant bank, told him out of courtesy that the company had accepted another offer. He immediately bought 6,000 shares himself, ultimately netting a profit of £3,000.

However, he was saved—and acquitted of insider dealing—by the dictionary definition of the word obtained. Judge Gerald Butler said that Mr. Fisher had not actually obtained price sensitive information in the sense of actively seeking or procuring it. He had merely received it.

He ruled that the proper meaning of the word in the Companies Securities (Insider Dealing) Act 1985 connoted active conduct in the sense of seeking out information.

The Attorney General argued in court yesterday that the word obtained “embraces both the active and passive usage.”

“Dictionary definitions are not always helpful to the court, and slavish adherence to these should be avoided if the result is to frustrate the intention of the legislation,” he said.

He submitted that the wider construction of the word obtained gives “proper effect to the statute.”

Judgement was reserved. [The Times, 27 September 1988]

Anyone laboring under the delusion that English is not an acquisitive language should be disabused by the following caption from an article about delicatessens that appeared in the Magazine Section of The Sunday Times [London], 7 January 1989: [“Foreignisms” are so set in the original.]

In its scale, menu and good-humoured vulgarity, Minsky’s is reminiscent of the rather palatial, slightly déraciné delis of suburban New York. Dé cor is belle époque with cod Tiffany and a superabundance of gleaming copper work. The cringe-making menu prose—“50 ways to love your liver”—disguises a reasonably echt core of standard deli fair [sic]: cream cheese and lox, salt beef [‘corned beef’], gefilte fish—with a few nouvelle intruders like sun-dried tomato and mozarella [sic] salad. Staff are perhaps too irrepressible. Me: “I think I’ll go for the pastrami.” Waitress:” You won’t be disappointed, sir!” It is all better than serviceable, less than exciting. Minsky’s at the Hilton, Regent’s Park, Lodge Road, NW8 (01-722-7722)

The Franklin Language Master, a £199.95, hand-held, electronic dictionary, offered in a mail-order catalogue accompanying The Sunday Times [London] of 8 January 1989, is illustrated by a photograph of the device with the following display:

1. dic<.>tio<.>nary (noun) dic<.>tio<.>nar<.>ies :reference book of words with information about their meaning

Shouldn’t that be “meanings?” The centered dots mark hyphenation points; the standard calls for a dot between the n and the a, not the o and the n. Little confidence is inspired by the presence of three errors (one appearing twice) in only 12 words of information. As the contrivance is American, it is sold in the UK with a card that shows the “correct Queen’s English” where spellings differ. No comment is made about differences in hyphenation that result from differences or variants in pronunciation. For instance, if a Brit pronounces the word (as many do) conTROVersy, then the hyphen ought to come after the v, not as in standard US in early January, fore the v. At rates of exchange in early January, £200 is equivalent to $355, which seems a lot to spend, in pounds or dollars, to get it wrong.

EPISTOLA {Laurence Urdang}

On January 12th, 1989, Carole Leonard, who compiles a chatty column for The Times of items picked up on the Rialto in The City, reported that a “reader in Surrey” (not, for a change, “Disgusted,” Tunbridge Wells) received a tax form with the instruction “Send the cheque and payslip unfolded to the Collector in the envelope provided.” “I looked inside,” wrote the mystified reader, “but couldn’t find him.” A few pages on, the Scots Law Report carried the headline, “Causing death by reckless driving of person unborn at time of accident.”

[Laurence Urdang]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Wednesday, September 2 will be declared a Monday for purposes of class attendence. This designation of Wednesday as a Monday is for the first week of Fall semester only.” [From the University of Southern California catalogue. Submitted by Scott McCarty, Long Beach.]

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Through the use of ultrasound, University of Washington researcher…studies women who develop high blood pressure during pregnancy with the assistance of AHA-WA funds.” [From Heartlines, a Washington affiliate newsletter of the American Heart Association, Vol. VI, No. 2, 1988.]

Nifty Nomenclature

Elaine T. Henry, Clarksboro, New Jersey

Has your name haunted you and convulsed others since you were a child? Was it nearly impossible for you to have a peaceful elementary school experience? Could you barely wait until you were old enough to use your first and your middle name? Have you never told your middle name to anyone (except the teachers at school)? Were you stuck with a family name that the dog wouldn’t even answer to?

On the other hand, has your name always been plain, generic, and no-frills? Do you fail to lift a bureaucratic eyebrow at the Motor Vehicle agency? Have you contemplated marriage only because you get to change your name?

