Fire New Words

Vocabularian

2009-01-03T09:31:00.002-05:00

I read a book by Ammon Shea called “Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages.” Most books I read are on Amazon’s Kindle, an electronic reader. There are many online articles about the pros and cons of using a Kindle. I think it’s a wonderful devise and the pros definitely outweigh the cons. One of the cons, however, is the Kindle doesn’t give conventional page numbers as a physical book so I can’t list a page number when giving a review.

Ammon Shea devoted one year to read the twenty volumes (150 pounds) of the OED. He makes the point that he did not read this online, he read the physical volumes. He interweaves stories about his life of collecting and reading dictionaries and the people who have influenced him. After each word and definition he adds a wry comment. For example, the word “airling” means a person who is both young and thoughtless. Shea comments “although it might well seem redundant to specify a person as both young and thoughtless (how many words do you know for one who is young and thoughtful?).”

Ammon Shea comments that the etymologies were written in Greek and Latin which he did not find helpful. With a little effort people can learn the Greek alphabet. Many people look at Greek and get scared of the strange letters. Shea spent a year reading the OED, it would take him about two days or less to learn the Greek alphabet. There is a difference between Ancient and Modern Greek pronunciation. The OED etymological entries are in Ancient Greek. I recommend two books that are helpful in learning the Greek alphabet: Greek and Latin in English Today by Richard M. Krill and The Greek and Latin Roots of English - both can be found on Amazon. My goal for the New Year (not a resolution, I will never keep it) is to learn Old English (OE). In addition to Greek and Latin, the OED uses the original OE. Now that looks Greek to me.

Most of these words that Shea writes about you are not going to hear or use in everyday conversation but they are still fascinating to read. I jotted down some of the words I found interesting: lectory: a place for reading; misdelight: pleasure in something wrong; hypergelast: a person who will not stop laughing; somnificator: one who induces sleep in others. And of course “vocabularian” one who pays too much attention to words. There are two great links about Ammon’s book:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93170569

http://blog.oup.com/2008/12/are-you-down-with-the-oed/

And The Winner is...

2008-08-07T15:56:00.001-04:00

...at least for a few days is "war driving" or "wardriving" written both ways depending on what online source you read. This is the buzzword du jour. The BBC even reported the story. This is the news story of eleven people who stole millions in credit card fraud and were fortunately caught. According to gameshout.com from August 5th"Gonzalez and his party would engage in what is known as "war driving". This is where the team would simply drive around with a laptop computer and sniff out accessible wireless networks. Once they found a network that was accessible, they would hack into the network system and install a "sniffer" program. This program would capture and relay sensitive credit card information back to the team and allowed them to remotely capture the account information. This system worked especially well when the team found an unsecured retail network."

Maybe they should have experienced a "road rash." This is when a person who is not wearing a helmet and protective gear falls off a motorcycle and sustains abrasions and other injuries.

If you think these words sound depressing, let me throw in one more "suicide doors." These are rear doors that open opposite to the front doors. Do a Google image search for a better idea.

Watch Your Language

2008-06-14T14:44:00.001-04:00

Any country with the word "ice", like Iceland, would be great to visit as I sit here in the North East United States sweltering in this heat wave. In the bookstore I saw the Teach Yourself Icelandic book and wondered how difficult it would be to learn the language.
Despite the heat in the U.S, I would still prefer to live in an English speaking country where a committee is not going to dictate what words I use. The June 9th, Iceland Review Online interviewed Gudrún Kvaran, the head of the Icelandic Language Committee and she said, "Our project now is to draft a language policy." Then she goes on "it’s quite dangerous if we are exposed to too much influence from, let’s say, English."I expected that she would blast English as do most European countries who want to keep their language "pure" from English. How do Gudrún and the Icelandic Language Committee plan on stopping people? Wait I hearing a knocking on my door, I must have used a non Anglo-Saxon word.

