Archive for April, 2009
April 16th, 2009
In the 1967 animated Disney film “The Jungle Book,” the character Baloo the bear sings about “The Bare Necessities.” Thanks, Disney folks. As if “bear” and “bare” weren’t confusing enough already.
For example, we recently wrote about a town that “will have to bare” a financial burden.
Not so. That “bare” is usually an adjective meaning naked, empty (the cupboard is bare), simple (the bare facts) and without tools or weapons, obsolete except in the phrase “bare hands.”
It carries similar meanings when acting as a verb: an animal baring its teeth, a confessor baring his soul.
The verb “bear” is what’s needed above to handle that burden, or to bear a child or bear witness, and so on.
Idiomatically, it’s used in such phrases as “bear down,” “bear up” and “bring to bear upon.”
As a noun, a “bear” is an animal. It’s also slang for “a difficult task.”
English, for example, can be a bear.
April 15th, 2009
No less an authority on English than Groucho Marx made one of my favorite homonym jokes, in the 1933 movie “Duck Soup.”
Groucho’s character, Rufus T. Firefly, has just been made the leader of Freedonia. In a discussion with that nation’s officials, one of them asks that they take up the tax.
Firefly suggests they take up the carpet.
Official: I still insist we must take up the tax.
Firefly: He’s right. You’ve gotta take up the tacks before you can take up the carpet.
“Tack,” a short nail or pin, comes from “takke” in Middle English, which is from the Middle Dutch “tacke” for “twig, point.” Before that its path is a bit hazy.
“Tax” traces all the way back to the Latin verb “tangere,” meaning “to touch.” It also gave rise to “tact” and the related “tactful” and “tactile.”
This may explain why government officials seem to feel the need to reach out and tax someone. Probably not, though.
April 14th, 2009
The adjective “appropriate” means “right for the purpose; suitable; fit; proper.” Its final syllable is pronounced like the pronoun “it.”
When that syllable is pronounced “ate,” like the past tense of “eat,” “appropriate” becomes a verb. Its first definition is “to take for one’s own or exclusive use,” which is consistent with its Latin origin.
Its third definition is the one applied to government funding — our tax dollars at work: “to set aside for a specific use or certain person.”
Interestingly, the second one is “to take improperly, as without permission.” In that case, “appropriating” is acting inappropriately.
