I Stand Corrected

Bad spelling costs money!

2011-07-14T07:49:00.000-04:00

I just refer to the article on this link.

Spell checkers

2011-05-31T13:44:00.000-04:00

I don't use a spellchecker. I've been drilled in spelling and grammar, and it's not a bad thing. I was taught three foreign languages (one of them I'm typing in right now), and you can't properly learn a language if you don't know the basics. Spelling is so fundamental, in my mind, that (typing errosr aside) you shouldn't need a spellchecker. Pedantic? Me?? OK, use a spellchecker if you're not certain. And to weed out those typos. But for crying out loud, please use a passive one. I'm allergic to active spellcheckers, that change words for you, without you having to allow it or not. I came across this horrendous example in an article on the STV website - STV is the Scottish commercial television channel - about Scots cyclists who were in the Joplin tornado. Describing the scene, the article quotes:

The storm sirens whaled out. We had to sprint and get ourselves to the van and head to the storm shelter. It was terrifying; the sirens filled me with fear.

Well, I should not joke about such a devastating event as the Joplin tornado, where over 100 people died. But I am pouring scorn over the text editor on STV.tv, who did not spot that particular banana-skin. He will end up wailing about whales until the end of his days...

Diffuse or defuse

2011-03-16T08:24:00.000-04:00

That is a headline from a regional paper in the north of Scotland last Monday. So we diffuse bombs - but do we defuse light? Looks like someone didn't check his spellchecker!

Can you read any more?

2010-08-13T00:00:00.003-04:00

Or can't you read anymore?

This is a word that was formerly acceptable only as its split form, any more; however, it is now generally acceptable to use the combined form. It joins other such combinations as anyone, anything, anytime, anyway, and anywhere. However, there is an important distinction in which the separate form should be used. If referring to matters of quantity, the phrase should be two words. If one is full after a meal, the proper term would be, "I can't eat any more." If one is physically unable to eat, the phrase would be, "I can't eat anymore." The former refers to quantity, with the word "food" implied after "more," and "more" used as an adjective. In the latter, "anymore" is an adverb modifying the verb "eat."

Just to add a little confusion, anymore can have a regional meaning, specifically in the Midwest. I used it in speaking the other day and thoroughly confused the person I was speaking with. I can't remember the exact topic of the conversation, but a good example would be, "In Indiana, if you want to buy alcohol, it doesn't matter how old you look. You have to show your license anymore." In this case, it means "at the present time" or "nowadays." When I used it with my friend, they were very perplexed by what seemed to be a contradictory statement. They thought it would have made sense to have a negative in there: "You can't buy alcohol anymore unless you show your license." In that case, it would be using anymore as an adverb modifying buy. My usage was intended to show a time frame.

One of my sources says that such a usage "puzzles readers from other regions." I can testify to the truth of that! Other references state that it is not proper form in writing. As I thought about it, I don't believe it's anything that I use in writing. If I utilize that form, it is generally when speaking, which is when most colloquialisms and regional idioms are prone to "popping out."

Does anyone else here use anymore in that way? I know I'm not the only one. Here is a bevy of bathing beauties to prove it.

I rest my case.

Plurals

2010-08-12T11:26:00.001-04:00

Today is Glorious Twelfth, which sees the opening of the grouse shooting season here in the United Kingdom. So, if someone has a good aim, what do you say? How many grouse did you bag? Well, there are a few different plurals for nouns ending in -ouse.

House - houses
Blouse - blouses
Mouse - mice
Louse - lice
Grouse - grouse

It is one of my fave jokes to ask "how many hice in this street are afflicted with mice... "

Ad"DRESS"ing a Question

2010-07-19T22:48:00.004-04:00

I've been trying to come up with an idea for this blog, and Donna at JUST ME gave me one. She was writing of memories of watching her mother "dress" a chicken and, as a passing thought, wondered why taking the guts out of a chicken was known as "dressing". Well, let's just see, shall we?

First of all, I was rather surprised to see how many definitions there are for the word "dress." As a verb, there are around fifteen, as a noun there are four, and as an adjective there are two. There are also at least three ways to use the word as a phrasal verb, and one use of it as an idiom, according to one dictionary.

In our query here, we are dealing with the word "dress" as a verb, meaning "to clean for cooking or sale", as one would do a chicken, a deer, a turkey. (A closely related usage would be the verb definition meaning "to garnish".)

The word "dress" is so common to our everyday language that it is interesting to realize that it hasn't always referred to an article of attire. My OED gives the earliest recorded use of the word "dress" as 14th century. There are three definitions from that century. One, the obsolete one, is "make or put straight or right". The second -- now get this -- is "prepare, treat (later, in a specific way)". So when we say we are dressing a joint of beef, or field dressing a deer, or dressing a chicken, we are using the oldest recorded definition of the word "dress".

Interesting, eh?

And in case you're wondering, the third meaning from the 14th century is "array, equip, attire". From the 18th century we have "line up (troops)", and from the 17th century we get the meaning "personal attire" from William Shakespeare.

The earliest noun sense of the word was "speech, talk", and comes from the 15th century. That sense comes from a verb sense (Latin dirigere), meaning "to direct" (addressing or directing words to other people).

Numbers and amounts

2010-03-20T13:25:00.001-04:00

This morning, I was listening to the news on Radio Scotland, and in particular an item about potholes. Reporting from the side of a pothole in Perthshire, the journalist was talking about the amount of potholes. This is a very relevant topic, following the hardest winter since 1962/63, with snow on the ground for nearly 3 months in some parts of the Highlands. I remarked to a friend that talking about amounts of potholes is grammatically incorrect. You talk about numbers of potholes. Because you can count them. Of course, I would not expect anyone to go on a drive of all the roads in Highland Scotland and tot up the number of time their suspension gets wrecked. However, what could be a relevant statistic is the amount of tar required to fill in all those potholes. Or the number of men needed to put in all that tar.

You can talk about one tonne of tar needed to repair a stretch of road. That's an amount, you can weigh it or measure it; you describe it with a unit (e.g. of length, weight etc). You can't talk about one tar, unless you are watching a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.

You can talk about one lorry, needed to carry all that tar, because you can count the number of vehicles. Talking about an amount of lorries does not make sense.

Check Out Deb's New Blog!

2010-03-18T23:23:00.003-04:00

I'd like to invite you to visit a new blog by a former AOL Journaler. Thankfully she and I have stayed in touch since AOL Journals went under. She had a word usage journal for some time, but has only now decided to jump back into blog waters -- on Wordpress, not Blogger, but we won't hold that against her. ; )

Her name is Deb, and her blog is Everyday Language, Every Day. Please drop by to visit and let her know what you think. I am so jealous of the subject she chose for her first post. I wish I'd thought of it first!

A Few Shout-Outs

2010-03-09T20:29:00.006-05:00

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

James D. Nicoll

This quote opens one of my favorite web sites, Word Connections, run by John Dierdorf. I first made Dierdorf's acquaintance by using one of his other sites, You Can't Say That! Both are chock full of interesting etymological treasures, and Dierdorf himself is humorous in his presentations. If you write historical fiction (or even if you don't) "You Can't Say That!" is a must-have as far as reference sources go, in my opinion. I like to read both sites just for fun, but I'm funny like that.

Another favored site, and one you may be familiar with, is The Word Detective, "Words and Language in a Humorous Vein Since 1996". I believe I may have run across this guy from a recommendation of another AOL Journaler. I do know that it has been in my bookmarked sites for several years. The Word Detective is newspaper columnist and author Evan Morris, and, again, I like reading his web site just for the fun of it.

One other site that I enjoy reading is EnglishClub.com. It has a little bit of everything for "learners and teachers of English", including a very interesting History of the English Language.

I hope you get the chance to check these out and make use of them.

Punctuation

2010-03-07T09:47:00.001-05:00

Last Wednesday, I came across a public notice in an outlying district of the Isle of Lewis, where I reside. There was one comma missing in the first paragraph of the message from the Grazings Clerk, which threatened to render it unintelligible.

I read the first paragraph as:

ANY SHAREHOLDER WHO WISHES TO CAN PUT THERE SHEEP INTO THE AIRD PARK FROM NOW UNTIL END FEBRUARY/BEGINNING MARCH 2010.

which should of course contain a comma after TO.

A better phrase would have run:
"Any shareholder who wishes to put their sheep into the Aird Park can do so from now ... "

And yes, "there" should of course have been spelled "their", but that did not prompt me to take the photograph.

A Soupy Entry

2010-02-28T15:26:00.005-05:00

I had planned to write about pronouns today, but I read something a few minutes ago that changed my plans. I was reading a blog entry about The Sir John Soane's Museum in London (on my list of "places to visit" when I go to London) and the phrase hotch-potch was used to describe the sculpture in the basement of the home. It struck me that I had never wondered before what the difference is, if any, between hotch-potch and hodge-podge, so assuming you would be just as interested as I am, I decided to write about that instead.

I had a feeling that hodge-podge is what we Americans are more familiar with and that I would find that hotch-potch is older and probably used more by the English.

I first checked my trusty OED to see what it says about hotch-potch. The word is not there. The word hotch-pot is there, and I found that the earliest use of this word in print was by Chaucer in the 14th century with a meaning of "mixture" or "medley", specifically in cookery by the 15th century. In the 16th century it became a legal term meaning "collation of properties to secure equality of division." It is of Anglo-Norman origin, from Old French hochepot, from the French words hocher (shake) and pot (pot). Shaking the pot -- I like that. I'm imagining a stew of whatever I have in the refrigerator all shaken and cooked together. By steady progression the word evolved into hotchpotch, altered by "rhyming assimilation" in the 15th century, and finally hodge-podge sometime in the 17th century. When I looked up hodge-podge the OED told me to "see hotch-pot". So that is that.

Merriam-Webster's online dictionary gives as the first definition of hotch-potch "a thick soup or stew of vegetables, potatoes, and usually meat", and as "hodgepodge {one word}, a noun meaning 'a heterogeneous mixture', synoymous with jumble". The second definition given is "hotchpot", a word in English law, with the legal meaning given in the above paragraph. Merriam-Webster lists the word's origin as dating from 1538 (16th century), which is in disagreement with the OED of Etymology.

I just thought this was rather interesting and that I would share. Hope you enjoyed it!

A Brief Review of LIE and LAY

2010-01-31T23:11:00.002-05:00

It seems like the distinction between the two verbs "lie" and "lay" is disappearing in common usage. I have seen and heard so many examples lately where the writer or speaker uses the wrong one, and these are people who should know better. It has even been suggested {gasp} that someday soon the distinction may be done away with entirely in common usage. However, the distinction is still observed by enough potential employers (or clients) that it would be well to try to get the usage right before using one or the other incorrectly in a professional setting (or in a job interview!).

I believe we've covered these words before, but I thought it might be time for a quick review.

Very simply "to lay" means "to put" or "to place", and "to lie" means "to repose".