English teachers in the United States are concerned that student’s writing skills are going to decline because of text messaging. It’s not only English teachers, but the French, especially the president, Nicholas Sarkozy is worried about the French language. In an article, timesofmalta.com says "it’s not about the invasion of English words in the French language. His concern is over a new form of language - next messaging - also referred to as "txt-msging" or "txtspk". It’s refreshing to hear that he’s not blaming their linguistic decline on English. We all can get along. The French coined a word mediatheque described and defined In the Turkish Daily News June 13th:"In the four years that Littardi has been at the French Cultural Institute located at the top of bustling stiklal Street, the center has seen a lot of changes under his leadership. For one thing, all the electrical wiring has been replaced and the library was upgraded to a "mediatheque" (a term that combines the words English word media and the French word for library "bibliotheque") undergoing extensive renovations and expansion of its collection. The building now has central heating. And before Littardi leaves he plans to get more computers for French language students and give the place a new paint job."

Latin is even being attacked. An article from "The Pilot: The Official Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston" titled "Middle Schoolers learn their Latin ‘roots’."started off promising, I agreed with everything, until Hank Fleming, creator of the Latin program said "what separates his program from others is that it is aimed at increasing the student’s English vocabulary and not on teaching Latin grammar, which he said has limited usefulness because Latin is no longer a spoken language." What? Studying Latin grammar develops cognitive skills, but I guess we don’t want our middle schoolers to think. I’m not advocating teaching middle school the passive pariphrastic or the ablative absolute (even though the Founders could read Latin and Greek fluently at a middle school age) but they can learn noun declensions and verb conjugations. It’s very stimulating to read a book in Latin and not depend on a translation. After hard work, a student can feel a sense of accomplishment and build self-esteem.

Dictionaries and Thesauruses

2008-06-11T14:07:00.003-04:00

Undergrads and dictionaries. There was a study done by Muffy E.A. Siegel in Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America. Although I’m not an undergraduate student, there were many points I agreed with. First the pronunciation guide. Every dictionary or just about everyone uses different guides to pronunciation and this can be very confusing and frustrating. I tutored English as a Second Language (ESL) for over ten years and the pronunciation guide in an ESL dictionary uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) which is simpler than the diacritical marks. Why the IPA is not taught in schools? I don’t know; it’s very easy to learn and use.

Many upperclass students said that "thesauruses are much more helpful in daily use" and "synonyms should be right after the definition." This is a good segue for a book I just finished reading "The Man Who Made Lists" by Joshua Kendall - the life of Peter Mark Roget. When reading this book, it reminded me of another book with roughly the same format - The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Both books addressed the problem of depression, madness, and insanity; it makes one want to turn to stamp or coin collecting than collecting words. William Minor, in the Professor and the Madman, and Peter Roget were both doctors; Roget wasn’t insane or mad, but his mother, sister, and daughter were often depressed. Another similar feature that both writers use is placing definitions from the OED and thesaurus at the beginning of the chapters. For instance, chapter three of the Professor, Winchester’s title is "The Madness of War" and underneath the dictionary entry for Lunatic. Kendall uses the same method in his book, but uses synonyms. Overall Winchester’s book reads better and is more engaging than Kendall’s book.

Staying Home

2008-06-02T18:13:00.002-04:00

When people ask me where I’m going on vacation, I would always say "porchville." Now there is word that conveys the same meaning - "staycation." The word is not that difficult to understand - you are staying home on your vacation. Time will tell if this word will "stay" around. Once again I found myself in porchville for this past Memorial Day. Many people are turning to staycations because of the high gas and food prices. Staycations remind me of a poem by Billy Collins called Consolution http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/consolation/.

I didn’t even get to go to my outdoor room because the day was overcast. An outdoor room is an extension of your house, as The Columbus Dispatch (May 25,) describes:
"With the economy and high gas prices, it only makes sense that people would choose to create their own retreat or outdoor entertaining space at home...
People are really treating (the backyard) as an extension of indoors," said Karen Cobb, a spokeswoman for Lowe's Home Improvement. "So you'll get things that emulate indoor furniture and decor."

Do you hear an “Eco?”

