Number 40
Last week I wrote this about someone's mention of an "Irish drawl": Southerners have a drawl and the Irish have a brogue. "Drawl" means to speak slowly, which is not necessarily characteristic of the Irish. Obviously someone thought "drawl" meant "accent".
Similarly, Dilbert creator Scott Adams wrote the following in his latest newsletter:
You've probably heard the old saying, "She screamed like a banshee." I didn't learn much about banshees in school but I deduce that they are dead people who scream loudly. That seems unpleasant enough. But lately I have been learning more about the bad qualities of banshees. I've overheard these nuggets from people who apparently have detailed banshee knowledge:"I had to pee like a banshee." "My head hurt like a banshee." "I was sweating like a banshee."
As Adams has been noticing, people hear and repeat phrases they don't understand ~ "scream like a banshee" ~ and rather than find out what "banshee" means, infer that it's a vague intensifier; meaning doesn't matter. Then they reuse the words they don't understand in peculiar ways.
Again I heard someone (a TV reporter) say, "It's déjà vu all over again." As we know, "déjà vu" means the sense that you're reliving something. We all experience it from time to time. Adding "all over again" is redundant, and it's a very old joke, one of Yogi Berra's priceless malapropisms. It's a joke that everyone should hear at least once ~ it should be passed down to all generations. But I'm tired of hearing it, and I'm not even going to make the obvious joke about what it's like to hear it repeatedly, because it's not like déjà vu.
By the way, the word "malaprop" comes from the character of Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Sheridan's eighteenth-century play The Rivals. She was a comic character who mangled the language ("mal" = bad + "apropos"). "Déjà vu all over again" isn't truly a malapropism, which is substituting the wrong word for ones that sounds almost like it. But making a tired joke is bad and inappropriate, and I'm not sure that those who make this one know it's a joke. Maybe they're the same people who order roast beef with au jus (which means roast beef with with juice). Is there no one who can say "it's déjà vu" anymore without adding "all over again"?
A student of mine from Mexico City attempted (forgivably) to use the suffix "wise" in an awkward way (as, for instance, in "ecology-wise" rather than "ecologically"). Although at least one grammar source says this construction is non-standard, it's an old form and it can be OK to coin a word using this adverbial suffix, which is equivalent to the "like" which at some point became "ly" in English. However, even though the meaning may be correct, the sound of it on a too-long or the wrong word usually disqualifies it as an acceptable coinage. Also, if there's already an ordinary adverb in use, use it.
Remember Orwell's take on this structure in his book 1984 ~ I found this passage from his explication of the Principles of Newspeak:
Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix -ful to the noun verb, and adverbs by adding -wise. Thus, for example, speedful meant "rapid" and speedwise meant "quickly." . . . None of the now-existing adverbs was retained, except for a few already ending in -wise; the -wise termination was invariable. The word well, for example, was replaced by goodwise.
This alone should make you give up the use of wise as a suffix except in likewise and otherwise. The point was not that there is any particular evil in the –wise suffix, although I think it's often ugly, but that the destruction of the historical forms and their meanings is an evil. Be sure to read also Orwell's Politics and the English Language, 1946.
Someone else who teaches English to hapless foreigners noted a lesson that included discussion of the "axles of evil" (this was the teacher's spelling). No doubt the axles of evil are greased by greed while the engine of ego is muffled by mendacity.
On the whole, teaching English to foreigners one at a time is to teaching a group of American students of any age as lying on a beach under an umbrella while holding an umbrella drink is to snorkeling with a bunch (group? pod? school?) of stinging jellyfish.
For some reason I've gotten e-mail about teaching in the last couple of weeks from several people. I refer you to an excellent article in the San Francisco Chronicle by a teacher.
Another TV reporter referred to "the cult of celebrityhood." He must have felt unsure that mere "celebrity," which is what he meant, was sufficient. "Celebrity" is so commonly used to mean a famous person that perhaps people are unaware of its meaning "fame" itself (or famehood, or perhaps famousness?).
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. Feel free to comment in the Guestbook, linked below the back issue links.
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.