"Lay" is a transitive verb, meaning that it is an action word, expressing a doable action, and requiring at least one object; it will always be followed by a noun or pronoun. Its principal forms are lay, laid, have laid, and laying. For example: I lay my keys on the counter as soon as I get home. I know I laid my keys on the counter when I got home today. I have laid my keys on the counter since I learned to drive. Laying my keys in the same place every time helps me keep up with them. If you are saying that something has been put or placed somewhere, then use a form of "lay". In these examples, "keys" is the direct object. What did we lay? We laid "keys".

"Lie" is an intransitive verb, a word that has no object. The action stays with the subject, as it were. (The confusion between "lie" and "lay" usually comes about because the past tense of "lie" is spelled the same way as the present tense of "lay".) The principal forms of "lie" are lie, lay, have lain, and lying. For example: Today I lie in bed until noon. Yesterday I lay in bed until noon. In fact, I have lain in bed until noon all this week. Actually I am still lying in bed right now! There is no object for which the action was performed, so there is no direct object. The subject "I" performs the action, and the action goes nowhere; it stays with the subject.

So really, knowing the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs is probably the key to knowing whether to use "lie" or "lay" in a sentence. If you are going to be describing an action that is doable, with a noun or pronoun that receives the action of the verb, then use one of the forms of the transitive verb "lay". If the action you are describing is being done by the subject and "stays" with the subject, then you would use one of the forms of the intransitive verb "lie".

The etymology of the two words is also different. The word "lay" comes from an Old English word that means "to place on the ground" or "to put down". (This is also the origin of the verb "lay", meaning "to produce an egg.") The word "lie" comes from a different Old English word that means "to rest horizontally." (Yet another Old English word is the origin of the verb "lie", meaning to tell a falsehood.)

If anyone has a specific question about the usage of "lie" and "lay", please feel free to ask in the comment section.

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It . . .

2009-12-31T18:01:00.007-05:00

How would you like to go on a sort of etymological treasure hunt with me? Hmm???

My sister Barbara, who is very much a logophile, uses a bookmarker with nothing on the back whenever she is reading. When she comes upon a word that is unfamiliar to her or one that she wants to learn the origin of, she will write it on the back of the bookmark. When she has learned it, she will cross it off.

A few days ago she asked if I could help her find the origins and meanings of two words, cypocraphy and palitant. It had been a while since she'd written them down and couldn't remember in what context they were used, but I know for sure that "palitant" had nothing to do with an avatar on an online game (which is what I found when I googled it.). I've barely scratched the surface of research, so I thought I'd throw them out there to see if anyone else had any ideas or would like to join in the hunt.

My OED has been no help. The most I could find there was the word "Pali", with a capital "P" (long "A" sound), meaning a language used in Buddhist canonical books and short for "line or canon".

I'm hoping someone out there has perhaps come across one of these words or has a reference source that I don't have that may prove useful.

So please join in if you can. It'll give you something to do in 2010.

And yes, these are the sorts of things that keep me awake at night!

We have a request!

2009-11-29T12:51:00.002-05:00

Mary has requested that we do a post about the semicolon. I know that Lori is a little under the weather, and I'm sure I have more time on my hands than does Guido, so I'll do a quickie about this handy little punctuation mark.

I like the semicolon; I use it fairly often.

That's the first example of usage. Two independent clauses that are similar and are not joined by a conjunction such as and. The key is that the clauses must be able to stand on their own as a sentence. If and were in there, no further punctuation would be necessary. I like the semicolon and I use it fairly often.

I like the semicolon; however, I feel that I don't use it often enough.

I like the semicolon; I feel, however, that I don't use it often enough.

In this case, two independent clauses are joined by a linking adverb. The linking adverb is followed by a comma, or if within the second clause, offset by commas.

I like the semicolon, the exclamation point, and the ampersand; the semicolon is my favorite.

In this case, there are again two independent clauses, with internal punctuation in the first clause. This sentence could also include a linking adverb such as however in the second clause.

Some of my favorite punctuation marks are the semicolon, an underused mark; the colon, which introduces a list; and the exclamation point, which indicates emphasis or surprise.

This scenario shows the separation of a series in which each item uses internal punctuation. This is probably the usage I employ most often, for when some or all items in a series require a little further explanation, which is offset by commas.

In the first three scenarios, I think the important thing to remember is that the two clauses need to be able to stand on their own in order for the semicolon to be used correctly. A common error is for a writer to substitute a comma for the semicolon. This results in a comma splice, which is two independent clauses joined by a comma. I think many of us remember from school that a comma splice was a most egregious error!

I hope you'll give the semicolon another look; it separates elements of a sentence nicely, and can keep a writer from falling prey to run-on sentences.

Abbreviations, initialisms and acronyms

2009-10-13T09:47:00.000-04:00

In the 1990s, I worked for the Ministry of Defense in Holland, and I probably don't need to tell you that the military are art masters of the abbreviation. To a grating extent, sometimes. I used to be employed at the medical supplies division. Even if you know the Dutch, it does take a little gnashing of the cogs upstairs to work out what GNKDGDN stands for.

However, you don't need the army to make a meal of an abbreviation. Quite often, the abbreviation is there to cut down on the number of seconds, spent writing out a big long word, e.g. exemplia gratia. We all write e.g., and we all know what it means. When we speak, the phrase turns into for example.

A different form of contracting words or phrases consists of picking out the initial letters of the constituent words and putting them down as one word. The World Health Organisation is turned into WHO. Nobody will pronounce that as the interrogative who? Everybody spells out the individual letters in pronounciation. That is what you call an initialism. When the initial letters, put together, turn into a word that you can pronounce without causing confusion or difficulty, it is termed an acronym. Sometimes, additional letters are drawn in, added to initial letters, to make a pronounceable word. The word NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) is a case in point, as is SONAR (Sound Navigation And Ranging).

Wikipedia has an excellent article on this issue - the post was prompted by a letter in the Glasgow Herald of 12 October 2009.

So sorry, I'm too busy towing my cow!

2009-10-12T21:30:00.006-04:00

Photo © Tristan Savatier - http://loupiote.com/ - Used by Permission

Beth and I have noticed a lot of "cow towing" going on in the blogosphere recently, and it really must stop.

First I read a blog that began by complaining that a highly-placed politician was cow towing to foreign interests. Most recently Beth had an anonymous commenter accuse this same highly-placed politician of "cowtowing (one word this time) to just about every socialist dictator in existence". And there were a few other instances in between those two where I saw the words cow tow. So we have decided that it is time to do a brief study of the correct spelling and use of the term kow tow.

Kowtow (also koutau or kautau) is from the Mandarin Chinese kòu tóu, and it means, literally, "to knock head." From my own research I found that the noun came into general use sometime between 1795 and 1805 and was the custom of touching one's forehead to the ground to show respect or submission -- to quite literally "knock" one's "head" on the ground.

The figurative use of the term as a verb came into use in 1826, and it is as that figurative use of "acting in an obsequious manner" (genuflect, scrape, bootlick, brownnose) that the recent blogger and anonymous commenter were trying to use the term. This is not a political blog, so I am not going to get into a discussion of their opinions or arguments, but I will say that because they (and the other examples I read) used the spelling cow tow, I have no idea what point they were really trying to make and remember nothing else that they wrote. When I first read the blog entry mentioned in my second paragraph I couldn't get past the words cow tow. I couldn't have taken the blogger seriously on anything else written in that entry. I even had to go to Beth's blog to re-read the Anonymous comment to get the quote used above because all I could remember about it was that Anonymous had spelled kowtow wrong.

(Side note to bloggers who want to be taken seriously on serious subjects: If you are trying to make a valid point to readers who may not share your opinions, please try to use correct usage and spelling if at all possible.)

I found the history of the cultural and religious use of kowtow very interesting. Britannica.com says that it was

"the act of supplication made by an inferior to his superior by kneeling and knocking his head to the floor. This prostration ceremony was most commonly used in religious worship, by commoners who came to make a request of the local district magistrate, and by officials and representatives of foreign powers who came into the presence of the emperor. By the Ming period (1368-1644), the ritual, especially as made to the shrine of Confucius by the emperor and to the emperor by his officials and foreign envoys, involved "three kneelings and nine prostrations."

And the difference between kneelings and prostrations? The three kneelings were done from a standing position, and the prostrations were kowtows performed while kneeling.

There were different grades of kowtow used depending on the situation. The emperor's subjects were required to kowtow to him as described above. Commoners were also required to kowtow to government officials since they represented the emperor, and if they were brought before an official in a formal situation they were required to remain kneeling. By contrast, a person with a degree in the "Imperial examinations" would be allowed to sit down after performing a kowtow. Children were required to kowtow to their elderly ancestors, especially on special occasions. It was even traditionally required that newly married couples kowtow to both sets of parents at their wedding ceremony, to acknowledge the debt owed to the parents for their nurturing.

The word kowtow came into English in the early 19th century and described the bow itself. Very soon, however, it came to mean any groveling or abject submission, and that is how it is usually used today. A recent BBC News article reported that the former president of Pakistan had accused the Afghan president of kow-towing to India.

In modern times the kowtow is still performed in Buddhist religious ceremonies. It is not known as kowtowing, however, but as "worship with the crown" (head) or "casting the five limbs to the earth". It has all but been replaced by the standing bow in social and formal situations today.

As far as I can find out, the term is most often spelled as one word, kowtow, but it is also acceptable to spell it as two words, kow tow, or with a hyphen, kow-tow. And the "tow" part is never pronounced like "toe", but like "cow".

In researching this word I found several interesting web sites, and also learned a lot about the May Fourth Movement. You may find this site of interest, and The Word Detective is always worth reading.

Many thanks to Tristan Savatier for use of the oh-so-appropriate photo above. I shouted with glee when I saw that photograph!

Coming soon another misunderstood and misused term we've noticed recently: toeing the line! Be sure to tune in for that one!

Whose blog is this, anyway?

2009-09-20T17:23:00.002-04:00

If you enjoy words and word usage, it is your blog! Lori, Guido, and I may be the ones posting, but we share a love of language and have a mutual interest in a continued effort to improve and learn, and have some fun along the way.

My topic today is reflected in the title of this entry: who's vs. whose.

The apostrophe has been the topic here twice before: here and here. It's always worth repeating, because a misplaced apostrophe can change a well-intentioned phrase to nonsense.

Who's is a contraction of who is or who has. An appropriate use would be "Who's got the football?" or "Who's going with me to the football game?"

Whose is the possessive of who, and is used to show...well, possession. "Whose football is this?" or "Whose house are we watching the football game at?" (You could also say "At whose house are we watching the football game?" but that sounds a little stilted.)

As with other contractions, a good way to remember which is correct is to expand the contraction. In the first case, "Who has got the football?" makes sense. In the second case, "Who is football is this?" makes no sense whatsoever.

As for the score...who's counting?

I hate to say "I told you so"

2009-09-15T00:08:00.001-04:00

Please note #5.

I'm not exaggerating!

2009-09-08T01:14:00.002-04:00

At least not when it comes to the word literally.

