Number 81
I received this note from Richard Lederer (www.verbivore.com):
"I'm pleased that you have debunked the widely circulated 'Pluck you!' etymology. Almost all such Internet explanations are jokes that hosts of Internet users take seriously. I thought you might enjoy the puncturing of such theories in the second half of the attached chapter from my current book, A MAN OF MY WORDS."
First of all, I'm pleased that Mr. Lederer recognized that I was debunking the "Pluck yew!" story, obviously a joke, and didn't suspect that I took it seriously with my little addendum, which I assumed was also obviously a joke.
Second of all, I won't copy the excerpt he sent me, called "Haunted Words," but I recommend his book, which you can order through his web site, or Amazon.com and the usual other book dealers. One useful bit of advice is his warning that etymology by acronym is usually suspect, such as for "posh" ("port out, starboard home"), "tip" ("to insure promptness"), "for unlawful carnal knowledge," etc.
You've probably read as many stories about the origins of "OK" as I have; for an interesting survey (some of these stories are new to me), go to www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Okay.
Seriously, while we can make educated (one hopes) guesses at the etymology of words, credible etymology is built from finding the earliest evidence of a word's particular use, which obviously has to be its earliest known printed use, and this means combing through ancient texts, as well as learning the root languages of English. It's OK to invent etymologies for fun, but occasionally you'll find people concocting bogus etymologies devised to serve ~ well, agendas, like the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who could find a Greek origin for any word, including "kimono." That was just a movie, but etymology is used and misused to "prove" various political points and to bolster individual and ethnic egos, and, not to put too fine a point on it, to lie.
I got to hear Blue Oyster Cult at a little local festival this weekend. I'm glad some of these old bands are hanging in there even if they're not drawing the big stadium crowds. I wasn't really a follower of BOC but I loved one of their big hits, "Don't Fear the Reaper," which was popular at an interesting period of my life. Anyway, BOC may not look quite like the photos on their web site anymore (and four out of the five were wearing sunglasses), but they still rock, and "Don't Fear the Reaper" rolls.
The audience looked like they (we) were teleported from a concert 30 years ago and dropped down on the lawn ~ aged, of course, no time-warp going on, unfortunately; or perhaps everyone had sent their parents to check out the band. But there were some newish rockers there too, like the boy who looked like an Indian or Pakistani, popping his head to the beat like a turtle popping its head out of a shell. There was a young Goth woman (black clothes, black tattoo on her neck, black hair, black sleeping bag) (and no, Fred, "Goth" does not stand for "girl over the hill") whose date looked like he was dressed by J. Crew. There were a few guys who successfully continued their career as burnouts till the present and are, amazingly, still alive. The guy on stilts who made balloon animals for the kids was playing air guitar. I sat on a chair (avoiding the damp and the insects) fanning myself with an old-fashioned church-type paper fan I got from a booth promoting "Assisted Living At Its Best." Yep. I had to show my ID to buy alcohol; it's the law, but I like to think it's because I'm looking so young, uh huh.
And ~ here's your language bonus ~ a guy was wearing a T-shirt that said "I'm on vacation ~ What are you on?"
The band that opened for Blue Oyster Cult played Stevie Wonder's song "Superstition" and, like a good dweeb, I jotted down a note on the lyrics: "If you believe in things you don't understand, that's superstition." Dict.org says that "superstition" means an ignorant or irrational worship of the Supreme Deity; also scrupulosity over minor details or rituals. Good thing I looked it up, because the song got me thinking about how there's so little I thoroughly understand, up to and including electricity and the Deity.
I also love this country because one of my students, a German woman with two babies, told me about what happened to her when the battery went dead in her "certified" used Toyota. It's a long, agonizing story, but by the end of it she'd gotten an offer from a lady to drive her and her kids home, and then a jump from another lady who had jumper cables; when her car stalled again, a man physically pushed her car out of traffic; her babies got locked in the car while she tried to find someone else with jumper cables, because she'd left her purse in the first lady's car; a nearby road or construction worker called AAA and charged the tow (after the tow truck guy jimmied the lock) to his own account; and the first lady returned her purse, with her keys and cell phone. My student was amazed at the kindness and helpfulness of so many Americans. She said it wouldn't have happened in Germany ~ maybe she would have found one person to help, maybe not. She now has both jumper cables and an AAA membership.
