Sotomayor and rhetoricBrad 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...
Language Police Twitter EditionWhat do you call a dsigraced former House speaker who is also a "loggorheic ideological narcissist with a twitter account?"
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.
In which I get language-policedNo, rabbis imitating the bad behavior of priests is not, strictly speaking, ecumenical activity; it's really interfaith work.
From the language police blotter: testaments and testimonies"Testimony" is evidence given by a witness. A "testament" is a compact.
Explaining with simple toolsWhy 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...
Wards of the stateIn support of using the terminology of guardianship for temporary bank nationalization.
Stereotypes about Los Angeles and sprawlLet's be precise when we try to debunk stereotypes about sprawl.
Wish-I'd-said-that-MORE-dep'tUpton 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....
Responsibility without Guilt: A Proposed Palestinian Refugee NarrativePerhaps Israel can acknowledge responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem without acknowledging guilt.
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....
Political etymologyAmerican czars: Speaker Reed, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Frank Zarb, Bill Bennett.
Stuck Around St. PetersburgNow, 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...
Consultant Speak -- Usages to AvoidA break from politics to highlight some useless high-priced usage
Confidence gameGoldman Sachs worries that American Insurance Group might suffer from "an impairment of counterparty confidence."
More California linguisticsAngelenos 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").
Note to bloggers and other journalists: "reign in"... meaning "restrain," should be spelled "rein in."
From the language-police blotterIs 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?
Urdon'tThe 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...
Wish-I'd-said-that Dep'tFrom 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."
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?...
"Rambling" in speeches: a scientific challengeWhy are speeches by Middle Eastern leaders invariably described by American journalists as "rambling"?
Your metaphor police in actionJames' 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...
WritingTwo 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...
"Romani ite domum" Dep'tKevin Drum wants to say "bring 'em home" in Latin. Apparently the closest you can get is "Copiae subducentes sunt."
Concerning "unit cohesion" and the art of rhetoricA former tank platoon sergeant turns tough-guy military rhetoric back on itself in the "don't ask, don't tell" debate.
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?
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...")
Euphemism of the monthBrent Wilkes has a new term for systematic bribery. He calls it "transactional lobbying."
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.
Tony Snow and the tar babyNo, there's nothing wrong with saying "tar baby." But it sounds funny coming from an advocate of the "War on Terror."
You can call me Ray.. but you don't have to call me DemocratSam Seder is trying to make "RAYpublican" the mocking equivalent to "Democrat party." It won't work, but it also won't matter.
Gibbon's "ness" monsterMy 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,...
The New York Times violates A case study of a failure to omit needless words.
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.
Gross terminological inexactitudeA murder isn't an execution, even if a future Prime Minister commits it.
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...
"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......
More "ness" monster sightingsAdam 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...
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.
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...
Nonstandard conversion tables, cont'd0.000001 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...
2000 mockingbirds = 2 kilomockingbirdsDid 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...
Another "ness" monsterThis one from William Saletan, whose prose I generally admire: "presumptuousness" for "presumption."...
More sightings of the "ness" monsterA 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....
Another "ness" monsterIron Lung, a poster on Slate's Fray, in the course of this extremely rude piece about Mickey Kaus, uses "vapidness" for "vapidity."...
On MemesOne 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...
A plague of "ness"esA 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...