Number 52
After a whole year of Parvum Opus ~ this is number 52 already ~ I would have expected the world to have corrected its offenses against language, but my work is not yet finished here, as this week's culls reveal:
It struck me as a "Do not read this sign" sign, but eventually I noticed lines extending out from either side of the first line, setting it apart from the other words. Here's a case where quotation marks would have helped. This is the phone number of the government registry of phone numbers of people who don't want to be called by telemarketers.
"Adaptated" appears in a magazine article, meaning "adapted." The writer must have been wrongly orientated by too many commentators commentating. Another journalist writes about flea market vendors "hocking everything from fresh produce to cell-phone accessories." She meant "hawking." "Hock" means to pawn. "Hawk" means to peddle (sell, not pedal). The confusion is understandable since the words sound the same, and are both concerned with selling. Nevertheless, they are quite different. From an article about a chef: "He specializes in almost everything ~ German, Spanish, and Italian foods." First, the more skilled he becomes in different cuisines, the less "specialized" he is. I suppose only God can specialize in everything. Second, as my Spanish-speaking student pointed out, he'd have to cover a lot more than these three cuisines to approach "almost everything." Some gyms are considering banning the latest cell phones from the premises as they will enable people to take pictures covertly of people in the locker room, for example, in "compromising positions," and send the pictures to others. A "compromising position" is one that can damage one's reputation, which is not the same as what everyone does in a shower or toilet that should be private. Such exposure may be embarrassing but it doesn't necessarily call one's character into question. From a documentary: ". . .get physical data with respect to UFOs." Why not "get physical data on UFOs"? A woman in show biz who loves to wear huge turbans called them "Nefertitious" (a la Nefertiti). This must be an allusion to another new coinage, "bootylicious," which its creator says she'd prefer to forget. (Why do I assume "bootylicious" is based on "delicious" rather than "malicious"?)I saw a car today with a vanity tag that says SPELBND, which is easily read as "spellbound," giving some support to the theory (see PO 41) that we could understand most words if given only the first and last letters, with the others jumbled. Maybe vowels can be eliminated. Now I'm starting to try to read meaning into every license plate I see, though ~ say, 74LB97.
I say stick to traditional spelling. A clothing company called French Connection United Kingdom, or FCUK, sells hip duds, even a line of children's clothing. Is this a label you'd want your sweet little Jessica or Justin to wear? They'd probably think it was hysterical, and way cool. This company name must have been dreamed up either by cynical geezers who'd do anything for a dollar, or snickering adolescents who can't get over the thrill of shocking people with baddish words. In either case, they probably drink nothing but Fudpuckers.
The phrase "cherish no enmity" popped out at me from David McCullough's biography of John Adams, reminding me that it is human nature to indulge, respect, and nurture our worser feelings and vices; we "nurse" or "harbor" a grudge, for instance. ("Worser" gets a red line from MS Word, but www.dict.org says, "This old and redundant form of the comparative occurs occasionally in the best authors, although commonly accounted a vulgarism. It has, at least, the analogy of lesser to sanction its issue.")
Another of my Spanish-speaking students asked me to help her figure out a letter she'd received from her mortgage company, asking her to fill out a form for the IRS. It came with several pages of instructions, all printed without any spaces between the words. She thought at first that she was reading German (see PO 21).
If you liked the parakeet's narrative in PO 45, you'll want to know about the Dog Translator, an ingenious Japanese electronic device that promises to translate your dog's barks into a digital interpretation of its emotions, of which there are basically six, according to the Animal Emotional Analysis System: happy, sad, frustrated, on guard, assertive, and needy. Victor the budgie seems to have had a more complex inner life.
Unexplained video from TV news: signs over a highway, maybe in Iraq, saying "Moslem [sic] Only Lane" over one highway lane, and "Non-Moslem" over the other. I'll take a road less traveled than either, thanks.
In the coming year, I intend to write occasionally about things other than English usage. Thanks for reading and for writing!
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.
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