PARVUM OPUS
Number 227
May 24, 2007
______________________________________________
MEDIASPEAK
"He harbors no ill toward the cat that attacked him." You can harbor ill will, but can you harbor plain ill?
"This profounds the idea." We've complained about verbing nouns before, Dan E. especially, but this verbed adjective is worse. I'm afraid this could lead to verbing other parts of speech.
"In abstentia" mistakenly used for "in absentia". Could be useful, though, as in, "I was the designated driver for the evening so I went to the party in abstentia."
STRINE
Australian English is like Australian flora and fauna. The place has been sufficiently isolated to allow a sort of parallel universe to develop, sort of, but not quite, familiar. Here are a few Australian words from a Penny Press puzzle word list, with definitions I found at Koala Net, Joyzine, and Fact Monster.
arvo = afternoon
backblocks = remote area
chook = chicken
darg = work quota
dilly bag = bag made from reeds, grasses, or hair
footy = Australian Rules football
goog = drunk ("as full as a goggie" / egg)
jackeroo = male station (farm) manager trainee or hand (also jackaroo)
kidstakes = small stakes, or nonsense
kylie = boomerang
lollywater = sweet soft drink, especially if it's brightly colored
offsider = assistant
possie = job (position)
skerrick = a small quantity
smoodge = to curry favor
soony = sentimental, emotional
spinebash = to loaf
squiz = look ("take a squiz at this")
stickybeak = nosy person
strine = Australian
sunbake = sunbathe
yakka = work (noun)
COOPING
Bill R. wrote about the Harvard Coop:
It's pronounced like the
chicken coop, not like the co-op. "Co-op" is a dead giveaway of
visitorhood or very-new-froshood. Coop of Harvard and Coop of Tech (a branch)
were mainstays of the MIT student experience.
The Tech (deB* and I both worked for that paper) published a self-parody every semester, known as The Daily Reamer and Sunday Grossout. By tradition, The Reamer always contained an ad reading, "Get Eaton at The Coop."
*deB is Dave daBee, of course, who also wrote about the Coop: "The funny thing about pronouncing The Coop is that I kept hearing newcomers pronounce it co-op, clearly showing that they understand the underlying 'cooperative,' but puzzled that all the long-timers don't."
Although Bill disagreed, I insist that froshood must have two H's: froshhood. Like withhold, or threshhold. It's a compound word that can't be squashed because the H has different pronunciation functions in the two segments, as part of SH and beginning HOOD.
Dave also wrote, "I think Chinish (with a long first i) fits better than Chingrish." I think "Engrish" for tortured Japanese use of English on retail products refers to the difficulties the Japanese have pronouncing the English letter R.
(By the way, "cooping" is what cops do when they pull their cars together drivers' window-to-window to chat, or just park someplace to take a discreet nap.)
A VICTORY FOR PROFESSIONAL NITPICKING
Anne DaBee wrote:
One more anecdote from my
days as a professional nitpicker. About 10 years ago my boss editor was on a
hyphen-removing rampage, primarily because we were taking the regulations
online and hyphens confuse things. We removed hyphens from such terms as
non-standard and co-exist. Being fairly easy to get along with (and eager to
keep my job), I followed the program until I came up against co-occupants,
which when dehyphenated became cooccupants, obviously pronounced "cuckoo
pants". I won ~ the hyphen remains (in OUR stuff) to this day.
UP A TREE
Sue S. wrote:
I remember an episode of MASH
where Radar uses the phrase "up a tree without a paddle" instead of
the word "creek".
This is like many items people send in for Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams' newsletter in the "True Tales of Induhviduals" column, often mixed metaphors and malapropisms.
DEJA REVIEWS
I now own a copy of Deja Reviews, a new collection of book reviews and essays by Florence King, a real treasure trove.
