Archive for August, 2009
August 29th, 2009
The Franks were a group of related Germanic peoples that set up the Frankish Empire, which in the ninth century extended over what is now France, Germany and Italy.
The language was called Frankish, which I mentioned when I wrote about “guerrilla.”
The name “Frank” has been traced back to the Late Latin “Francus,” which also designated someone as a “free man.”
The original meaning of the adjective “frank,” now archaic, was “free in giving; generous.”
Nowadays, to be frank is to be “straightforward; candid” or “free from reserve, disguise or guile,” as in showing frank disgust.
“Frank” is also the term applied to certain kinds of free postal privileges.
And it’s short for “frankfurter,” also known as a “wiener” or “hot dog.” Whatever you call it, it’s seldom free.
August 28th, 2009
Webster’s considers “pompom” the correct spelling for “an ornamental ball or tuft of silk, wool, feathers, etc., as used on clothing or draperies or waved in pairs by cheerleaders.”
It’s an altered form of the French “pompon,” which is now reserved for references to flowers, such as chrysanthemums and dahlias, with heads that resemble pompoms.
In between is”pom-pom,” with a hyphen, an echoic term for certain types of rapid-firing automatic weapons. It also can be written without the hyphen. But for me the hyphen underscores its origin, representing the sound made by such guns — and distinguishes it from the ornamental kind.
If all of this seems a bit pompous, maybe it’s because that’s where “pompon” comes from — the Old French “pomper,” “to exhibit pomp.”
August 27th, 2009
As a verb, “ape” means “to imitate or mimic” — along the lines of “monkey see, monkey do.”
The word, for “any gibbon or great ape” or “loosely, any Old or New World monkey,” comes from the Old English “apa,” which is of Germanic origin.
As applied to people, “ape” the noun also can be someone “who is uncouth, gross, clumsy, etc.”
To “go ape” is slang for “to become mad” or “to become wildly enthusiastic.”
And “apish,” in addition to “like an ape,” can mean “imitative in an unreasoning way” or “silly, affected, mischievous, etc.”
However, an “apiary” is not a monkey house, it’s a beehive. That “api-” comes from the Latin for bee, “apis.”
If you go monkeying with an apiary, you’re likely to get stung.
August 26th, 2009
“Gorilla” is pronounced the same as “guerrilla,” which I wrote about the day before. They have been known to be mistaken for each other in print, but they are two entirely different animals.
The gorilla is the largest of the great apes and, says Webster’s, “is generally shy, intelligent and vegetarian.”
Slang use of the word for “a person regarded as like a gorilla in appearance, strength, etc.” is generally an insult to the person and the ape. Even more so its use as slang for “a gangster; thug.”
The word comes from the Greek “gorillai,” a term concocted in translating the reports of a Carthaginian navigator traveling along the coast of Africa in the fifth century B.C. That voyager, named Hanno, thought the creatures he was seeing were members of “a tribe of hairy women,” which was the literal meaning for the Greek word.
Roy Blount Jr., in “Alphabet Juice,” suggests the translators’ task was made more challenging by the Phoenician alphabet, which lacked vowels, and that another factor may have been that Hanno “had been at sea for a long time.”
August 25th, 2009
As an afterthought, Webster’s says it’s OK to spell “guerrilla” with one “r,” but you won’t find it that way very often, and with good reason.
Most words carry clues to their history in their spelling. “Guerrilla” is a diminutive of the Spanish “guerra,” meaning “war.” It was introduced to English during the Napoleonic Wars, specifically the campaign fought on the Iberian Peninsula (which Spain and Portugal share).
Earlier ancestors are the Italian “guerra” and the French “guerre,” both of which evolved from the Frankish base “werra,” meaning “confusion, strife” — the origin of “war.”
In Spanish, “guerrilla” means literally “a small war” or “a band of men who fight such a war.” In English, a guerrilla is any member of such a band. As an adjective, it can describe any activity characteristic of such combatants: for example, those that are “undercover, clandestine, etc., or radical, subversive, etc.”