I think we all see this word misused often; in the worst misuse, I've heard people say "Literately." [cringe]

The word means actually or without exaggeration. If you use it as merely an intensifier, you are probably misusing it. An example is "I was so angry, I literally saw red." Unless you actually had a crimson pall come across your vision, you didn't "literally" see red. However, if you say, "I was so angry that I burst a blood vessel in my eye; I literally saw red," that would be appropriate.

Make sure that if you use literally, you are presenting an accurate approximation of what really happened or what you really felt, without exaggeration. "Literally" is not meant to be used as a metaphor, but as a true representation of events or feelings.

And so on...and so on...

2009-06-14T21:10:00.006-04:00

I tend to use etc. fairly often in my blog entries, but I am going to do my best to get away from it. Etc. is the abbreviation for the Latin et cetera, and is correctly written as two words, rather than one as shown in the picture; the Latin meaning is 'and others' and the English is 'and so on.' It is very easy to tack on an etc. to the end of listed items in a sentence, but my reading tells me that it is not considered "polished," and is sometimes thought to be used by writers who can't think of anything else to add. Ouch! As I thought about my use of it, I think it is probably fairly redundant. If I have a list of three or more items, is it necessary to add an etc.? If I can only think of one example to give, I need to think a little harder, don't I?

I can't say that I'll stop the use of etc. entirely (and I can't write et cetera without hearing Yul Brynner intone it in my head), but I am going to make a conscious effort to be more aware of my usage of the abbreviation, and try to ensure that I do not overuse it.

Caritas

2009-05-31T16:52:00.002-04:00

More than a decade ago, I sang a piece by Maurice Duruflé called Ubi Caritas. How do you translate caritas? There's a challenge for you. Charity? Love? Friendship?

First of all, I have to refer to a letter in the Bible, the first from Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 13. Where it says "love", I have reason to believe that this was translated from the word caritas. What is love? Is it the love between man and wife, male and female? That is what we usually understand the word love to mean. Love, however, doesn't just cover the emotion that underpins a marital relationship. There is the love that a parent has towards a child. The love a child has towards its parent. More than that, love also exists outside family relations. There is friendship, a special branch of the tree of love, if you like.

Back to caritas. In some translations of the Bible (and don't start me off on that subject), it is translated as charity. Charity is usually understood to be the free gift of goods or money for the benefit of the less fortunate members of mankind. Particularly here in Stornoway, charity thrives. More than half a dozen charity shops, each working for a different organisation, e.g. the Red Cross, Blythswood, Breast Cancer support. the Lifeboat etc. But where does love come into that equation? The love of fellow man, I suppose. But a degree of doubt if not cynicism is creeping into my mind. Isn't it often the case that people give to charity to assuage their guilty conscience? Yes, I'm a cynic. Although it is a good thing to part with some of your worldly goods for the benefit of others, it is a distant member of the family of love. And often it is a case of seen to be doing good.

Ubi Caritas.
Love is everywhere.

I think it is eminently apt that we can't properly translate the word caritas. For it spans the whole spectrum of human emotion. I'll leave you with a performance I dug out of YouTube.

And That's Why!

2009-05-13T16:21:00.004-04:00

This is a mirror post (with one addition) from my main blog Dusty Pages. I figured since it had to do with language, it would make a good post for this blog; but since it's also about kids, I wanted it on my main blog as well. So if you already read it over there, you may want to just skip to the additional info in red.

I love some of the words and phrases that young kids come up with. We hang on to them in this house for just as long as we can because we think they're precious. That's why when Andrew said "ball bearian" instead of "ball bearing" we didn't correct him. And that's why Eler Beth pronounced it that way, too. When Andrew would ask me if I would do him a "favorite" instead of a "favor", I didn't correct that either. For every cute word or phrase they came up with, they would usually correct themselves in time, just from hearing us use the correct word or phrase. I think the "ball bearian" one was the only one that survived to kindergarten for both kids. (And in case you're wondering why a small child would even know what a ball bearing is, Thomas has always had various sizes of steel ball bearings in his possession for one reason or another, and on rainy or cold days, he and the kids used to build these elaborate tracks all through the house or apartment for the bearings to travel upon.)

I recently was going through some boxes and found evidence of one of our favorite Eler-Beth-isms. It's one that Thomas and I still use to this day, although Eler Beth can't remember saying it. From the time she learned to talk until she was about three she would say it. The phrase is "that why."

What I found down in a box on a top shelf of a closet was another smallish cardboard box, holding a few sea shells and some fossils. But apparently at one time it had held "school stuff". I know that it had held "school stuff" because it said so on the box. And since the instruction written on the box was in my own handwriting, and since Eler Beth's signature was in her pre-school handwriting, I know that it dated from before she could write much more than her name, so the "school stuff" would have been things that she considered "school stuff", things that we were working on at home. And from the "that why" that was part of the instruction I know that she couldn't have been much more than three years old when she dictated the instruction.

When Eler Beth said "that why", she meant "because." For example, instead of saying, "I'm ready for lunch because I'm hungry," using the Eler-Beth-ism one would say, "I'm ready for lunch, that why I'm hungry." Or instead of saying "I need to go to the store because I'm out of bread", one would say "I need to go to the store, that why I'm out of bread." And when you think about it, it does make since. At two and three years old, she didn't understand or know (or accept) the word "because" for some reason, but she certainly understood the concept of "because", didn't she? For what else does "because" mean if not "that's why"? Why do my joints creak when I get out of bed in the morning? Because I'm getting old, that's why. Why do I hate buying gas for my car these days? Because the price of gasoline is so high, that's why. We don't use "that why", Thomas and I, all the time, but we do occasionally toss it into our conversations to add a little bit of spice and nostalgia.

And what was the precious message on the box that my little one had dictated to me all those years ago? It was this:

"Nobody don't touch this box, that why it my school stuff!" And it was signed with a very wobbly "ELER".

I wanted to share this story with you, "that why" I knew you'd enjoy it!

Eler Beth at about the age when she would have said "that why". She was posing so prettily here, and then just when I got ready to snap the picture, she scooped up her skirt! What a meanie-mite!

I had to include the picture, that why she's so cute!

(I cropped the picture so that those of you who are concerned that the other one might embarrass my girl can rest easy now. lol)

The etymology of the word "because" is this: From the fourteenth century it has had the meaning of "for the reason that" or "on account of". Quoting The Oxford English Dictionary of English Etymology, in Middle English it was written, "bi cause, i.e. bi BY CAUSE, after OF {Old French}par cause de by reason of."

More on "Alright"

2009-04-19T20:44:00.004-04:00

As I commented below this used to really bug me, but then I found myself using it in informal corresponce -- never in professional correspondence! -- quite often. This is a link to an interesting history of the words "all right" and "alright", and there is more out there. When I have time I'll consult my Fowler's and see what it says. Check out this site in the meantime: The Maven's Word of the Day. And in the meantime use the rule "If in doubt, don't", and don't use it if you think the person you're writing to or for is going to hate it! lol See the distinction below:
Quoted from the above site:

While in general, alright can be found in all the senses of all right, in
practice there can be a real semantic distinction between the two, because the
two word form all right can mean 'all correct' or something like that, while
alright can only mean 'good; safe; healthy', etc. when used as an adjective.
(Similar distinctions are found with already and all ready, though these forms
have diverged to the point where they are not interchangable at all.) Thus the
sentence "The Kids Aren't All Right" can mean 'not all the kids are right', or
'some of the kids are wrong', while "The Kids Aren't Alright" can only mean 'the
kids are not OK'. from http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19990604

Two words in one? No.

2009-04-18T17:28:00.000-04:00

I often see "alot" and "alright" in print, but the correct usage is always in the form of two words: "a lot" and "all right."

Just remember, it takes two, baby!

A handy website

2009-04-10T10:35:00.004-04:00

I haven't spent a lot of time on this one, but in browsing through it, it looks to be a fairly good reference for word usage, especially words that are frequently confused. In fact, the name of it is Confusing Words. Of course, you have to be aware that you are confused by a group of words (such as 'there,' 'their,' and 'they're') in order to look them up!

Addendum

It seems that this website isn't functioning at the moment. I was on it yesterday, so I don't know if it's a temporary problem or if the site is down. A shame, because it was a nice little reference!

Having Truck with the word "Truck"

2009-02-24T16:23:00.005-05:00

Thomas came up with an interesting question recently. "How old is the word 'truck'? Was it around before the vehicle?"

I knew it must have been, because the word can mean "trade" or "barter". But the question made me wonder exactly how old the word is, and it also made me wonder how the term "truck garden" came about.

So the first thing I did was pull out my OED of Etymology, 1974 edition.

TRUCK¹

The first and oldest definition of the word is from the 13th century, and that was to "give in exchange". (Apparently the earliest example of this meaning in print was from the Ancrene Riwle)

"Barter", 16th century; "barter away" 17th century, as well as "dealings, traffic"; "payment in kind, good supplied instead of wages" 18th century, and; "pay otherwise than in money", 19 century.

TRUCK²

The meaning of this word as a "small solid wooden wheel or block" dates from the 17th century and moved into the 18th century as "wheeled vehicle for heavy weights", possibly as a shortened form of the word "truckle". Truckle came into our language as a "pulley, sheave" or "small roller or wheel under a bed, etc" in the 15th century. As a verb truckle came to mean to "yield obsequiously to" in the 17th century.

The word truck progressed through Middle English trukie, later trukke, to Anglo-Norman truquer, Old French troquer, (reflected, according to the OED, in Medieval Latin trocare). So the word truck has been around since at least the 13th century and has gone through several languages to reach our modern English.

Now, as for truck gardening, the Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th edition, says it is

the horticultural practice of growing one or more
vegetable crops on a large
scale for shipment to distant markets. . . . At first this type of
farming depended entirely on local or regional markets. As the use of railroads
and large-capacity trucks expanded and refrigerated carriers were introduced,
truck farms spread to the cheaper lands of the West and South, . .
. The major truck-farming areas are in California, Texas, Florida,
along the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and in the Great Lakes area. . . .

That's all well and good, but I already know what a truck garden is. I have not been able to find anything about the origin of the term. I have no idea when it started being used with relation to gardening. My OED fails me there, and so far so has the Internet.

* Other interesting usages of the word "truck" are:
as an intransitive verb, to do trucking or to drive a truck as one's work;
the slang truck on down, which means to stroll or walk in a carefree, leisurely manner;
as a rare form of the intransitive verb, peddle;
as an informal noun, dealings (e.g. have no further truck with them), which is how I used it in the title of this entry;
as an informal noun, trash, rubbish (**e.g. “Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What is that truck?” --Mark Twain).
from U.S. Military Dictionary, a wooden disk at the top of a ship's mast or flagstaff, with sheaves for signal halyards. **

Now you probably know more about the word "truck" than you ever wanted to know, but wasn't it interesting? I like it when someone asks me a word question that sends me digging into dictionaries and encyclopedias. Hope you got some enjoyment out of it as well.