There are those who suffer with names and those who don’t, and, personally, I have always thought the sufferers have the better time of it. They are usually the center of attention at parties and at conferences their name tags positively glow with recognition. Who remembers Jane Smith when Jayne Smyth can warm collective cockles on any day of the year. Since I have been a nonsufferer with a truly dull name (not even marriage made a difference), I’ve become a collector of offbeat names, a genuine, green-eyed, envious Name Maniac. Names became significant to me at an early age. It was the year I discovered that Pansy Euphonia Ubrecht resided in the cabin next to mine at summer camp. I listened in fascination as each camp counselor and administrator vied to involve her in extra roll calls. Pansy couldn’t understand why her name was music to my ears when she simply despised it. I was oblivious to her moans of disgust. All I wanted was to follow her everywhere to listen to others say her name. Coming from a staunchly conservative, two-syllable past, I longed desperately for such melody in my life. Her name ran through my thoughts at random moments for four months. My destiny was quietly locked into place: look forever for other names of the Pansy Euphonia ilk.

Accordingly, I’ve kept a name list for years— great reading for anyone with two or three hours of spare time. After all, names are not just read: they must be savored, rolled about on the tongue. Since the original list is so long, I’ve extracted a select number of names in the health professions only, as listed in the publications that have passed over my desk—a tribute to my employer, a famous medical publishing firm. These are names that catch the eye and the ear, and make beautiful music of their own. Some are unusual, incongruous, gross, strange-look-ing, downright odd, and some depend solely upon juxtaposition. Most can be categorized; others must stand alone. As for pronunciation, just say it the way you see it. However, whatever, these are real folks, every one.

Specialties

A.G. Pissidis—colon and rectal surgery
R. Reutter—sinus (first name Roto?)
R.C. Snip—ophthalmic surgery
H. Ichinose—sinus
D.G. Cutright—surgery
D.L. Dungworth— veterinarian
J.H. Butt—bowel
V. Mutt—canine research
A.R. Crap— gastroenterology
E.A. Gall—liver
E.J. Catcott—feline surgery
Dr. Kock—urology
V. Colon—urology
R.D. Leake—pediatric urology
C.H. Organ—surgery
P.I.G. Frelier— veterinarian
J.D. Yeast— gynecologist
J.D. Noshpitz— nutritionist

Furry, Feathered, and Wet

A. Cats
J. Bambi
D.A. Shamoo [works at Sea World?]
W. Kattwinkle
F. Buzzard
R. Beaglehole

Sounds—Pleasant and Awful

A. Ding
J.J. Hoo
P.P. Klug
W.K. Hoots
H.G. Schnurch
H. Gong; H. Gong, Jr.
H.J. McClung
C. Choo [first name Chu?]
Victor Vroom
M.A. Cornbleet
S. Smookler
M.E. Nimni [say it fast several times]
C.C. Crump
Yoogoo Kang
W. Oh
N. Gesundheit
W.J. Blot
Nils U. Bang
B. Woo
C.G. Plopper

Destined to Be a Doc (of Some Sort)

E. Colli
C.W. Health
H. Body
Y. Nose
M.C. Horsinek (vet)
B. Miedema
J. Noseworthy
Dr. Saltpeter
Sylvan Stool
E. Rump
D. Purpura
L.J. Van Cutsem
M. Pain
E. Cutz
J.P. Clot
L. Doctor (Dr. Doctor?)
A.C. Tongue
J.D. Brain

Food and Related Stuff

Louis Lasagna
P. Onion; D. Onions
G.B. Grindem
P.J. Garlik
N.H. Fridge
O. Croissant
M.A. Peppercorn
E. Raisin
A. Vinegar

Bodily Functions and Parts/A Bit Raunchy

J.M. Smellie
W. Thumfart
G. Lust
M.A. Arce
K. Dikshit
R.V. Gumbs
R.O. Crapo
R.J. Gummit
J. Keaster
A.B. Fuks
P.A. Butts
W.P. Cockshott
T.A. Assykeen
M.L.F. Knuckles
W. van Pee
H.W. Windschitl
R. Glasscock
R.A. Pubek

Listings

Tweedle, D.E.
Kiss, M. E.

Have a Nice Day!

