VOL V, No 2 [September, 1978]
“You know what I mean…”
Laurence Urdang, Editor, VERBATIM.
Unlike die-making, language-making is a relatively imprecise art. But we must recognize it as an art, not a science, with a little technique thrown in. (Criticasters of current English usage are more likely to complain that what little technique there might be appears to have been thrown out.)
The less sophisticated speakers of English adopted the preposition like first as a conjunctive adverb but ultimately as an interjection. I believe that the likes, y’knows, and other interpolations in speech are not so much attention-getting devices borrowed, as some maintain, from Black English, as they are genuine comments made by the speaker about what he is saying. Undereducated, unsure of his facts, apprehensive of how his comments may be received, sensitive to the slightest nuance of disapproval among his listeners, the speaker mitigates every statement by a qualifier (like), providing himself with an escape through which he can avoid responsibility for having made a false or (worse!) socially unacceptable statement. Thus, rather than coming right out and saying something straightforward like, “It’s snowing,” he will say something like, “Hey, man, it’s like snowing, y’know?” Originally, this technique of calling a spade a shovel was restricted to matters involving opinion, where the commitment was made yet more tentative by the insertion of the disclaimer like: “That was a great movie” became “I think that was a great movie” which became “I may not know anything about movies, but I think that was a great movie,” which became “That was like a real great movie, y’know?”
Another reflex of the same syndrome of insecurity may be in the use of a rising inflection (normally reserved for questions) when making a bare statement of irrefutable fact. That is difficult to show in writing, but it is often heard, especially in reply to questions: Q: “Where were you born?” A: “In New York City?”; Q: “May I help you?” A: “I am calling to find out if you are open till 6 tonight?”
I am given to suspect, though, that the entire trend may be attributable simply to a panlingual weakness for the cliché. Witness, for example, the silly expression as we know it, frequently tossed in, with meaningless reference, after words like life or phrases like life on earth. Even some of the (presumed) better writers of our day are prone to it as can be seen from the following, which, quoted out of context, may appear to be rather amusing. [It is from a review by Auberon Waugh of The Public School Phenomenon in Books and Bookmen, June 1978.]
By comparsion with the end of civilization as we know it, the price of a taste for flagellation, or buggery, or a certain awkwardness in relations with the opposite sex, seems absurdly small.
In certain circles, it has become popular to the point of irritation to characterize every eremitical, dyspeptic, closemouthed selfish crank as a private person. Again: the fear of offending, combined with the pseudoclinical, “psychological” approach invoked to conceal the genuine opinion or emotion.
There are others, of course, too numerous to catalogue here. Many have their origins in the jargon of psychiatry and psychology, affording the speaker of a certain social level and of unimaginative intellectual incapacity the opportunity to affect the patina of the class to which he aspires. Overhearing a conversation between two practitioners of such jargon gives one the impression that neither understands the other any more than he understands himself, which is just as well, since neither is saying anything anyway: most such “conversations” are mere attempts by the some ninnyhammer to impress his counterpart that he is familiar with the trendy shibboleths of the current scene. I suppose that this is what we must come to expect in The Age of the Decline of the Subjunctive.
Partly responsible is the aphoristic cliché “Everyone is entitled to his (or, more often their) own opinion.” That is as much of a truism as any cliché. It omits two important corollaries, though, that are not implicit in it:
1. Everyone doesn’t, necessarily, have the right to express his opinion;
2. Everyone’s opinion isn’t, necessarily, of any value.
That is about as undemocratic a statement as anyone is likely to associate with me, but there comes a time when one must put his foot down. Jacqueline Susann’s novels are not good just because they sell a lot of copies and because publishers were willing to pay a $1 million advance for the last one. Andy Warhol’s paintings are not good just because they are original and cost a lot of money. And, as we have learned from bitter experience, our elected officials are not good just because they run the country or because we were foolish enough to have elected them.
What I find a disturbing trend in language is reflected in aberrant discourse. Taken to extremes, this total lack of simple communication manifests itself in an exchange like this:
“How much does the lettuce cost?”
“Today is Tuesday.”
That may be a little extreme, but here is an actual example from The N.Y. Times, 29 January 1978, p. 17:
[…A reporter asked if the President was in better health.] “Yes,” Mr. Carter said, “much better; better than campaigning.” Maybe I am becoming senile, but I cannot see any way in which the reply fits the question. This is not an example of a grammatical lapse of the kind Edwin Newman loses sleep over. It is something far more serious. It has many common reflexes. The rest of you may have become used to it by now, but I am made nervous by an exchange like this:
I: Would you like to have another drink?
GUEST: I’m fine, thanks.
I suppress a rude impulse to say something like, “I didn’t ask you how you felt; I asked you if you wanted another drink.” Maybe that is a manifestation of language change that this poor, tired brain is just too conservative to assimilate, but I must confess it makes me nervous.
Examples of this sort abound. It seems that every waiter, waitress, bartender, salesperson, and all others in comparable jobs deliver a plate, glass, or what-have-you accompanied by a “There you go.” What in heaven’s name does it mean? There once was a cliché, seldom heard today, that was uttered under similar circumstances. It was, “There [or Here] you are.” It was often followed by a “Sir,” “Miss,” or “Madam,” but today, when someone calls me Sir—in America—I seem to detect an undertone of derision: this purely polite word has assumed the connotation of sardonic servility and has made me suspicious of the sincerity of whoever utters it.
While I am on prejudices, I must mention the word meal, which has always carried with it the association of gruel, haggis, cold oatmeal, and other delectables. Yet it is persistently on the lips of every waiter, waitress, and stewardess (but you’re not allowed to use that term any longer—everyone is now a flight attendant) as your breakfast, lunch, or dinner is placed before you: “Hope you enjoy your meal.” As soon as I hear the word meal, any enjoyment I might have derived from it has been effectively squelched. In the same category is “Have a nice day.” Mercifully, this is no longer accompanied by a smiling moonface on packets of sugar, matchboxes, and stickers clinging to windows and walls. In fact, my early revulsion at the expression seems to be diminishing, for I have reconciled myself to the meaninglessness of it, just as my forebears must have done when “God be with you” became Goodby.
The inability to describe a simple fact abounds in the press, probably brought about by some legalistic rubbish having to do with protecting “rights.” The typical example is the situation in which a reporter, present at an attack on a person that takes place in full view of dozens of other people, describes the capture, 50 yards away, of the attacker by a crowd. The criminal immediately becomes the “alleged assailant,” notwithstanding his having committed the assault before several witnesses. This cautionary legalism, which prevails when describing naughty behavior, is never extended to the reportage of good behavior: one never reads of the “alleged hero.”
As often as they are guilty of interpolating meaningless interjections into their speech, thus giving their hearers the impression that they are saying a great deal more because they are talking a great deal more (or, perhaps by talking more, albeit saying less, they create the illusion that their limited vocabularies are capable of more expression, if not more expressiveness), speakers also tend to apocopate the language. One hears “As far as [the weather, it will be cloudy and…]” more often than “As far as [the weather] is concerned…”
I find myself consciously trying to avoid clichés. Some, of course, are unavoidable, like Hello, How are you, See you soon, Goodby, etc., and it would be foolish to try to create substitutes. Besides, they don’t jangle my nerves the way the new crop of stereotypes does. It can probably be demonstrated through information theory that content is virtually unassimilable when delivered in concentrated doses. That is, we may be unable to understand “pure” information: it must be couched in sufficient white noise to allow it to sink in; perhaps our brains need a rest in between bouts of concentration that last longer than a millisecond or two.
As a parallel, I cite the difference between conversation in which information is exchanged (in small doses) and the reading aloud of a scholarly paper that was meant for publication. Too often have I attended academic meetings where inept participants, bent on preparing articles to be published in a journal or in the proceedings, have seen fit to read it to the audience. It is one thing to read such a paper to oneself, and, if one encounters a difficult or recondite passage, to be able to reread it as many times as necessary for full comprehension; it is another to listen to the same paper read aloud: it is usually incomprehensible. At a recent meeting I attended, the audience was regaled with about five minutes of statistics! And the speaker was a university teacher. Small wonder that no one can learn anything any more.
What separates good speakers and writers from bad speakers and writers is the ability of the former to make a conscious choice. I am, for instance, able to speak and write in a variety of styles, from very informal to very formal. I can affect an illiterate style if I wish. The illiterate speaker is incapable of saying what’s on his mind in more than one way. Indeed, the good stylist can probably think of a dozen different ways in which he can say the same thing, while the poor stylist has few such resources at his disposal. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that I can express myself with great artistry, merely that my technique is reasonably versatile. Also, because of the reams of text I generate regularly in articles, books, and correspondence, I am prone to an occasional solecism, though I do try to avoid them. I strive for clarity first, expressiveness second. Long ago I gave up any notion of becoming a creative writer: as a lexicographer, primarily, I am compelled to eschew fiction in my writing.
Recently, I was told by an editor that, as far as he knew, I was the only person who writes the way I speak. I am still unsure whether that is complimentary or not, but I take it, at least, as not intended as a slur. Upon taking up the question with another editor, I was told that the first editor was mistaken: in fact, said Editor Two, I speak the way I write. That seemed flattering enough, so I left it alone (except to bring it up here).
I know from bitter experience that however people may speak, there are damned few who can write even a few simple, well-organized, grammatical sentences. Still fewer can write without spelling errors. And there are even fewer who can write interestingly. That subject had best be abandoned for now, for it leads to comments on modern education, which lead to apoplexy.
