Category Archives: Language

A Tense Moment

October 22, 2008 – 11:05 pm

There is a mode of locution known as the Sports Present: one hears it often, and almost exclusively, during broadcasts of athletic competitions. It is employed, when discussing some action that has just taken place on the field, to point out that had something in the execution gone differently, a different result would have ensued. […]

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Comma Chameleon

July 13, 2007 – 10:10 pm

With a hat tip to Kevin Kim, here is a wonderful example of the power of punctuation to alter the meaning of written English.

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Beside Myself

March 31, 2007 – 1:45 am

I haven’t ranted about the decline of the English language in quite some time, but I do find myself vexed almost to the point of irritability by a particularly gruesome verbal tic that seems more and more in fashion. I refer, of course, to the increasingly common use of the word “myself” as a nonreflexive pronoun. You hear it all the time lately, in sentences like:

    “The director has asked Zoltan and myself to oversee the completion of the TPS reports.”

    “Readers may direct comments either to Wally Stunkard or myself.”

This is an abomination. You don’t give something to “myself”, I do. You give something to me. The purpose of a reflexive pronoun is to serve as the object in a sentence where the subject and object are the same, as in:

     “After I had dealt with Carol and her lover, I turned the blowtorch on myself.”

    “I decided to treat myself to an evening of gangsta rap and a large bowl of offal.”

I realize there is a great deal of suffering in the world, and that perhaps we have more pressing matters to grieve us, but this sort of thing really drives myself up the wall.

By Malcolm | Comments (4)

Meaning and Demeaning

January 2, 2007 – 10:37 pm

In today’s New York Times we see, in response to an article about the difficulties faced by working diabetics and their employers, the following letter (it’s number six in the linked collection):

To the Editor:

Thank you for your article. But you do a disservice to all those with diabetes by referring to them as “diabetics.” We are not our diseases; we are individuals with lives and families. Such a reference is demeaning and promotes just the discrimination you were reporting.

Susan Lesburg
Boston, Dec. 26, 2006

We are all aware, of course, that diabetes is merely a disease, and that those who suffer from it possess other attributes as well. In the article under discussion, however, the individuals chosen for consideration were selected precisely because of the salient characteristic they share — namely, that they do indeed suffer from this cruel affliction — and the term “diabetic” summarizes this distinction with precision and economy. The use of the term in such a context should not be seen by diabetics as diminishing their humanity — which, as nobody should have any reason to doubt, is surely as dignified and multifaceted as anyone else’s — and to eschew its use in favor of some euphemistic monstrosity such as “the pancreatically challenged” would serve only to draw another pint from a language and culture that are already well on their way to becoming quite utterly bloodless.

I have seen firsthand the suffering diabetes can cause, and certainly mean no disrespect to its victims. But Ms. Lesburg might do well to read this post, by the noted curmudgeon Deogolwulf.

By Malcolm | Comments (0)

Looking Up

November 3, 2006 – 11:36 pm

Recently I was given a century-old copy of the immense Merriam-Webster International Dictionary of the English Language. This 1906 edition’s title page continues:

BEING THE AUTHENTIC EDITION OF WEBSTER’S
UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY, COMPRISING
THE ISSUES OF 1864, 1879, AND 1884
THOROUGHLY REVISED AND
MUCH ENLARGED UNDER
THE SUPERVISION OF

NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D.

WITH A VOLUMINOUS APPENDIX

TO WHICH IS NOW ADDED
A SUPPLEMENT
OF TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND WORDS AND PHRASES

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Monkey Bards

August 9, 2006 – 10:51 pm

We’ve all heard the suggestion that a roomful of monkeys hammering randomly away at typewriters would, given billions of years, recreate the complete works of Shakespeare. (A “typewriter”, for those of you whose brows are wrinkled solely by bafflement, is an antique mechanical device that generated crumpled sheets of paper.) It’s an interesting idea, but if you’re like me, you’ve just been too busy to try it out.

Well, the wait is over. Take a look at this. It’s not exactly instant gratification; thus far the sedulous simian simulacra have only got as far as the first 24 letters from “Henry IV, Part II”. But, as someone once said, “how poor are they that have not patience.”

By Malcolm | Also posted in Marginalia | Comments (3)

Eggcorns and Snowclones

June 21, 2006 – 11:23 pm

Yesterday’s New York Times ran a story about a website called Language Log, which I visited at once and had a hard time leaving. There is even a special introductory post written just for all the new visitors that came by as result of the piece in the Times.

If you love English, you’ll love this blog. Onto the sidebar it goes.

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Cowboy Leg Beautiful Pole

March 8, 2006 – 6:16 pm

I had to share this, which came to me by way of Eugene Jen.

Bon appétit.

By Malcolm | Also posted in Marginalia | Comments (2)

The Bard of Bucks County

February 17, 2006 – 12:18 am

I wonder how many of you have ever read any S. J. Perelman, or even know the name. He was pretty much a household world, at least in New York and Hollywood, in his heyday, but fewer and fewer people that I mention him to even seem to know who he was.

By Malcolm | Also posted in General | Comments (1)

Consonant Cluster Ice Cream

February 3, 2006 – 11:33 pm

It’s time I commented on an alarming trend. Not only are we Americans more sedentary and obese than ever, nowadays we even have lazy tongues. You’d think with all the exercise they get they’d be regular Jack la Langues, but no, they’re slacking off just like the rest of us. And written English is feeling the effect.

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Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

December 13, 2005 – 12:19 am

I love the English language. I love its immense vocabulary, largest of them all. I love its rich history of assimilation, which began with multiple invasions of the Scepter’d Isle itself, continued with the Earth-girdling expansion of the Empire, and which, with English now the international language of science and commerce, shows no sign of abatement.

It is a tricky, idiosyncratic tongue, full of broken rules and irregular spellings, in which the same strings of letters can take a bewildering variety of pronunciations (consider cough, though, through, plough, and rough). But from the pen or tongue of a master – a writer such as Shakespeare, Churchill, Joyce, Nabokov, Perelman, Tennyson, Austen, Twain, Wodehouse, Dickens, Pope, Swift, Shelley – the English language can lilt, evoke, command, arouse, describe, amuse, exalt, gladden, inform, seduce, provoke, abash, and delight with incomparable beauty, power and nuance.

But the icing on the cake is Cockney rhyming slang.

By Malcolm | Also posted in Pretty Good Posts | Comments (0)

Oral Gratification

December 9, 2005 – 12:32 am

Here’s an interesting site that I recently happened upon:

An Illustrated Glossary of Rhetorical Terms

It’s all there, from “accumulation” (figure wherein a rhetor gathers scattered points and lists them together) to “zeugma” (use of a word to modify or govern two or more words although its use is grammatically or logically correct with only one). Here are some other goodies:

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