A great site

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

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

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

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

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....

'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

"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!