PARVUM OPUS
Number 18
LANGUAGE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Istory in the Making
A TV listing for the movie, The House of Mirth, calls it a "historical drama". Just because it is set in the past, the past being before the writer was born, or maybe before movies were invented, that doesn't mean it's "historical". Neither the movie nor the book was about a "historical" event or person. The story was fiction. "Historical" refers to actual, factual events in the past, or at least what we think happened. Movies about Pancho Villa, Abraham Lincoln, and Queen Elizabeth the First are legitimately called historical dramas, however far they may stray from the facts, but not the story of poor Lily Bart.
By the way, I'd like to know why people write or say "an historical" rather than "a historical". I always pronounce the h, and the only reason to use "an" would be to lead into a word that starts with a vowel. The h is frequently softened in "historical", but it shouldn't disappear, particularly when it's heard clearly in "history". The Oxford Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage says: "Practice differs with h-words in which the first syllable is unstressed: a (or an) habitual criminal; a (or an) hotel. There is evidence, especially in written English, for the continued use of an before . . . historian, historical . . . but the choice of form remains open." Well, of course they're British, aren't they? But in Cockney speech, dropping the h in the wrong words is the mark of someone who is of a lower class and less educated than those who remark on this sort of thing. How do they distinguish then? Besides that, I don’t see the logic. Why should written English vary from spoken in this case? Did anyone grow up aspirating the h in history, but omitting it in "historic"? And where did that American aitch go? I suppose I think it's an affectation because I first heard "an historical" uttered by an American who'd traveled in England, cultivated British literary celebrities, and was an arse.
Tubal Locution: War Reporting
In a TV interview a college girl protesting the war said, "I think this attack on Saddam Hussein is nepotism." The reporter moved his microphone along to the next student without remark. Maybe he didn't know what "nepotism" means either.
"We're not into nation building yet," said a news commentator, "we're still into nation dissembling." Very likely, but I think he meant "disassembling". (By the way, how did we end up with "commentator" instead of "commentor"? It's like "orientate" instead of "orient" except that is incorrect and "commentator" is correct.)
"Suicide bombers" are turning into "homicide bombers" lately. Accurate but the emphasis is different.
One of the many retired military personnel commenting on the war referred to what sounded like a "kill sack" that could develop in Baghdad. He may have meant "cul de sac" but if so, the fuzzy pronunciation expressed the idea very well.
Discuss amongst yourselves: Fred noticed that recently someone on TV reported that the administration says the war is going "swimmingly" and shortly thereafter he kept hearing "swimmingly" out of the mouths of several other reporters. The question is, what is the mechanism whereby a word, not necessarily a new coinage, suddenly becomes impressed on many people's minds as an interesting word to use, and then becomes at least a conspicuous word? I think it's a chain reaction, not a simultaneous occurrence, where a meme spreads like a virus.
". . . that building [was] essentially destroyed." That building was rubble. It was destroyed not just in essence but in detail. It was an unbuilding.
More or less a quote from the news: "After a bombing in Basrah, a body was identified as Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid aka 'Chemical Ali's' bodyguard." This isn't the exact quote but it's pretty close. The word order is at issue here. The first problem is that the sentence leads us to anticipate the death of Chemical Ali himself; who cares about the bodyguard? He wasn't even named. The second problem is the awkwardness of the syntax when a very long string has to be made a possessive of "bodyguard". Better to say, ". . . a body was identified as the bodyguard of etc." Similarly, some years ago I edited a sentence something like this: "'Blah blah blah,' Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of Everything Important in the Johnson Manufacturing Company John J. Johnson, Jr. said." I changed it to, "'Blah blah blah,' said Chief etc." The writer changed it back, leaving "said" twisting in the wind, far from its direct object, which in this case was the quotation. Stet happens.
Ad Enough
TV ad: "If you want to grow significant hair . . ."
Impressive hair. Noteworthy, momentous, rare hair. Eloquent, pithy, suggestive, weighty hair. Yes, I want all that and more. But I suspect the advertisers can't give me that. They are promising quantity rather than quality, though to a balding person, quantity is quality.
"Significant" is often used to mean "substantial" when referring to quantity, as in, "The company realized significant profits in fiscal year 2000." But "significant" signifies a sign, it denotes meaning, not an amount, nor necessarily a large amount. After all, low or nonexistent profits could be significant. They could signify something bad. The word is becoming a synonym for "large", which is of course not as large a word as "significant", which sounds more ~ significant.
Radio ad: "The baseball season is in full gear." No, it wasn't an ad for a sports equipment store. Is full gear the opposite of low gear? Is it the same as full bloom?
Copyright Rhonda Keith 2003. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but it is permissible to forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.
Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services (www.keithops.us).
Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. If you don’t want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with “unsubscribe,” “quit,” “enough,” or something like that in the subject line, and I’ll take you off the mailing list.
Return to KeithOps.
