SOLIDARY

From Sue B.:

Regarding the Dutch non-word, solidary. I think the student meant "solidariteit". "In solidariteit met" is a phrase used a lot in Dutch. For example, international petition in solidarity with Orhan Pamuk (a Kurd): Internationale petitie in solidariteit met Orhan Pamuk.

I still think my student had something else in mind. She said it didn't exactly mean "in solidarity", it was something more personal, and if I remember correctly, she spelled out "solidary". Maybe it has an additional Dutch slang meaning.

HOIST ON YOUR OWN SWORD

Geraldo Rivera, talking about crash-and-burn Rev. Ted Haggard, said Haggard "fell down on his own petard." Geraldo mangled two metaphors, fall on your own sword and hoist on your own petard. Roman soldiers sometimes committed suicide by falling on, or running into, their own swords. Yourdictionary.com says about the French word petard,

"To be hoist by one's own petard," a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598), means "to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices."

Haggard was hoisted, he didn't fall on his own sword, which implies death before dishonor, like hara-kiri (or seppuku).

THE SEMICOLON

While discussing her own shortcomings in a TV comedy special (alcoholic, doesn't like sex, can't understand punctuation), Paula Poundstone asked if anyone in the audience understood the use of the semicolon. One man gave a good answer, referring to his friend in the next seat who had given a bad answer: "He can't; I can." A semicolon separates to grammatically complete sentences that are closely connected.

AS WELL AS

Dave DaBee asked a question that made me think about why as well is does not mean the same thing as and, nor is it the same grammatically. Example, you can't say:

I bought eggs, apples, milk, bread, as well as bacon.

As well as implies something outside of the series, it does not introduce another equal member. You have to put in and after milk. But Dave's question had to do with using the phrase in this kind of construction:

The onset of winter invites reflection, as well as inviting you to rake leaves.

As well as is a sort of prepositional phrase that must be followed here by a gerund. It is more like in addition to than and. If you used and, you would have parallel construction:

The onset of winter invites reflection and invites you to rake leaves.

(You could throw in as well at the end of that sentence, though.) But you couldn't say:

The onset of winter invites reflection, as well as invites you to rake leaves.

...just as you couldn't say:

The onset of winter invites reflection, in addition to invites you to rake leaves.

NOW I KNOW

Sometimes I assume I know what something means and it can take years to find out I was wrong. Examples:

Bust [my] chops: A New York boy told me it does not mean to attack or insult someone, which is what I guessed. It may have that meaning, but the boy from New York City told me it means something like this:

to push someone to the limit of his abilities, especially someone's physical skill or prowess in his area of expertise; (probably originally musical slang)

Chops means skill in music. Oddly, yourdictionary.com gives one definition as: To hold a building contractor to the letter of an agreement.

Sublimate: Somehow I always thought it had to do with repression, but it's related psychologically to the chemical term, meaning to change something from gas to solid or solid to gas without its becoming liquid; and to the word "sublime". Turning an antisocial impulse into something more acceptable is not the same as repressing it.

Nervous breakdown: An old college friend once asked, "What exactly is a nervous breakdown?" when someone we knew was said to have had one; on examination, we didn't know what it really meant, though I assumed it involved some degree of non-functioning. In fact it is not a scientific or psychiatric term (if you think psychiatry is a science), and according to How Stuff Works, it used to be called melancholia and later neurasthenia.

I hate to think of how many words I think I know, but I'm wrong about.

A VOTE FOR WINTERGREEN IS A VOTE FOR WINTERGREEN!

From Garner's Usage Tip of the Day:

"A writer, if he is to be reasonably honest, must express sentiments repugnant to a good many people." Richard Neuberger, "I Run for Office" (1947), in Think Before You Write 30, 33 (William G. Leary & James Steel Smith eds., 1951).

Another election has been accomplished without too much bloodshed and once again we may anticipate the more perfect manifestation of our national destiny in the latest crop of the elected. Mark Steyn wrote an entertaining article about election songs (this is where I snagged the title of this item). A favorite is the Boston campaign song written in 1948 about a subway exit fare, which prohibited a passenger named Charlie from getting off the subway, so he never returned. I know you know the tune. Boston is now calling its subway cards (which are replacing tokens) "Charlie Cards", which I bought in Boston recently. I miss the tokens, and I almost got squashed by their new speedy subway toll gates, and one Charlie Card couldn't be used on my return trip. But unlike Charlie, I returned, because I had more cash in my pocket.

OPINIONATED EDITORIALS

A reader wrote to the Cincinnati Enquirer complaining about the opinionated columns on the editorial page ~ not the specific opinions, but the fact that they were opinions. She didn't grasp the concept of "editorial" and unfortunately the newspaper does not answer letters in print. Editorials are not the same as journalistic reporting (at least they should not be the same, but too often reporting is slanted). Newspapers are privately owned and editors can write whatever their advertisers will tolerate.

YOOSAY YES, ISAY NO

Radio talker Dennis Prager answered a caller who corrected his definition of acronym. Prager said in popular usage, acronym means any use of initials. Wrong. It still means a word created by the initial letters of a name or phrase. USA is not an acronym because we do not pronounce it as a word (oosa or yoosa or yoosay?)

PLEASE DO NOT REWRITE HISTORY. THANK YOU.

Wal-Mart and Macy's are restoring the word "Christmas" to their holiday sales campaigns. On the other hand, New York is going to allow people who have genital-altering surgery to change the sex on their birth certificates. A birth certificate is a historical document and should not be altered. I think few of the people who choose this surgery were born with genuine physical ambiguities. And Christmas is an inoffensive tradition with the majority of Americans.

______________________________________________

SOMETHING NEW! Check out the new "Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" shirts 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.

SEARCH IT OUT

Proverbs 25:2

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

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.

NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE A MEETING OR CONFERENCE? CALL KEITHOPS.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries.

The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. 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.

Copyright Rhonda Keith 2006. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.