And all I can say in closing is . . .

KEEP ON TRUCKIN'!

* Your Dictionary.com
** Answers.com

English...whose idea was this, anyway?

2009-02-22T01:14:00.002-05:00

A friend sent this to me, and I thought it showed perfectly how strange the English language can be. I've always heard it's one of the hardest languages to learn as a second language, and I can imagine how frustrating it is!

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Lost in translation

2009-02-19T18:32:00.001-05:00

Irish police were left red-faced in the wake of the hunt for the country's worst driver. He managed to rack up dozens of traffic violations and fines, and forces up and down the Republic were on the hunt for Polish man Prawo Jazdy. Except... Prawo Jazdy is Polish for driver's licence.

Which reminds me of foreign tourists in the Netherlands who are driving for miles, looking for the town of Doorgaand Verkeer. This features on hundreds of signs, particularly in larger towns and cities. Never with a distance indication, something that is quite common in Holland. Doorgaand Verkeer is a Dutch fata morgana,as it stands for Through Traffic.

First published on Atlantic Lines

2009-02-17T07:38:00.000-05:00

Some advertisements on the Internet are just plain stupid. One company, trying to pander its creditcard off on unsuspecting punters can rest assured of an absolutely 0% (yes, zero) success rate. After saying which normally disqualifying criteria will be considered, it says that everyone will be EXCEPTED.

Originally posted on Atlantic Lines

Imply vs. Infer

2009-01-30T19:51:00.001-05:00

Some use these interchangeably, but there really is a difference that should be observed.

Imply means to to hint or suggest. Infer means to draw a conclusion.

I try to remember the difference between the two by thinking that "imply" is something that is done to you. Someone implies that you are a nincompoop. "Infer" is something that we do...based on hearing someone's remarks, we infer that they are a nincompoop. Or sometimes I think of it in dramatic, cinematic terms. I say to the bad guy, "Just what are you implying with your remarks?" He says to me, "I'm not sure. What are you inferring?"

Read this, or I'll lump your jolly nob for you!

2009-01-28T19:10:00.003-05:00

I did a post in my Book Shelves blog today about a book called 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. I'm not going to copy the post here -- you can follow the link to read the whole thing if you'd like, and I hope you do --, but I wanted to mention it here because it's a really fun read, and I'm probably going to be using it as a source for some posts here.

There are many expressions in this "Dictionary" which have remained unchanged down to our day -- for instance, the word "Pig" as slang for a policeman. The 1811 Dictionary says, "PIG. A police officer. Floor the pig and bolt," which would mean to "knock down the officer and run away." Apparently this definition for "pig" came into use after the original Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was published in 1785, because that one lists other slang meanings for "pig", but the 1811 dictionary includes those as well as "policeman".

Another one I thought was funny was "Sea Lawyer." Can you guess what it was slang for? A shark!

The word "shark" on the other hand was slang for "A sharper; perhaps from his preying upon anyone he could lay hold of. Also a custom-house officer, or tide-waiter. Sharks; the first order of pickpockets. Bowstreet term A.D. 1785." (A sharper, by the way, was a "cheat, one that lives by his wits." A sharper's tools were these: "a fool, and false dice," according to this wonderful dictionary.) Doesn't that sound like our more modern term of "pool shark" probably came from this slang term? And who knew there were different orders of pickpockets??

I found out that I could be called a "Whither-go-ye", which is slang for a "wife". The Dictionary says that this is due to "wives being sometimes apt to question their husbands whither they are going." Isn't that cool? I think I'd rather my husband refer to me as the "old whither-go-ye" rather than the "old lady".

Well, I'd better go. I'm sitting here laughing out loud at some of the words and definitions I'm finding, and Thomas is looking rather "peery" at me (suspicious). I'm also getting a bit "peepy" (drowsy), so I'd better hop off here.

If you come upon a copy of this book at any time, I hope you pick it up; and since I know not one of my readers is "light-fingered", I know you know that I mean to buy or borrow it, not to steal it. In the meantime, come back here and I'll share a few more good ones with you now and then.

Life in the 1500s

2009-01-27T09:49:00.001-05:00

Not sure if these are the valid explanations behind the relevant terms in the English language, but it's a good try. Obtained from an anonymous source.

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water.

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs ) lived in the roof When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying It's raining cats and dogs.

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, Dirt poor.

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a thresh hold.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old..

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all n ight (the graveyard shift). to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer..

The Birds

2009-01-24T10:29:00.003-05:00

If you're like me, you enjoy knowing the origins of words. It can be surprising, and sometimes amusing, to see how a word or a phrase evolved into its present-day usage.

With a big change happening in our country this week, I wondered about the origins of "inauguration."

The word dates to 1569, from the French inauguration (no change there at all), which means "installation, consecration." The French word is derived from the Latin inaugurationem, meaning "consecration, installment under good omens," and from inaugurare meaning "take omens from the flight of birds, consecrate or install when such omens are favorable." Its Latin roots are in- "on, in" + augurare "to act as an augur, predict."

I didn't hear of a multitude of birds flying around Washington, D.C. this week, but let's hope that recent events augur well for our country!

The Old New Year

2009-01-04T10:15:00.003-05:00

Back in the year 1582, pope Gregory XIII found that the inaccuracies of the Roman calendar were getting out of hand. Although a leap year had kept aberrations on the calendar down, it now transpired that the earth was spinning 10 days ahead of schedule. His religion being Christian rather than Muslim (which states that when Mohammed can't come to the mountain, the mountain comes to Mohammed), Gregory decided to take a drastic step. He commanded that the calendar be moved forward 10 days. During the last months of 1582 and the early ones of 1583, this was implemented across Europe. Another change was that leap years in start years of new centuries (e.g. 1800, 1900, 2000) would only occur if the year number was divisible by 400.

Protestants were not always eager to follow a papal decree. In Scotland, the Old New Year was kept until fairly recently in some quarters. This led to Christmas being celebrated on January 6th (in fact the Epiphany). However, it should be pointed out that formally, the corrections of the Gregorian calendar were accepted across the world by 1923.

One Year Old on this New Year's Day

2008-12-31T19:58:00.009-05:00

Today is the one year anniversary of I Stand Corrected. And although I have been rather MIA lately, I definitely wanted to stop by to make an entry here today. Here is a link to The First Entry in the original AOL Journal from January 1, 2008, in case you missed it way back then. The following is a paragraph from that original entry:

I've wanted to do this journal for a long time, and I finally decided that
I'd start it on January 1. I want to discuss words -- beautiful, lovely,
inspiring words! I want to discuss lovely phrases, especially archaic
phrases that one doesn't hear much nowadays; perhaps words or phrases you may
have heard your parents or grandparents using, but don't hear often now. I
want to discuss styles of writing. I also want to open the journal up for
questions and answers. Do you wonder when it is correct to use "then" and
when you should use "than", for example? Email a question or leave it in
the comment thread, and someone will supply the answer.

There were 14 posts that first month of 2008, but no other month had that many. Life rather interrupts us at times and makes us put on a back burner projects that may be dear to us. If it hadn't been for Guido and Beth contributing entries, some months would have been sadly empty of posts. My goal for 2009 is to spend a bit more time on this blog, starting today.

A great site

2008-12-24T00:57:00.002-05:00

Check out the Etymology Dictionary. I think I've died and gone to heaven.

Oh, and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

I'm affected by the effect these words have on me

2008-12-19T00:29:00.002-05:00

For the most part, I think I have this one figured out, but I still like to double check myself whenever I use either of these words.

Most frequently, affect is a verb, meaning to influence or cause a change in, or to act on the emotions of. "I was very affected by such a sad movie." Effect is usually seen as a noun, meaning something brought about by a cause (i.e., a result), or the power to produce a result. "The sad movie had a profound effect on me."

Of course, just to make things interesting, we can pull a switcheroo with these words, and make affect a noun, meaning feeling or emotion. This is especially used in psychology: "The patient's affect was blunted and reduced," meaning that they showed little emotion. Use effect as a verb, and it means to produce or bring about. "The new manager plans to implement a change in suppliers in order to effect cost savings." (The change in suppliers will produce cost savings. In the sentence I gave as an example, the word "implement" could be replaced with "effect.")

If anyone has an easy way to remember the difference between the two, please share. This is one that took me many years to get straight, and it's still not automatic for me.

Better World Books

2008-12-10T19:43:00.002-05:00

If you love books, visit my Nutwood Junction blog for a discount coupon for Better World Books. They're a great company, and you can get the coupon code, follow the link, and read more about them at my site.

Aggravate vs. Irritate - further discussion

2008-12-03T09:58:00.002-05:00

I wanted to weigh in on this when we got back from our little vacation, because like Lori, I was curious to see if there was a distinction between the two words. I found this specific usage note at Answers.com:

USAGE NOTE Aggravate comes from the Latin verb aggravāre, which meant "to make heavier," that is, "to add to the weight of." It also had the extended senses "to annoy" and "to oppress." Some people claim that aggravate can only mean "to make worse," and not "to irritate," on the basis of the word's etymology. But in doing so, they ignore not only an English sense in use since the 17th century, but also one of the original Latin ones. Sixty-eight percent of the Usage Panel approves of its use in It's the endless wait for luggage that aggravates me the most about air travel.

It is also listed as a synonym in the thesaurus section.
*****

Definition source: "aggravate." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 03 Dec. 2008. http://www.answers.com/topic/aggravate

Thesaurus source: "aggravate." Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995. Answers.com 03 Dec. 2008. http://www.answers.com/topic/aggravate

Aggravate and Irritate -- A Question of Usage

2008-11-26T14:53:00.004-05:00

We received a comment on a previous post about expressions of aggravation used in my family, and I think it's an interesting question.

The comment from Paul was: Since this is a blog about usage, I have to admit to some discomfort over using the word "aggravate" to mean "irritate".

Hmm. I had never thought about the two words not meaning basically the same thing, so I did a little digging.

Aggravate: According to my OED of Etymology, the word "aggravate" can mean, among other things, "incense, provoke". This use dates from the seventeenth century and admittedly is not the earliest usage. From the sixteenth century the meaning in common use was of "load, burden; add weight or gravity to", but this meaning is listed as obsolete.

Irritate: The OED of Etymology gives the usage of "irritate" as "incite; excite to anger, fret" and dates these definitions as sixteenth century, but also lists the meaning as obsolete. However, if I look up "irritate" in the Oxford American Dictionary, the definition of "irritate" is, once again, "excite to anger, annoy."

Just out of curiosity I looked up the word "provoke". The OED gives as its first definition "incite, esp. to anger; call forth, evoke", and this usage dates from the fifteenth century.

When my mother was provoked or excited to anger she would say, "aggravation proclamation!" And I think she was expressing aggravation or irritation in doing so.

I am ready to "stand corrected", and if Paul may has more information about these two words than I have been able to find, I hope he contacts me. Has the modern usage changed so that one can't use them interchangeably? If "aggravate" can be used to mean "provoke", and if "provoke" can mean "incite to anger", and if "irritate" can be used to mean "incite, or excite to anger", then couldn't aggravate be used the same as irritate?