I. Sunshine
J.T. Goodgame
K. Hug
J.R. Perfect
B.A. Friend
F. Happy
R.D. Goodenough
E.I. Grin

The Hyphen’s the Charm

W.F. Moo-Penn
B.V. Low-Beer
R. Pitt-Rivers
J.L. Bravo-Bravo
T. Poon-King
L. Noronha-Blob

Team Spirit

Gittus Decker Salt and Shenker
Cook and Ware Doupe and Chance
Billiard and Ball Kwong and Ong
Crummy and Turnipseed
Hook, Hooten, and Horton Balls and McCabe
Barthel and Butt
Ali and Katz Rude and Sharpe Pippi and Lumb
Young and Poore
Peachy and Creame Mule and Camiel
Young and Eger
Rossetti and Hell Shoulders and Proudfoot
Huch, Huch, and Rabbitts

Gotta Stand Alone

T.A. Vats
J.P. Isbister
Nirmal Mann
R.O. Greep
A. Tough
D. Muchmore
C.M. Pinksy
H.V. Unfug
A.C. Eyechleshymer
F.M. Dumpit
F. Wimpfheimer
E.E. Tizzer
J.D. Whynot
J. Alsofrom
C.M. Feek
J.D. Hosenpud
N. Publicover
I. Klatzo
A. Slob
Y. Ohno
T.T. Puck
W.J. Virgin
D.F.W. Wurbs
J. Klicklighter
J. Clinkingbeard
D. Walljasper

Trippingly Off The Tongue and the Eyeball

A.W. Miglets
Ruth Bope Dangel
A.G.G. Turpie
E. Fong-de-Leon
N. Speece-Swens
J. Funhufnagle
D.I. Tudehope
Bo G. Crabo
R. Pitts Crick
W. Ripley Ballou
Camillus L. Witzleben
Monto Ho
C.C. Wiggleshoff
Garrison Rapmund
Mary P. Lovely
M. Folk-Lightly
P.G. Peerbooms
Hermes Grillo
Eldred Mundth
Desmond Duff
Drago Montague
P.C. Pairolaro
Hebe Chestnutt
V. Mikity
Gaylord Throckmorton
H.A.W. Hazewinkel
Lasalle Laffall, Jr.
Delmar Finco
Bosco Postic
Bimbo Welker
D.J. Zitzewitz
Spotswood L. Spruance
Berten Bean
Monica L. Monica
Munro Peacock
M.C.G. Littlewort
Susan Armstrong Screws
B.E. Dahrling
Munsey W. Wheby
Birdwell Finlayson

Feelings

J.G. Boring
C.G. Loosli
L. Iffy
I.B. Crummy
L.C. Grumbles
I. Sick
I. Leave
J. DeGrouchy
D. Rotten
M.R. Soggie

“Zing, Zing, Zing Went My Heartstrings”

J. Garland (cardiologist)
E. Zingg

Initially Great

M.C.P.Ip
B.S. Bull
P.B.M.W.M. Timmermans
O.K. Joe
M.D. McGoon, M.D.
P.S.E.G. Harland
H.P.A. de Boom
I.R.G. Toogood
G.E. Sale
W.C.J. Hoo
J.O.Y. Chew
I.N. Love

Championship Stuff

R.V. Allhands
O.A. Fly
J. Feely
D.D. Stiff
J. Crooks
W. Speed III
J.L. Sever
Roy S. Rogers III
J.B. Blood, Jr.
K.H. DeWeerd
H. Thing
A.M. Dozy
A.L. Blotchy
T. Armbuster
S.C. Duck
O.M. Wrong
B. Safer
M.C. McWeeny
J.N. Groper
J.P. Truant
I. Fatt
S.M. Killer
J. Duhm (long or short u, it’s still a problem)
P.H. Slug
A.H. Bizarre
M. Bunny

Transatlanguage

Nicholas Whitehead, Kington, Hereford

It was in a hotel bar in Chicago, on my first night of a visit to the US, that I was given some advice on how to communicate with Americans. My volunteer tutor, an executive with the Sears company, explained that the British have a “beat-about-the-bush” way of saying things, whereas Americans always go straight to the point. In America, he assured me, I would hear “English with its sleeves rolled-up.” Jet-lagged after ten hours in the custody of American airline staff, I could neither believe nor argue.

Back here in rural Herefordshire, after two months in the States, I’ve had time to reflect on what the man said. Did he have a point? Well, I do say taken to hospital rather than hospitalized, even though the American term is two syllables shorter. I would never write All thru the nite just to save four letters. And I still remember being baffled by a British news story in U.S.A. Today. The paper reported that the Duchess of York had been presented with her pilot’s wings “at Oxford Monday.” I actually checked the index of my Ordnance Survey atlas (Oxenwood…Oxford…Oxhill) before concluding that there was no such place and what they really meant was “at Oxford on Monday.” Is it just because I am English that I resent the dropping of a small preposition? Do I belong to a race of fusspots who decorate their sentences with words that don’t matter? The man from Sears thought so and he was not alone. His belief turned out to be so widely held in America that it was almost beyond question.

