Archive for October, 2008
October 17th, 2008
The previous week it was a medical issue. This past week I was on vacation. But now I’m back and raring to blog.
While I was away, a reader called to complain about a headline in which “fall,” the season, was not capitalized and said she was taught otherwise in school. Unfortunately, that’s probably ture.
Capitalization is an issue often determined by “house rules,” and in our own little worlds we tend to use uppercase for what we think is important. If a teacher wants you to capitalize the seasons, you probably should — while you’re in that classroom. In the big, bad outside world, however, “spring,” “summer,” “fall” or “autumn,” and “winter” are generally lowercase.
In fact, writing “the Fall” could be interpreted as referring to the concept in Christian theology of “the Fall of Man” — “Adam’s sin of yielding to temptation in eating the forbidden fruit, and his subsequent loss of grace.” Now that’s a term deserving of the big-letter treatment.
October 9th, 2008
Let’s try to preserve the difference between “beside” and “besides.” The former is most commonly used to mean “alongside” or “near” (”they stood beside him all through the crisis”) or “not pertinent to” (”that’s beside the point”).
It’s also part of a perfect example of how idiom is not meant to be taken literally: “After he said that, she was beside herself,” meaning she was “wild or upset, as with fear, rage, etc.” Clearly, to actually be beside oneself is impossible, unless we’re talking about an out-of-body experience or perhaps time travel.
“Besides,” with the additional “s,” has the sense of something in addition or in contrast to: “Besides the legal questions, think of the expense.”
Neither should be confused with “B side,” which is the “flip side” of a phonograph record (remember those?). Usually, the A side had the hit song and the B side was rarely if ever played. “Flip side” and B side” can be used informally in a general sense in referring to “the reverse or opposite, often sharply contrasting, side, aspect, effect, etc. of something or someone.”
Sometimes the flip side is something you don’t find out about until it’s too late.
October 8th, 2008
I vaguely recall from my geology studies that there was a definite difference between “stress” and “strain.” The pressure of various forces upon rocks was stress, and the rocks’ response, bending or fracturing, for example, was strain. Of course, I may not be remembering it correctly — I realized long ago I was in over my head in that field.
In common parlance, as they say, the two can be considered pretty much the same. In fact, the first definition for the noun “stress” is “strain or straining force.”
As verbs, “strain” is generally more suited to actual exertion — to strain muscles, for example — while “stress” is associated with mental or emotional pressures. Both come from the same Latin root, the verb “stringere,” “to draw tight,” which also is the origin of “strict.”
But whether you’re feeling the strain or feeling stressed, either can be hazardous to your health.
October 7th, 2008
There was no activity on this blog last week, because I was dealing with clogging instead of blogging.
I went to the Rockford Memorial emergency room Monday, had a stent put into a major artery Tuesday and went home Wednesday, where I spent the rest of the week recuperating. So I had a lot of time to read — and find a wealth of material for this week.
One of the things I came across was “in a gentlemanly manor.” Homonyms again, although this one is most often encountered in the phrase “to the manor born.” In both cases, the correct word is “manner.”
A “manor” is a dwelling. It comes from the Latin “manere,” “to remain,” so a manor is a place to stay. Two other kinds of residence from the same source are “mansion” and “manse,” a parsonage.
“Manner,” on the other hand, comes from “hand” — that is, “manus,” Latin for “hand.” “Manner” is all about behavior, attitude, method and style, as in “table manners,” “ill-mannered” and “What manner of man is this?” As you might expect, lots of hands-on words are derived from the same root: “manual,” “manage,” “manufacture,” “manifest” and “mandate.”
Interestingly, neither is where “man” comes from, but there’s no way I’m going to get into the origins of man here.
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