Archive for July, 2008
July 31st, 2008
That goo that some people put on their hair is called “gel.” The homonym “jell” is the one used informally as a verb to mean “to take or cause to take definite form; crystallize,” as in “The team hasn’t jelled yet.”
Those two, as well as “jelly” and “gelatin” and related words, come from the Latin verb “gelare,” which means “to freeze.” The only two somewhat common words that retain the freezing connection are “gelato,” a type of Italian sherbet, and “gelid,” an adjective meaning “extremely cold; frozen.”
“Jam,” another bread spread made by boiling fruit mixed with sugar, is a word of unknown origin. The homonym “jamb,” which is “a sidepost or piece of a framed opening,” as for a door or window, has the same origin as “gamb.”
That one is “an animal’s leg or shank, especially on a coat of arms.” We don’t encounter that much these days, although you may have heard “gam” in reference to “a woman’s shapely leg.” That’s where it comes from.
Our other toast treat is “preserves.” It occurred to me that if you use a hyphen, it becomes “pre-serves,” which could be another word for “leftovers,” but it certainly wouldn’t make them more appealing.
July 30th, 2008
The phrase “to squelch the flames with fire extinguishers” is close but no cigar.
To “squelch” is “to crush or smash by or as by falling or stamping upon; squash” or, informally, “to suppress or silence completely and with a crushing effect.”
Technically, you can squelch a small fire, like a burning cigarette, by stamping on it — or smashing it with a fire extinguisher.
A similar word is “quell,” meaning either “to crush; subdue; put an end to” or “to quiet; allay.”
“Garner’s Modern American Usage” advises that “squelch” works better for suppressing ideas, feelings and the like, while “quell” is the word of choice for “stifling a violent uprising or competitive bid.”
So you would try to squelch talk of a rebellion, and failing that, try to quell the ensuing riots.
As for putting out larger fires, a better verb is “quench.”
July 29th, 2008
“Teetotalism” is “the principle or practice of never drinking any alcoholic liquor.” It sounds like a word that would have an exotic origin, but it’s actually pretty dry — which is certainly appropriate.
The “total” portion is from the Latin “totus,” for “all, whole.”
The “tee” part has nothing to do with golf or its traditional 19th hole, or with the homonym “tea,” another type of beverage. It’s actually just a repetition of the first letter to give it special emphasis.
According to “The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories,” it apparently was coined by a worker from Preston, England, named Richard Turner, who used it in a speech in 1833 “urging total abstinence from all alcohol rather than mere abstinence from spirits, advocated by some early temperance reformers.”
You see, “temperance” is actually about moderation and self-restraint.
Our national experiment in this area, called Prohibition, didn’t work out so well. There are all kinds of prohibitions, but only one rated capitalization — and two constitutional amendments, one to create it and one to repeal it.
As Mark Twain said years before Prohibition:
“Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.”
July 26th, 2008
This came up recently, and the sports editor and I batted it around. The correct plural of the baseball term “RBI” (”run batted in”) is “RBIs,” even though the word that’s plural when it’s spelled out (”runs”) is at the start of the initialism. This does NOT mean that we’re actually saying “run batted ins.”
It just doesn’t work that way. By the same reasoning, why would more than one “IOU” be “IOUs” — there is NO plural in the expression “I owe you,” unless it’s more than one “you,” which is still “you.”
Fortunately, there are other examples of this sort of thing, as pointed out in “Garner’s Modern American Usage.” The plural of “WMD” (”weapon of mass destruction”) is “WMDs.” If you have been using “WMD” as the plural, you probably are one of those folks who feel strongly that “RBI” also is correct.
The other common one is “POWs” for “prisoners of war.” If you have been insisting on usage such as “there are still thousands of POW,” you probably will never change no matter what I say.
For the rest of you, form the plural of an initialism or an acronym by adding “s” — no matter what it stands for.
July 25th, 2008
Early in Mel Brooks’ first movie, “The Producers,” the down-on-his-luck character played by Zero Mostel looks out a window to see a white Rolls-Royce and shouts, “That’s it, baby, when you got it, flaunt it!”
The verbs “flaunt” and “flout” have been known to cause confusion. “Flaunt,” used correctly in the film, is “to make a gaudy, ostentatious, conspicuous, impudent or defiant display.”
It’s the defiant aspect that also appears in “flout”: “to mock or scoff at; show scorn or contempt for” or “to openly disregard, as by rejecting, defying or ignoring.”