If anyone has more info to add to this discussion, please leave a comment or email me. As I said, it's a very interesting question and one that had never occurred to me before. I'd love to learn more about these two words, their modern usage, and their antiquated usage.

Don't be scared....

2008-10-31T23:38:00.003-04:00

'Tis a spooky night, this Halloween! Or as it is sometimes written, Hallowe'en.

You can investigate the meanings and ancient rituals behind the holiday elsewhere (a fascinating subject), but this is where we discuss words, and the word "Halloween" is a combination of archaic terms. Allhallowmas is an old term for All Saint's Day, which is the first of November. "Even" is an archaic word for evening, and in this case is contracted to "e'en." Put them all together and you get (All)hallow(mas)e'en, the evening before All Saint's Day...and I hope it was a fun one for you all!

Shakespeare Had Nothing On My Parents

2008-10-13T16:09:00.010-04:00

"When a gentleman is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths." ~~ William Shakespeare (Cymbaline)

I wonder often about the origin of colloquial words and phrases, especially certain ones used by my family. Today something aggravated me which caused me to make an exclamation that my Mother used to make. When she got irritated she used to exclaim loudly, "Aggravation Proclamation!"

Only it was more like this: Ag-ruh-VAY-SHUN PROC-luh-MAY-SHUN!

I have always loved that. It stated very simply but vehemently that she was aggravated, and it did it without using any swear words.

I don't recall either of my parents using any serious "bad" words. I heard d**n and s**t come out of their mouths once in a while, usually spoken before they took time to think, and coming after a thumb had been struck with a hammer or something like that. Euphemisms were often used, however. Today I got to thinking about some of the things they DID say and wondering about the origins.

My Mother's proclamation of her aggravation came from a school teacher known to all as Ms. Margie (Mrs. Margory Shrewsbury). She was a teacher at McQuady Elementary School, and I believe she had my sisters Dennice and Maxine as well as my brother Alton at one time or another (she might possibly have taught P.J., Lois, and Barbara for all I know -- I know I had her as a substitute when I was in high school). Apparently she used the exclamation in class, my sisters and brother brought it home, and my Mother adopted it as her own. I suppose that an expression of aggravation used by a teacher of hundreds of schoolchildren must have naturally appealed to an oft-harried mother of seven.

My favorite expression of aggravation that my father used was "Dad-blast the dad-blasted luck!" Only whenever he found it necessary to say it, the words were drawn out, and it came out like "Daaaadddd-Blaaaaasssttt the Daaaadddd-Blaaaaasssttteddd luck!" with "luck" coming out clipped and very final. I can remember hearing this one used when he couldn't find the right wrench or when coffee was spilled in his lap. It was a good universally-apt phrase, well-suited to many situations. Sometimes he would say "blast", "blasted", or "blamed" as well, but they didn't carry the disgust that "dad-blast the dad-blasted luck" carried, and I wish I knew where he got the expression.

According to The Random House Unabridged Dictionary "dad-blast" and "dad-blamed" were used in the 1830s or 1840s as euphemisms for damned or accursed. "Dad" has long been a euphemism for "God", so either of them would be the equivalent of g-d. And according to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, there are many others that start with "dad" or something similar to "dad", like "dad-burned" and "dag-nabbit" and "dag-gone".

My father was a sailor (in the Navy during WWII), so it really is a wonder that he didn't "cuss like a sailor". Perhaps he had done so during the war, but he never did so at home. One of his favorite sayings when he was irritated was "well flitter ditter!" This was said with the double Ts being enunciated very clearly: "fliT-Tur, diT-Tur". I don't remember this, but Mom says he used to say it a lot. She has no idea where he got it, though. I do remember him saying "Fiddle!" which I suppose was short for "fiddlesticks", an expression of impatience.

One of Mom's favorite expressions was "I'll be switched!" The Urban Dictionary says this is a phrase indigenous to Appalachia and expresses wonder, amazement, or befuddlement. But I think Mom actually used it to say she was at the end of her rope.

"Well I swan" or "I swanny" is a form of "I swear" or "I declare" that I've heard used by different ones in my family, though not as often as other phrases. The Oxford English Dictionary says that "swan" as a verb is U.S. slang and was probably derived from Northern England dialectal "I s'wan" or "I s'wan ye" which literally meant "I shall warrant" or "I'll be bound" and was later taken as a substitute for "swear". The OED gives four instances of "I swan" in print dating from 1784 to 1841.

"I swear to my soul!" is another one that Mom used that would probably loosely translate as "AAARRRGGHHH!", and be the verbal equivalent of pulling out her hair. According to Kristy Lashbaugh "I swear" was a common oath in the mid-nineteenth century and wasn't necessarily considered cursing in and of itself. I'm not sure how "swear to my soul" came into being, but I would think that it was originally "swear on my soul". The writer on this website posits that "I swear on my soul" means "my soul is forfeit if I'm lying."

Well, Mom would take "I swear to my soul" (which she had heard her own mother say) and tag it with an extra "I swear" -- repetition for emphasis, you know. She would say "I swear to my soul, I swear!" and then you knew you'd stepped on her last nerve. But a family story illustrates the ultimate in nerve snapping, where my mother combined her own "swearing" with Dad's "blasting".

She was busy doing something one day, and two of the younger (at the time) kids kept getting right up in her face. She can't remember what it was she was doing or who was in her face, but my sister Dennice thinks it was P.J. and Lois who were in her way. She'd probably tried several times to tell them to move back, because finally, in total exasperation, she yelled, "I swear to my soul, I swear! Get back, dad-blasted, get back!"

And my 15-year-old brother laughed and asked, "Just who does she think she is, anyway, Shakespeare?"

I'm surprised he lived to see sixteen!

Well, Here We Are!

2008-10-08T22:47:00.006-04:00

Welcome!

I look forward to spending a bit more time here at ISC now that we're in our new home. I hope that our former readers from AOL Journals follow us over, and I hope that we get many new visitors as well.

Our purpose with this blog is twofold; have fun and learn (or teach others) something new. If you're completely new to ISC, please check back over our previous posts. And don't be afraid to call us on something if we get it wrong; that's why the title of the blog is I Stand Corrected. Or if you have a question about language, words, phrases, or grammar, please leave a comment. We'll do our best to find an answer.

Looking forward to reading some great comments ~~~~~ Lori

Moving

2008-10-07T23:31:00.000-04:00

Within the next few weeks this journal will be moving to Blogger and will continue to be a shared "blog". I'll post the new URL as soon as we have one.

A nice turn of phrase

2008-09-28T18:17:00.000-04:00

A while back I read something that struck me as very nicely written. I wish I could recall the author, but I can't. They wrote that someone had "a Sequoia-sized chip on their shoulder." I like the imagery, the hyperbole, and the humor.

Hey, You Guuuyyyysssss!

2008-09-24T14:01:00.000-04:00

Today, September 24, is the fifth annual National Punctuation Day®!! Check out the web site; it's great! From a newspaper article quoted on the site: National Punctuation Day®, the holiday that reminds America that a “semicolon is not a surgical procedure,” celebrates its fifth anniversary September 24. What started as a clever idea to remind corporations and professional people of the importance of proper punctuation has turned into an everyday mission to help school children learn the punctuation skills they need to be successful in life.

I have to admit that the first thing I thought of when I found out that today is National Punctuation Day® was The Electric Company, an educational TV show back in the early 70s. I loved it then, and I still love seeing some of the re-runs. I can remember watching it at school every morning in at least one grade, probably third. I remember Morgan Freeman was a regular, as was Rita Moreno. Bill Cosby was on during the first season, and segments he had taped for the show were repeated in subsequent episodes. I still see actors and actresses occasionally and think, "Hey! I remember him/her from Electric Company!"

But what comes to my mind (quite often, I'm sorry to say) whenever I hear the word "Punctuation" was the punctuation song from The Electric Company. Remember it? Care to sing along? Well, here's a video from the show that I found on YouTube, and I've posted the lyrics afterward. Enjoy!

Title: Punctuation

Composer: Joe Raposo / Elaine Laron

Lead vocals: Lee Chamberlin, Rita Moreno

Backing vocals: Short Circus #1

(Scene: Lee and Rita, swaying in tropical outfits, with the kids chroma-keyed into the background.)

Chorus:

[SC] Punctuation. Punc, punc, punc, punctuation.

They are the little marks that use their influence

To help a sentence make more sense.

[LC] Now a period is just a little dot,

But it occupies a very special spot.

If you should see a period, my friend,

Ah, then you know a sentence just came to an end.

Chorus:

[SC] Punctuation. Punc, punc, punc, punctuation.

They are the little marks that use their influence

To help a sentence make more sense.

[RM] Now an exclamation point is saying, “Pow!

Yes, sirree! I don’t mean maybe! Boy, and how!”

When you see it there, it means you ought to say

That sentence in a MOST emphatic way!

Chorus:

[SC] Punctuation. Punc, punc, punc, punctuation.

They are the little marks that use their influence

To help a sentence make more sense.

[LC] Now a question mark is always there to show

That there’s something that somebody wants to know.

It’s as if a sentence tries to say to you,

“I don’t know the answer, but perhaps you do?”

Chorus:

[SC] Punctuation. Punc, punc, punc, punctuation.

They are the little marks that use their influence

To help a sentence make more sense.

[RM] Now a comma is that funny little sign

That says, “Hey, wait. Just a second. Hold the line.”

When you see a comma, mostly it will mean

There are words you ought to take a breath between.

Chorus:

[SC] Punctuation. Punc, punc, punc, punctuation.

They are the little marks that use their influence

To help a sentence make more sense.

[LC, RM] So if you want to be a reading sensation,

You’ve got to know your punctuation.

Did you enjoy that stroll down memory lane? I did!

Happy Punctuation Day!!!

Tags: National Punctuation Day, The Electric Company

mondegreens

2008-09-16T17:39:00.000-04:00

What is a mondegreen? It's not a literary problem, it's a speech problem. It's a spoken phrase that can mean two different things depending on the way you hear it. It comes from "She's Lady Mondegreen." or. "She's laid him on the green."

There are simple mondegreens: "last train," or, "last rain," "that's no time," or,
"that's snow time," "he's in the Jewry room," or "he's in the jury room." There's the infamous Shakespearean line that actors have to be careful of: "I hear his trumpet," instead of "I hear his strumpet."

They can be complicated as in "She had a graded dress," or, "She had a great address." And they can be very far afield, "This Malcom Eddy," or, "dismal comedy."

I wonder how many others there are. DB

Tags: mondegreens

To lay or to lie?

2008-09-14T01:39:00.000-04:00

Two verbs that I struggle with are lay and lie.

Lay means to place or put. The past tense is laid. We speak of laying something on something, such as laying a book on a table, or if you did it yesterday, you laid a book on the table.

