January 21st, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
“Snakebit” is an adjective meaning “having or characterized by bad luck.” Webster’s adds a note that it is also occasionally written “snakebitten.”
This preference is another bit of bad luck, because it can add to the confusion over how to use the verb “bite.” The past tense is “bit,” but the preferred past participle is “bitten”:
“Does your dog bite?”
“It bit my husband yesterday, but it has never bitten me.”
So, we feel “snakebit,” but we get “dog-bitten.”
The difference appears to hinge on whether the biting is literal or figurative. Bryan A. Garner says in “Garner’s Modern American Usage” that “bit” is preferred when a past participle is needed with certain “set phrases”: “bite one’s lip,” “bite one’s tongue” and “bite the dust.” I assume “bite the bullet” and “bite the hand that feeds you” would be included.
So, it would be, “We were shocked to learn they had all bit (not ‘bitten’) the dust.”
In each of these phrases, the meaning is conveyed without actual biting. But when teeth are involved, use “bitten.”
January 20th, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
The word “service” has many meanings, but it’s generally considered a positive thing.
Its roots, however, are in the Latin “servus,” meaning “slave.”
This heritage is best preserved in the adjective “servile” and the noun “servitude.” The latter has two general applications, neither of them desirable:
“The condition of a slave, serf and the like; subjection to a master; slavery or bondage.”
“Work imposed as punishment for a crime.”
“Servitude” should not be thought of as a fancier-sounding substitute for “service.”
January 19th, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
When we say “wit” (singular), we generally mean a certain sense of humor: “the ability to make lively, clever remarks in a sharp, amusing way” or “the ability to perceive incongruous relationships and express them in a surprising or epigrammatic manner.”
Whew! In other words, it’s more than just telling jokes.
As might be expected, the plural, “wits,” is much broader: “powers of thinking and reasoning; intellectual and perceptive powers; mental faculties with respect to their state of balance.”
So, the idiomatic phrases “live by one’s wits” and “at one’s wits’ end” both use the plural, the one that refers to general mental faculties.
Otherwise, their meanings would be altered.
We could say that a comedian “lives by his wit,” but most of us couldn’t make a living that way.
Also, if you were to find yourself “at your wit’s end,” you would have lost your sense of humor but you could still find a solution to your problem.
However, “witless” does NOT mean “humorless,” it means “lacking intelligence.” In such a case, a person may need to join a witless protection program.
January 12th, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
“Ridden” is the past participle of the verb “ride”:
“He still rides a bus to work. He has ridden one for 30 years.”
As an adjective, “ridden” means “dominated or obsessed (by the thing specified).” It’s used in combinations, such as “guilt-ridden,” “fear-ridden,” “debt-ridden.”
Similarly, the combining word “laden” (”flower-laden,” “doom-laden”) is used to convey “filled, covered, permeated or burdened with.” One might say, for example, that U.S. policy since Sept. 11, 2001, has been Osama bin Laden-laden. And no, it’s not funny.
In contrast, the verb “riddle” means “to make many holes in,” “to find and show flaws in” or “to affect every part of.”
Buildings in a war zone are bullet-riddled. Reports are sometimes riddled with errors.
Notice that something that’s “ridden” is essentially intact but has taken on an additional burden. However, something that’s “riddled” is usually full of holes, literally or figuratively.
January 6th, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
There was recent confusion on this, when a football team was referred to as a ship that had hit an iceberg and “floundered.”
The noun “flounder” is a fish. The verb “flounder” means “to struggle awkwardly to move, as in deep mud or snow; plunge about in a stumbling manner.”
This could certainly describe a struggling football team’s woeful efforts, but not when it’s being compared to a ship. A ship in trouble can “founder” — “to fill with water, as during a storm, and sink.”
Applied to things other than ships and boats, to founder is “to break down; collapse; fail.”
Something that’s floundering is still making some effort, even if inelegantly. Something that’s foundered has stopped moving altogether.
How to keep them straight? Once again, I bow to the great Daffy Duck, who says of a foe temporarily knocked unconscious:
“He’s colder than a foundered flounder.”
For now, th-th-that’s all, folks!
January 5th, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
The initialism RSVP means “please reply,” not “make a reservation.”
Apparently the latter usage is actually gaining some traction in American English, but it’s too loose for my taste. Maybe that’s because I took French in high school.