Speech must differ from writing in several important ways. Sound is fleeting: the message must get through the first time or it must be repeated. In order to get through the first time, it must be presented in a palatable form, not riddled with arcane sesquipedalianisms or convoluted by recondite syntax. It cannot be too concentrated or condensed. Speech must be punctuated by redundancy. Eye contact with an audience provides the feedback required to keep the speaker informed about his success in communicating his ideas: a knitted brow here, a dreamy expression there should alert him that all is not well, and the idea might merit rephrasing. That is not always the case, however.
I recall my father’s story about a classroom incident that took place many years ago. He was lecturing about Hamlet, and, as most speakers do, had established eye contact with one student, in particular, seated at the front of the class. The eager, interested, curious expression on the student’s face reflected an intelligent response to the lecture that my father too rarely encountered. After a bit, he paused, asking if there were any questions or comments. The bright student’s hand shot up, and he was acknowledged. “Mr. Urdang,” he asked, “What is that pin for that you wear in your lapel?” My father lapsed back into his habitual state of disillusionment from which he seldom recovered thereafter.
Current educational theories of testing seem to be changing under pressure from groups who maintain that the old-fashioned tests didn’t take into account their culture and the things they know as a result of having been brought up in a different way. The idea sounds noble enough in principle, and it even sounds eminently democratic. However, the entire thrust of the argument is nonsensical, as I shall attempt to show. First, it should be pointed out that the older tests were conducted under a propagandistic approach that was unfortunate in its selection of terms like intelligence, intelligence quotient, and so on. In most cases, the tests were to determine either what someone had learned in school or what skills he had—developed or innate—that would equip him better to cope with what he was likely to encounter in the world. It is perfectly true that someone who was ignorant of history could cope quite well in an assembly line, where he might need skill as a mechanic, or as a salesman or retailer, where he might require skill as a judge of personality. Such skills are hard or impossible to evaluate by a written test. The imputation that those who possess a certain kind of intelligence will make better citizens or businessmen or workers has not been demonstrated. Whatever their morality may be, pimps and prostitutes, confidence men and thimblerig artists are probably among the best practical psychologists in our society in that they are almost infallible judges of human character and personality: they really have a basic understanding of what motivates many people, and they didn’t learn it from textbooks. For another thing, there is no trick in being honest, however moral it may be and no matter how important it may be to stay on the side of the law for societal reasons. The fact is that the criminal who is not caught, despite the enormous odds against him, must have some attributes that most of us do not possess. Certainly, those attributes do not emerge from the results of the Stanford-Binet tests—at least not in those terms.
I am not condoning prostitution, pandering, or crime: I am merely pointing out that success in those—and many other—callings demonstrates a measure of ingenuity, skill, and proficiency that is not tested by present-day methods. Only a few of the skills required to succeed in our society are equated with testable “intelligence.”
Second, the fallacy of the pressure groups that would change the testing base lies in the assumption that their intelligence is being insulted. In the current spate of action moving toward bilingual education in the United States, the forces seem to believe that their cultural heritages are being insulted. What rubbish! This is America, and America has its own cultural heritage. It is probably the most adaptive, adoptive, and adaptable cultural heritage that has ever existed on the face of the earth. Yet, the Italian-Americans, Spanish-Americans, Afro-Americans, Greek-Americans, and all other kinds of Americans seem bent on destroying the American culture by insisting that their children be taught in Spanish, Black English, and myriad other languages so that they can maintain their “culture.” If these pressure groups are successful, America, once a unique “melting pot,” will become a collection of competing enclaves of foreigners. The irony of the entire movement is that the immigrants who populated the United States left their homelands because they wanted to escape from the very cultures that allowed—even fostered— poverty, lack of freedom, and indignity of the individual. To be sure, these immigrants brought with them certain vestiges of their heritage and continued to pursue some of the cultural and religious rituals of the Old Country. Seldom were they fanatical about it. We all appreciate the traces of other cultures found in America: the foods, the costumes, the other relics. Everybody is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Every one dances the hora at a Jewish wedding. Everyone celebrates Christmas, whether he wants to or not. The Jews eat subgum, the Chinese eat bagels, the Russians eat spaghetti, and the Italians drink vodka. That’s what America is all about.
But the divisiveness that comes from a factional pursuit of these and other cultural (or religious) rituals can be dangerous to what, for lack of a better way of describing it, I must call the “American way of life.” Americans of Lebanese origin should not be concerned as much that the American government do what is right for the people of Lebanon as they should worry about its doing what is right for them as American citizens. The same is true for Jewish, Catholic, Mexican, and any other kinds of Americans. The United States is a nation with its own citizens; it cannot survive as a haven for private political lobbies from around the world.
Lest that make me sound like an America-Firster, let me hasten to add that, with all due sympathy for all peoples everywhere, I still believe firmly that America must do what is expedient for its own citizens in the short and long runs. Thus, we may be faced with trying to determine, as successfully as we can and within the constraints of what is morally proper, what course must be followed to accord the greatest good to the greatest number of American citizens— not Bolivian, Panamanian, Israeli, or Lebanese citizens, but American citizens.
The same applies to the teaching of English and of every other subject at every level in our educational system.
If this be utilitarianism, make the most of it.
Names in Fiction
Donald Hawes, The Polytechnic of Central London
THE SIMPLEST AND CRUDEST method of naming fictional characters was to use epithets denoting their predominant traits: Volpone (in Ben Jonson’s play of that name), Mr. Worldly Wiseman (in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress), Allworthy (in Fielding’s Tom Jones), Verisopht (in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby). Some writers refined the system and more subtly contrived nomenclature that sounded reasonably authentic and yet suggested temperament and behavior: Becky Sharp (in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair), Lucy Snowe (in Charlotte Brontës Villette), Slope (in Trollope’s Barchester Towers), Gabriel Oak (in Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd). Such conventions, though not completely dead, have little life left in them today, since on the whole modern writers of fiction try to name their personages in what they hope is a realistic fashion. They attempt, however, to avoid names that might be considered inappropriate or unconvincing when attached to particular people. A fictional character who is supposed to be heroic or who is meant to move the reader to sympathize with his tragic predicament cannot be given a name that may sound ludicrous or vulgar. A pretty young girl cannot be called by a name that evokes an image of an ugly harridan. A factory worker should not have a name associated with an ancient aristocratic family. Social class, occupation, age, nationality, and the law of libel are all relevant factors. (I forbear to quote examples, because subjective opinion would obviously be involved in my choice and because certain people might well be offended if they saw that I had placed their own names in derogatory categories). Nevertheless, despite the care that authors may take nowadays to be realistic and convincing, the names of some personages in novels, short stories, plays, and films occasionally strike me as typically fictional in a way that I can exemplify but cannot easily define (though I shall make an attempt).
Looking through a recent copy of the weekly, the Radio Times, which gives details of BBC television and radio broadcasts, I found the following names amongst the dramatis personae of films and plays: Helen Carobleat, Jonas Bradlaw, Rodney Gloss, Rupert Hillyard, Marcus Gwill, Detective-Inspector Purbright, Juliette Baldock, Yvette Marson, Gladys Trimble, Bridget Madderley, Steptoe, Wilfred Hargreaves, Miss Billinge, Rupert Lovell, George Underdown, Derek Paynton, George Barford, Agnes Remnant, Mr. Posling, Joanna Finch, and James Fenner-Baxter. I then turned to the Everyman Dictionary of Fictional Characters (edited by William Freeman, revised by F. Urquhart, 1973), and chose these surnames in alphabetical order: Armitage, Beverley, Carruthers, Drewitt, Effingham, Frensham, Golightly, Harrington, Inglewood, Joliffe, Kershaw, Longstaff, Manderson, Norrington, Osgood, Pargiter, Rumbold, Singleton, Turnbull, Updike, Verrinder, Wyvern, and Yolland. Now I think that anyone who saw all those names listed in isolation and without explanatory comment would instantly guess that they could belong only to fictional people.
After considering these names, I think it is possible tentatively to define some common characteristics. The points I am going to make apply to the surnames, since generally there is, I think, less that is notable in fictional personages' Christian names, although some combinations have a typical ring about them (for example, Joanna Finch). First, the names are all, I suppose, slightly unusual, but not of course fantastic in the way that Dickens’s names can be. In fact, a consultation of the 1977 London telephone directory shows that most of them are in actual everyday use, although some have only one or two entries. Secondly, almost all of them have at least two syllables, thereby giving a hint of rhythm, and are also euphonious, with a noticeable predominance of “I” and “r” sounds. Thirdly, some suggest (or really are) place names, with such endings as -dike, -down, -ford, -ham, -ton, -wood, and -yard. These three features lead me to conclude that the majority of the names tend to convey to the reader a pleasant English ordinariness, just tinged with eccentricity and humor, although I realize that this description may not be applicable to all the holders of the names. This diffident conclusion of mine shows that in this note I am referring mainly to English fiction, which in this respect has more limited resources than American fiction, since it has not at its disposal the enormous range and variety of names that are naturally available in the United States. On the other hand, English names can perhaps more clearly suggest such things as social status and regionalism.
Readers of VERBATIM may like to explore this topic further in future issues. It would be especially illuminating to hear from writers of fiction who could give us particulars about the factors responsible for the names they themselves have chosen for their fictional personages.
Useful Usage
In case readers have been wondering about what happened to English in our newspapers, it will provide little consolation to learn that at least one promulgator of felicitous usage is now in retirement: Perry C. Hill, former managing editor of The Milwaukee Journal. Mr. Hill, a VERBATIM reader and faithful correspondent, was the principal author of a Stylebook which is replete with admonitions like “disregard Web.” he explains that “Webster’s Third expectably fuzzes over many … distinctions or even lists some pairs [of words often confused and erroneously interchanged by careless or ignorant or imprecise writers (and speakers in some cases)] as synonyms.” He goes on, “We gave up the struggle to distinguish meanings of stanch and staunch, gantlet and gauntlet, and opted for the -au- spellings in all senses.”