Let us question it now. First of all, think of five living English People and remember how each of them speaks. Come on…Margaret Thatcher, Dudley Moore…any other three. Are they euphemistic? Is their diction cluttered with redundant words and phrases? Are their sentence structures so ornate and pernickety that the meaning is obscured? Now think of a few people who are guilty of those linguistic sins. I can guess who they are: American airline stewardesses, Pentagon Officials, New England hostesses, and people who insist on being referred to as “spokespersons” for social reform.

In airline-speak and Pentagonese, the idea seems to be to build up the number of words or syllables in a sentence at the expense of its color, vitality, and charm. English is reduced to a bland, verbal porridge. “The no-smoking signs are illuminated at this time.” The sentence is in the present tense. There is no need to say at this time (or even now), but the rules of airline English state that whenever a stock, useless phrase may be inserted into a sentence then that phrase must be inserted (at that moment in time).

The Pentagon is more extreme but perhaps more honest. Its euphemisms are so blatant that no one could fail to recognize them as anything but straightforward attempts to deny the truth. Bombs are called systems, poisons are agents. Then there is the marvelously uninformative Strategic Defence Initiative. To help maintain the required standards of blandness and inefficiency, the words situation and located must be used (they would say utilized) as often as possible. Unfortunately, the practices of military and airline staff are contaminating the language of the greater public. In England we talk about the weather. In America, it is the weather situation. In California, I saw a notice Scotch-taped to a supermarket door: “This door is locked, please use the other door which is located around the corner.” In England, where everything is supposed to be so long-winded, the sign would ask simply: “Please use the door round the corner.”

New Englanders deserve a special mention. It is they, I believe, who are mainly responsible for this crazy notion that the English have a niminy-piminy way of expressing themselves. You know the sort of thing—inexpensive instead of cheap; R.C. instead of Catholic; T.P. or even bathroom stationary instead of toilet paper. They believe it sounds English so the rest of America believes it too. What it really sounds like is genteel, Victorian English, a style extinct in all but a few suburban, lower-middle-class areas. While English people are more or less immune from the mincing style of the Mayflower’s granddaughters, Pentagonese has seriously infected the language of British trade union leaders. Situation pops up like acne all over their sentences and at this time has deteriorated to at this moment in time. Located has, mercifully, not caught on.

Even in England, trade unionists are put in the shade by the speakers of Sociologese; they, in turn, are outshone by their transatlantic counterparts. American community workers are the champion language-manglers. In their world, nothing and no one is ever specifically identified or accurately described. Doctors and nurses are lumped together with gophers and pen-pushers under the blanket term health professional. No one over owns up to being the boss, the leader, or the headmistress, only the coordinator. Words that have a richness of meaning are strenuously avoided in favor of cold, empty terms that have no resonance. Thus, biological mother rather than natural mother. This is not the straight-to-the-point English usage on which Americans pride themselves. This is English with its sleeves rolled right down around its ankles. Of course, to avoid being “negative” we’d have to call it “Meaning-Free Language.”

Is there any hope? Yes. The cavalry is coming. In fact, it is already here. The battle is on for truth, clarity, and the elegant way. Just as the staid, old British English was rejuvenated after the First World Was by the injection of American, no-nonsense grittiness, so modern American English is being saved; this time by the charge of honest and potent street-talk into the flim-flam and flummery of the body linguistic. Some of the best new words on both sides of the Atlantic have come from the streets of America. Mugger for instance. How ever did we manage without it? There is the old English cutpurse but that sounds too fancy for its purpose and has none of the casual bluntness of the American word. Then there’s scam, junkie, and copout; neat, powerful, armor-piercing words. And where would we be without rip-off?

The battle would probably be won by now, were it not for the fact that the truth-dodgers have managed to lay a false claim to the moral high ground. There are, however, encouraging signs that they may not hold it much longer—even New Englanders are calling black people black these days. Perhaps it will not be too long before the man from Sears, and every proud American, will be able to welcome the foreigner to a land where people are not afraid to roll up their sleeves.

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“The Met Office—a part of the Ministry of Defence and therefore shielded from accountability and the prying eyes of outsiders—is beyond the pail.” [From the New Scientist (London), 22 October 1987. Submitted by Cornelius Van S. Roosevelt, Washington, D.C.]

