Archive for June, 2008
June 12th, 2008
The word “who’s” is a contraction of “who is” (or “who has”). The homonym “whose” is an all-purpose possessive pronoun. Whenever you write “who’s,” test to see if you mean “who is” (Who’s sorry now?) or “who has” (Who’s been sleeping in my bed?) If not, “whose” is your word.
You can find considerable debate among usage experts about when to use “which,” “that” or “who” when a relative pronoun is called for. However, when you need the possessive, “whose” works every time.
There’s no possessive equivalent for “that” or “which,” and the phrase “for which” can make things unwieldy. So whether referring to people, animals or inanimate objects, go with “whose.”
“This is the woman whose face launched a thousand ships.”
“It’s the only oil company whose profits have decreased.”
June 11th, 2008
Two special types of abbreviations are known as “initialisms” and “acronyms.” The difference: With an initialism, such as HIV, each letter is pronounced; an acronym, such as AIDS, is said as a word.
Other common initialisms include DNA, FBI, UFO and VCR. Initialisms and acronyms are popular because they usually are much easier to say than the terms they stand for. Do you prefer to say “DNA” or “deoxyribonucleic acid”? Of course, as with most things, they can be overdone.
One minor annoyance to watch out for: You need to remember what these abbreviations stand for to avoid redundancies. For example, don’t write “ATM machine,” because the “M” stands for “machine.”
Similar no-nos: “PIN number” (PIN stands for “personal identification number”) and “UPC code” (that’s Universal Product Code”).
One that doesn’t fall into this category is “SWAT team.” SWAT stands for “special weapons and tactics.”
That’s right: There is no “I” in “team,” and there is no “team” in “SWAT.”
June 10th, 2008
The natural progression of the opposite of “good” is “bad, worse, worst.”
The expression “from bad to worse” reflects this, but “worst comes to worst” does not. Although this is the traditional phrase, the more logical “worse comes to worst” is gaining popularity, according to “Garner’s Modern American Usage.” I’m all for an increase in logic in the world, but “worst comes to worst” is still Webster’s preference.
Other members of the “worst” family of idioms include “give someone the worst of it,” meaning “to defeat or get the better of someone”; “(in) the worst way,” slang for “very much; greatly”; “make the worst of,” “to be pessimistic about”; and the modifier “worst-case,” as in “worst-case scenario” — and that’s as bad as it can get.
June 9th, 2008
I still see this one misused occasionally. Use “titled,” NOT “entitled,” when giving the name of a movie, book, song, etc. For example:
One of my favorite books is titled “The Immense Journey” by Loren Eiseley.
You’re entitled to your own opinion on this point, but use “titled.”
June 6th, 2008
Consider the phrase “where labor costs are less expensive.”
This is one of those fine points, like temperatures are higher or lower, NOT warmer or colder.
It would be OK to say “where labor is less expensive.” But the costs of that labor are “lower.”
The cost is a number. It can be high, low, moderate, outrageous, even prohibitive — but not expensive. The item that you pay for is expensive. The cost is high.
So look for one on eBay.
June 5th, 2008
The plural of “foot” is “feet,” but remember that in English modifiers aren’t the same as nouns. In a phrase such as “a 500,000-square-foot factory,” “foot” is correct, NOT “feet.”
Think about similar phrases you use more often: a 2-liter bottle, NOT a 2-liters bottle, a 10-kilometer run, a 75-cent can of Coke, a 12-gallon tank of gasoline.
The same applies with irregular plurals: a 12-man team, a five-person committee, a 500,000-square-foot factory.
Similarly, it’s “freshman” class, NOT “freshmen.”
Singular, isn’t it?
June 4th, 2008
I recently wrote a column about the “-izing” of nouns to create verbs. This has been going on for a long time. Sometimes the results are good, sometimes not.
I recently saw the word “monetization,” and I’m pretty sure the intended meaning was “revenue,” “profit” or “making money.” If so, any of those three works much better.
Also, the verb “monetize” has its own specific meanings. It’s either “to coin into money” or “to legalize as money.” In a way, then, it is “making money,” but not in the revenue sense.
Simpler is usually better when it comes to language.
June 3rd, 2008
A reader pointed out that our blog links page bills me as a word “guro.” That’s a typo. According to Webster’s unabridged, the Guro (or Guros, both usually capitalized) are “a people of the interior of the Ivory Coast now known chiefly for their wood carvings (as dancing masks).” They’re also called the Kweni (or Kwenis).
I, on the other hand, am from east-central Indiana. And even though my last name is Wood, I can’t carve a lick. The intended word is “guru,” which is a Hindi term from the Sanskrit “guruh,” meaning venerable or, originally, heavy. (OK, I am heavy.)
In Hinduism, a guru is a “personal spiritual adviser or teacher.” In general, it can mean “any leader highly regarded by a group of followers,” and is “sometimes used derisively.” Maybe that’s what’s going on.
I have never thought of myself as a guru. I’m just a guy who’s willing to look things up.
June 2nd, 2008
Yes, we make mistakes here at the Register Star, and we try to own up to the ones involving factual errors in our reporting by running corrections. Others are catch as catch can.
I’m mentioning this one because it can be instructional, and the lesson, often repeated, is “Watch out for homonyms.”
The correct term for an “abundant or rich source” is “mother lode,” NOT “mother load.” “Lode” is a mining term for a vein or deposit of a valuable substance. A “mother lode” is an especially rich concentration, the mother of all lodes.
This is not to say that mothers are not load-bearing, because they are — and usually to a greater extent than they ever get credit for.
Two other valuable “lode” terms: “lodestone” is specifically a strongly magnetized rock and generally anything that “attracts as with magnetic force”; and “lodestar” is a star used in navigation, especially the North Star, and generally “a guiding principle or ideal.”
June 1st, 2008
The adjective “adamant” can mean “too hard to be broken” or “not giving in or relenting; unyielding.”
It’s not the same as being demanding. It’s stubborn resistance.
It comes from the Greek “daman” for “to subdue” paired with the prefix for “not.” In olden days, “adamant” also was a noun for “a hard stone or substance that was supposedly unbreakable.”
“Adam Ant” also was the stage name of an English singer and musician of the 1980s.
I was not a fan.
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