We reproduce the list here for the convenience of our readers who probably don’t need it but who undoubtedly know someone who does. Thus we spread the Gospel according to Sane Thomas the Grammarian. The discriminations can be found by checking in a good dictionary [“disregard Web.”], and for those who need it, the effort is good exercise— like mental jogging, which is the only kind we indulge.
adapt, adopt
a while, awhile
adverse, averse
affect, effect
anxious, eager
appraise, apprise
attorney, lawyer
auger, augur
bail, bale
bait, bate
beside, besides
between, among
bogey, bogy
breach, breech
burglary, robbery
can, may
cannon, canon
canvas, canvass
capital, capitol
carat, karat
caster, castor
cement, concrete
chords, vocal cords
cinch, clinch
climactic, climatic
co-respondent, correspondent
complement, compliment
comprise, consist of
confidant, confident
continual, continuous
council, counsel
credible, credulous
decimate, deplete
desirable, desirous
device, devise
disburse, disperse
discreet, discrete
due to, because of
ecology, environment
electricity, electronics
Episcopal, Episcopalian
equable, equitable
far away, faraway
farther, further
fearful, fearsome
fewer, less
flack, flak
flair, flare
flaunt, flout
flier, flyer
flounder, founder (verbs)
forbid (to), prohibit (from)
forceful, forcible
forego, forgo
foreword, forward
fulsome, lavish
furor, furore
gage, gauge
gibe jibe
grisly, gristly, grizzly
hail, hale
hangar, hanger
hanged, hung
historic, historical
hoard, horde
hopefully, one hopes
human, human being
hurdle, hurtle
impassable, impassible
imply, infer
impugn, impute
incredible, incredulous
inter-, intra-
judge, jurist
lay, laid
liable, likely
lightening, lightning
like, as
linage, lineage
loath, loathe
manifold, manyfold
mantel, mantle
masterful, masterly
milk shed, milkshed
noisome, noisy
occur, take place
oral, verbal
ordinance, ordnance
palate, palette, pallet
parlay, parley
perquisite, prerequisite
plat, plot
precedence, precedents
premier, premiere
principal, principle
prone, supine
prophecy, prophesy
proved, proven
rack, wrack
rebut, refute
reign, rein
repellant, repellent
resin, rosin
role, roll
sewage, sewerage
straight, strait
swath, swathe
textual, textural
thrash, thresh
tort, torte
tortuous, tortwous
unique, unusual
waive, waver
SIC! SIC! SIC!
From San Diego Magazine: “She juggles a load of volunteer activities with the poise of an octopus … [and she is] shepherding the development… around the rapids of task forces, commissions, government agencies, through the Scylla and Charybdis of financial packaging.” [Barbara Marsh, San Diego]
Don’t Call Me an “Adult!” — I’m a Mature Human Being
Kay Haugaard, Pasadena, California
THE FLAGRANT DECLINE in the meaning of the word adult in the past few years has reached a point where I am not certain I want to admit to being one. As one child speaking to another in a New Yorker cartoon succinctly puts it, “Adult means ‘dirty.’ ” I guess this is one example to support the theory that words have a tendency to decline from good to bad, or so one of my English professors once said. He said that the word stink, for instance, used to have a sense for which we would now use the word fragrant.
Because of this creeping change of meaning in adult, I have noticed that writers frequently alert us to this secondary meaning by putting it in quotation marks. Thus we have “adult” movies, books, and magazines. Perhaps this is one step along the route of its decline by using the word as a euphemism for a vulgar or negative word—in this case as the little girl said, “dirty.”
Once this insight occurred to me I started thinking of other words that might be examples of similar declines. If you read many Victorian novels you find a number of words that strike you as being quaint because they have been completely taken over by their secondary meaning.
But to go back even farther in time, I found that heathen was once simply a descriptive term that meant ‘a person who dwelt on the heath,’ just as a pagan was ‘a person who dwelt in the village.’ Barbarians were ‘outsiders’ at first and the word carried no pejorative connotations, just as philistines were just ‘inhabitants of the country of Philistia.’ These words have gradually been completely absorbed by their secondary meanings.
That’s not all. A toilet was originally a simple little piece of cloth (French toile ‘cloth’ + -ette diminutive suffix) or towel as we have adopted it. These little towels, used for personal grooming, were frequently found in a small room or booth that also contained a water closet. Gradually the room where one attended to personal grooming or “made one’s toilette” came to be called just the toilet. It has since lost all its grooming connotations and has become a term with uncertain connotations for water closet; so much so that we feel obliged to cast about for new euphemisms to take its place—rest room, powder room, etc.
Pressing onward, we find that the word slop originally was slip, a kind of goopy, wet, clay mixture, a term still used in ceramics. A more circuitous route was taken by the word slut which derives from sleet ‘something soft, formless, and yielding.’ It was used to describe a rather sloppy, disheveled woman and gradually, by extension, one who was loose and easy in a moral sense.
A dunce or dunceman used to be merely a follower of 15th century John Duns Scotus. He was regarded as a foe of humanistic education and gradually the word came to mean any dull, stupid person.
Propaganda had a similarly respectable origin from congregatio propaganda fide, ‘the congregation for propagating the faith.’ But the methods it used apparently gave it a bad name, hence the negative implication of the word as we now use it.
The word cheap once meant merely ‘a purchase price.’ Fart (akin to German fahren ‘to go’) was formerly a polite euphemism. There was a time when it was a compliment to a girl to be called homely. It meant ‘a home-loving person filled with all the domestic virtues.’
A lot of the debasement of the status of a word’s meaning from positive to negative seems to be assisted by quotation marks, because in written language we use them to give words a suggestion of special intonation indicating they are euphemistic or ironic. For instance,
They ‘liberated’ the Volkswagen.
Wouldn’t you just “love” that?
She’s a real “jewel” isn’t she?
Are these uses of these words the first step toward destroying the original meaning of the word? Perhaps. It probably depends on how popular the substitute word becomes. I saw a case of this in miniature when my eldest son, about seven at the time, expressed surprise at finding out the meaning of the word treasure. Whenever he had come into the house with some oddment of childish discovery—a bottle, can, rock, stick, or weed—I would say, “Oh, is that your treasure?” So when I read him a story about buried treasure he asked what it was. When told that it was gold and jewels and valuable things, his wondering response was, “Gee, I thought it was any old junk you found lying around.”
Who knows what strange, irrational, metaphoric twists and turns our words, at present respectable, will take in the future? For those interested in language it is irritating to lose old meanings but equally exciting to meet new ones.
SIC! SIC! SIC!
Ironic Misnomer: Mohawk Tire Company—considering the fact that the American Indian never invented the wheel!
SIC! SIC! SIC!
Jim Lehrer, Channel 13, N.Y.: “Doctor, what is your opinion of mid-wiffery?” Asst. HEW Secy. Henry Aaron, explaining that the proposed welfare reform bill will cost closer to $2 billion than to $9 billion: “There’s a lot less here than meets the eye.” Channel 5, N.Y.: “… an elderly geriatric patient.” WBAI news: “The Scottsboro boy who was sentenced to die three times.” National Council of Churches: “We have concluded a pre-feasibility study.” TWA captain, to passengers about to land at JFK: “Remain in your seats until we deplane the aircraft at Kennedy Airport.” [all submitted by Austin H. Perlow, Hempstead, New York]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
There is a place in Scotland in what used to be called Invernesshire with the name Glenelg, which doesn’t look like a palindrome but is. Hardly a city, however, as the population of the village and parish was, in 1937, under two thousand. [Robert Martin, Glasgow]
SIC! SIC! SIC!
“Make certain that frozen meat, fish, poultry, or other food is thoroughly thawed before cutting it with a knife that is not intended for that purpose.” —Safety Rules, Section 4012 Rule 6, pub. by the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak). [Rich Webber, Boulder Creek, California]
Porcine Semantics
Robert Devereux, Falls Church, Virginia
William Shakespeare wrote (in Romeo and Juliet) that “… a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” It is difficult to take issue with that statement but equally difficult to imagine what other name one might use since, as Gertrude Stein observed, “a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” Stein’s epigram, if one might so dignify it, has become a well-worn cliché, a phrase frequently employed by those wishing to emphasize the finality of a particular matter. But while the phrase can no doubt be meaningfully applied in many different circumstances, the present writer wishes to note that it is not necessarily applicable where certain common farm animals are concerned.
An American farmer is unlikely ever to consider the semantic aspect of his calling or even to be aware that such an aspect exists. The English language, however, has such a rich and variegated vocabulary that a farmer may, if he so chooses, apply any one of a number of terms to refer to one of his animals. Admittedly, these terms are not all applicable in all cases, since some are generic terms, while others denote an animal of a certain character as regards sex, age, breed, etc. With the indulgence of VERBATIM’s readers, the writer will illustrate his point by expounding on swine (but horses, cows, or sheep, for example, would serve him equally well).
The word swine can be defined as a general term for any or all of the various suoid mammals and can be used as either a singular or plural noun. As a singular, it can be replaced by either of two very common words, hog and pig, as well as by the less well known, but equally proper, baconer (chiefly British usage), and porker. As a plural, swine can be replaced not only by hogs and pigs but also by the seldom used hoggery, piggery, and porkery.