2008-02-21T10:55:00.001-05:00

No I didn’t misspell echo, I’m not that bad. What I’m referring to is an article in the New York Times, February 16th : "For EcoMoms, Saving the Earth Begins at Home." This must be a new word because the spell check underlined "echomoms" with the annoying red line; the line that tells me I’m a poor speller.

What can also be annoying are the words eco spawned. Ready? eco life, ecomotherhood, ecoanxiety, ecotherapists, eco-mother, eco-guilt, ecopsychology. As a politician would say, had enough?

The eco in these words are referring to ecology. Etymologically speaking (another "e" word), ecology is also related to economy and the home. The word is from oikos, Greek for home.

What happened to the "i" in "oikos?" When the Romans came on the scene, Latin changed the "i" to an "e". When this word was written in mid nineteenth century it appeared as " oecology" and "oeconomy."

If you would look up the word economy in the first English dictionary in 1604, Robert Cawdrey spells it "oeconomicke" and defines it "things that pertaine to houshold affaire." Now this guy really needs a spell check.

Dumbing Down not Smarting Up

2007-12-11T11:25:00.001-05:00

"Dumbing down" has been used a lot in our daily life, even though it was first recorded in 1933. A slew of books with titles "...for Dummies" and the "Idiot’s Guide to..." have been very popular among the public. Clearly no one can know everything about every subject especially today when information is doubling every five years. What caught my attention is an article from the OUPblog from August 2, 2007. Michael Ravitch wrote that a high school teacher took it upon herself to revise the Declaration of Independence because the language was too difficult and then she was going for the Constitution. How brazen to take it upon oneself to re-word the Declaration. With younger readers this would make sense, but high school students this is ridiculous. Teenagers today can memorize and master complex abbreviations for emailing and text messaging as well as memorizing song lyrics; they can learn meanings of words.
The problem is not with the words in the Declaration, but the teacher.

When I read this blog, I was reading Novus Ordo Seclorum by Forrest McDonald. In his preface he writes "In thinking in the eighteenth century, I suggest three main guiding principles. First, one must pay close attention to the meaning of even the most ordinary words, for these have changed into a myriad ways. For instance, discover meant not uncover or find, but disclose or reveal, nervous, meant not worried or jittery, but strong or vigorous; awful meant not extremely bad, but that which inspires to awe and reverence." Then he writes, "A rudimentary knowledge of Latin is highly useful; after all, every educated Englishman and American knew Latin, English words were generally closer in meaning to their Latin originals than they are today."

This idea leads to an Op-Ed article in the New York Times, December 3, 2007 by Harry Mount "A Vote for Latin." He lists the politicians who had and hadn’t studied Latin. He also answers the question so many people ask who never studied Latin, "Why study Latin?" He writes " But what they gain is a glimpse into the past that provides a fuller, richer view of the present."

Instead of putting a lot of effort in trying to change the wording of the Declaration and Constitution, put the same amount of effort in teaching the students the meanings of the words in the eighteenth century.

Close the Gate and Keep the Dogs Out

2007-07-18T09:46:00.000-04:00

I remember the first time I went to Washington, D.C. and the tour guide pointed out Watergate, the infamous hotel. I wished that the Democrats would have picked a Holiday Inn or a Ramada to have their convention. In the 80s was Contragate with the Reagan Administration. Bill and Hillary had their Whitewatergate in the 90s and now people are digging for something for Obamagate.
Dogs have even played an important role in politics. I was in Washington four months ago and saw the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial for the first time. Next to FDR is his dog Fala. Looking at the dog I could hear FDR’s words of a speech he gave on September 23, 1944 at a campaign dinner (I wasn’t there, I’m not that old), "These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala.."
On September 23, 1952, eight years after FDR’s speech, Richard Nixon was on the Eisenhower ticket as Vice-President. Nixon went on television to defend charges that he illegally accepted $18,000 in campaign funds. Nixon said in his speech, "It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl-Tricia, the 6-year old-named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it." Nixon wrote in his diary, "using the same ploy as FDR would irritate my opponents and delight my friends." Later this speech was dubbed "Checkers speech". The Encarta World English Dictionary online defines Checkers speech as"political speech deflecting criticism: a political speech dedicated to saving a politician's career by diverting attention from criticism rather than refuting it."
Now we have Seamusgate. Seamusgate? Is there a politician named Seamus running for president? No, it was the name of Mitt Romney’s dog. Now for the first time someone has combined the name of a dog and gate. According to the bostonherald.com , " Seamusgate, as the mini-scandal has been labeled, involves Romney’s admission that, in 1983, he placed the family’s Irish setter, Seamus, into a kennel strapped atop a car for a 12-hour drive to Ontario." This is the same year Chevy Chase’s National Lampoon Vacation came out. Chase’s character, Clark Griswold, tied his dog to the back bumper, but Clark Griswold is not running for president.