Lie means to recline. Many times it is used with the adverb down, as in "I would like to lie down on the bed." Here is where it gets really fun: the past tense is lay, just like the present tense of the other verb! The past participle is lain. If I decided to lie down, I would lay on the bed for a while, then realize that I had lain there too long.

I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted just thinking about it. I need to go lie down!

Syntax horror

2008-09-03T10:28:00.000-04:00

The BBC ran an article on its website on the misuse of grammar. Item 10 is not incorrect: when you start firing your weapon, you open fire.

Spell check

2008-08-19T18:50:00.000-04:00

When talking with some of my fellow "wordies," we often express dismay that spell check has removed the incentive to learn how to spell.

I'm certainly grateful for spell check, because it saves a trip to the bookcase to pull out the dictionary. But all those lists of vocabulary words in grade school, participating in spelling bees (I won in third grade! I spelled rheumatism.), reading and learning about various words...was it all for naught?

Well...I don't think so. While spell check is a powerful tool, it doesn't take homonyms into account, and it is no substitute for proofreading. (One of my common typos is typing "and" instead of "an." The former happens to be a fairly common word. <grin>) Spell check will let such things as the improper use of as "to" and "too" slide, not to mention "their" and "there." There are many more. Spell check does not erase all errors, and is not a panacea for not knowing the fundamentals of grammar or spelling.

Of course, if you're going to rely on spell check, I suggest you actually use it. I recently came across the word "surroget" in my readings. You can't blame spell check for that one!

Tags: Spell check, vocabulary, grammar, homonyms

The Apostrophe

2008-08-13T00:34:00.000-04:00

From my 11-24-07 entry:

Question: When do you use an apostrophe?

apostrophe: The apostrophe has three uses:

1) to form possessives of nouns

2) to show the omission of letters

3) to indicate certain plurals of lowercase letters.

Apostrophes are NOT used for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals, including acronyms.

How to make a noun possessive: To see if you need to make a possessive, turn the phrase around and make it an "of the..." phrase. For example:

the boy's hat = the hat of the boy; three days' journey = journey of three days

Once you've determined whether you need to make a possessive, follow these rules to create one.

--add 's to the singular form of the word (even if it ends in -s): the owner's car, James's hat

--add 's to the plural forms that do not end in -s: the children's game, the geese's honking

--add ' to the end of plural nouns that end in -s: houses' roofs, three friends' letters

--add 's to the end of compound words: my brother-in-law's money

--add 's to the last noun to show joint possession of an object: Todd and Anne's apartment

Don't use apostrophes for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals. Apostrophes should not be used with possessive pronouns because possessive pronouns already show possession -- they don't need an apostrophe. His, her, its, my, yours, ours are all possessive pronouns.

__________________________

This is one of my buddy Greg's (note the apostrophe there, denoting possession) pet peeves, and it has also become one of mine. Specifically, "it's" means "it is." It is (or I could write "it's") not interchangeable with the possessive "its," as in "a leopard cannot change its spots." If you substitute "it's" in that sentence, the expanded contraction would read, "a leopard cannot change it is spots." It makes no sense.

Tags: Apostrophe

Sic

2008-07-31T07:02:00.000-04:00

This is a Latin word originally meaning "thus", "so", "as such", or "just as that".

Nowadays, it is used primarily in square brackets [sic] to indicate something of interest, and also when a word or expression is quoted verbatim - this is usually done when there is a spelling or grammatical error, or unusual usage of language.

The US constitution for instance states: The House of Representatives shall chuse [sic] their Speaker.

This store sums up its appeal as "styley [sic], confident, sexy"....

That Is To Say . . .

2008-07-30T16:36:00.000-04:00

In the past few days I have seen "i.e." and "e.g." used incorrectly; or, rather, I've seen "i.e." used when the writer obviously meant to use "e.g." So I thought I'd write a bit of a refresher here.

First of all, what does each abbreviation mean?

"i.e." stands for id est, which is Latin for "that is" or "that is to say".

"e.g." is the abbreviation for exempli gratia, which is Latin and is literally translated "for the sake of example", and which we shorten to "for example".

So how should we use them correctly?

i.e. is used to clarify something. I would use it if I were going to say, "I went shopping with my two eldest sisters, i.e. Dennice and Maxine." I have five sisters, so this clarifies which two are going shopping with me.

e.g.is used to introduce an example or a list of examples. I might say, "I always have fun when I go shopping with a couple of my sisters, e.g. Dennice and Maxine." Since I have five sisters, I chose two of them to use as examples of being fun to have along while shopping.

Another set of examples might be these:

"I enjoy an eclectic mix of music genres, e.g. bluegrass and alternative rock." I listed only two examples of the many genres of music that I like. "There is one type of music that I do not like at all; i.e. gangster rap!" In the second sentence I clarified which type of music I do not like at all.

I have taught my kids a couple of memory tricks to use if they find themselves getting confused about which abbreviation to use. The simplest way to remember is that "i.e.", starting with "i", means "in other words", which also starts with "i". And remember that "e.g.", starting with "e", means "for example", also with an "e".

One big peeve I have is when a writer over-uses i.e. or e.g. It really is okay to just say "for example", or "that is". And please don't put a space between the letters, capitalize them, or italicize them when you do use them in a sentence. They should be in lower case with no space between the periods and letters.

Tags: i.e., e.g., id est, exempli gratia, that is, for example

Huh??

2008-04-30T22:02:00.000-04:00

I saw this AOL News headline:

Bush Blaming Congress On The Foreclosure Crisis?

A quick scan of the headline had me doing a double-take. Then I had to read it a few more times. Is it just me, or does the wording in that headline mean that "the foreclosure crisis" is responsible for Congress. I'm pretty sure the headline writer meant it the other way 'round.

Shouldn't it have read "Bush Blaming Foreclosure Crisis On Congress?" or "Bush Blaming Congress For Foreclosure Crisis?"

Could one of the many, many definitions for the word "on" actually support the headline being written that way? If so, I just can't wrap my mind around it. But if you can wrap yours around it, then please email me and explain it, because things like this just drive me nuts!

I know. It's just a headline.

But it's a stupidly written headline!!

Cut short

2008-04-03T07:17:00.000-04:00

One of my pet hates is the use of abbreviations without using an explanation. There are some fairly common ones about, such as e.g. (for instance, for example). However, if you can get away without using the abbreviation, please do. I worked in the supplies division of the army for 6 years, and they are terrible for abbreviations and strange shortcuts. CSM e.g. means company sergeant major, the terror of all troops. I found guidelines for the use of abbreviations in the U.S..

Allied to that is textspeak, or should I type txtspk. When I first came to AOL, now 4 years ago, I didn't have a clue what somebody meant when they typed CUL8R. Of course, I now know it stands for "see you later". And I also appreciate that not every internet user is a 70 wpm fast typist like myself (coughs). Moreover, you can't type fast on a mobile phone keypad, and I see the need for shortcuts. However, textspeak is beginning to intrude into everyday language, and it's a degradation in my book. It's the answer to a lazy man's prayer.

En Garde!

2008-03-31T22:36:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I was listening to a heated discussion on talk radio. I no longer recall what the debate was about, but something that was said caught my ear and I listened intently for several minutes. There were two "experts", a man and a woman, with contrasting views. At one point there was a caller who agreed with the points expert #1 was making. The caller made several statements to which expert #1 would agree. After the caller made his last statement, expert #1 replied "touché". From the context of the conversation and the statement being made by the caller, expert #1 had to have meant "touché" as a word meaning agreement. Since then I have heard someone on television do the same thing. And of course, I was very irritated both times.

So, just in case there is anyone out there who isn't sure what touché means or when it should be used, here's the scoop:

The word "touché" is french for "touched", but according to the American Journal of Etymology it is not of French origin. It is believed that it was probably imported to France from the original Norse language of Norman settlers.

"Touché" is an interjection used in fencing to acknowledge a hit, and it is said by the fencer who receives the hit. In the 1800s first blood duels were relatively common. Drawing "first blood", or touching an opponent with the sword tip, was enough to win, and the loser would acknowledge defeat by calling out "touched", or "touché".

The word is used in language today to acknowledge a verbal "hit". During a debate or argument, one person may acknowledge the other's witty or appropriate response by saying "touché". But the word is never, ever used to express agreement.

Tags: Touché

Toboggin and Boggin

2008-02-18T13:24:00.000-05:00

Our recent snowfall and watching the kiddies wrapping up and getting out their sleds made me remember a pet peeve I have. I hate it when people use the word "toboggin" for the knitted, wool cap they wear. A toboggin is a light sled used for transport over snow. According to my OED the word was Canadian French, "tabaganne", taken from an Algonquin word. There are closely similar variations found in other Native American words.

I have not found (or haven't so far) the origin of the word "boggin" for a knitted, wool cap. I'm going to have to dig a little deeper, unless someone out there has a reference source for it. I am aware of the word as Scottish slang for messy or smelly, and other similar adjectives. But when did it become a name for a knitted cap?

Tags: toboggin, boggin

To Be Or Not To Be -- Silent?

2008-02-03T19:56:00.000-05:00

Yasmin asked a question in a previous comment regarding the word "herbal". She observed, "... this always irritates me when I hear it, in Britain we always say "Herbal" and when I hear people from the US it always sounds like "Erbal or Erbs why is the H silent but in spelling the H is always used, or is it just a slang that's used?"

Good question. First of all I looked up the word "herb" in my Oxford English Dictionary of Etymology, 1966. On page 437 it says, in part, "The sp. [spelling] with h is recorded from the earliest times, but the pronounc. [pronunciation] without initial aspirate was regular till early XVI." So at least as early as the 16th century the silent "h" was common.

Why is the "h" silent? The American Standard Dictionary of the English Language Fourth Edition, 2000, makes this interesting usage note: "The word herb, which can be pronounced with or without the (h), is one of a number of words borrowed into English from French. The (h) sound had been lost in Latin and was not pronounced in French or the other Romance languages, which are descended from Latin, although it was retained in the spelling of some words. In both Old and Middle English, however, h was generally pronounced, as in the native English words happy and hot. Through the influence of spelling, then, the h came to be pronounced in most words borrowed from French, such as haste and hostel. In a few other words borrowed from French the h has remained silent, as in honor, honest, hour, and heir. And in another small group of French loan words, including herb, humble, human, and humor, the h may or may not be pronounced depending on the dialect of English. In British English, herb and its derivatives, such as herbaceous, herbal, herbicide, and herbivore, are pronounced with h. In American English, herb and herbal are more often pronounced without the h, while the opposite is true of herbaceous, herbicide, and herbivore, which are more often pronounced with the h."

So apparently either is as acceptable as the other. It always sounds strange to me to hear the "h" pronounced in herb (unless the Herb being pronounced is short for Herbert). On the other hand, my mother has always pronounced the word "humble" as "'humble" with a silent "h", and that used to bug me no end! But according to that usage note, it is acceptable either way! I also found a reference that said it was more common in the South for the "h" to be silent in the word "humble", so perhaps that was something my mother got from her Virginia grandparents.