Every farmer is familiar with boar as the proper word for an uncastrated male swine, but probably not all know that barrow is the term for a male swine castrated before reaching sexual maturity and stag for one castrated after the secondary sex characteristics have developed. Also infrequently heard are hogget (a boar in his second year) and hogsteer or hoggaster (a boar in his third year). For the female swine English has gilt for the immature female and sow for one that has borne young.
A sow’s offspring at a single birthing are most commonly known as a litter but an equally good word is farrow; the latter, in fact, might be called a better word since it refers specifically to a sow’s offspring, whereas litter can be applied also to a number of different animals. Piglet is perhaps the most common word for a baby pig, but the dictionary provides a number of others: hogling, piggy (or piggie), pigling, porket, and porkling. The young pig of either sex, especially when less than a year old, is a shoat; shote and shott are both recognized variant spellings. The unweaned piglet can also be called a sucker or suckling and a newly weaned piglet a weaner or weanling; these four words, it must be noted, are applicable to many different animals, not just to swine.
A swine can also be called by its breed name, which is usually but not always capitalized but which, in either case, can be used to designate an individual swine of that breed. Thus, we have Berkshire, Hereford, Landrace, Poland (or Poland China), Suffolk, Cheshire, Chester white, Duroc (or Duroc-Jersey), Essex, Tamworth (or Irish grazier), Victoria, Yorkshire, etc. Although not a recognized breed name, razor-back is used in similar fashion.
Although the term swine is usually applied only to the domesticated animal, it actually covers all members of the family Suidae. A good English dictionary includes, for example, such exotic words as babirussa (or babiroussa), a wild hog of the East Indies also known as staghog; peccary (or pecari), a nocturnal gregarious wild swine of the genus Tayyassu which is native to the western hemisphere; wart-hog, an African wild hog of the genus Phacochoerus; boshvark (or boschvark), also called bushpig, a wild pig of South Africa, etc. Closely related to the wild boar (Sus scrofa), also sometimes called a tusker, are the bearded pig (Sus barbatus) of Borneo and Malaya, the crested pig (Sus cristata) of East Asia, etc.
The American humorist, Ellis Parker Butler (1869-1937), scored his first great success (in 1906) with a book entitled Pigs is Pigs. Had he been better versed in the field of porcine semantics, he would not have chosen such a categoric title for he would have known (and here my apologies to Gertrude) that “pigs is hogs is porkers is baconers.”
Verbifying in America
Noel Perrin, Dartmouth College
WHEN IS A VERB LEGITIMATE? As far as I can tell, any word in our language becomes a true verb the minute someone decides to use it as one. Putting it in a verb situation is all that’s required. In fact, it doesn’t really have to be either a word or in our language. A set of French initials can achieve American verbhood, as in “Honey, do we need to R.S.V.P. the Pratts?” Even breathing noises can do it. “The audience ooh’d and aah’d as Baryshnikov made his second leap; one old man in the front row was zzzing, and missed it.”
But though everything is eligible for verb status, by no means everything achieves it. It’s interesting to look for the reasons why some words do and others don’t.
Take a simple case: the four names of the four seasons. Two have been verbed, and two have not. One summers, in Maine, and winters, perhaps, in Florida. But no one springs in Arizona, however crisp the April days, or falls in New Hampshire, however dazzling the foliage. The reason is easy to see, though ponderous to state. If a verb already exists which is a homonym for the new-verb-to-be, creation does not occur. To ignore the other verb would simply be a confusion and lead to unintended puns. (“Did you fall in New Hampshire?” “No, I tripped over an ashcan in the Bronx.”)
What about autumning, which people also don’t do? There is no homonym problem here. Answer: Only words easy to pronounce get made into verbs, unless there’s pressing need.
House-and-furniture words provide a much more complex case. Over the years a huge number of them have been verbed. You can floor someone metaphorically with a question or literally with a blow. You can table a motion, not to mention chair a meeting. If you are a football coach, you can and do bench players. You can also carpet a room, roof a building, bed a wife, and shelve a problem. If you’re the Sits-in-Front, you can closet yourself with your key advisers, or perhaps the Russian Servant.
All this being the case, how come no one ever sofas anything, much less davenports it? It’s not because we won’t need such a verb. On the contrary, the sofa plays a major role in American courtship and napping habits both. A new verb would be a great convenience.
It’s because sofa ends in a. Very few American words do that, and those few are chiefly exotic imports like aria, banana, sultana—and like sofa itself. (From Arabic suffah ‘a carpeted and cushioned place to recline.')
No American verb ends in a. Not one in our language. The participle problem makes it impossible. One could sofa, or have sofa’d yesterday. But sofaing? “Who were you sofaing with last night, Albert?” The American tongue cleaves to the roof of the mouth at the mere thought. As for “davenport,” it’s a regionalism, and a dying one at that. And since there is already a homonymous verb “to couch,” no term is available.
There is a similar explanation for the non-existence of the verb “to ceiling.” No American verb ends in -ing, unless the -ing is a stressed syllable, because no American tongue could be comfortable with the participial echo. A pilot could, with some trouble, say that he ceilinged at 31,000 feet. But ceilinging? It would be easier to keep going up.
“Drawer” (intensive of “to shelve”) is missing for quite a different reason. “Drawer” doesn’t exist because at least two American dialects have a tendency to put an r sound after an a (which then ceases to be pronounced a), as in Americer, or George Worshington. In these dialects one would thus dror— or drawer—a picture, and the creation of a new verb is ruled out for their speakers on the homonym principle, and for other Americans on the snob principle.
Another puzzle. Our language has a special ability to make verbs out of what were previously two-word phrases— most commonly, a noun and its modifier. A recent Sits-in-Front, for example, verbed the noun “wall” and its modifier “stone.”
Such creations seem to be particularly common when the modifier is a color word. You can blackball a candidate, blueprint a set of plans, whitewash a fence, brownbag your lunch. You can bluepencil an article. Red-baiting was a popular sport in the fifties, and blacktopping driveways is a common activity right now. But there is no verb “to green-light”— or “to redlight,” either.
Considering the tremendous role that traffic signals play in our national consciousness (it can be argued that the entire Interstate system was built in order to get around—and under and over—stoplights), this may seem a curious omission.
There is a simple linguistic reason. All verbs created in the twentieth century, without exception, conjugate regularly. I stonewall today, he stonewalled yesterday, the Sits-in-Front has stonewalled for years. But a few of our older verbs still conjugate in their original Anglo-Saxon forms. Light is one of this group. Subconsciously we know that if we make “greenlight” a verb, we are going to wind up with a past tense of either greenlighted or greenlit, and both sound wrong.
There is some comfort in reflecting that however persistent our politicians or our TV advertisers may be in giving us the hard sell. Americans are quite safe from ever being hard-sold anything.
READERS’ QUERIES
Readers are invited to respond directly to those who have sent in questions.
Some years ago, perhaps as many as twenty, one of the popular medical throwaway journals had a most interesting article that I have been trying in vain to obtain. I am hoping that one of your readers may have seen it and might be able to point me to a source or secure a copy for me.
In brief, the article was a scholarly abstract of a large number of medical articles comparing quantitation words with statistical incidences. The words, from always through invariably, often, usually, frequently, infrequently, not frequently, not infrequently, not often, etc. down to never, were all used to represent percentages of incidence or occurrence. In medicine always was ninety-five to ninety-nine per cent while never indicated an incidence of five per cent. [Marvin Schuster, M.D./586 New Brunswick Avenue/Perth Amboy, NJ 08861]
About ten years ago, when my chief job here was plowing through unsolicited manuscripts, I ran across a submission by (I think) two black sociologists. They had made a collection of toasts and other poetic items in black oral tradition.
Well, Abingdon (book publishing arm of United Methodist Publishing House) is not now and was not then the sort of house that could publish “The Signifying Monkey” or “The Titanic,” much less some of the riper toasts: too many short words of dubious social acceptability.
In any case, I want to know who published the book. It was only later, of course, that I realized what a treasure it was. [Richard Loller, Editor/Abingdon/201 Eighth Avenue, South/ Nashville, TN 37202]
Nonplussed by Plus
Caldwell Titcomb, Brandeis University
THERE ARE THOSE who are offended by certain four-letter words when they crop up in print or in talk. I have my own candidate, which of late has been annoying the four-letter hell out of me. To be specific: I am nonplussed by plus.
Now plus is a word with many legitimate uses. It’s helpful to be able to figure out three plus five, and to know the difference between a plus and a minus charge on a battery. It’s pleasant to earn $15,000 plus, or to get a B plus from one’s teacher. And sunny weather will be a plus for the next outdoor tournament.
What riles me, however, is the increasing number of people who mistakenly think that plus is also a conjunctive adverb. From a U.S. Senator I received a fund-raising letter with this sentence: “Plus they tell us we should increase the defence budget.” And the director of one of our most eminent university presses offered me “a 20 per cent discount—plus we will pay all postage and handling costs.”
Almost daily on radio and television I hear this usage coming from program hosts, reporters, and anchormen. Boston’s highest-rated news channel tells me: “Those are tonight’s headlines, plus we’ll have a report on….” One commentator even declared, “I’d vote her an Academy Award. Plus she’s also….” Note not only the plus but also the tautological also.
William and Mary Morris, in their Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage, felt it necessary to call attention (p. 476) to this solecism: “Plus cannot be used as a substitute for also as the first word of a sentence when the intent is to link the sentence with the one which precedes it.” And they rightly proclaimed this use “illiterate.” Yet the bombardment from linguistic barbarians continues to grow.
