May 30, 2009
Sotomayor and rhetoric
Brad DeLong raps my knuckles for being cavalier about the sentence talking heads have been endlessly parsing from Sotomayor's Berkeley speech. Here's the full paragraph: Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in...
May 28, 2009
Language Police Twitter Edition
What do you call a dsigraced former House speaker who is also a "loggorheic ideological narcissist with a twitter account?"
May 27, 2009
More on "testament"
Turns out that "testamentum" is St. Jerome's translation of the Greek διαθήκη, which can mean either "covenant" or "will," and which the Septuagint uses to translate the Hebrew b'rith.
May 22, 2009
In which I get language-policed
No, rabbis imitating the bad behavior of priests is not, strictly speaking, ecumenical activity; it's really interfaith work.
May 21, 2009
From the language police blotter: testaments and testimonies
"Testimony" is evidence given by a witness. A "testament" is a compact.
April 03, 2009
Explaining with simple tools
Why does the Red River of the North do like it do? Because the country it flows through is so flat. How flat? ... the river flows very slowly across a pancake-flat landscape. Imagine raising an eight-foot-long sheet of plywood just enough to slip a single sheet of paper under the raised end. The resulting minuscule tilt of the board...
February 26, 2009
Wards of the state
In support of using the terminology of guardianship for temporary bank nationalization.
February 20, 2009
February 12, 2009
Stereotypes about Los Angeles and sprawl
Let's be precise when we try to debunk stereotypes about sprawl.
February 03, 2009
Wish-I'd-said-that-MORE-dep't
Upton Sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. More words than Hume, but I like Sinclair's formulation better. Your mileage may vary....
January 25, 2009
Responsibility without Guilt: A Proposed Palestinian Refugee Narrative
Perhaps Israel can acknowledge responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem without acknowledging guilt.
December 12, 2008
Another Czar?
Now, consumer groups want a "consumer czar." This will be added to the drug czar, the energy czar, the climate czar, the car czar, and the counterterrorism czar. In order to make sure all these czars do not impede each other, they will all be coordinated by the czar czar. Just wait....
December 11, 2008
Political etymology
American czars: Speaker Reed, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Frank Zarb, Bill Bennett.
December 08, 2008
Stuck Around St. Petersburg
Now, people are talking about an "car czar" to restructure Detroit. This should not be confused with the "climate czar" that many have proposed, the "energy czar" that others have pressed on Obama (which itself should not be confused with the "energy czar" from the 1970's), the "Iraq czar" that was briefly floated in 2007 by the Bush Administration, Tom...
September 03, 2008
Consultant Speak -- Usages to Avoid
A break from politics to highlight some useless high-priced usage
August 22, 2008
Confidence game
Goldman Sachs worries that American Insurance Group might suffer from "an impairment of counterparty confidence."
July 28, 2008
More California linguistics
Angelenos give the definite article to highway numbers ("Take the 10 East to the 405 North"). San Franciscans give the definite article to neighborhood names "the Mission is between the Castro and the Haight").
June 29, 2008
Note to bloggers and other journalists: "reign in"
... meaning "restrain," should be spelled "rein in."
May 05, 2008
From the language-police blotter
Is it sexist to say that Hillary Clinton is trying to "claw her way" to the nomination? That Sen. Obama managed to "ram one of her lies back down her throat"? Would it be sexist to use the same images about Rudy Giuliani or John McCain?
March 31, 2008
March 27, 2008
March 25, 2008
Urdon't
The new PM of Pakistan is being sworn in, in English. Sounds odd. Apparently, Urdu is the national language and the language of the Constitution, but English is the official language. I understand that there’s a lot of resentment against native Urdu speakers and the dread Indian influence, but almost everyone understands Urdu, whereas only about half the population understands...
March 17, 2008
March 15, 2008
March 01, 2008
February 22, 2008
February 07, 2008
January 27, 2008
Wish-I'd-said-that Dep't
From The Nonprofiteer: "Volunteers can move mountains, provided there's a staff member around with a supply of scaffolding, tools, wheelbarrows, safety glasses and maps to the new location."