Even More Latin

2007-06-21T09:34:00.000-04:00

What do a woman’s organization and a rock band have in common? They are using Latin! From the beenews.com, a group of women called the Soroptimists, held a fund raiser to help local domestic abuse shelters in the Portland area. I learned from a link to their website that they are "an international volunteer service organization for business and professional women who work to improve the lives of women and their families, in local communities and throughout the world."

The word is a blend of the noun soror and the adjective optimus. Anyone who attended college knows about sororities.

Optimus is the superlative form of bonus (good). When your boss gives you a bonus, that’s pretty good. An optimist looks at the best of life. The meaning of Soroptimist is the best for women. For a humorous take on Latin watch Monty Python’s The Life of Brian - Romanes eunt domus. I’m thankful my Latin teachers were not that strict.

Not only are women using Latin creatively, but also rock bands. The Queens of the Stone Age created an album called Era Vulgaris. According to The Age, www.theage.com.au , it’s a play on both meanings of vulgar. Vulgar in Latin means "common". The band wanted the double meaning of both "of the common people" and the modern meaning of "crudely indecent" . I hope a mob will not be waiting for them. Our English word "mob" is shortened from "mobile vulgus", the movable public.

Behold the Bread

2007-06-02T14:41:00.000-04:00

Latin is a dead language,
as you can plainly see.
It killed off all the Romans,
and now it’s killing me.

The picture I took at the supermarket clearly shows that Latin is not dead.
Most people heard of ecce homo, behold the man, the title of a famous painting by Antonio Ciseri of Pontius Pilate showing Christ to a crowd of people.

I posted this blog after having lunch at Panera Bread.

Can You Hear Me Now?

2007-05-02T05:58:00.000-04:00

I sat on the bus thinking what people, including myself, did before cellphones. I always ridiculed people on the bus, talking as if no one else could hear them, until I gave in to peer pressure and bought a cellphone and found myself doing the same thing.

Cell in cell phone is shortened from cellular. Try saying cellular a number of times and you will know why it has been shortened.
When new words are coined, and if they are difficult to pronounce, we tend to shorten the words. For example, the word fan as in football fan is short for fanatic.

The advent of the cellphone spawned many new words. Take your phone out and give it a good sniff. Smell anything? If you can’t, your next phone might be a smellophone. Not only do you have to worry if you have an odor, now you have to worry that your phone has an odor. Reuters online, January 16th, 2007, reported that "Sony Ericsson...made a new ‘aroma’ handset for DoCoMo, the ‘SO70i’, which comes with scented sheets designed to relax the users while making calls." Maybe a company should make "scented sheets" to relax the people who have to listen to other people’s conversations. The article continues "The phone offers nine aroma choices for the consumer, each coupled with a different panel design."

In our 21st century society, we like to think we are independent. Some psychologists are suggesting that the use of cellphones are making us more dependent and our ability to make decisions are decreasing. If we have a decision to make, it is easy to flip open the phone and ask someone’s opinion instead of making our own decision. According to Leysia Palen, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, used the words "grooming calls" for "nonessential expressions of concern, support, and love" (Psychology Today, January/February 2007). In the last paragraph, I mentioned that one way to form a new word is by shortening it. Another way, with "grooming calls" is combining it. Take two words that have different meanings and combine them to form a new meaning. Combining can take on one of three forms: it can have a hyphen between the two words, like blue-collar; it can have a space, like channel surfing; or the two words can be together like doublespeak.