Let me make clear that I have no objection to new words or to new uses of old words when they fill a real need in our language. But there is no excuse for misusing plus to duplicate what can properly be expressed by also, too, moreover, besides, furthermore, as well, to boot, and in addition—not to mention and.
So surfeited am I that I can’t bring myself to peek inside Joseph McElroy’s recently published novel entitled, simply, Plus. The word has become a p(l)ustule.
ETYMOLOGICA OBSCURA: on again, off again, Finnigin
J. Walter Wilson, M.D., Los Alamitos, California
I have before me a small tan-colored book of poems published by Strickland Gillilan in 1917 entitled Including Finnegan. The fly leaf is inscribed “To J. Walter Wilson with the undying regard of a regular feller who knows another regular feller thoroughly but loves him still; also when he isn’t still.” This was inscribed to my father who was his companion on several vaudeville circuits.
Gillilan’s name is virtually unknown, but he should be forever remembered because the Finnegan poem added to the English language the phrase off again, on again, which most of us hear and use frequently in the mistaken belief that it refers to something or someone who changes direction rapidly and often. In fact, it refers to the thousands of persons who fled from Ireland’s potato famine in the 1840s, whose men almost always became policemen or railroad workers. Thus it is an old railroad story. It is written in one of the more difficult rhyming styles and contains the longest succession of trisyllabic rhymes I have ever encountered.
Finnigin to Flannigan
Superintindint wuz Flannigan;
Boss av th' siction wuz Finnigin.
Whiniver th' cyars got off th' thrack
An' muddled up things t' th' divvle an' back,
Finnigin writ it t' Flannigan,
Afther th' wrick wuz all on agin;
That is, this Finnigin
Repoorted t' Flannigan.Whin Finnigin furrst writ t' Flannigan,
He writed tin pa-ages, did Finnigin;
An' he towld just how th' wrick occurred—
Yis, minny a tajus, blundherin' wurrd
Did Finnigin write t' Flannigan
Afther the' cyars had gone on agin—
That’s th' way Finnigin
Repoorted t' Flannigan.Now Flannigan knowed more than Finnigin—
He’d more idjucation, had Flannigan.
An' ut wore ’m clane an' complately outT” tell what Finnigin writ about
In ’s writin' t' Musther Flannigan.
So he writed this back. “Musther Finnigin:—
Don’t do sich a sin agin;
Make ‘em brief, Finnigin!”Whin Finnigin got that frum Flannigan
He blushed rosy-rid, did Finnigin.
An’ he said: “I’ll gamble a whole month’s pay
That ut’ll be minny an' minny a day
Befure sup’rintindint—that’s Flannigan—
Gits a whack at that very same sin agin.
Frum Finnigin to Flannigan
Repoorts won’t be long agin.”Wan day on th' siction av Finnigin,
On th' road sup’rintinded be Flannigan,
A ra-ail give way on a bit av a currve
An' some cyars wint off as they made th' shwarrve.
“They’s nobody hurrted,” says Finnigin,
“But repoorts must be made t' Flannigan.”
An' he winked at McGorrigan
As married a Finnigin.He wuz shantyin' thin, wuz Finnigin,
As minny a railroader’s been agin,
An' ‘is shmoky ol’ lamp wuz burrnin' bright
In Finnigin' shanty all that night—
Bilin' down ’s repoort, wuz Finnigin.
An' he writed this here: “Musther Flannigan:—
Off agin, on agin,
Gone agin.—Finnigin.”
SIC! SIC! SIC!
Richard B. Anderson [Arlington, Massachusetts] admits to having concocted, with the help of Joseph Zelan, a new cocktail made from Manischewitz wine and tomato juice. Its name, of course, is the Oyvay Maria.
SIC! SIC! SIC!
Which two words, one English and one French, each of 6 letters, both with the same meaning and derivation, have not a single letter in common? [from Denis Brearly, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire] Answer on page 684.
A Missile-any of Shots by a Poor Marksman
Robert A. Fowkes, New York University
Vaguely related to spoonerisms are a number of instances of utterances connected by an unthemely common theme with some juncture, some assonance, a few malapropistic and apropostic features, foul wordplay, and untenable juxtapositions. For half of them I could give the names of perpetrators. For the rest, I am the culprit. But which are which and who is who I’ll surely never tell. They are:
There’s more than one way to skim a cat.
In Japan we have terrorvision too.
Regards to Mr. Sippi.
Did your hendiadys? (Zeugma epes!)
Merci Bo-peep!
a khaki dude’ll do
apocryphal awry
watch the Antietam
She picks no bones about it.
A falling timber hit him in the lumbar region.
the bronicle tubes (perhaps subway to the Bronx?)
the Baltimore Aureoles
the Auricle of Delphi
It warmed the cuckolds of his heart.
I demand an atomized account.
this tinthetic surf
the sacred service (spied for the Inquisition)
“Indo-chronology” heard by me at the time of the toxic troubles in Philly (turned out to be endocrinology!)
He suffered from romantic fever.
employees of the highest caliper
Sodom and Camorra
public enema No. 1 (or 2?)
Hierarchy and lowerarchy
in starkest/star-kissed Africa
Avesta fideles (Zoroastrian faithful)
Armored Christian Soldiers
We hiked along the Appellation Trail.
the Avogadro pair (count & countess)
the abogado pair (two lawyers)
Give me something practical, mink, fur example.
Fight Rachel Prejudice!
infradignitaries
a Buffalo vendor selling buffalo in Rochester
Our Colonel is a nut.
I’ve never seen him show such emulsion.
The psychopath of the cycle path.
But one’s head is beginning to go round in linguistic circles. Enough of these oddmentalities. When pigs had wings, the swine flew.
Answer to the puzzle on page 683:
Bishop and évêque, both directly from Latin episcopus, which is from Greek epískopos.
EPISTOLA {Charles Van Doren}
My copy of VERBATIM arrived today. Delightful as always. Also beautiful. I have remarked before on the contents; now I praise you highly for your layout, typeface(s), and overall design.
With regard to the Query by Messrs. Olive and Revard [V, 1], the word gaper-block (or gapers' block)—a traffic jam caused by drivers gaping at an accident—has been used by policemen reporting on Chicago traffic conditions for at least five years. I doubt if the word was invented in St. Louis.
[Charles Van Doren, Encyclopaedia Britannica]
Notes Found in Bottles
Deborah Wing
Location of (plural) find: The Ducking Pond, Salem Inscription(s): “It was all because my wife didn’t understand me…
—Reverend Dimmesdale”
“All for love and the world well lost….
—Hester”
“Phooey!
—Pearl”
So What Else Is Nous?
Herb Kraus, Chicago, Illinois
The Chinese call it the Year of the Serpent. Political pundits term it the period of the Peanut. Lovers call it the Time of the Cuckoo. But grassroot grammarians know it as the Coming of Age of the Pronoun.
This underpraised part of speech is probably the most neglected, least memorialized, and most sparsely parsed in the English language. In spite of an occasional rock group like the Who, a novel like She, and a Russian play like He Who Gets Slapped, the lowly noun substitute has never before reached great literary heights. However, all this is now changing in this era of the short, catchy name. The past few years have produced a reckless, almost feckless, proliferation of pronominal publications in the magazine field.
Witness the French make magazine Lui ‘him’ and its female counterpart Elle ‘her.’ Closer to home is Playboy’s younger brother Oui, patterned after Lui, and pronounced “we.” Chicago’s Italians clamor for Fra Noi ‘among ourselves.’ The New York Times is publishing US. I AM is being circulated nationally to Italian-Americans; an enterprising Spanish-language publisher is coming out with Nuestro ‘ours,’ and there is a thriving evangelical periodical called HIS. The British version of Consumer Reports is called Which?
Verily, this is an idea whose time has come. And since everyone today is doing his own thing, there is a crying need for pithy periodicals to suit every literary taste. Here is a suggested list for an enterprising publisher in search of untapped audiences:
It—for the nostalgic Clara Bow buff.
I—for the egocentric ophthalmologist.
Dese, Dem and Dose—for the Chicago Ward Committeeman. (Da Mare, Editor)
Y’awl—for the Southern yachtsman.
Which—for the lecherous warlock.
His and Hers—for the hotel towel collector.
Thou Art—for the Quaker painter.
Cosa Nostra—for the quiet Don.
Hic, Haec, Hoc—for the Latin hiccuper.
And there is one little title I’m saving for myself. I plan to put out a quarterly devoted to the members of the gentler sex who give themselves unselfishly to male needs and desires. I shall call it The League of Women Votres.
ETYMOLOGICA OBSCURA: peter (as in peter out)
Clyde K. Hyder, Lawrence, Kansas
Most dictionaries either state that the origin of peter, ‘to fail, become exhausted, or give out,’ as A Dictionary of Americanisms explains the meaning, is unknown or attempt no explanation. Two exceptions, Wyld’s Universal Dictionary and Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang (1973 edition), list French péter ‘to crack or crackle’ as a possible etymon, but the similarity of meaning is not marked enough to make the suggestion convincing.