I hope this answers the question.

Tags: Silent H, herb, humble

What's The Deal With Dis-orientated?

2008-01-31T22:41:00.000-05:00

This is a re-run of an entry I made in my main journal. I thought it would fit well here:

Feeling Dis-orientated

I recently re-read (actually listened to the audio book of...) Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James and was reminded of a word that bugs the heck out of me -- disorientated. I don't know why, but it just doesn't sound right. The first time I saw it in print I thought it was a misprint. But I looked it up and it is actually a word. It means, of course, to "cause to be lost or disoriented", and the literal meaning is to "turn away from the East or (figuratively) from the right or the truth", thus the "orient" portion of the word, as in "oriental". (Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.)

I have no problem with the word disoriented, but disorientated makes my mouth feel funny! And if reading the word was bad, listening to it being read on the audio book was even worse. Made my head spin every time I heard it. And I think P.D. James uses it at least a half dozen times in that book.

Oh well. I'll get over it. Isn't it funny how some words just bug you or make your tongue feel funny when you try to say them? I do love P.D. James, though, and Death in Holy Orders is probably my favorite Adam Dalgliesh story. Love those "who-done-its."

P.S. I just checked my OED of English Etymology, 1966 and found this interesting note about the word "orient": "...place so as to face the east ...; determine the bearings of; ...ascertain one's bearings ...So, by extension with -ATE, orientate; prob. after orientaTION; situation so as to face east (of a church, east and west), bearing or lie of a thing, determination of bearings...."

But the word "disorientate" doesn't appear in this book.

P.P.S. Tag, Guido, you're it.

Tags: Disoriented, disorientated, P.D. James, Death In Holy Orders

Giving A Title Its Due

2008-01-31T22:15:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm determined I'm going to get an entry in here before the day is officially over!

I've been playing around with several ideas for entries, but then Amanda left a comment in the previous entry that I feel I just MUST address. Let's see what we can find out, shall we?

Amanda asked how to "properly give a book title its due recognition", and she wondered "how to properly do speech in writing." She wondered if she could put the actual quote on another line to emphasize it. Let's deal with the second question first.

I don't see why you can't put a quote on a separate line to emphasize it, but I wouldn't (like the example you used in your comment) put She said, on one line, and then the quote on another line. I'd just go ahead and put the words She said and the quote on the same line, or I'd just let the quote stand alone without using the words She said. I couldn't find anything that addressed this particular question, but I did find this nifty video about using quotation marks: Nifty Video About Using Quotation Marks. The only thing I'll add is that when you're writing in your journal or in any personal writing I don't see why you can't style your writing any way you want. If you're looking to get published, you'll have an editor (or team of editors) rearranging anything that needs to be rearranged, anyway.

Now, as for the first question dealing with properly giving a book title its due recognition: Unless things have changed since my proofreading days, the preferred method is to underline the title of a book or magazine. ONE CAN ALSO WRITE THE TITLE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. I have also seen cases where a book or magazine title is typed in italics, but I was not taught to do so. (I must offer a bit of a disclaimer here. I was a proofreader for a newspaper, and sometimes journalism has its own rules and regulations when it comes to these things.) I believe that it is more acceptable to underline titles. However, two exceptions to this are the Bible and the Koran. I don't think it's acceptable to underline these names, or to write them in all caps, nor would I italicize them. Often when I'm writing online I will use all caps for the title of a book, simply because underlining may make it look like a hyperlink, but otherwise I prefer underlining. Never underline and italicize a title at the same time. It just isn't done.

I found one source that mentioned that The New Yorker uses quotation marks around everything whether it's a novel, a TV show, or a short story. I think the main thing is to be consistent within your writing. Decide which you are going to do, and then stick with it.

If I find anything more definitive about this, I'll post it at a later time, and if there is anyone out there who knows what the current rules are, please leave a comment or email me.

Tags: underlining titles of books, writing dialogue

What's in a name

2008-01-31T16:33:00.000-05:00

Although I was the last to post on this blog, I thought it would be a shame to let this journal slip into oblivion, so I'm picking up the baton. What's in a name in my neck of the woods. An exercise in etymology.

Here in the Scottish islands, names are not predominantly of English origin. It is a mish-mash of Norse, Gaelic and English. The name of the Isle of Lewis, where I currently reside, is a corruption of the Gaelic Leòdhas. This in turn is a corruption of the Norse male name Leod. Completing the circle, I think the closest name in English would be Ludovic. Bearing in mind that in Gaelic, the word for "son" is "Mac", it won't come as a huge surprise that the name MacLeod occurs in abundance round here.

Names of hills are usually of Norse derivation. The suffix "val" means "hill", so you get loads of mountains whose names end in -val. Three of the hills I have climbed, or tried to climb in some instances, were called Teileasbhal (699 m), Roineabhal (218 m), and Stulabhal (550 m). Oh, in Gaelic the "bh" is pronounced as a soft "v".

Beaches and bays also carry Norse names. The name of my hometown, Stornoway, has a Gaelic name of Steòrnabhagh. The suffix -bagh (or bhagh where lenited) means bay. In the case of Stornoway, it means anchorage.

The Vikings had farms, and the name of many a village in Lewis bears witness to that, with a suffix of -shader or -bost. The tiny hamlet of Grimshader lies 5 miles south of Stornoway, along a beautiful inlet. The village of Leurbost a few miles south of that again.

Norway occupied these parts until 1296, when it lost the battle of Largs. The Vikings have long gone, as has their culture. Only in their names do they live on.

Inconsistencies

2008-01-09T17:37:00.000-05:00

English is a strange language, whether it's British or American English. I once possessed a list of all the quirks in English, like:

Why is it one mouse, two mice
Why is it one louse, two lice
Why is it one house, but not two hice?

The point was raised by Yasmin and a few other (British) bloggers about the differences between American and British spellings. In the USA, you tend to reduce the 'ou' in (e.g.) colour to 'o' as in color. Another disparity is turning the 's' in organisation to 'z' (organization). To be honest, this is something that I tend to ignore. I note it, but don't take issue with it.

I DO Stand Corrected!

2008-01-09T12:46:00.000-05:00

In her comment to the "bath-ing" entry (and a subsequent email) Yasmin said that, being British, she does use the word "bath" as a verb. Curious I pulled out my Oxford American and look what I found:

The word "bath" can be a noun or a verb in Great Britain. Here's what Oxford says: "v. Brit. 1.tr. wash (esp. a person) in a bath. 2. intr. take a bath.

So in Britain "bath" can be a verb, both transitive and intransitive. However, according to my Oxford, in Britain the word "bathe" is used when referring to a swim, and this goes along with what Yasmin told me, as well.

I will, in all fairness, email my sister, Maxine, and tell her that she wasn't totally incorrect to use "bath" as a verb; she was just using it on the wrong continent! She will get a kick out of that, believe me. (Of course, it would still bug me to hear someone say "I need to bath the kids." It just sounds wrong to my ears.)

Thank you Yasmin for your input! Aren't we all learning so much?

Note: take a bath is also slang for suffering a large financial loss.

P.S. I just noticed last night that this journal made the Friday Blogplugs list in Magic Smoke. (Guido's doing, perhaps?)

Tags: Bathe, Bath, Oxford American, Take A Bath,

Just A Few That Get Misconstrued

2008-01-09T12:35:00.000-05:00

(just a few that get misconstrued)

hear=here

leave=leaf
limet =limit
tagers =taggers
there =their
thoes=those
instructions =instructions
mailto= mail to
delelted=deleted
half-have
weather-whether

I am not sure whether this falls under typos-pet peeves or what.

Yes,Virginia-I make typos-I can't type-I hunt and peck,but I go back all the time and check for mistakes.
I'll be typing away and I get an alert and I am still typing and look up and half of what I wrote is not even there.
I try to remember what I had written so I can do it all over again.
Thank goodness we can go back and edit.

I just wish to goodness we could go back and correct our comments.
Just as my comment is saving ,I will notice a typo.
Now, do I add another comment and explain my typo-sometimes I do.
I just don't like the fact that someone may think I can't spell or speak correctly.
Which,as I've said ,I don't always write or speak correctly.I like using slang to get my point across at times.
But when a word is used incorrectly it will bug me to no end.
When I read the newspaper I do it with pen in hand .When I come to a misspelled word I must correct it before I continue reading.
My husband says to correct it in my mind and read on.
No can do my friend.

The long and short of it

2008-01-09T11:26:00.000-05:00

Two years ago, Western Isles Council (in Scotland, for those unfamiliar with my location) ordained that anyone who allowed their dog to foul pavements and other public places would be liable for a £40 ($80) on-the-spot fine.

The debate on local radio centered on whether a beach constitutes a public place. Cue the local accent. Vowels tend to get shortened in this part of the world. This means that locals pronounce "beach" as a synonym for a female dog, so you can imagine the raised eyebrows when the announcer mentioned that it was not clear whether dogs would be allowed on beaches.

"Bath"-ing the Babies!!

2008-01-09T00:08:00.000-05:00

You may find this hard to believe, but I don't go around correcting people all the time. I can think of one time that I did actually correct two of my sisters, though. It was done out of exasperation and after I had totally reached the end of my rope.

My two eldest sisters and their kids were staying with us for a long weekend. By "us" I mean my parents and me; I was about fourteen at the time. Each evening I would hear one or the other of them mention "bath-ing" the kids. "You can bath Bill and then I'll bath Sheila." "I'll bath Evonne and put her to bed, and we'll let Bill and Sheila play outside a few more minutes.", & etc!

On the last night they were there I couldn't take it any longer. I looked up from the book I was reading as Maxine walked past on her way to "bath" one of the kids. "You know," I said, respectfully, "it isn't 'bath', it's 'bathe'. Bathe is the verb."

Maxine raised her eyebrows at my fourteen-year-old presumption and asked, "Oh really?"

I said, "Yes, and it's been driving me nuts, everytime you guys say 'bath'!"

From the height of her 28- or 29-year-old superiority, she sneered, "Well, if it was 'bathe' it would have an . . . Oh!" There was a pause and she looked a little chagrined. "It does have an 'e' on the end, doesn't it?"

Maxine teaches first grade, by the way. lol

Tags: Bathe

A Prestigious Pet Peeve

2008-01-08T23:55:00.000-05:00

When I was around twelve years old I was reading something aloud when my sister, Barbara, corrected my pronunciation of the word "prestigious." I had pronounced the "i" in the middle as a long "e", and she told me that it should be pronounced as a short "i". From then on I pronounced it "correctly", and for many, many years it would actually hurt my ears when I heard someone say "pres-TEE-jus", especially if it was a news anchor. (Well, actually, it still does!)

Yes, in the root word, "prestige", the "i" is pronounced as a long-e, but then most people pronounce that word wrong, too. It should be "pres-TEEZH", not "pres-TEEDG", which is how I hear most people pronounce it. That second syllable should be pronounced softly, not with a hard "dg" sound.