Anyway, don’t spell “guerrilla” with one “r,” unless you have a clearly subversive reason for doing so.
August 15th, 2009
I’ll be away from the newsroom for another week of vacation, but I thought I would leave you something to think about:
What should we make of the adage “Ignorance is bliss”? Is that advising us that “to be stupid is to be supremely happy”? I think we’re lacking context here.
As with many “wise sayings,” this is only a portion of the original, from a 1742 poem by Thomas Gray:
“Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”
The real sentiment is more like, “Not knowing about something is better than knowing and worrying about it.”
This may have some validity, but only if you’re talking about something you can’t do anything about.
This point is clearer in the similar saying, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.” Not necessarily so. Let’s say that you don’t know that something you’re about to eat or drink is poisonous. Not knowing that can definitely hurt you, while knowing it could save your life.
Something can hurt you whether you know about it or not, but knowing might allow you to avoid it or prepare a defense for it.
I’m just not a fan of ignorance, which I think of as voluntary stupidity. It comes from the Latin verb “ignorare” — “to have no knowledge of, ignore.”
To “ignore” is “to disregard deliberately; pay no attention to; refuse to consider.”
We seem to have an overabundance of people loudly participating in this type of “ignore-ance,” and they don’t seem at all blissful to me.
August 14th, 2009
Be careful when trolling for synonyms to spice up your prose. For example, I had my doubts when I read a recent story about a person who finds “great bliss” in his work with a museum.
In the first place, I don’t think of “bliss” as something that comes in varying quantities: One size fits all.
By definition, it’s already great, as in “great joy or happiness.” It also can mean “spiritual joy; heavenly rapture.”
Which brings me to my second point: “Bliss” is not likely to be on any realistic job satisfaction scale. If you’re feeling blissful on the job, you’re probably too happy to concentrate on your work.
The word “bliss,” by the way, evolved from the adjective “blithe,” meaning “showing a cheerful, carefree disposition; lighthearted.”
It is not related to “blithering,” which comes from a variation on “blather” and means “talking without sense; jabbering.”
August 11th, 2009
Some word people consider the use of “here” or “there” at the beginning of a sentence to be weak writing. There’s some truth to that, but I don’t like outright bans when it comes to language.
Here’s a bigger problem with “here’s” or “there’s”: Whether at the start of a sentence or later, it’s often followed by a plural noun. Here’s an example:
“There’s many reasons the players from the 2008 Olympic basketball team may return in 2012.”
This says, “There is many reasons.” No, there isn’t — there “are” many reasons.
Wherever you use the contracted forms of “here is” and “there is,” be sure what follows is singular. Otherwise, you need “here are” or “there are” — or maybe you should rewrite so that the verb is no longer inverted.
Beginning a sentence with “here’s” or “there’s” isn’t a grammatical sin, but treating either as plural is.
August 7th, 2009
What exactly is “umbrage,” and why do so many people seem to be taking it these days?
It comes from the Latin “umbra,” meaning “a shade, shadow,” now considered an obsolete or old poetic use of “umbrage.”
Also outmoded is “umbrage” as “a semblance or shadowy appearance.”
What we have left are two definitions: “foliage, considered as shade-giving” and “offense or resentment.”
That last one is what we mean when we say someone has taken umbrage at a remark or action.
It’s a fancy way of saying the person is offended or perhaps feels insulted.
“Umbrage” is out of the shadows and into the light, and it isn’t happy about it.
August 6th, 2009
You probably have heard of “homing pigeons” and “homing devices.” Try to think of them the next time you’re trying to decide whether the correct phrase is “home in on” or “hone in on.” (It’s the former.)
The verb “hone” means “to sharpen.” It comes from the Old English “han” for “stone” — in this case, a whetstone.
You can use “honing” for literally sharpening, as with such a stone, or figuratively, as in “honing your skills.”
But the phrase for guiding or being guided to a destination or target is “homing (in) on.”
Home is where we want to go.
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