The earliest quotation cited by the OED indicates that Lincoln used the expression in 1865; but A Dictionary of Americanisms cites a passage from the Quincy (Ill.) Whig of 6 January 1846: “When my mineral petered why they all Petered me.” Another early quotation, also cited by the DAE, is from H.H. Riley’s Puddleford (1854): “He ‘hoped this ‘spectable meeting warn’t going to Peter-out.’ ”
The capitalization of peter in these early quotations is worth noting. May not the word be an adaptation of the name Peter? An expression like robbing Peter to pay Paul reflects former generations’ familiarity with the Apostles, as do substantives like St. Peter’s Wort, St. Peter’s fish, Peter’s barge, boat, or ship, (for the Church), and Peter’s Pence. A passage in the Bible that seems to justify the use of peter out describes Peter’s attempt to walk on water. He takes a few steps and then, owing to insufficient faith, begins to sink (Matt. 14: 28-31). Two other passages are also relevant. Peter is among those who have fallen asleep at a crucial moment, and it is Peter that Christ addresses: “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” (Matt. 26:40). The impulsive Apostle’s bitter realization of failure comes after he has thrice denied any acquaintance with Christ; when the cock crows, reminding him that Christ had predicted his threefold denial, he weeps, realizing that he has now failed in steadfastness and loyalty, as, having petered out, he had previously failed in faith (Matt. 26: 69-75; Mark 14: 66-72; Luke 22: 56-62).
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Dos, Don’ts & Maybes Of English Usage
Theodore M. Bernstein, (Times Books, 1977), vi + 250 pp.
Reviewing such a book fairly and without nitpicking is a difficult task for me, so I usually try to avoid it, especially when I know the author as well as I do Ted Bernstein. However, honest is honest, so here we go.
My first complaint is about the price: 5¢ a page is really too exorbitant for serious comment. That’s the publisher’s fault; it ought to be made clear to Times Books that if you don’t think you can sell a large number of books because you aren’t going to spend the money and effort to do so, the solution is not to try to make all your money on the few you think you might sell. This book would sell more copies at $7.95—a fairer price—than at $12.50; it is unfair of a publisher to visit his own shortcomings on the books he publishes.
Which, in a convoluted way, brings me to the title of the book: it would more accurately have been named “Dos, Don’ts & Maybes of American English.” For example, under AGREEMENT IN NUMBER, “(Multiple subject.),” Bernstein writes, “A common error is illustrated in the following sentence: ‘The Jones Company, together with other manufacturers of plastic widgets, have been trying to reach an agreement with the union.’ The phrase together with does not add to the grammatical subject; … Hence the verb should be singular: has.” That is in keeping with American practice; but by choosing ‘The Jones Company,’ Bernstein has introduced a different sort of problem, namely, whether Company or the name of a company (e.g., Kodak, IBM, Xerox) is treated as a singular or plural. In America, it is usually a singular; in England, it is usually a plural. Thus, in England, one would say The Jones Company have been trying…, while in America has, as Bernstein points out, would have been preferable. Not required, mind you, for Americans do say, “IBM are going to build a plant in the country,” though it is rare. In a way, my comments are beside the point at issue (whether the parenthetical “…together with…” phrase creates a compound subject requiring a plural verb); on the other hand, Bernstein should have selected an unambiguous example, particularly since he does a good job of treating the other question under collective nouns.
[The influence of British usage in America is more and more evident: The New York Times, 1 April 1978, in referring to the increased settlement for transit workers in New York City, called it a “6% Rise.” Unless I have been contaminated completely by British English, I believe the more common American form is raise.]
The organization of Dos, Don’ts & Maybes is alphabetical, by word or topic, with a handy cross reference if you happen to look up the wrong item. Words that occasion the same kind of usage trouble are treated together, as they should be: alleged and accused under alleged, accomplice and confederate under confederate, and so on. This practice is economical of space and of rhetoric. Without counting, I would guess that about 500 topics are treated. Many of the entries are treated in other usage books and in dictionaries that carry usage notes; I shall not bother commenting on those except to say that Bernstein has a lively, friendly style that seldom leaves the reader in doubt regarding the answer he may be seeking. In a few cases (affinity, for example), the style becomes so technical that one doubts if a reader who could understand the explanation would be likely to make the error of usage. But such instances are rare. As the title implies, the answer is sometimes Do, sometimes Don’t, and sometimes Maybe. I do disagree with some of all three, and that is what this review is about.
To be brief, I shall list my grievances and a bouquet or two:
(1) anymore—I don’t accept it as a single word, even in postpositive position. B. approves of, “The movies are no good anymore.”
(2) apostrophes—I miss a comment on “the 1900s” vs. “the 1900’s.” [I prefer the former.]
(3) as a matter of fact—I am in complete agreement with the following, quoted in full. It is an excellent example of Bernstein’s sensitivity to the language:
Nine times out of ten the expression as a matter of fact is mere embellishment; if a statement is a fact it need not be so labeled. But on some occasions the words are not intended to be taken literally as pointing out that a statement is factual. Rather they lend a flavor to what is being stated. Suppose you ask someone whether he has ever attended a basketball game and he replies, “I’m going to one tonight.” It’s a simple, rather flat response. But if he replies, “As a matter of fact, I’m going to one tonight,” it could suggest that he’s going for the first time or that it was quite a coincidence that you asked at this time or that he has been going to games for years, all depending on the intonation and facial expression. The words of the expression may not have much meaning, but they do on such rare occasions provide a light vehicle on which a tone or a sense can be conveyed.
(4) awful, awfully—These words have undergone a semantic change sufficiently long ago so that scarcely anyone considers them in their literal senses of ‘full of awe’ any longer. True, their use in He’s an awfully good tennis player is informal and should not be used in more formal writing, but in colloquial use they are okay. B., using the (otherwise) solecistic awful pretty as an example, condemns awfully and demands very, highly, extremely. I don’t share his prejudice, except for formal contexts.
(5) bring, take—B. writes: “If a boss were to say to his secretary, “Bring this up to Mr. Jones on the fifth floor,' he would be guilty of bad usage. On the other hand, if he were to say to her, ‘Bring me a chicken salad sandwich…,’ he would be correct….” As the Oldtimer used to say, “That ain’t the way I hear’d it!” (A) In the first case, take would be correct. (B) In the second case, bring would be correct only if the sandwich were in the immediate vicinity of the secretary (across the room or, if the sandwich and the secretary were both in another room, the boss were shouting or speaking on the intercom). (C) If he expected the secretary to go out to buy the sandwich, fetch would be the preferred word. B. doesn’t mention fetch, here or anywhere that I could find.
(6) Britishisms—Either the author of the article in the New York Law Journal is wrong or B. miscopied it: (A) lay-by: any paved area alongside a road where a driver may pull off to rest, eat, or look after a malfunction of his car. (B) loose-slippings: never saw or heard it; the term loose chippings refers to gravel or crushed stone that has not yet been bonded into fresh asphalt in a road repair. (C) roundabout and circus: the former is generic; the latter is (usually) part of the proper name of what Americans would call a square in town. (D) clearway (one word): this does not mean ‘no parking’; a clearway is an express street where parking and the flow of traffic are strictly regulated. It would have been better to have verified such matters with an authority, like Norman W. Schur, whose new book, British English: A to Zed, will be published soon by VERBATIM.
(7) but—B.: “If the pronoun appears elsewhere in the sentence [than at the end], put it in the same case as the noun to which it is linked by but:… ‘No one (nominative) but he (nominative) knows how he developed that interest.”’ Such a rule makes no logical sense, for it requires that but he be in apposition to no one, and there is no precedent that I know of in English for analyzing any appositive in association with but. It should be but him (object of but) in such constructions where but is a preposition.
(8) commas—A clear and simple treatment, complete as far as it goes.
… and so forth. Generally, Bernstein’s comments are based on his own common sense and good taste; on occasion, he draws on what he finds in dictionaries and other reference books. I find that I agree with him most, but not all of the time. For instance, I agree that, within the same article, data ought to be treated consistently as a singular or a plural, but I disagree with the remark, “the preference in good usage is to keep it plural.” In most contexts, since datum, the singular, is confined chiefly to surveying, data used as a plural strikes me as a pedanticism.
If you like Watch Your Language, More Language That Needs Watching, and The Careful Writer, chances are that you will like Dos, Don’ts & Maybes. If you don’t, you won’t. If you are unfamiliar with these Bernstein books, I can recommend them as a nontechnical, middle-of-the-road, practical approach to modern English usage in America, cheerfully written and interlaced with puns, some even forgivable.
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Whistled Languages
René-Guy Busnel and André Classe, (No. 13 in the Communication and Cybernetics series, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1976), 117 pp., 40 figures.
Of the 5,000 and more natural languages spoken and understood today, a few can also be whistled intelligibly by certain of their users. Those languages so endowed—in special, limited, geographical areas—are Spanish (the Silbo Gomero of the Canary Islands and Mazateco of Mexico), French (at Aas, exclusively, in the Pyrenees), Turkish (at Kuskoy and thirty-five other villages), and Tepehuan (and thirty other Mexican Indian languages, according to Cowan/Busnel). The geography conducive to whistled communication and responsible for the need is invariably extremely mountainous and rugged. The motivation is consistently shepherding. Such systems of communication by whistling, based on the language of the user, are conventionally referred to as “whistled languages” or “whistled speech.”
This form of communication is accomplished by the sender’s usually shrill whistling of the articulatory and timing features of the language in question, and depends, of course, on the reception and interpretation of this signaling by the listener(s).
The authors of Whistled Languages have treated the phenomenon of whistled communication both historically and with regard for the related ecology, the acoustics and range of the signal (as much as 5 miles!), different mechanisms of production, pertinent phonology and phonetics, and possible correlates in the animal kingdom. These considerations are enhanced with some forty figures depicting relevant terrain, whistle techniques, and acoustic properties of the whistles themselves; a phonetic analysis of the Silbo Gomero of Canarian Spanish is extended feature by feature to the articulated whistle, including prosodic and dialectal inferences.
One chapter is devoted to the implications of whistled forms of human communication for comprehending analogous non-human communication, especially in connection with dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and birds, and M. Busnel is especially well known for his work in that area.