Well, anyway, I finally looked up "prestigious" one day, and although the short-i pronunciation -- "pres-TIH-jus" was listed in the dictionary as the first pronunciation, meaning it was the more acceptable, the long-e pronunciation was also acceptable.

In recent years I have consulted various dictionaries, and sometimes one pronunciation is listed first, while at other times the other pronunciation is listed first. I'm sure that whatever dictionary Barbara had read -- and I do mean "read", because she used to sit around and literally "read" a dictionary -- must have only shown the short-i pronunciation as correct, because she was always very sure about such things.

The damage was done, though, as far as I was concerned. I prefer the short-i pronunciation and wince when I hear it pronounced otherwise.

The word comes from the Latin praestigiosus, from praestigiae, and I believe that the first "i" in both those words is a short-i.

Does anyone else even care about how the word is pronounced? (lol) Is there another word that makes you wince when you hear it mispronounced (or not pronounced the way you like to hear it?)? I used to work with a girl who hated to hear someone say error as "air-or". She said it was like chalk scraping on a blackboard, and she preferred it to be pronounced "air-er", whereas I can't even think it as "air-er"! {shudder!}

Tags: Prestige, Prestigious, Error

A catastrophe with an apostrophe

2008-01-04T07:16:00.000-05:00

Without going too much into the origin of the good ole apostrophe, it is an essential part of the English language, and I get annoyed by people misusing it. Apostrophes denote that letters have been omitted, and the word containing an apostrophe is either a contraction of two words, or a shortened one.

The most abused contraction is It is. Which of course gets turned into It's, if used properly.

Cue the possessive its. Example: The cat licked its fur.

Now for the confusion: It's clear that the cat has licked its fur. Some people will jumble up the apostrophes and write Its clear that the cat has licked it's fur. Cue some pretty sulphurous remarks from this writer.

Then and Than

2008-01-04T00:29:00.000-05:00

How do I know when to use "Then" and when to use "Than"?

This is a question that another journaler asked. First I'll give a simple way to remember -- Then tells When.

Now for more in-depth information about "then" and "than":

THEN can be an adverb, an adjective, or a noun.

As an adverb it is used to specify the time in question. (For example, I was then too busy.) Or it can mean next, or after, or also. (For example, Then {next} he told me to come in; Then {also} there are the children to consider.) Also as an adverb it can mean "after all", "in that case", "if what you say is true", "if you must have it so" (for example when you give up arguing with your children and you say, "all right, then!").

As an adjective "then" is used to describe "that" or "who" was this-or-that at the time in question. For example, "the then President".

As a noun "then" means "that time". For example -- then and there, as in immediately and on the spot.

THAN is always, ONLY a conjunction, like "and", "but", "or", "nor". So you are going to use "than" to show comparison or contrast. It will introduce the second part of a comparison, such as "I am younger than he is." That would be a comparison. Or it can introduce the second part of a sentence that makes a statement of difference, such as "I will season with anything other than garlic." That would be a contrast.

So Then tells When, and Than has an "a" like comparison and contrast. I hope this helps.

I'm going to finish up a few things, and then I'm going to go to bed. I'd rather go to bed now than oversleep in the morning!

Tags: Then and Than

Thank You!

2008-01-03T23:32:00.000-05:00

What a nice response we got! I appreciate everyone's comments and the enthusiasm for this journal. I really think it's going to be enjoyable.

I want to give Guido a big "thank you" for his previous post. As I said in my own comment, I knew he would add a touch of class that might otherwise be lacking!

I recently updated the resume for a friend of ours. I used the info from his old resume, plus the changes that he'd noted, then I used a little bit of license to spruce it up a bit. He was very impressed and just kept thanking me. I was actually rather nervous about doing something like that for someone else, but it also felt kind of good to dust the cobwebs off my old brain and do something like that -- since I don't work outside the home now I haven't had to use certain skills, and communicating in a business setting is one of those skills.

Well, he not only got the job, but three different people involved in the interview process told him that his was the best resume they'd ever seen. That made me feel good. Anyway, I don't want my brain cells to be covered in cobwebs when it comes to the proper way to communicate, orally or with the written word, and I suppose that is one reason why I wanted to do this journal.

I also want to share my love for language! We're off to a great start, and I look forward to more posts from Guido and from anyone else who would be interested. Thanks again!

Tag by Donna

Language

2008-01-02T16:53:00.000-05:00

Lori invited me to write in this journal, and she knows she's done that at her own peril.

I speak four languages, including (apart from English) German and French. Leaving those to one side, I have a smattering of Scots Gaelic and Italian. I'll just put in a post about one of my pet hates: the misconception in the UK that French is "easy".

Many young people in the UK take up French at school, thinking it is so similar to English. It is not. Let me explain.

All major European languages stem from a source language, called Indo-German. It has several branches: Romanic, Germanic, Slavonic, Celtic and a rest-group, containing odd ones out like Hungarian, Finnish, Rhaeto-Romanisch [Switzerland] and Basque. These are all alike in being unintelligible to readers from any of the other groups.

Having introduced the concept of branches of languages, I can now set about destroying the myth that French and English are alike. They are not. They have quite a few words in common, or appear to have. I'll close the post with a devastating put-down about that perceived similarity.

English has actually more in common with German. Both languages stem from the Germanic group, and have a common denominator in that strangely morphed language called Frisian, spoken in northern Holland. Frisian is a mixture of Danish, Dutch, German and English. Although English spelling is full of idiosyncracies, it also has things in common with Scandinavian languages, such as Icelandic. The infamous "th" is shared with the Icelandic letters "þ" (as in thing) and "ð" (as in there).

English and German people have more in common than either side is likely to be willing to admit. They are both, for a start, strongly regimented. A class system, to this day, still exists in the UK, even if no longer overtly discernible. In Germany, your social standing is denoted using any letters before or after your name.

So, what do English and French have in common? A few words? Oh really?
Let's have a look at one example.

preservative

If you are unfortunate enough to have an allergy to a food preservative, you have to be careful. So, you are across the Channel and you want to ask the shopkeeper whether the things are contained in your jar of beans. You ask him: "Est-ce qu'il y a des conservatifs dans ces haricots-verts?". You don't ask him "Est-ce qu'il y a des preservatifs dans ces haricots-verts?" because you'd be asking him if there are condoms in those beans.

A Limerick To Get Us Started

2008-01-01T23:26:00.000-05:00

English is my cup of tea,

For I like proper grammar, you see;

But my friends, with their "ain't"s,

And "got no"s, and "cain't"s,

Ain't got no respect for me!

Yes, my friends, the time has come. I am opening a new journal -- because you can never have too many journals to write in, right? And none of us can ever have too many journals to read, right?

This journal has come about because of my love of language, of words, of grammar, of correct sentence structure, of witty phrases -- and because during Eler Beth's recent language arts lessons I've discovered that there are many things grammatical which I had forgotten!

Now DO NOT BE ALARMED!!! This isn't going to be an English 101 class masquerading as an AOL Journal. It is going to be fun if I have anything at all to say about it -- and since it's my journal, I do!

I firmly believe that if one is writing in a journal or any piece of personal correspondence general rules of grammar don't have to apply. In other words, poetic license extends to prose in those instances. When I read journals, I love knowing that I'm usually reading the way the writer talks or thinks. It makes it personal and interesting. In my journal I often begin my sentences with "and" or "but", and I end them with prepositions, too (but believe me it hurts when I do that!). Donna (Mosie) recently titled an entry "Some Things I Forget To Be Thankful For" and then said that she realized if she'd wanted to be grammatically correct she'd have said "some things for which I forget to be thankful", then she asked "but who talks like that?" Well, I am ashamed to say that I do -- usually. Please remember that I have mild OCD, and that is one of the things about which I am compulsive. So don't think too badly of me, okay?

I've wanted to do this journal for a long time, and I finally decided that I'd start it on January 1. I want to discuss words -- beautiful, lovely, inspiring words! I want to discuss lovely phrases, especially archaic phrases that one doesn't hear much nowadays; perhaps words or phrases you may have heard your parents or grandparents using, but don't hear often now. I want to discuss styles of writing. I also want to open the journal up for questions and answers. Do you wonder when it is correct to use "then" and when you should use "than", for example? Email a question or leave it in the comment thread, and someone will supply the answer.

As I re-teach myself things like when to use an "appositive noun" and the difference between "main" and "subordinate" clauses, etc., I will share that here. Believe me! Somewhere there is someone who will like to know!

So please bookmark this journal and come back to visit. If anyone would like to contribute an entry, just let me know, and I'll make it possible. Even if the "words" part or the "grammar" part doesn't interest you, come back anyway, because I plan to keep the entries light and fun, even funny at times. At the very least, read long enough to give me your opinion of it, because I really want to know what others think.

Thanks for reading this far. Oh, and the limerick at the top of the entry?? During my Senior year of high school our English teacher asked us to write a limerick. I have written many different types of poems and works of prose, but I had never been able to write limericks to my own satisfaction. My sister Barbara can rattle one off in fine style, but I never could. This is my one and only limerick, and I was rather proud of it, if I do say so myself. It will be the theme for this journal. I think it starts it out on the right track, don't you?

Tags: English language, words, grammar, writing style

I Stand Corrected

Bad spelling costs money!

Spell checkers

Diffuse or defuse

Can you read any more?

Plurals

Ad"DRESS"ing a Question

Numbers and amounts

Check Out Deb's New Blog!

A Few Shout-Outs

Punctuation

A Soupy Entry

A Brief Review of LIE and LAY

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It . . .

We have a request!

Abbreviations, initialisms and acronyms

So sorry, I'm too busy towing my cow!

Whose blog is this, anyway?

I hate to say "I told you so"

I'm not exaggerating!

And so on...and so on...

Caritas

And That's Why!

More on "Alright"

Two words in one? No.

A handy website

Having Truck with the word "Truck"

English...whose idea was this, anyway?

Lost in translation

Advertisements

Imply vs. Infer

Read this, or I'll lump your jolly nob for you!

Life in the 1500s

The Birds

The Old New Year

One Year Old on this New Year's Day

A great site

I'm affected by the effect these words have on me

Better World Books

Aggravate vs. Irritate - further discussion

Aggravate and Irritate -- A Question of Usage

Don't be scared....

Shakespeare Had Nothing On My Parents

Well, Here We Are!

Moving

A nice turn of phrase

Hey, You Guuuyyyysssss!

mondegreens

To lay or to lie?

Syntax horror

Spell check

The Apostrophe

Sic

That Is To Say . . .

Huh??

Cut short

En Garde!

Toboggin and Boggin

To Be Or Not To Be -- Silent?

What's The Deal With Dis-orientated?

Giving A Title Its Due

What's in a name

Inconsistencies

I DO Stand Corrected!

Just A Few That Get Misconstrued

The long and short of it

"Bath"-ing the Babies!!

A Prestigious Pet Peeve

A catastrophe with an apostrophe

Then and Than

Thank You!

Language

A Limerick To Get Us Started