In "Nice Jewish Girl" (review of Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel), she writes (regarding the Samson and Delilah story):
..."the Bible is fast
to identify women who ply their wares in the sex trade," and Delilah is
not so identified. Moreover, she is introduced with the words, "Her name
was Delilah," instead of "Delilah was her name," the former
being the Hebraic structure that indicates a respectable person.
I can't stretch my mind around that. Of course I don't know Hebrew, but I don't understand how word order indicates this sort of judgment. The only comparable example in English might be referring to a woman as "that woman" to show disapproval or possibly jealousy, but the key is "that", not word order.
In "The Man Who Defined American Culture" (review of Noah Webster: The Life and Times of an American Patriot by Harlow Giles Unger), King writes:
Webster achieved the
cultural unity he sought. America developed regional accents but we are the
only major country in history without dialects.
I'm not a linguist, but I'm not sure if that's true. It depends on the definition of dialect. Remember the Ebonics flap? Was so-called Ebonics a foreign language? The political issue was really whether public schools should teach dialects. Standard English is most useful for students. The point about Webster's accomplishment, however, with the first comprehensive American dictionary, is that we do speak the same language in this country, which is necessary for national unity. Speaking of which...
LAW AND ORDURE
Just a heads up about the illegal immigrant amnesty bill: Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined in an immigrant protest march against the city's police department. Millions of votes will be bought and paid for with this bill, because some of these non-citizens have already registered to vote.
Bryan Garner's daily usage tips included a couple of interesting items recently about sex language (not what you're thinking):
He reminds us that when it's not used as a grammatical term, gender refers to a social construct, unlike sex, which is biological. It's fashionable now to think of gender as something invented. If you walk like a duck and quack like a duck, and wear the same clothes and makeup as a duck, and maybe get a little plastic surgery and some beak and feather implants ~ does that make you a duck?
And about gay:
The homosexual sense of "gay"
first appeared in the mid-20th century; before that the word did, however, bear
the derogatory sense "leading an immoral life." That connotation has
disappeared. Today, the new sense of "gay" is standard. There's much to
be said for gays' having a more or less neutral term to describe themselves ~
something besides the familiar old dysphemisms.
But is "gay" neutral? It seems more positive than neutral, very cheerful in fact, which I thought was the point. (By the way, if you run Microsoft Word's Thesaurus over "gay", nothing comes up.) I think heterosexuals need something more cheerful than "straight". It's time for some oneupmanship. I suggest enlisting the Scottish "braw" which means more or less the same thing as gay, but sounds tougher. It's related to brave (which also means bright and bold), bravo, and brawny, and possibly comes from the Latin barbarus (related to barbarian and beard). How about braw and blithe for hetero men and women.
______________________________________________
Link here to look for books on Amazon.com, and
I'll get a little commission!
Parvum Opus CafePress shop: New: "I am here"; "Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" T-shirts; "I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron; Parvum Opus mouse pad; and more!
HUR HERALD
Parvum Opus is
now being carried by the Hur
Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun
County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10,
2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.
NEW! SHORT ORDER
Short Order is a new series of my short stories in 5
1/2" x 8 1/2" booklet format. The first two are available now for $5
each (includes mailing).
/// In Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn, a young
computer guy who dreams of becoming a big-time gambler sets up web sites for
his role model, a real big-time gambler, Stockyard Stan of Kansas City. But
when Carl comes up short on his gambling debts, he finds himself wearing
concrete boots in the middle of a Kansas cornfield. 26 pages.
/// Still Ridge is about what happens when the old-time moonshine business meets up with a predatory modern bottled water corporation. How far will Kate, a newcomer to the mountains, go to protect the water supply? 22 pages.
GET
COMFORTABLE! For women who get massage or chiropractic treatment, who
sleep on their stomachs, or have implants, try Rhonda's original Breast Cushion
to take the pressure off. Go to www.keithops.us/cushion.
WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at www.sonnyrobertson.com and www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".
SEARCH
IT OUT ON AMAZON : It is the glory of God to conceal a
thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Proverbs 25:2
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 2007. 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.