Number 121
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TRADER JOE'S NOVITIATES
Trader Joe's is a fun place to shop, and it looks like it's even a fun place to work. If you've ever been in one, you know they have a little nautical theme going on, fish nets and so on, and the employees wear Hawaiian shirts. The employees have nautical titles: captain/commander and first mate/second mate, then merchant and specialist, which probably have their counterparts in Merchant Marine or Navy ranks. But beginners are called "novitiates". This is wrong for two reasons. First, it's not a seafaring title or rank. Second, "novitiate" most often means a period of time, or a place, for the training or probation of beginners, particularly of religious orders. A person is called a "novice". Although the dictionary says novitiate has been used to mean novice, most often it means time or state of initiation. I've never heard it used to refer to a person.
Bob O. wrote to me on heteronormative: "On social science systems, my basic problem is that it is yet another 'image' that we create of others. How often is there communion between two human beings? It is usually an interaction of two images rather than the human beings themselves. When we add a system to it, we increase the image formation."
From Sue S.:
I get songs stuck in my head a lot, as do most people. There was an old hymn we used to sing in church "throw out the lifeline." I remember it particularly because of this older woman who would sing it louder and off-key than the rest of us. Every time I start a case in surgery there are cords thrown off the table to drills, etc., that must be plugged in. I always hear that woman singing as the stuff is being tossed to me. One day another nurse (also southern) was helping me, and when the cords came off the table we both broke into singing "throw out the lifeline, throw out the lifeline, someone is drowning today." I was so surprised, as was she, we started laughing. She also admitted she thought of the same song when doing the same task. She also had the same woman in her church singing louder and off-key. Some things will be with us forever, I guess.
"A police officer is accused of setting a deadly arson." Arson does not mean fire. You set a fire, but you commit arson. Arson is the act of setting a fire unlawfully.
Carol Moseley Braun said making John Bolton U.N. ambassador would be like "sending a pit bull into a china shop." A minute later she said it would be like putting a pit bull in with a lamb. Aside from the mixed metaphor (my chief concern), what kind of china shop is the U.N.? And is it full of lambs?
A daycare advertised on radio that they "offer a clean and presentable" place for children. When I hear "presentable" I think of something that's acceptable, not necessarily outstanding. Hardly dynamic marketing.
Got 'tude?
Dave DaBee was disappointed that I ignored his wonderful coinage, youthitude. I didn't ignore it, I just didn't include it. But it's too good. The Spanish word for youth is juventud, using the same suffix form. English happens not to have gone that route, but youthitude is fun because it suggests attitude, therefore a youthful attitude, not just the state of being young. Let us avoid olditude.
My German student says there's a popular department store in Germany that advertises in English, "Come in and find out!" The problem is, she says, that Germans don't get the idiom "find out". If their English isn't excellent, they think it means "Come in and try to find your way out!"
More things I've learned about the USA from my students, incidentally:
The German woman's little boy was delighted to be able to buy an American flag to hang in his room. In Germany, displays of nationalism are not encouraged, for obvious reasons. (In the May 2005 Atlantic, Bernard-Henri Levy mentions that he was struck by seeing American flags everywhere as he retraced de Tocqueville's journey. The French also do not have an affection for their flag.)
In Colombia, you can't buy things on sale. Everything is always full price. Sales are great.
Fred and I went to the Smoky Mountain Banjo Workshop again last weekend. The cooks were from Alabama, and I heard a variation from one of them (Flint Patterson) that was new to me: "He didn't give flinch when. . ." instead of "He didn't flinch."
It's baby squirrel season again, and one of the little guys almost ran in front of my car the other day, provoking me to use squirrelous language. Here are definition and example for scurrilous from dict.org, which is using some amusing definitions from the 1913 edition of Webster's:
Using the low and indecent language of the meaner sort of people, or such as only the license of buffoons can warrant; as, a scurrilous fellow.
The absurd and scurrilous sermon which had very
unwisely been honored with impeachment. ~Macaulay.
In this day and age, can we refer to the "meaner sort of people" or call anyone a buffoon? We can in the dictionary.
Mike S. wrote: "May I suggest you take a look at Skeptico: What the (Bleep) Were They Thinking? ? You may find it edifying."
I was edified. It seems the film was financed by partisans of a certain channeler of a departed spirit, the "heavy-set woman" as Skeptico referred to her.
But I still think you ought to pay attention to what you say around water. Seriously, more reliable research on the remote influence of thought on matter has been done at the behest of qigong master Dr. Yan Xan. Unfortunately, activity around Dr. Yan's work seems to have faded in the U.S. in recent years, probably as fallout from the Chinese government's oppression of the Falun Gong organization (though it is quite different from Dr. Yan's work).
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