PARVUM OPUS

 

Number 132

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BLITZ

 

I'm happy to say that the couple of PO readers in England were not in London during the bombing. One of them,  Mike S., corrected me on my use of blitzkrieg ("the blitzkrieg of London").

 

By the way, a small point: my dictionary has both /blitz/ and /blitzkrieg/ as headwords. The latter is a noun only, meaning

A violent campaign intended to bring about speedy victory.

and would be applied to the German (ground) attack on Belgium, Holland and France in the Spring of 1940.

/Blitz/, though an abbreviation of the foregoing is both a noun and a verb, the first meaning being: A sudden or intensive (esp. aerial) attack with the object of immediate destruction or reduction of defences; spec. the air raids on London in 1940.

It is the only word used to refer to the London blitz of 1940-41.

One might even now say: I'm going to have a blitz on the garden as soon as the weather clears up.

My dictionary also thinks the verb is used intransitively in N. American football.

Cheers.

 

I think I knew this but I was in a hurry and careless. Thanks and cheers back at you.

 

Fred tells me that a blitz in (North American) football is when defensive players move into the offense. He can explain it in much more detail than I care to listen to or relay.

 

NEWS FLASH

 

Headline:

"News 5 Uncovers Details About Raging Fire"

 

Lead sentence:

"News 5 has uncovered new information about the huge fire that has been raging at a plastics warehouse since noon Thursday, News 5's Brian Hamrick reported."

 

Journalists traditionally lead with the kernel of the story. What is the news in this story? Is it the freshly uncovered information about the big fire? No, that doesn't appear until the second paragraph. It's the fact that a news department has found some news, perfectly illustrating what's wrong with journalism today. We have news as entertainment and news as product, and the reporters are packaged as the stars because that's what sells product. This story is first and foremost about how great this reporter is ~ he actually got some new information!

 

I found this bit on a city web page that links to news stories taken from local television, so what they usually run are transcripts of TV newscasts, not written journalism. This accounts for lots of bad grammar and occasionally peculiar organization of the story; it's not a written form, so perhaps the reporters don't even use scripts, just notes. However, no matter the medium, the news ought to be about what the reporter sees and hears, not about the reporter.

 

JODHPURS

 

Somewhere I ran across the spelling "jodphurs" to mean those riding pants that are very wide at the hips and tight from the knees down. While English speakers can hardly stop themselves from pronouncing the word "jod-furs", in fact the word is "jodhpurs" from the Indian city of Jodhpur. There's no excuse for misspelling the word.

 

IMPACTFUL

 

...is not yet an accepted word, and I was pained to hear it on TV yet again. I've written more than once about using "impact" as a verb meaning "affect", and why not to do it, but my words have no impact. "Impactful" is even worse, and it just sounds ugly. That should count for something.

 

TO COIN OR NOT TO COIN

 

Fred was beating his brains for a single word to mean "self-correcting", as when a jet corrects its trajectory automatically, or, more organically, when a body heals itself. I suggested that he might invent a word using Latinate parts, "auto-something or other", although that's not always a good idea. "Autorectifying"? Sometimes it's just best and simplest to stick with a multi-word expression of your thought. George Orwell might agree. Do read, or re-read, George Orwell's 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language". He wrote,

 

...the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix.... It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

 

I hasten to add that Fred is neither slovenly nor vague; quite the reverse. But there's nothing wrong with Anglo-Saxon.

 

CULTURE CORNER

 

Part of the Rules Is to Cheat

An e-mail list that sends info about current slavery in Sudan and elsewhere announced a fund-raising sale of paintings by African artists. Zimbabwean artist Tichaona Tongoona painted an interesting picture of Arabs playing cards titled "Part of the rules is to cheat?!"  Bidding starts at a low $85 on eBay. Find out more about today's slavery at iAbolish.

 

Gypsies

The other evening I met a hospital nurse who told me that sometimes the hospital has gypsies as patients. She said they are charming and good looking, and religious; they come to the hospital and pray for their friends and family. Sometimes they stay in rooms, rent-free, at the hospital, because they really are itinerant and have no place else as they pass through town, and also have no medical insurance. They also, as per the stereotype, steal everything and you have to watch your stuff. The nurse said she figures it's just their cultural tradition, it's how they make a living.

 

Gypsies are thought to have arrived in Europe from northern India in the 14th century. Europeans didn't know where they came from, though, and thought they might be Egyptian, thus the name. Their language is Romany, not to be confused with Romanian.

 

I'm not sure that I've ever knowingly seen Gypsies except on the streets of Boston, where they rather aggressively peddled their fortune-telling services.

 

Language Differences

I was wondering if deaf people ever talk to themselves in sign language. I think I would. Even now sometimes I gesticulate when I talk to myself.

 

Good Vibrators

After a couple of horrific weeks where my younger son works ~ including a chemical leak and the wounding of one employee and the death of another (off-site) ~ one of the supervisors, whose first language is not English, was trying to reassure an employee who'd been away and just learned what had happened. "Don't worry, everything is OK now and everything is only good vibrators!" A co-worker tactfully took him aside later and told him why he meant "good vibrations", but the atmosphere was considerably lightened.

 

 

 

 

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