Now that your phone smells good and is well groomed, is it on ICE.? This is an acronym which stands for In Case of Emergency. An acronym is when you pronounce the word like NASA or NATO. Don’t get this confused with initialisms -the individual letters are pronounced like GOP and CBS. We have always been told to carry ID in our wallets or purses just in case we were in an accident and needed to be identified and also wear clean underwear. According to the New York Times "ICE can help emergency room doctors who are trying to track down a patient’s family" (October 24, 2006). Instead of searching through a wallet, hospital workers search through the address books in cellphones. According to the article, not too many people are putting their phones on ICE.

The Return of the Robocalls!

2007-04-26T11:00:00.000-04:00

I wrote in my blog on March 22nd about Robo Calls, well they're back. There is an article about Robocalls on the front page of the New York Times April 25, 2007.

Happy Birthday, Will

2007-04-23T13:54:00.001-04:00

To celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday, April 26th, I think it’s fitting to write my first book review about Shakespeare; specifically about a Shakespeare dictionary. There are many dictionaries about Shakespeare from his characters to his insults but one dictionary, in my opinion, this book is distinct "Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary & Language Companion" by David and Ben Crystal; a father and son collaboration. David Crystal is a noted linguist who wrote many best selling books about language and Ben Crystal is an actor. Even if you are not a Shakespeare fan, which I find hard to believe, the book is fascinating just to browse.
Through out the dictionary, to break up the list of words, there are gray boxes with word subjects as swearing (there are two and a half pages! - some things don’t change) , Greetings, Farewells, Clothing, Weapons, and much more. Does thee and thou leave you perplexed? Well there is an explanation of these confusing words. For those who are grammar mavens, there is a section on Functional Shift and Verb Forms.
There is a wealth a material in the appendices: Classical Mythology, Gods and Goddesses, Religious Personalities, Historical Figures. There is also a Languages and Dialects section. There are lists of French, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh words that Shakespeare used.
This is not just a dictionary with a list of words. In the back of the book is a section called "Shakespearean Circles, Synopses, and Dramatis Personae." The circles show visually how the characters and plots are intertwined along with the written summary and cast of characters. The visual aspect is innovative; I never saw anything like this. When I’m listening to a Shakespeare play on CD or watching a performance on DVD, I have this visual summary in front of me. While listening to Two Gentlemen of Verona, one word jumped out at me: sluggardized . According to the dictionary, it means "like a sluggard, made lazy" and the sentence is said by Valentine to Proteus "living dully sluggardized at home." I think we can all relate to that, especially me, while I am writing this on Sunday at home; I don’t plan on doing anything else. I did a little more dictionary digging and consulted the Oxford English Dictionary Online and discovered the origin of slugg comes from the
Norwegian dialect which means "a large heavy body" and sluggje means "a heavy slow person."
In the last paragraph, if you noticed, I said I listen to CDs and watch DVDs; I didn’t say I read the plays. Like a lot of people, I
struggled with the syntax and vocabulary of Shakespeare until it finally dawned on me that Shakespeare never wrote these plays to be read; he wrote for the ear, not the eye. Fifty years ago we would have to go to a live play to hear Shakespeare, but today we have CDs and DVDs so we don’t have to just depend on books or wait for a performance to come to our town or city.

You Have Been Plutoed!

2007-03-24T10:29:00.000-04:00

Drum roll, please. And the winner is... plutoed. Every year the American Dialect Society (ADS) votes for the new Word of the Year and the word for 2006 is plutoed and it’s used as a verb. According to ADS, the verb means "to devalue or demote someone or something." During 2006, the press reported arguments among astronomers and scientists on whether Pluto is a planet. The lesson is that even a planet can be downsized after seventy seven years of loyal service to the solar system. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, The International Astronomical Union formally declared Pluto a dwarf planet in August 2006.

Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto at Flagstaff, Arizona in 1930.

Pluto, like all the planets, except the earth, is named after Roman gods. Pluto is the Latin name of the Greek god of the underworld Hades. It’s interesting to note that when it was discovered, Pluto had a moon. Scientists, keeping with the Roman god theme, named the moon Charon. Charon is the man who the living paid to ferry the dead body across the river Styx to the underworld. The river Styx was more powerful than the gods themselves and once the gods swore on the river Styx, even they couldn’t break their promise; that proved troublesome for Zeus.

I don't think that scientists, when they demoted Pluto, realized that it was the name of Hades and you don't want to anger the god of the underworld.

Robo Calls

2007-03-22T10:17:00.000-04:00

How many times have this scenario played out in your life: The plot is unwinding on CSI and the phone rings. Did I mention that it is election time? You manage to get to the phone because you are expecting an important call, but instead, it’s an automated phone message from a political candidate. Nothing can be more annoying, perhaps possibly a telemarketer. The catchy words to describe these automated phone messages are called "robo calls." The image that immediately comes to my mind was the 1987 movie Robocop. He was a hybrid of machine and man and while he was a "good guy", he invoked fear.

I came across the words robo calls in the July 2005 magazine Campaigns and Elections. Ari Pinkus wrote "U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said she heard repeated complaints about the volume of ‘robo calls’ during her hard fought primary and runoff campaigns last summer." Interestingly, Ari Pinkus later wrote the word with a hyphen "Tape-recorded robo-calls started in the late 1980s and became more popular in the 1990s." Robo calls is an example of combining or compounding; you take two words that have different meanings and you put them together to form another meaning. When words are combined, they can be one word, a space between the words, or a hyphen. If more people write the word without a hyphen, then it would appear in the dictionary that way.

After the mid term elections, November 8, 2006, Howard Dean, Democratic National Committee Chairman, appeared on C-Span and said "This country has been divided in a very bitter partisan way...we hope very much the other side would not want to engage in a kind of bitter partisan personal rhetoric that we both heard in the election, in some of the robo calls and in some of the ads...". About a week later, November 17, 2006, Republican Tom Cole from Oklahoma appeared on C-Span and said "I don’t think campaigns are about robo calls and attack ads."

The word robot comes from the Czech language and means "servitude"; politicians are our public servants, aren’t they?

Fire New Words

2007-03-15T10:06:00.000-04:00

Shakespeare, in his play Love’s Labor’s Lost, describes Don Armado as a man of "fire- new words." According to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, fire-new in this sense means brand-new like "newly forged iron, fresh from the furnance". Often words that are well established in the dictionary will change their meaning through time. One such word is nice. "You are a nice person." A compliment, right? Well, in the 21st century it is, but not in the 14th century, it would be an insult. Nice is made up of two words - prefix ne means not and the infinitive verb scire, which is a Latin word that means to know (our word science comes from this verb). In other words nice means "not having knowledge" or more bluntly "stupid." It wasn’t until1830 that the word meant kind. My advice: If you travel back in time, especially to the 14th century, remember not to tell people that they are nice.

Let’s turn our attention to something more modern. We have all seen on TV the horror and devastation of what a tsunami can do to an area and people. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a tsunami is "a brief series of long, high undulations on the surface of the sea caused by an earthquake or similar underwater disturbance." In 1999 one writer used the word tsunami in a different way; this is called a shift of meaning. Joseph E. Maglitta in Computerworld (May 17, 1999) wrote "for months I’ve watched the Net tsunami surge from Wall Street to Main Street and back again." Belinda Luscombe, wrote an article in Time Magazine (April 5, 1999), with the same meaning of the previous example, "that year she was engulfed in another Tsunami of publicity when she won the international competition for the opera house." This sense of tsunami is not in the dictionary -this meaning means something that is powerful or overwhelming. Words change slowly through time, often hundreds or even thousands of years, and we don't notice these changes because we don't live that long.