All in all, the book—as well as the ambitious explorations it recapitulates—is well worth the effort of both authors and readers alike and may well lead to futher scientific ventures in the continuing enterprise of interspecies communication attempts and analysis.
[Henry Truby, Miami, Florida]
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Sensible Words: Linguistic Practice in England 1640-1785
Murray Cohen, (The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1977), xxv + 188 pp.
The past dozen years have seen abundant research into the history of linguistic thought, above all in the thought of the post-Renaissance period; and it is about time, for there are almost limitless treasures to be mined. For what has been happening, however, the metaphor of a mine is less appropriate than that of a magical lucky dip, from which everyone who pays his sixpence pulls out in his triumphant grasp exactly what he hoped to find. Could there be such a thing as a definitive history? It is not a question to which Dr. Cohen chooses to address himself. In a lively, but densely written Introduction he distinguishes his intentions from those of more conventional historians (like R.F. Jones and Aarsleff) whose aim he characterizes as “to establish extensive pedigrees for particular ideas” [xiv] and equally from the “revolutionary” approach of Kuhn or the “episteme” of Foncault. The word practice in his title is crucial; his intention (though he slips from it as the work progresses) is to concentrate on the numerous second-rank writers rather than the few prominent names, and so to seek the texture of the history of ideas “in the changing forms of basic texts” [xx]. His work illuminates by being subjectively interpretative; by telling you how the texture feels to him, he invites you to examine and elucidate your own response. In this sense it is not a beginner’s book, for to some degree what you get out of it depends on the extent to which you have a sense of the period to be illuminated. It is not designed to be refutable, and those whose interest in linguistics is confined to what is scientific on Popper’s criterion will be baffled by it.
The substance of the book is arranged chronologically in three chapters, covering the periods 1640-1700, 1700-1740, and 1740-1785. For the first, Cave Beck is taken as central— not the cleverest, profoundest, or most influential, but in his ordinariness the most representative of a class of seventeenth-century linguistic thinkers characterized by a series of related principles. Sound, letters, and meaning are assumed to be parallel systems in which ideally words are rationally organized, represented by sequential symbols (Arabic numerals in Beck’s case); the essentials of the system are its basic elements, and the representation of them must make visible sense. These assumptions lead in several directions — at the practical level, to concern with shorthand, signing and visual mnemonics, and at the theoretical, to the ambition of using language to recover the essence of things and to “remake the world in the image of God’s first activity” [3]. But in this most ambitious conception lie the seeds of change, for it is a small step from the essence of things to the composition and coherence of things. In the latter part of the seventeenth century both Wilkins’s realization of the limitations of tabular taxonomy and Port-Royal’s initiation of search for the rational basis of language in the order of the mind rather than the order of things, prepared the way for change.
For the second phase, 1700-1740, Cohen claims to give more than the fresh angle of view offered in Chapter 1, and to present “distinctive linguistic theories and techniques” which “have not been observed before” [44]. Linguistic writers of the period insist on their continuity with their predecessors while in practice shifting the emphasis from elements to discourse, especially written discourse. Even discussions of orthography are directed towards effective reading and composition, and syntactically determined punctuation becomes a focus of attention. Though visual signaling retains its importance, its purpose is not analysis and cataloguing but method and sequence. The shift is seen as parallel to the literary change: “The shift in linguistic method and emphasis from lexical units to syntactic relations, from the system’s taxonomy to its operations, from a locus principally in the world to one principally among ideas, is widely evident in the poetry, prose, and critical ideas of the period, but nowhere more characteristically, I think, than in the various ways in which a temporal aspect subsumes the spatial” [74].
In the third phase it is taken for granted that the categories and capacities of language are settled, and what is of central interest is internal difference—between languages, between periods of linguistic history, between different kinds of linguistic work. Practical and theoretical linguistics are different tasks (though they may be carried out by the same man in the same book, using visual, typographical cues to the function of each passage). On the theoretical side attention shifts from natural or theological history and the operations, of human understanding to the origin and progress of human societies. In language and in literature the emphasis is on forms as expressive possibilities rather than simply as the carriers of particular meanings; the poet is newly explicit about the limitations of language, and the linguist more modest in his claims for his subject.
There are full and learned Notes, though references are given according to the tiresome belle-lettristic convention and there is no bibliography. The book is full of challenge, and merits the approach it advocates. One leaves it with a fresh view and can come back to it again and again to discover more insights. I plan to continue doing so, and commend it to other readers for its capacity as a widow’s cruse of new perspectives.
[Barbara M.H. Strang, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne]
BIBLIOGRAPHIA:
The Written Word
(Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 460 pp.
The Right Word
(Houghton Mifflin, 1978), iv + 261 pp.*
The Legal Word Book
Comp. by Frank S. Gordon and Thomas M.S. Hemmes, (Houghton Mifflin, 1978), vi + 296 pp.
Few casual users of dictionaries are aware of the wealth of information that the average desk dictionary contains. In addition to spelling and syllabication of headwords and of many derived forms, pronunciations, etymologies, synonym lists and studies, and usage notes abound. Some dictionaries even include “related adjectives,” like equine under horse. Publishers who had the foresight to computerize the information in their dictionaries have the advantage of being able to extract from their files certain kinds and classes of information that was coded on input but that would, without the aid of computers, be tedious to compile from the published dictionary itself. For example, if definitions are categorized by subject, a computer could extract all of the words and definitions relating to a specific (coded) field like inorganic chemistry, veterinary medicine, or legalese.
Because of the integral nature of the information in a dictionary, most such extracted matter dealing with a single topic may seem a bit bare if required to stand alone in a book by itself, but some exceptions come readily to mind, and, at least, such matter can serve as convenient raw material which, when embellished, can provide useful information. The Legal Word Book would appear to be a book prepared by sorting out legal terms that appeared in The American Heritage Dictionary. If so, the extracted material has been expanded and reorganized into a number of convenient sections including an A-Z Word List (from the AHD), Legal Citations (from A Uniform System of Citation, 12th Edition), Legal Forms (apparently original), Abbreviations (from the AHD), and so on, through Postal Abbreviations and Telephone Area Codes— 13 sections in all. As a handy desk reference for legal secretaries, this book should prove useful, but it must be understood that it does not take the place of a law dictionary. On the other hand, law dictionaries do not contain information like Forms of Address, Proofreaders' Marks, Roman Numerals, etc. The book offers 20,000 terms, “spelled and divided.”
The Right Word is a very brief — too brief — synonym dictionary with the discriminations among confusing words picked up from the AHD. The pickings are quite sparse among the listings, for the smallest synonym dictionary will provide more. But the discriminations, a series of brief essays discussing semantic clusters like shy, bashful, coy, diffident, modest, or help, aid, assist, are useful. Collective Nouns (ex- altation of larks, etc.), Collateral Adjectives (ape, monkey: simian), Color Terms, and a list of “some of the major sciences or branches of technology” round out the book.
The Written Word is a chunky little book about the size of a Big Little Book but not as thick. (The Right Word is the same size; The Legal Word Book is 5½” × 8¼”.) According to its cover blurb, it is “A concise, practical guide to writing, usage, and style. Featuring a Usage Glossary based on the recommendations of The American Heritage Dictionary’s unique Usage Panel, to help you use words correctly.” I have mixed feelings about blurbs that contain incomplete sentences beginning with a participle, but very definite feelings about AHD’s Usage Panel, which set descriptive linguistics back 150 years (virtually the Stone Age as far as the study of language is concerned).
This is not a very carefully done book. In the first place, it lacks an index to the section on grammar; in the second, it makes errors that range from recommending Origins (without giving Partridge credit), an execrable choice, to misspelling Chambers Biographical Dictionary [sic]. Also, the Book of Lists is missing as are many other reference sources. The information given in alphabetical order in the Usage section is straightforward except where the phrase “not acceptable” appears: not acceptable to whom? to the Usage Panel? On the other hand, the treatment of finalize seems to be free of any such taint.
In general, these books suffer from the fact that their broad subjects cannot be properly convered in the compass of so few pages (of such small size). However, if the need is limited it is easily fulfilled, and, as far as they go, these are adequate digests of useful information for the (very) casual user of language. Laurence Urdang
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: An Illustrated Dictionary Of Chess
Edward R. Brace, (David McKay, 1977), 320 pp.
Ed Brace, with whom I have had the experience — that’s the word, experience; pleasure doesn’t fit, neither does opportunity — of playing chess, has compiled more than 2000 entries into a very readable and extremely useful reference book on chess. Here are listed not only the rudimentary information on the names and moves of the pieces but also succinct biographies of chess masters (with their Elo ratings: a two-page entry on Elo explains everything, including the fact that it is named for Prof. Arpad E. Elo, chairman of the Ratings Committee of the FIDE, the Fédération Internationale des Échecs), names and explanations of well-known openings, defenses, and plays, including such useful matter as spelling variants of names transliterated from Russian. I was particularly taken by a game at which I ought to excel, Losing Chess “a variant of chess in which the winner is the first player to lose all his men….” Dozens of books on chess are listed, in alphabetical order, providing a useful descriptive bibliography to the game. The language of chess emerges in such entries as Queen’s Gambit Declined, sweeper, sealer, pawn roller, Greek Gift Sacrifice, and Alcoholic Chess, “an absurd game played on a large board with glasses or bottles of alcoholic drink replacing the chessmen. If the opponent’s ‘man’ is captured, the drink it represents must be consumed by the capturer before the play proceeds. B.H. Wood… relates the story that Lasker is said to have won such a game ‘by sacrificing his queen in ridiculous fashion at the very outset of the game. The queen contained about a quarter litre of cognac; quaffing this seriously incapacitated his opponent in the ensuing complications.’ ” Ah! They don’t play chess the way they used to.