Verbal Analogies IV—Miscellaneous

D.A. Pomfrit, Manchester

To make the Verbal Analogy, select the appropriate term or description from among the Answers provided. To make it harder, cover the Answers. The solution appears on page 24.

1. ant : termite :: grouse : ?

2. liquid : solid :: evaporation : ?

3. minerals : mohs :: metals/alloys : ?

4. daily : weekly :: diurnal : ?

5. Hermes : Bacchus :: caduceus : ?

6. siege : garrison :: obsidional : ?

7. two-piece : one-piece :: bikini : ?

8. Mali : Burkina Faso :: Bamako : ?

9. democracy : people :: ochlocracy : ?

10. cleaver : dolabriform :: claw : ?

11. ant : aphid :: man : ?

12. vesperal : evening :: vespal : ?

Answers

(a) Brinell
(b) Cheliform
(c) Cow
(d) Mob
(e) Hebdomadal
(f) Maillot
(g) Ouagadougou
(h) Presidial
(i) Ptarmigan
(j) Sublimation
(k) Thyrsus
(l) Wasp

New Blood in the Namestream

John Tittensor, Goudargues, France

The most respected mechanic in the village of St. Martin d’Ardèche, not far from where I live, is called Monsieur Salaud. And in another nearby village the job of mayor is held down by the amiable Madame Bordel. Perfectly ordinary-sounding French names—with the sole drawback that salaud means ‘bastard’ and bordel means ‘brothel’; and all over France these unfortunates have for company the bearers of such names as Lacrotte ‘turd,’ Vachier ‘piss off,’ Connard ‘bloody fool,’ and Putin ‘whore’— not to mention such real unprintables like Baize and Ducon.

Having a name in this category is no fun in any language—I speak from bitter personal experience—but at least in most Anglo-Saxon countries effecting a change poses no great problem. Not so in France, where names are part of the patrimoine, the national heritage, and are not to be altered or forsaken lightly: a poet friend had to spend several years and a lot of money to get a missing s restored to the official version of his surname, so that now, instead of being B\acap\tard ‘mongrel’ he’s plain old Bastard and, what’s more, is very happy about it.

But to get back to our Whores, Brothels, and so on. Some of them felt strongly enough about their situation to form a pressure group and now, after a long struggle, the government has caved in: a recent Journal officiel lists four pages of people who are to be allowed to change their names—when they can come up with the 2000 franc (±$325) fee.

It is not, however, a matter of “you pays your money and you takes your choice.” For the Journal officiel also provides the alternative names acceptable to the Fifth Republic; and if the Putins, for example, do not like “Pertin,” well hard cheese, they’ll just have to stay as they are. While the Salauds get a government-guaranteed Hobson’s choice: “Saland” is going to remind everybody of that unloved ultra-right general of the Algerian War period and God help anybody called “Asslot” who ever gets the urge to travel in the English-speaking world.

On the credit side two gentlemen called Hitler can now safely come out of their bunkers: they’ll be known henceforth as Hiler and at school their children may enjoy a peace that the fathers (and I for that matter) never knew.

One imagines that the majority of the Cocus ‘cuckolds,’ Beaunichons ‘nice tits,’ Boccons (unprintable again), and their comrades in suffering are going to take more or less gratefully whatever name the state cedes them. But in doing so they are going to break the heart of Michel Tesnières of the French Onomastic Society. Onomastics is basically the science of worrying about names and Monsieur Tesnières—an appellation, as it happens, regrettably free of all sexual or scatological interest—is much exercised by the fact that three centuries from now 97 per cent of all French family names will have vanished, with only 7500 surviving out of the estimated present stock of 250,000.

Up until the 17th century you could call yourself anything you liked in France (which makes you wonder what the ancestors of today’s Bastards and Turds were thinking of), but in these more prosaic and regulated times a number of ordinary everyday factors is gradually eroding this part of the patrimoine. The French, to the despair of every government since the Revolution of 1789, are notoriously good at not having babies, and even then half the production at any given time are girls who do not usually pass on their names when they marry. Men are free to pass on their names as much as they like, but some do not marry while others marry and remain childless. Add to this those perverse types who voluntarily renounce such fine family designations as Cupissol ‘Arsepiss’ and the result, according to an anguished M. Tesnières, is that 70 out of every 100 current surnames disappear in the course of a single generation.

