SQUIRE

Garner's Usage Tip about adding "Esq." to a name reminds us that in American English, this honorific following a name signifies that the person is a lawyer, and it is used for women now also. In British English, "esquire" means a gentleman. (No, I'm not going to say that excludes lawyers.) You're not supposed to add it after your own name, however, just other people's names.

My great-great-grandfather, William W. Bailey, was called Squire Bailey in Calhoun County, West Virginia. He was a Civil War vet (I mentioned once that he was a forage master for the Confederate Army, which probably meant he stole food for the troops), lost an arm, then came home to his farm at the age of 48. Besides farming and selling lumber, he was elected constable and deputy sheriff and justice, thus the title "Squire", which I'm sure would have been more of a local customary honorific than an official title. Yourdictionary.com says a squire is "an English country gentleman, especially the chief landowner in a district. A judge or another local dignitary."

SEE THE SITES

Here are a few sites on language to keep you busy, or keep you from being busy:

LANGUAGE LOG BLOG

Miscellany on language and culture by U. of Pennsylvania phonetician (i.e. phonetics is his beat) Mark Liberman. This one is popular enough to be listed in Wikipedia, although since anyone can post ... maybe I should enter a Wikipedia note about Parvum Opus, like when I nominated myself for, and got into, various Who's Who books.

DOUBLE-TONGUED WORD WRESTER

Fringe English, from Grant Barrett, an Oxford University Press lexicographer.

FUNWORDS

What it says, by Martha Barnett, co-host with PO reader Richard Lederer of KPBS program "A Way with Words" now available by podcast from NPR.

PONTIFICATE

A radio guy used the word "pontificate" this morning, and his partner in chat asked what it meant, then a third radio personality said it means to speak with passion. But that's not what it means. It means to speak with authority (which might or might not be passionately), and it comes from the same word as pontiff, which means pope, which comes from a Latin word meaning bridge. The verb "pontificate" when applied to anyone other than the pope usually suggests that the pontificator is being annoying, because you know how we hate for people to speak authoritatively if we do not think they are real authorities.

MAMA'S AND PAPA'S

A TV documentary about Mama Cass showed one or two album covers that used apostrophes in the band name: The Mama's and the Papa's. I always thought the record companies must have proofreaders. An Amazon search turned up The Mama's and the Papa's (import album and NOT the original band members) and The Singles + by Musicrama, not big-time labels. So it's time to remind you again about John Richards' The Apostrophe Protection Society of England.

OXFORD COMMA

Dave DaBee wrote that what I thought of as a serial comma is called an Oxford comma. F'rinstance, Wikipedia uses the classic example:

The apocryphal book dedication, "To my parents, Ayn Rand and God", creates ambiguity about the writer's parentage, because "Ayn Rand and God" can be read as an apposition to "my parents".

So, you should write, "To my parents, Ayn Rand, and God." The comma before "and" clarifies things because each element in the series is separated equally.

But suppose you have just one parent? You might write, "To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God." Is Ayn Rand your mother? If you eliminate that comma before "and" the meaning might still be unclear even though the writer does not use that Oxford comma. So for perfect clarity you could write, "To my mother, to Ayn Rand, and to God."

TRAFFIC CIRCUS

If you live in New England you're familiar with that theoretical marvel of traffic engineering called the rotary. In the Midwest it's called a traffic circle. In England, it's a roundabout. Wikipedia says it's also called a gyratory circus, but I don't believe that one even though that's what it feels like.

BEWARE OF ELOPING HUDLOOMS

Latest in the Nigerian scam e-mails: Now they're warning me about hudlooms (especially one Mr. Peter Woo) who haven't paid me my $3 million. As for other scam artists: "The above listed names are been traced/investigated by our team and some of them have elope the country."

LOGORRHEA

Logorrhea means an excessive flow of words: logo + rhea, as in the more familiar diarrhea, which is well enough known to suggest that an excess of words is not a good thing. Rhea comes from an ancient Indo-European word root meaning flow. The same root also evolved into stream. Surely logorrhea could be good sometimes, say when your mate is telling you how wonderful you are. However, maybe you remember the Woody Allen movie Bullets Over Broadway where the wonderful Diane Wiest tells the playwright who was infatuated with her, "Don't speak!" as if she were too moved to listen, but he kept speaking so she finally has to repeat very firmly, "Don't speak!" But if she'd been in love, it would have been a different script.

OPTION TO

Medical ad: "This minimally invasive technique provides an option to going under the knife." This is like saying it "provides a choice to going under the knife." It should be "provides an alternative to...."

BUT HOW DO YOU DRY IT UP?

An antique collector said that a particular piece of furniture got his "appetite wet." Sounds sloppy. What he meant was that it "whetted his appetite." Whet means to sharpen, literally as a knife blade (on a whetstone) or metaphorically as an appetite. It sounds a lot like wet, of course, hence the confusion. But we do not "wet our appetites." How would you do that anyway? Maybe you ... no, never mind.

WORDPLAY

DaBee sister and fabulous diva Suede ~ Diva la Difference! (all those DaBees like word games) ~ tipped me to a new movie, which I plan to see when it comes to town next week: Wordplay, about New York Times crossword maven Will Shortz and the celebrities who love him.

YEILD

The big parking lot of our local grocery store has lines and signs painted on the asphalt, one of which reads "YEILD". Proofreading while driving could cause an accident. If the letters weren't so close together maybe I could sneak over some night and fix it with a little paint, cover the crossbars on the E and add some to the I. Which is worse, bad spelling or bad type spacing?

As a kid I half-learned that spelling rule, "i before e except after c" followed by a few exceptions that I could never remember. But it's a useless rule. How about leisure, and weird, and lots of others? I guess that's why I only half-learned it, because it was only half right, if that.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail about the vote to declare independence, which took place two days before the completed Declaration was sent to the printers:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826.

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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.

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