"SO-CALLED"

"Wondering" from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, wrote to Dear Abby asking if there's a "dress code regarding 'proper attire' for a funeral" (quotes around "proper attire" are hers), and "Why is it that this so-called tradition is so entrenched that no one wants to break it?" "Wondering" likes bright colors so that's what she wears to funerals.

Both her phrasing and punctuation reveal what she says overtly, that she has no understanding of or respect for this custom, but wrote to Dear Abby in hopes of getting some backing. Quotes around "proper attire" mean that she doesn't think it's proper, it just that other people do. So-called tradition doesn't even make sense. It's called a tradition because it is a tradition, a long-standing custom observed by most people in our culture. You might as well say so-called funeral. Tradition doesn't mean there's an official dress code on file somewhere that will get you kicked out of a funeral or out of society if you break it (unless you don't wear clothes at all in public and get yourself arrested, in which case tradition has become law).

You can put quotation marks around anything to suggest that it's not quite real, or it's only "so called". Some writers use it to indicate irony. It's a cheap trick. For instance:

America the Beautiful

O "beautiful" for "spacious" skies,

For amber waves of "grain",

For purple mountain "majesties"

Above the "fruited" plain!

"America"! "America"!

"God" shed "his" "grace" on thee

And crown thy "good" with "brotherhood"

From sea to "shining" sea!

Every set of quotation marks used in this way (not to indicate a quote) is a wink wink nudge nudge.

IF I ONLY KNEW LATIN

Mike Sykes told me more than I need to know about the ant/ent/int (and able/ible) endings:

Strictly speaking, the /ant/ent/int/ depends on the conjugation og the Latin verb from which the word is derived. In the case of /-ant/ and -/ance/ it's the first conjugation, in the case of -/ent/ it's the second, third and fourth. Though, as my dictionary rather unhelpfully points out, "Conflicting Eng., Fr., & L analogies have produced much inconsistency of use of -/ent/ and -/ant/."

Then there are -/able/ and -/ible, /as in /eatable/ and /eedible.../

If only I hadn't quit Latin in junior high. You know Parvum Opus is just a false storefront.

Latin would not be considered "relevant" in most U.S. schools today anyway, as if "relevance" matters. The point is to teach kids things not relevant to their tiny, media-ridden experience. (See the current issue of American Spectator for Roger Scruton's article on education.)

ARTS POLICY

Regarding support for artists, Bill R. referred me to a very good article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Does America Have an Arts Policy?" The link threatens to expire soon for non-subscribers, but I copied and saved it, so in case you miss it, I can send it to you.

I was moved to send the link and my own note on subsidizing artists to Miss Czar, who bemoans the lack of support for ferociously talented artists forced to get jobs after college. She is, as one might have guessed, a grad student. She wrote back, and I'll follow up with her and with you on this later.

LEGAL WRITING

Bryan Garner, who writes the Usage Tips mailings for Oxford U Press that I often quote, is giving seminars on legal writing and editing. The seminars include video clips of state and federal judges; he's interviewed about 85 since November.

By the way, in a Usage Tip last week, Garner wrote that "err" should be pronounced uhr, not air, even though we have the related "error" (airer) and "errant" (airant). Modern dictionaries allow air for "err" and although I usually go for the traditional ("our linguistic heritage") over the upstarts, in this case, I think uhr sounds like er or uh, but to air is humming.

CHINX NIX GOOGLE LINX, GOOGLE PIX FREE CHIX

Google is providing its service to China even though the Chinese government blocks some links, censoring political sites, etc. But Google is atoning with a new policy of serving only free-range eggs in the company dining rooms.

In case you're wondering, my title parodies a famous Variety newspaper headline from the 1930s, "Hix Nix Stix Pix" which meant that rural people did not go to movies about rural life. (Or maybe it was "Stix Nix Hix Pix".) Of course, I'm using "pix" to mean "picks", not "pictures". Could they get away with calling people hix nowadays? Can I get away with Chinx?

UNWANTED WORD

A review of Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary by Harry Hitchings, (Tracy Lee Simmons, The Weekly Standard, 5/29/06, p. 38), quotes from the famous dictionary:

Opiniatry: This word, though it has been tried in different forms, is not yet received, nor is it wanted.

Well, he got that right. That word disappeared.

WORD DIVISION

I learned a few rules about dividing a word at the end of a line when I was in grade school. One of them is that if you have a vowel-consonant-vowel combo at the junction of syllables, the break usually comes before the consonant. This fits most English word forms, and automatic spell checkers follow this pattern. Here's a really bad word break I found in a review of The Godfather Returns, a sequel to the Godfather trilogy:

capor-

egime

Capo means head and regime of course means the ruling power (thus, the boss of bosses), so breaking after the R doesn't make sense, and it doesn't follow the rule nor lead to correct pronunciation or comprehension as you read. I can't get my word processor to break this word, but even if you don't know the Italian word caporegime, I don't see how anyone or anything could split the word between the R and the E.

Liberty magazine, by the way (not the religious magazine, the other one), had a bit on Mafia nicknames (Eric Kenning, February 2005, p. 11), the most arresting of which (no pun intended) was Richard "Shellackhead" Cantarella.

SUMMER READING, VIEWING, AND LISTENING

Stouten Hearted Man

Self-Made Man is an interesting and well written book by a woman named Norah Vincent who went dressed as a man into several male environments to try to figure out what they're all about. Though a lesbian, she came away not only with a manuscript, but with a sense that men are after all quite human and often quite decent.

She's a tall woman but though she said she's considered a rather masculine female, she made a rather feminine man, so it took a lot of work to pass as a man. She wore extra clothing with collars to "stouten" her neck (and conceal her lack of an Adam's apple). Although "stouten" is a legitimate construction, a la toughen, I'd never seen it used to mean "make stouter" but yourdictionary.com says it is a word.

When You're In Town

The other night we went to a local production of a musical called Urinetown, a silly farce. I don't have much to say about it except that it was fun, and it sounds like "You're in town".

SOMETHING NEW! Check out the new "I Eat Dead Things" T-shirts for dogs and people, and the Protestant Work Ethic items in the Parvum Opus CafePress shop, plus a new Parvum Opus mouse pad! Now you can buy neat products with the Parvum Opus / KeithOps Catti logo at CafePress.com/parvumopus.

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories.

The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

If you buy books from Amazon using the link below, I'll get a tiny commission, and I'd appreciate it.

Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

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