A restaurant review says, "This relaxed, friendly establishment offers good Ethiopian food and an enlightening, authentic experience." It seems too much to expect that a restaurant be enlightening. You may pick up new knowledge about Ethiopian food, i.e. that there is such a thing. But "enlightening" suggests so much more, like becoming one with the universe, which you can only do with hot dogs: Did you hear about the guru who asked the hot dog vendor, "Make me one with everything"? As for "authentic experience," I guess that means you won't get any of that ersatz Ethiopian food we're all so tired of. Well, I was a picky eater as a kid and I've grown up to become a picky reader. But being distracted from the subject by the writing is like getting bad service in an otherwise OK restaurant.
If I'm eating alone, I have to be reading something. Could be a cereal box, could be a magazine or book. There are a few products on the market that hope to distinguish themselves by clever labels when there's nothing else to make them stand out; I have in mind a couple of beverage brands (alcoholic and otherwise). But when it comes to readable labels, you can't beat Dr. Bronner's soaps, which are sold mainly in health food stores. The late Dr. Bronner was an eccentric immigrant, idealist, and soap entrepreneur who plastered his products with his own uniquely telegraphic prose: "Absolute cleanliness is Godliness! Teach the Moral ABC that unites all mankind free, instantly 6 billion strong and we're All-One!" Maybe you'll be able to read the soap labels on his web site (I couldn't), but you could read them in the store, or even buy some; it's good soap.
"Agenda" is being used a lot these days to suggest conspiracy or Machiavellian machination; that is, if you don't like someone's opinions, sexual practices, or politics, that person has an "agenda" or secret plan underlying the apparent, surface activity or statement. In fact, the agendas you don't like are always "hidden." A few years ago a woman told me her college boyfriend had had a "sexual agenda" for her (I don't believe she said it was hidden), that is, he was thinking about it and would have liked to have sex with her. He didn't, they didn't; her non-sex agenda was stronger than his yeah-sex agenda and persisted the rest of her life, apparently. I knew lots of guys with sexual agendas, but we didn't call it that and they weren't very hidden. Anyway, it sounds to me like people you agree with have an implied philosophical foundation that need not be spelled out; people you don't agree with have a hidden agenda. Never assume.
On the tube:
Someone used the word "falsify" to mean "disprove" (i.e. to show falseness). English does allow us to coin words by using certain prefixes and suffixes in familiar patterns, but that doesn't mean it can be done at will, because certain words have a history of meaning. I've never heard "falsify" used to mean anything other than "to make false." However, I'm sorry to say that dict.org also gives the definition "disprove" accompanied by quotes from Shakespeare and Addison. It doesn't say that this meaning is archaic, but I wouldn't use the least common connotation of a word that has two opposing meanings.
Someone else said "assertation" for "assertion" and I'm happy to report that "assertation" does not appear in dict.org.
My high school Spanish teacher, who also taught English, pointed out faulty subject-verb agreement in PO 80:
This jargon as well as "pluck yew" contain a difficult "consonant cluster" which was found to be rather awkward to pronounce.
I copied this whole "pluck yew" Internet story, which a friend sent, and made a couple of corrections, but missed this one. "As well as" is not a conjunction, it is not the equivalent of "and," and therefore in this sentence it is not adding another number to the singular subject. Thus the verb should be "contains." To clarify the reading of this sentence, commas should be added after "jargon" and before "which."
When Ellen mentioned an error, I thought she was referring to this sentence:
It's the treatments that are customized (i.e. tailor-made), not your needs.
Here, the singular verb (is) seems not to agree with the plural predicate nominative (treatments), although it seems like a natural construction to me. Most discussions of "it is" problems have to do with whether one should say "It is she" or "It is her," not with the plural. But in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, I find this:
Constructions in which it is is followed by . . . a plural were troubling to 18th-century commentators, beginning at least as early as Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755). . . . What troubles them the most seems to be the occurrence of the constructions in writers like Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, and Prior.Let us sort things out a bit. With plurals the problem was never specified. . . . Modern usage consistently goes right along with Shakespeare and Pope, and no modern critic sees a problem here:
'Tis these that early taint the female soul ~ Alexander Pope (in Johnson and in Campbell)
It is they who argue for military intervention ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Harper's, March 1969It takes is, and the later verb agrees with the plural referent of its subject.
Not a totally satisfying discussion, and I don't know what's meant by "later verb," but I'm thinking this is a necessary construction. Imagine a scenario ~ yeah, in a movie ~ where somebody spots the posse and shouts, "It's them!" No English speaker would ever say, "They are them!" (or to be even more grammatically precise, "They are they!") No. Can't be done.
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