Diagrams abound to illustrate various critical positions in the strategies described. Brace, who is a formidable player (how else could I categorize him, since I have beaten him on occasion), is an entertaining and knowledgeable writer. Published originally in England (hence the British spellings — defence — and occasional Briticisms —sandglass for ‘hourglass’) the Dictionary is now available in America — and a good thing, too, when you consider that it is just in time to meet the rush on the chess playing computers that is bound to develop for Christmas.
As Svetozar Gligoric points out in his introduction, “An Illustrated Dictionary of Chess is an attempt to diminish the existing gap between the huge amount of literature published about chess and the lack of books giving general information about the game and all its aspects.”
Laurence Urdang
Notes Found in Bottles
Deborah Wing
Location of find: The Thames at Coventry
Inscription: “The night has a thousand eyes, the day but one… alas….
— Godiva”
BIBLIOGRAPHIA: Unmentionables And Other Euphemisms
Jeremy Lawrence, (Gentry Books Ltd., London, 1973), 88pp.
“On the excremental front, ‘defecate’ finds a rhyming slang equivalent in either pony and trap or tom-tit; ‘urinate’ in snake’s hiss or Mike Bliss. The last of these also took the form Micky Bliss or simply, Micky — and how many people partial to the phrase, taking the Micky, know that this is its vulgar origin?”
How many indeed?
Unmentionables explores our use of euphemisms, mysterious, comic and often darnright ludicrous in a humorous and lightly written manner. Here is no attempt to review the history and use of such rhetoric on the academic or comprehensive level, and the reading of this book surely gains as a result.
The content is richly drawn from recounting expressions aimed at safeguarding the coy from brutal mention of God, the Dead, “private parts” and sexual activity generally, and political or occupational embarrassment. The emphasis is on nineteenth-century creations, designed so as to meet the needs of “genteel” middle-class Victorians. (It was indeed the Victorians who gave genteel a bad name, and today, “the word is used mockingly in reference to that era’s obsolete standards of false refinement.”)
The material is drawn from both British and American experience and carries a concluding chapter on Newspeak, bringing our inherited euphemisms up to date: it claims that Britain has still a long way to go “before she becomes as enmeshed in this sort of language as the United States.” Lawrence then goes on to quote such topicals as mopping up operations and protective manoeuvres for ‘napalm bomb raids.’
From our side of the Atlantic, I would doubt this charge, and if the heyday of euphemisms is past, its popularity is well in evidence as garden flat (situated at shady basement level) and Adult books (as advertised in certain Soho shop windows) bear ready witness.
[Simon Smith, Nantwich, England]
EPISTOLA {D.D. Paige}
Professor Donald Sears’s piece, “Ameritalian” [I, 4], has only lately come to my attention. The following notes are offered as a mild corrective to his sweeping conclusion that in the last few years Italy has been borrowing words from America rather than from France.
Of the 33 words and prefixes that he cites, 14 (dancing, bitter, garden, dry, leader, standard, W.C., cocktail, toast, pullover, box, bar, touring — not “turing”! — and club entered in the nineteenth century. Ten words or prefixes (super-, sexy, market, relax, motel, bowling, cracker, credit carta, long drinks, and jumbo) possibly entered Italian within “the last few years” (though market and relax may have entered from Great Britain rather than from America). The remaining eight do not fall into either group.
All 14 words in the first group above are listed in Italian dictionaries published prior to 1935. Bar, for example, officially entered the Italian language in 1926, when by ministerial decree it became exempt from the tax imposed on foreign words appearing on signs on the grounds that “the word bar cannot be translated exactly into Italian, since the word taverna does not in fact describe the sort of business that is now indicated by the word bar.” As for touring and club, both appeared in Italian at least as early as 1894, when the Touring Club Italiano was founded in Milan. Of the eight words that do not fall in either group:
autogrill is completely Italian: automobile plus griglia. There is no American counterpart.
manzo amburghese, like T.V. (pronounced “Ti Vu”), is an assimilation.
mini-, like midi-, and maxi-, is surely borrowed from the French fashion world.
Gingerino is, I believe, a brand name.
camping only appears to be an import from American. Whoever in the United States heard of a camping? Our word is campsite. The obvious derivation is from the Italian campeggio. The -ing was added to the root on the analogy of dancing ‘a place to dance’ for the sake of what? — class?
frigo is certainly not from refrigerator but from frigorifero.
coupon is, of course, French, and entered Italian from that source before World War II.
parcheggio is old and Italian.
stereo is doubtful. Why can it not be purely Italian? (hifi, also found in Italy, is another story).
There remain brand names and names of businesses, a number of which Professor Sears cities. These are matters of snob appeal — like our Paris belts, Hai Karate, and English Leather toiletries for men or shops like Picadilly, Via Veneto, and Rive Gauche — and serve in merchandising and advertising products and services. Though there is only a raunchy joke in the brand of sanitary napkins made in Turin, called Pussy’s Best.
All of which is not to deny that Italians do not import American words, merely that Professor Sears’s choices do not illustrate his thesis. After all, as every traveler knows, there are snack bars and jeans (not to mention a jeanseria, a shop in Via Balbi in Genoa). Product manager, account executive, art director and design engineer are common in advertisements offering jobs. And the drug culture has assimilated trippare ‘to be tripping on drugs.’
[D.D. Paige, Middletown, Connecticut]
EPISTOLA {Jeremy H. Thompson}
In one of your recent issues [IV, 3], I read some colorful cricketing terms. As an avid cricketer, I feel that the following excerpt from The Cricketer [13, 4, 1977] might shed some light upon this game of games, explaining simply the basic rules of play.
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in goes out to go in, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out the side that’s out comes in, and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When both sides have been in and out including the not outs, that’s the end of the game.
[Jeremy H. Thompson, Santa Monica, California]
EPISTOLA {Duncan M. Mennie}
To Willard Espy’s query [IV, 2]: the nearest German equivalent in form and meaning to lean over backwards is sich auf die Hinterbeine stellen (setzen). Only the English phrase conjures up literally the picture of a man pulling on a rope with all his might as in a tug-of-war while the German phrase refers literally to a horse pulling a specially heavy load with all its might. Figuratively both expressions mean make every effort and are used of human beings. Klappenbach et al., Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache states that the German phrase is “South German and colloquial” and gives a quotation from Brecht’s Mutter Courage, Scene 9, “Wenn wir zwei uns auf die Hinterbein stelln, können wir unsern Unterhalt finden….,” I would translate ‘If we two really put our backs into it…’ despite Eric Bentley’s ‘look lively’ in the standard rendering. Heinz Küpper, Wörterbuch der Umgangssprache states that Mozart used the phrase in 1781 — South German again.
The trouble with sich auf die Hinterbeine stellen is, of course, that it has a second and more common meaning: literally ‘rear up’ (of a horse), hence figuratively ‘make difficulties,’ ‘dig in one’s heels.’ There are exactly parallel phrases in Swedish and Dutch.
With ‘dig in one’s heels’ one is brought back to the tug-of-war; falling over backwards is the fate of the defeated side. Could bending over backwards refer to the position adopted by a man who is drawing a long-bow? Or has alliteration been a decisive factor?
[Duncan M. Mennie, Newcastle-upon-Tyne]
Crossword Puzzle
Across
1. Cop-outs set up for a well-armed conglomerate (7).
9. Possible baseball team to play the Tigers. (7)
10. Hunting ally in hot and bothered full cry. (7)
11. Heroic little saints face danger? Not these runners. (9)
12. Ring master. (3)
13. The goons next door, of all places! (13)
15. Bird thou never wert, frequently enough. (3)
16. Support of country before the postal service collapses. (11)
19. Kind of kind. (3)
20. Posthumorous remarks? (5, 8)
22. The flow of spring. (3)
23. “Am I anti-beer? That’s not my bag.” (9)
25. Fellow to get the edge, breaking the sound barrier. (4, 3)
26. Missing notes, because of the conductor’s absence of mind or perfect memory. (2, 5)
27. Sister’s being rattled by fights. (7)
Down
1. Beaten in court and rendered illegal. (8)
2. Having tongue in cheek but not in check. (7, 8)
3. The discipline to change one’s mind. (10)
4. Don’t get rough, get even. (5)
5. There’s an excess despite appeal about the missile. (8)
6. Places of concentration. (4)
7. Preferred income, according to Wall Street brokers. (4, 11)
8. Desist in their creed? Not the faithful. (6)
14. Headlocks to be held tight. (10)
17. Harped on the absence of parents. (8)
18. The captain’s ship holds a cargo of herring. (8)
20. People like this are in a devil of a fix, trying to help. (6)
21. Feeling of insecurity, or term to that effect. (6)
24. Underground network. (4)
Crossword Puzzle Answers
Across
1. OCTOPUS
9. Leo-nine
10. T-ally-HO
11. O-st-RICHE-s
12. Ali
13. Neighbor-hoods
15. Egg
16. Nation-ALISM
19. Ilk
20. Funny epitaphs
22. Sap
23. I-n-EBR-iat-E
25. Mac-H ONE
26. No score
27. RESISTS
Down
1. Outlawed
2. Talking nonsense
3. Psychiatry
4. Smooth
5. PLE-Thor-A
6. Loci
7. High commissions
8. DEISTS
14. Hairpieces
17. O-rpha-N-ed
18. S-kipper-S
20. F-r-IEND
21. TREMOR
24. Root