BANISHED WORDS

Since 1976 Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, has published an annual Banished Word List. My heart and head are with them, but I might make a teeny exception for "blog," short for "Web log." True, it's an ugly word. The LSSU complainants ask, why not use "diary" or "journal"? Real diaries and journals are more or less private. Blogs are public. So maybe a new word is called for, to accommodate speedy people who find the two-syllable "Web log" too tedious.

You can send your own pet peeves to the LSSU Banished Word List, but send them to me first and we'll talk about them.

SUPPOSABLY

It has been reported that "supposably" is being heard in certain circles for "supposedly". If "supposably" were a word, it would mean something different from "supposedly" ~ it's the difference between what is being supposed and what could be supposed. The "supposable" crowd may never have thought about word endings, but certainly they're being lazy about pronunciation. To enunciate "supposedly" one has to move the tongue and lips a bit more.

VERBAL IMPLANTS

Somehow while I was driving I got caught up for a while by a radio program on dental implants, and was forced to fish around in my bag for pen and paper, also while I was driving, to record these two bits for you:

"Here's a misnomer: many children have had dental implants."

"Because of the new technologies we have, dental implants can be a pleasurable experience."

First, "misnomer" means a mistake in naming something (nomer = name, as in nomination, nominal, nom de plume, etc.). The speaker seems to have felt that anything with the prefix "mis" (meaning wrong) would do. But she simply meant it's surprising that many children have dental implants.

Second, she'd have been closer to the mark to have said that it's a misnomer to say that getting dental implants can be a pleasurable experience. They might be nice once you have them, but few dental procedures are pleasurable, unless you're like the masochistic guy in the movie "Little Shop of Horrors".

TREATMENT

Those decorators are at it again. This time someone "added a dramatic paint treatment" to all wall. That just means they painted it.

"Treatment" also means a script summary. Maybe the TV decorators all have scripts stashed away they're hoping to sell.

JUMBO SHRIMP REVISITED

Found somewhere: "obscure blues legend". Can you be a legend and obscure at the same time?

SIGNS OF OLD TIMES

About 310 A.D., Emperor Constantine is said to have seen a cross of light in the sky with an inscription, In hoc signo vinces, meaning In this sign you shall conquer. So he did (in the Battle of Milvian Bridge), and ended Roman persecution of Christians, thus beginning the Holy Roman Empire. Fred informed me that Pall Mall cigarettes also use In hoc signo vinces on their logo. I bought a pack (which Fred says to say I will definitely not smoke) to check it out. On the pack, a banner bears the Latin motto underneath a heraldic emblem with two lions rampant, holding a shield topped by a crowned helmet and carrying another Latin motto, Per aspera ad astra (Through hardship to the stars), which is the state motto of Kansas (reversed, Ad astra per aspera). And beneath all that it says in English, "Wherever particular people congregate." That's a lot of weight for a pack of cigarettes to bear. Makes me feel I ought to be smoking.

The state mottoes, you'll notice, range from the cryptic (Idaho, Esto perpetua, It is forever) to the monosyllabic (Rhode Island, Hope); from the hortatory (New Hampshire, Live Free or Die), to the tourismo (Michigan, Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice, If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look around you); to the hopelessly pedestrian (Tennessee, Agriculture and Commerce; it's from 1987 ~ how the aspirations of the slogan writers have dimmed; Utah's Industry might be at least hortatory). The mottoes are in the English, Latin, American Indian, Hawaiian, or French languages.

WHIPSTITCH

Whipstitch is a word that must be disappearing from common use as I only remember hearing it from my mother, as in, "I can't be cleaning up after you every whipstitch," meaning "often". A whipstitch is a small overcast stitch, although it also means to rafter and to plow in ridges, and of course a small interval. People don't sew much anymore.

ST. DALE

Tonight I went to hear Sharyn McCrumb speak and read from her new book, St. Dale. Some of you may remember that she and I had a little contretemps a couple of years ago because I'd called her books "mysteries." Some of them are of that genre, and in fact her books are shelved in mysteries this very day in the bookstore. (I didn't check to see whether some of them were also on the literature shelves.) But I bought St. Dale anyway, got it autographed, and look forward to reading it. It's about NASCAR, and is based on The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer.

Notice how people are still using the classics for their own works, sometimes successfully, sometimes not? The movie O Brother Where Art Thou was loosely framed on Homer's Odyssey. A recent movie called Pride and Prejudice was a very bad modern adaptation of Austen's great novel (can't find it on www.allmovie.com, maybe it's a TV movie). The movie Clueless was based on Austen's Emma, but was better. There's a new Bollywood (India's movie industry) musical called Bride and Prejudice that might be fun.

______________________________________________

I have a contribution in a new anthology about the "center of life", Changing Course: Women's Inspiring Stories of Menopause, Midlife, and Moving Forward, edited by Yitta Halberstam.

Copyright Rhonda Keith 2005. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but it is permissible to forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. You may comment in the Guestbook, linked below the back issue links.

Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list.

Return to KeithOps.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page to Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!