Number 83
From a cartoon panel: "He's been working in the yard like a banshee."
A banshee, says www.yourdictionary.com, is a "female spirit in Gaelic folklore believed to presage, by wailing, a death in a family." Someone can wail like a banshee, or even scream like a banshee, but not work like a banshee. Obviously the writer vaguely remembered that "like a banshee" is some kind of intensifier, without questioning what a banshee actually is. I've known ever since I saw the movie Darby O'Gill and the Little People.
Gus Thornton, MSPCA president, was quoted in the newspaper about cloning cats: "It serves no perceived useful purpose that I can imagine." He was commenting on the "wisdom of creating a cat in a world with no shortage of unwanted felines." I was struck by the multiple redundancies: "useful / purpose" and "perceived / imagine." Mr. Thornton is right, though. Let's take care of the kitties we've got. I wrote a sci fi / crime book about this very subject, cloning (humans, not kitties, and not published).
A home (house) show spokesman referred to the houses' extras and luxurious features as "a lifestyle issue; it's a lifestyle kind of home." A house without built-in wine racks and fireplaces and atrium living rooms also has a style, just a different one. And there's that "lifestyle" again. In PO 7, I mentioned the real estate developer who referred to a "lifestyle ambience." That was maybe 20 years ago and it's still irritating; perhaps it's time I seek medication.
It just occurred to me that the phrase "fifth wheel" is an antique, although I didn't know it has this meaning: "a wheel or portion of a wheel placed horizontally over the forward axle of a carriage to provide support and stability during turns." I can't picture this; what is it? And could a portion of a wheel turn? Anyway, I was thinking of the meaning, something or someone superfluous, but what about those huge 18-wheel trucks? Could you call someone a "19th wheel"?
A designer on a TV show on interior decoration demonstrated a wallpaper project using brown paper (like grocery bags), and said, "Smooth out the wallpaper so the wrinkles aren't sitting up so proud of the wall." I'd never heard this exact expression, but I have heard "proud flesh" from my mother. It means a bump or swollen spot or inflammation rising from the skin, higher than the surrounding skin, i.e. "proud".
You've heard of insurance companies refusing medical coverage for "pre-existing conditions," which I guess means before you bought the insurance. It must really mean that you haven't seen a doctor about it yet so there's no record of it. You can pretend you didn't know. But in fact any condition you see a doctor about "pre-exists" your visit to the doctor. Otherwise it would be something that begins in the doctor's office, in which case you can call it "iatrogenic" and sue. I expect insurance companies to decide that every illness pre-exists in your genetic makeup or your psychological temperament or your environmental stresses, and therefore you should just pay them and shut up, unless you break a leg, but even that could have been caused by a sequence of events (and thoughts) that began at the Big Bang.
On a documentary about military codes, a man said, "It's a code, not a cipher." I hadn't known there was a difference, but here it is, in case you ever get called up to do cryptography for your country (one hopes not for someone else's country): A cipher is "a cryptographic system in which units of plain text of regular length, usually letters, are arbitrarily transposed or substituted according to a predetermined code." A code is "a system of symbols, letters, or words given certain arbitrary meanings, used for transmitting messages requiring secrecy or brevity." Got that?
Someone somewhere is spelling her name "Krystyna," which with a little effort you will recognize as "Christina." You've undoubtedly met "Krystal" too. These inventive spellings must strike people as aesthetically pleasing, although that Teutonic "K" plus the substitution of the Greek "y" for "i" strikes me as incongruent. Cute, tricky spellings are not new, however. In one of Louisa May Alcott's 19th-century books, I forget which one, she mentions the fad of using French spellings at a time when all things French were in vogue, from clothes to food. "Marie" is the English "Mary" and it's familiar enough. But apparently the passion for French was causing other girls besides Mary to spell their names with an "ie" ending, like "Mollie" and "Sallie". Alcott's sensible heroine (as they all were) imagined how silly her name, "Polly", would look spelled "Pollie".
Some women in my family of earlier generations were named for precious gems (or semiprecious): one Opal and two Pearls. Crystal seems like a step down, no matter how you spell it.
Headline: "Democratic Icons" (show up at the Dem convention). Originally an icon meant a religious emblem, and beyond that it means someone of deep significance. I can't think of any living politician of any party who's made it to icon status, but maybe that's just me.
In PO 13, I complained about the misuse of "creative," in that only something with a mind can be creative; craft items don't qualify. Not everyone agreed with me, and I may be too hard-headed about that one. And yet ~ a local coffee house has for sale sets of boxes labeled "Creative Boxes" (three, square, cardboard, nesting), and again I'm troubled. The sets of boxes are covered with printed paper, in flowers or teapots, things like that. So, are they "creative" because you can decorate them? They're already decorated, although you could of course paint or re-cover them, which is true of anything you buy. Maybe they're "creative" because you, the purchaser, as the artistic individual that you must be, may decide what you're going to put into those boxes, and then, as the final touch, decide where you're going to put them.
A couple of people have mentioned the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. The title amusingly refers to the panda, I believe, which "eats shoots and leaves" but which bad punctuation can cause to eat, then shoot and leave. The June 28 issue of The New Yorker has a review of the book called "Bad Comma" by Louis Menand, who points out that Truss makes quite a few mistakes in punctuation herself, and also is inconsistent in her punctuation. Part of this, he says, is because the British are laxer about punctuation than Americans (imagine!), but part is just carelessness. He also says Truss is incorrect in some things she says about American punctuation usage, citing several specific examples from the book. I note, however, that he put the title of the book in quotation marks, not italics; could that be New Yorker style? It's not what I learned. Menand ends his essay with a discussion of literary voice, which is interesting but seems to have no bearing on the Truss book, which I still haven't read.
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