Already the nation is top-heavy, with 25 per cent of the population sharing 0.4 per cent of the available names. The twelve commonest names now embrace a million people, with the Martins—there are already 168,000 of them—heading the list. Maybe when the crunch comes in 300 years' time the Martins, who by then will in theory be one in 20 of the population, will start demanding the right to call themselves Brothels or Bloody Fools.

One thing M. Tesnières hasn’t reckoned with, though, is the Anglo-Saxon input. The vogue for first names such as James (pronounced JEMSS) is still far from its peak, and freedom of movement within the EEC means that English surnames are becoming more and more common here. Already a quick scan of the local phone book reveals the presence of the Broadbents, Coxes, Cockles, Willings, Whitworths, and Crackenthorpes. Not that the English have a monopoly when it comes to, as it were, injecting new blood into the namestream. The Irish haven’t been wasting their time either. Friends in Bordeaux swear by a French plumber called Patrick McGarvey and our municipal musical school is overseen by that genial organist—and Frenchman—Rory Nelson.

Just a little effort on the part of people with names like this—put Cox with Willing, for example, and something has to happen—could take some of the strain off the neurotically prolific Martins, Bernards, and Petits and send a welcome ray of sunshine into the gloom-filled halls of the French Onomastic Society. But on second thoughts, maybe not: M. Tesnières would doubtless see this foreign intrusion as poor compensation for the loss of his homegrown Whores, Bastards, and Hitlers.

Leslie A. Dunkling

SIC! SIC! SIC!

“Proceeds from sales of carved ducks go to handicap children.” [A sign in a Greek pizzeria in Peabody, Massachusetts. submitted by Nell Wright, Lynnfield, Massachusetts.]

Answers to Paring Pairs No. 36

(a). (26,28) Pro Rogue.
(b). (29,30) Roman Scandal.
(c). (3,6) Beach Buggy.
(d). (7,34) Con Strict.
(e). (7,15) Con Done.
(f). (7,18) Con Form
(g). (7,16) Con Firm.
(h). (7,36) Con Temporary.
(i). (7,32) Con Sorts.
(j). (7,31) Cons Science.
(k). (10,40) Cons Train.
(l). (17,19) For Give.
(m). (9,39) Conning Tower.
(n). (7,14) Con Donation.
(o). (8,1,38) Condemn A Tory.
(p). (26,33) Pro State.
(q). (11,35) Curt Tale.
(r). (21,42) Intracostal Waterway.
(s). (22,27) Lew Rawls. re.
(u). (23,25) Loco Motive.
(v). (20,41) In Voice.
(w). (20,2) In Apt.
(x). (20,37) In Tern.
(y). (1,12) A Dept.
(z). (5,40) Board Train.

We regret that lack of space precludes our publishing a new puzzle in this issue. The solution to Paring Pairs No. 36 is (4) Beat. The winner was Adam Halpern, Palo Alto.

Crossword Puzzle

Across

1. Fool lass into eating (4-1-4)
6. Left—left wearing cape (5)
9. Panhandlers with urge to enter taverns (7)
10. Standard cut vegetable (7)
11. Gossip rag covering bit of lewdness (7)
12. Frank admitted into Ma- sons in ceremony (7)
13. Fear being right in the grip of the dearly departed (5)
14. Heroic to move through area of maximum destruction (9)
16. Western shurubs com- pletely surrounded by disarray (9)
19. A highlander’s neckwear (5)
21. South American custom is baloney (7)
23. Surviving California city con game (7)
25. Reform in games and puzzles (7)
26. Windstorm ripped up a party (7)
27. Put a stop to bad deed involving head of nation (5)
28. Burdened boy with present—piece of nickel (5,4)

Down

1. College dons owed mon- re (5)
2. Bedroom garment close to neckwear (7)
3. Miss Gardner and I went first and profited (7)
4. Rebel in South demanding immediate action (9)
5. Monkeys beneath $1000 goggles (5)
6. Unfamiliar road stretch (7)
7. Liberal German’s refusal comes up in permit (7)
8. Extremely confidential in respect to maneuvering (3, 6)
13. Block a view from mid- eastern capital (9)
15. Put down covers—one protected from the cold (9)
17. Learned to cash in one’s chips in poker game (7)
18. Rude man attacked with- out a gun (7)
19. Loser among linberals or anarchists (4, 3)
20.\ U.S. city fashionable in the past (7)
22. Lee’s surprisingly taking a stand supporting art (5)
24. Increased sound of pain heard (5)

The answers to Anglo-American Crossword Puzzle No. 50 appear on page 9.

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