January 03, 2008
Vegan Cane Sugar?
I like to think that I'm pretty sympathetic to vegetarianism: it's superior on environmental and moral grounds, and so even if I'm not there yet, I can see why people would advocate for it. But I think we're getting a little ridiculous here. Last night, my wife brought home a package of what was labeled as "Vegan Cane Sugar." Vegan?...
December 27, 2007
December 08, 2007
December 05, 2007
October 08, 2007
October 02, 2007
September 27, 2007
"Rambling" in speeches: a scientific challenge
Why are speeches by Middle Eastern leaders invariably described by American journalists as "rambling"?
September 26, 2007
Your metaphor police in action
James' reflections on the fate of bubbles provokes me to poke at the implode bubble itself. For some reason this word, which specifically refers to the sudden inward collapse of something resisting external pressure, has floated into careless use to describe all sorts of destruction and failure where explode would be a more appropriate metaphor. A TV tube would implode...
September 14, 2007
September 11, 2007
August 06, 2007
Writing
Two of your genial hosts have been having a self-referential episode that readers might enjoy, if only as a Gallagher and Shean routine. I sent out to some colleagues my approximately annual update of a longish memo for students about writing, and Mark suggested I post it. OK, here it is, with some free samples: Clearly and its treacherous kin...
May 28, 2007
"Romani ite domum" Dep't
Kevin Drum wants to say "bring 'em home" in Latin. Apparently the closest you can get is "Copiae subducentes sunt."
April 27, 2007
April 09, 2007
Concerning "unit cohesion" and the art of rhetoric
A former tank platoon sergeant turns tough-guy military rhetoric back on itself in the "don't ask, don't tell" debate.
March 09, 2007
October 18, 2006
Vulgarians at the gate
"There is no greater love that can be displayed than for a person to lay down their life for others." Is there any way to make that sentence worse?
September 23, 2006
September 02, 2006
August 19, 2006
Beyond "sounding brass"
I encounter a new translation of St. Paul's famous ode to love from First Corinthians. ("If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love...")
August 05, 2006
Euphemism of the month
Brent Wilkes has a new term for systematic bribery. He calls it "transactional lobbying."
July 28, 2006
Tell it, Kevin!
Kevin Drum: Clearly, the Republican Party is the party of common sense. After all, if you give a few hundred dollars a month to the poorest of the working poor, it's only fair that you also give several million dollars to the richest of the idle rich.
May 17, 2006
Tony Snow and the tar baby
No, there's nothing wrong with saying "tar baby." But it sounds funny coming from an advocate of the "War on Terror."
May 11, 2006
March 22, 2006
You can call me Ray.. but you don't have to call me Democrat
Sam Seder is trying to make "RAYpublican" the mocking equivalent to "Democrat party." It won't work, but it also won't matter.
November 29, 2005
January 16, 2005
December 25, 2004
Gibbon's "ness" monster
My campaign against the "ness" monster -- the use of "valorousness" instead of "valor," "resoluteness" for "resolution" or "resolve," "perfidiousness" for "perfidy," and so on -- has not attracted the universal support on which I had counted. Eugene Volokh, a linguistic liberal and democrat, agrees on "perfidiousness" (which is no more than a mistaken back-formation), but balks at insisting on,...
December 16, 2004
October 26, 2004
September 27, 2004
The New York Times violates
Strunk and White's first rule
A case study of a failure to omit needless words.
August 31, 2004
The origin of "ness" monsters
-ness is Germanic; -ity and -itude are Classical. A true "ness" monster occurs when an adjective is made from a noun (as "perfidious" from "perfidy") and someone makes it back into a noun the wrong way.
July 16, 2004
Gross terminological inexactitude
A murder isn't an execution, even if a future Prime Minister commits it.