The letters in RSVP come from the French phrase “repondez s’il vous plait,” literally, “answer if it pleases you.”
You could make a reservation by way of an RSVP, but you would have to be invited first.
If you need short phrase for “make a reservation,” how about “sign up” or “book”?
“RSVP” is an initialism, not an acronym, because it’s pronounced by sounding each letter, not as a word.
An example of an acronym is “SEAL,” as in Navy SEAL.
The SEALs are a special operations force. The letters in the acronym come from “sea, air, land.”
A “Navy Seal” could be some kind of insignia, and a “Navy seal” might be a character in an old (and bad) TV comedy. But you need all caps for the special forces unit.
December 30th, 2009 07:00am
Barry Wood
It’s time for a brief review of “chord” and “cord”:
In music, a “chord” is “a combination of three or more tones sounded together in harmony.” Since most people can sing just one note at a time, it’s virtually impossible for one singer to produce a “vocal chord.”
Whatever sounds are made come from the use of vocal “cords” (no “h”) — “either of two pairs of membranous cords or folds in the larynx.”
The word “cord,” without the “h,” appears in other references to structures resembling ropes or strings, including “spinal cord,” “umbilical cord,” “electrical cord” and “rip cord.”
It’s also a measure of wood that’s been cut for fuel.
In general use, the “chord” with an “h” should be restricted to harmonious (with an “h”) references.
I hope this lesson has struck the proper chord.
December 23rd, 2009 07:00am
Barry Wood
When an alcoholic beverage is rated as “100 proof,” that means the amount of alcohol in it is 50 percent, at least in the United States. It works out to more like 57 percent in Great Britain and Canada.
A liquor that’s 100 proof is sometimes called “proof spirit,” which Webster’s refers to as “the arbitrary standard.” I love coming across terms like this — “arbitrary,” meaning “not fixed by rules,” matched up with “standard,” as in “something established for use as a rule or basis of comparison.”
I suspect there are more “standards” that have been established arbitrarily than we realize.
Moving on from drink to food, you can’t adequately judge a pudding without tasting it. So says Miguel de Cervantes in “Don Quixote,” to wit: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
It’s often misquoted as “The proof is in the pudding.” That skips the most important — and most enjoybale — part.
December 22nd, 2009 07:00am
Barry Wood
The suffix “-proof” has three principal meanings: “impervious to,” “protected from or against” and “resistant to, unaffected by.”
Some of these “-proof” terms are so well-established that they are written as one word: bulletproof, childproof, fireproof, rustproof, shockproof and waterproof, for example.
Others haven’t graduated to that status and remain hyphenated. One is “recession-proof,” maybe, as we’ve rediscovered lately, because so few things are.
One that’s expanded beyond its literal sense is “foolproof.” Basically, it’s applied to something that’s “so simple, well-designed or indestructible” that even a fool can’t mess it up.
Webster’s unabridged dictionary takes it an additional step: “guaranteed to operate without breakdown or failure under any conditions.” That’s some guarantee.
My experience has been that the only sure thing is that there’s no sure thing.
December 18th, 2009 07:00am
Barry Wood
I was asked about the proper way to refer to institutions of higher learning. There may be some strict standards somewhere, but I gave up trying to find them. So here’s my take:
The “universe” is everything. The word comes from the Latin “universus” — “all together”" — which is also the root for “university.”
Traditionally, a university is made up of a number of colleges and offers undergraduate and graduate degrees.
“College” is generally applied to an institution that offers undergraduate or associate degrees but not graduate degrees. However, many individual colleges within universities do have graduate programs.
The word “college” is a descendant of the Latin “collegium,” meaning “community, society, guild, fraternity.” An earlier ancestor is the Latin “collega,” meaning “one chosen along with another.” This chummy aspect is reflected in “colleague” and “collegial.”
There are several other types of colleges, including professional schools (like a secretarial college), clerical groups (the College of Cardinals, for instance) and the group that actually elects the president of the United States (the electoral college).
And then there’s Dartmouth College, which is actually a full-fledged Ivy League university.
In general, though, a college is a smaller educational entity and shouldn’t be called a university. A university can be made up of a number of colleges; loosely speaking, the whole thing could be called a college.
If you aren’t sure which to use after a first reference, either one can be called a “school.”
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