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WHY NOT?

o Why don't we have the word "conascend" to go along with "condescend" (to lower oneself, go down with)? Why can't we rise to a level above our stations, or capacities, or virtues? Would it be as offensive to the person being conascended to condescension is? The word "presumptuous" doesn't exactly cover the sense I mean. I think there's a verbal gap here that needs to be filled.

o Why don't we have any words that begin with "pw"? It's an easy sound for English speakers to say.

ON THE MEDIA FRONT

Decimal Point

Alert the media! A journalist used the word "decimated" correctly!

Hurricane Wilma wiped out half of Florida's grapefruit crop and decimated its orange crop.

"Decimated" originally meant to punish an army by killing one-tenth of the soldiers. You know ~ dec, decimal, decade, ten. People now use it to mean to destroy not only a tenth of something, not only a large number, but the whole batch. I think the root dec, meaning ten, ought not to be lost.

In the case of the orange crop, about 13% of it was destroyed. Close enough.

Go Forth and Multiply

Someone wrote, "I anticipate being invited to multiple bridal showers."

"Multiple" is often used to mean many, or at least several. But that's a sloppy usage. The adjective implies duplication of the same thing, as dict.org says:

having or involving or consisting of more than one part or entity or individual; "multiple birth"; multiple ownership"; "made multiple copies of the speech"; "his multiple achievements in public life"; "her multiple personalities"; "a pineapple is a multiple fruit"

Although the bridal showers may resemble each other, it insults the hostesses to say they are clones of each other.

Those Hypocritical Quakers

In a TV documentary, Moby Dick: The Real Story, about shipwrecked Nantucket whalers, the narrator snidely intoned (in fact I think that was his name, Snidely Intoned) that the ship owners were Nantucket Quakers "who believed in peace toward humans but killed other living creatures", i.e. whales. Damn Quakers. Who writes this stuff?

Who's In Charge Here?

"Cellular phones driving 911 calls." What the writer meant was "increasing 911 calls" because most 911 calls about highway accidents come from drivers with cell phones, so dispatchers may get many calls about the same accident, which ties up the lines and slows emergency response since they have to pay attention to every call. The headline sort of makes sense, but not good sense, especially in a story about traffic, vehicular and phone. "Driving" as used here is a business buzz word meaning giving impetus to something or being the cause of something, as in "High gas prices are driving sales of wood stoves and firewood."

Just Wrong on the Front Page on the Same Day

o "What they are doing here in terms of prices is incorrigible." Well, maybe, but perhaps he meant something else like bad or inexcusable, something that starts with "in" and ends in "ble". But the root of "incorrigible" is related to the word "correct". We hope gas prices are correctible.

o "The biggest surprise about being in China was just the enormity of it." Well, maybe, but I think he meant enormous. "Enormity" suggests largeness but in a bad way, something outrageously extreme.

Kool-Aid Drinkers

Have you noticed this fun phrase popping up in the news and elsewhere lately, not referring to little kids in the summertime? Who else do we know who drank Kool-Aid? Jim Jones & Co. of Jonestown. People on both sides of the political Kool-Aid stand are referring to loyalists on the other side as stupidly, murderously, suicidally loyal Kool-Aid drinkers. It's an ill wind that blows no-one good, and it's comforting to know that if nothing else, we got a buzz word out of that monstrous fiasco. After a decent period of mourning, of course. Which leads us to the O. J. Simpson trial as commemorated in the Chrysler ad...

LOST IN MY MAILBAG

Spanish teacher Chris G. wrote about the Snoop Dogg car ad,

Snoop really says, "If the ride's mo' fly, then you must buy!" I talk like this all the time since it's siglo 21, when I'm not hablando espanol.

By the way, Snoop is suing a car dealership for "appropriating his trademark language, " i.e., "Is Bar-BIZZLE The SH-izzle." He invented this izzle thing. Isn't that sort of like the inventor of Pig Latin suing people who use it?

Chris G. is a hip teacher of espanol, but I'm still a siglo MM English schoolmarm. We met years ago in our espanol class with Miss Ellen Rowe, also an English teacher, who died earlier this year. Vaya con Dios, Ellen.

FILL IT WITH KINDNESS

On a form somewhere: "Kindly complete the below information."

I don't remember where I found this, before finding it again on the bit of paper where I jotted it down. Possibly the writer was not a native English speaker. But a native English speaker may have written it, mistaking "below" for an adjective preceding "information" rather than an adverb following "complete" and not knowing exactly what to do about it. But ... grammatically, you could perhaps make a case for either. It's just that English is a very idiomatic language, and we simply do not say "the below information".

STRAW DOGS AGAIN

Sue S. wrote, "I had somewhere in the past thought that the term straw dog was a British slang term for a common laborer." Anyone know anything about that?

NAMING OF PARTS

Sue S. also says "My heroes have always killed cowboys" T-shirts can be purchased at any pow-wow out west. Also, she has an Athabaskan friend from Alaska who prefers to be called Native American or First American, but never Indian (but he wears bright blue contacts). The word Indian, of course, comes from the error Columbus made in thinking he'd reached India, when in fact he'd arrived at what we still call the West Indies. I've written about this issue before. Here's more or less what I told Sue about why I used the term "Indian":

I used to work for an office of the National Native American Aids Prevention Center in Kansas. My boss and a co-worker preferred to be called by their tribal designations (Shawnee-Seneca, I think, and Pojoaque Pueblo, respectively), not "Indian", but my preference is not to call them Native American because I am also a native American. Meaning I am a native, I was born here, my family has been here for more than two centuries, and I don't have any place else to go. I'm Scottish-American. Does anybody care? I also am stuck calling black Americans "black". Went through the various other designations, but "African-American" doesn't work for me because what they really mean is their color. Why is an Egyptian or a Moroccan or a white South African who emigrates from Africa not called African-American? And occasionally some Americans who are black have forgetfully called sub-Saharan (black) Africans, African-Americans. People can call themselves what they want, but I do not permit inaccuracies. So there's a rap on the knuckles with the PO ruler. Ow!

Retreat: The Essence of Christian Mysticism

Bernadette Roberts

I am organizing a workshop with Bernadette Roberts, a remarkable Christian contemplative and author of three books:

The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center

The Experience of No-Self: A Contemplative Journey

What is Self? : A Study of the Spiritual Journey in Terms of Consciousness

This retreat, called The Essence of Christian Mysticism, will be held on the weekend of May 5-7, 2006, in Loveland, Ohio. For more information, go to Bernadette Roberts Retreat (www.keithops.us/brretreat.htm). The site may be updated from time to time.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

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