May 04, 2004
April 22, 2004
Additional "ness" monsters sighted
"Tenaciousness" for "tenacity" (a physicist interwiewed on ABC News) "Impetuousness" for "impetuosity" (from Inversions, by Iain Banks) These seem to me to illustrate the two poles of "ness" monstrosity: "tenaciousness" is a long, ugly substitute for "tenacity," a nice, vigorous word. By contrast, "impetuosity" actually adds a syllable to "impetuousness." The claim that "impetuosity" is superior must rest either on...
April 20, 2004
"Ness"less ness monster
"Comfortability" for "comfort. Thanks to the reader who spotted it. He notes that it's in a reporter's account of casual conversation. Still......
April 17, 2004
More "ness" monster sightings
and a note on the commonality among the conservatisms
Adam Wolfson, editor of The Public Interest, contributes new two "ness" monsters in a single essay ("Conservatives and Neoconservatives," Winter 2004): "rapaciousness" for "rapacity" (p. 35) and "solictousness" for "solicitude" (p.44). (He does, however, use "acuity" correctly, sparing us "acuitousness.") The essay is otherwise well-written and well-argued (from the neocon viewpoint), making many useful distinctions and connections. Wolfson raises, without...
April 14, 2004
As Kleiman once said ...
My chance to be an entry in some future Bartlett's: There is no more destructive force in human affairs -- not greed, not hatred -- than the desire to have been right. Non-attachment to possessions is of trivial value in comparison with non-attachment to opinions.
February 25, 2004
Another "ness" monster
"Credulousness" for "credulity." Eugene Volokh seems to be quoting Clayton Cramer, but I can't find the monster in the Cramer post. Update Eugene reports that he was quoting the original title -- since changed -- of the Cramer post. He also points out that "credulousness" is attested as far back as 1598, only half a century after the first recorded...
February 09, 2004
Nonstandard conversion tables, cont'd
0.000001 greetings = 1 microwave 0.5 one-eyed naval heroes = 1 half-Nelson 0.1 Southern beauties = 1 decibelle 0.1 spouse = 1 decimate 1,000,000,000,000 carpal joints = 1 terrorist...
February 06, 2004
2000 mockingbirds = 2 kilomockingbirds
Did you know that the ratio of an igloo's circumferance to its diameter is Eskimo Pi? Neither did I, until Eugene Volokh sent me off to this table of non-standard conversion factors. [But shouldn't it be a trillion microphones to the megaphone?] Eugene has his own selections from the Wilkinson list, and one delicious addition: 1.5 dollops = 1 trollop...
January 27, 2004
December 13, 2003
Another "ness" monster
This one from William Saletan, whose prose I generally admire: "presumptuousness" for "presumption."...
December 05, 2003
More sightings of the "ness" monster
A reader offers the following, all from internet sites: "frivolousness" for "frivolity" "tediousness" for "tedium" "audaciousness" for "audacity" and -- my favorite ever, I think: "zealousness" for "zeal." Keep those emails coming. I'd like to try for a comprehensive list....
December 03, 2003
Another "ness" monster
Iron Lung, a poster on Slate's Fray, in the course of this extremely rude piece about Mickey Kaus, uses "vapidness" for "vapidity."...
November 12, 2003
On Memes
One of Kevin Drum's commenters asks whether "meme" isn't just an unnecessarily fancy way of saying "idea." Kevin responds, more or less, that memes are "ideas that filter into a community rapidly, spread like a virus, and then just as rapidly die away. A meme that survives becomes something else: a concept, or an idea, or a principle." That may...
November 09, 2003
A plague of "ness"es
A headline in today's Baltimore Sun notes that an official caught in controversy is being praised for her "candidness." Whatever happened to "candor"? I've also seen "valorousness" for "valor," "confusedness" for confusion, "cowardliness" for "cowardice," “maliciousness” for “malice,” “recursiveness” for “recursion” and (more than once) "novitiate" for "novice" (the "novitiate" properly designates the status or the period of time, not...