Adding to the potential for crossover, it’s often people who are flaunting their own perceived authority who flout that of others – the leader of a nation who openly disregards its laws, for instance.
I prefer emphasizing how the two words are different: To “flaunt” is to show off, and to “flout” is to show contempt.
July 24th, 2008
The prefix “un-” usually transforms the main word into its opposite. This generally holds true, from “unabashed” to “unzip.”
As pointed out in Mark Davidson’s “Right, Wrong, and Risky,” there are at least two common words that mean the same as their “un-” versions.
Once upon a time, “ravel” (rhymes with “travel”) meant “to make complicated or tangled,” but these days that’s considered rare. Now it’s the same as “unravel”: “untwist,” “untangle” or “make clear.”
Either one is acceptable, but “unravel” works better for me, because it’s all about undoing something.
However, in the case of “loosen” and “unloosen,” I choose “loosen.” Why? Because logically, “unloosen” seems to be saying “tighten up.”
July 23rd, 2008
Webster’s says a “rate” is an “amount, degree, etc., of anything in relation to units of something else.” As one of its examples, it has “rate of speed per hour.”
I think “rate of speed” is redundant. Speed IS a rate, specifically, of distance (miles) per unit of time (hour). Therefore, it’s sufficient to say a car was traveling at “high speed,” not “a high rate of speed.”
In general usage, “velocity” is considered a synonym for “speed.” In the world of science, “velocity” includes speed and direction of motion. And the “rate of change” of velocity is “acceleration” (or “deceleration” if slowing).
Style footnote: The Associated Press says the abbreviation “mph” (no periods) is acceptable in ALL references to “miles per hour.”
July 18th, 2008
One of the main reasons “lie” and “lay” cause so much trouble is that the past tense of “lie” — to be or get horizontal — is “lay.”
“I usually lie down for a two-hour nap in the afternoon.”
“Yesterday I lay down for just 20 minutes.” (That’s “lay,” not “laid.”)
Combine that crossover with the wonderful world of idiom, and it can get quite confusing. Here are some examples:
To “lie low” is to hide out to avoid detection or otherwise try to be inconspicuous:
“I think we should lie low until this blows over.”
To “lay (someone) low” is to weaken or sadden:
“This bad news is sure to lay her low.”
Similarly, to “lay for” is informal for “to be waiting to attack.”
To “lie in wait” can mean the same thing, although it’s possible to have less violent intentions — like waiting for the guest at a surprise party.
I won’t lay any more of them on you today.
July 17th, 2008
Some words come with size limits. Two examples, listed one after the other in Webster’s, are “swatch” and “swath.”
The specific meaning of “swatch” (origin unknown) is “a sample piece of cloth or other material.” In general, it can be used for “a small amount or number in a cluster, bunch or patch.” You could have a large swatch of something, but it would still be fairly small — just larger than a typical swatch.
The word “swath” comes from the Old English for “a track,” and is related to a German word for the “space covered by a scythe swing.” This accounts for its first definition, “the space or width covered with one cut of a scythe or other mowing device.”
In general, a swath is “a long strip, track or belt of any particular kind.”
The path of destruction of a tornado is often called a swath. Note that the distinctive characteristic of a swath is its length, not its width.
On the other hand, the idiomatic phrase “cut a wide swath” emphasizes that other dimension. It means “to make an ostentatious display or forceful impression.”
If you add an “e,” you get “swathe,” used mostly as a verb for “to wrap or bind up,” as with bandages, or “to surround or envelop.”
“Every night she swathes him in swaths of damp cloth.” Swatches probably wouldn’t work.
July 16th, 2008
A writer who found much of the current movie “WALL-E” depressing pointed to a break in that mood with the phrase “the reprise from the dreariness.”
A “reprise” is a repeat or a replay, which is the wrong idea. The intended word probably was “reprieve,” in the sense of “a temporary relief or escape, as from trouble or pain.”
According to “The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories,” the early meaning of the verb “reprieve” was to “send back to prison.” Somewhere along the way, it underwent a reversal to the current sense “rescue from impending punishment.”
Both “reprieve” and “reprise” are rooted in the Latin notion of “to take back,” which also yields the word “reprehend,” meaning “to reprimand or rebuke (a person)” or “to find fault with (something done).”
Also in the family is “reprisal,” which embodies the ideas of “hitting back” in general and “an eye for an eye” specifically.
Historically, “reprisal” was “the forcible seizure of property or subjects in retaliation for an injury inflicted by another country.”
Reprisal on a national level still implies the use of force, but “short of war.” Of course, war may soon follow.
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