Words, Words, Words

Musical Notes

I spent some of last week arranging a piano accompaniment for my daughter's musical performance this weekend. It was a hymn-like song from the 19th century, and I attempted to make it sound a little more contemporary, less churchy. That effort brought to mind a great simile from the Pat Conroy novel "The Prince of Tides." In this scene, the young protagonist's lively and plain-speaking grandmother bickers with a stodgy funeral director over a neighbor's body in an open casket.

"He looks like he just nodded off for a nap, doesn't he?" Mr. Ogletree said proudly.

"Naw, he looks dead as a stump," my grandmother answered.

"He had a full life," Mr. Ogletree intoned, his voice as serious as D-flat major on an organ.

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Pure simile gold! The booming, faux majesty of a major chord in a stuffy church is just the note to strike in that paragraph.

Roger Ebert, on his loss of speech

Although the noted movie reviewer has lost his ability to speak, he has gained something else of value:

“I’d always heard how blind people developed much better hearing, and deaf people became more observant. It’s true: when you lose something, your mind and body adapt to compensate. In my case, whatever energy I put into speaking has now been channeled into writing, and my writing has benefited."

  

"Really" is truly a very bad word

Long ago, a co-worker complained about the use of the word "really" in formal writing.
"It's ambiguous," he said. "The word can mean either 'very' or 'truly.'" I had long thought "really" cast a slangy tone to a sentence but hadn't previously considered why.

The difference between "very" and "truly" is subtle but significant. For example, if someone said that Jane is "really pregnant," it could mean that she's 8 and 29/30ths months pregnant and looks like she's going to pop any minute. But "really pregnant" could also mean that she's 6 weeks along and previously only suspected her condition, but had just taken a test that confirmed it.

Most dictionaries state that "really" is an acceptable synonym for "truly" or "actually," and only its use as "very" is overly casual. Although I agree with that, I think the ubiquitous "really" in our conversational speech and not-so-polished writing taints the word for formal prose even when used correctly.

When I was a teenager in Texas, we used "really" as a type of acknowledgement, or an all-purpose response when we had nothing better to say. It had a cool touch of ennui that teens of every generation seek.

"Really," you'd drawl (with a slight emphasis on the first syllable so it came out "RULL-y") when your friend said that school sucks or it's too hot outside or all boys our age are losers. A terribly uncool person would toss back "yes," as if you'd said "Really?" in the sense of "Is that actually true?" An acceptably cool person would make no counter-response other than to maintain an aloof, socially appealing, and slightly disgusted air.

These days, the use of "really" in formal writing completely ruins it for me, as if I was enjoying quiet music until Billy Bob in his pickup roared by.

Truly.

 

At the end of the day, there's always some overused phrase

Currently, the most overused phrase in America: "At the end of the day."

A rough equivalent of "ultimately," or an updated "when all is said and done," I hear this expression or read it in the news at least once every 24 hours.

I pondered an end-of-year post that named "at the end of the day" as the most overused expression of 2009. But I decided that the phrase didn't get going until mid-year. And now in 2010, it's still (unfortunately) going strong.

"Twenty ten" or "two thousand ten"?

How do you say the current year..."Twenty ten" or "two thousand ten"?

Although most people think the latter is correct, the National Association of Good Grammar (NAGG) says the year should be pronounced as "twenty ten."

"'Twenty' follows 'nineteen,'" says the organization's Tom Torriglia. "'Two thousand' does not follow 'nineteen.'"  

It makes sense. When we refer to events 100 years ago, we don't say "One thousand nine hundred and ten."

Besides, "twenty ten" is shorter. In this age of abbreviated speech and text, the short, simple phrase dominates.

Another transgression in the news

As the world waits for a Italian jury to decide who killed British student Meredith Kercher in November 2007, a reporter today made reference to the young woman's "grizzly murder." Strange theories abound in the sad case, but this is the first time I've heard anyone offer that the perpetrator was a large bear belonging to a species native to North America.

Although grisly (the word that, of course, should have been used) sounds the same as grizzly, the words have very different meanings and origins. Grisly comes from a Germanic word meaning "to fear." We now use it to mean gruesome, horrible, repulsive. Grizzly, on the other hand, comes from the French word gris for "gray." It's essentially the same word as grizzled, which means "graying" or "sprinkled with gray," usually in reference to hair or fur.

So that's easy, right? Well, not so fast. Merriam-Webster Unabridged insists that grizzly was once an acceptable way to spell grisly, and it's therefore not wrong to talk about a grizzly murder, even if no carnivorous mammal was involved. Wikipedia seems to back that up when it says that grizzly bears weren't named for their occasional speckles of silver fur but because a naturalist actually meant grisly when he bestowed that adjective on the fearsome species. This is echoed in the bear's subspecies name horribilis (full name Ursus arctos horribilis). Apparently, grizzly as a synonym for "graying" never quite caught on, and it's not perfectly clear that its use as an alternate form of grisly is erroneous.

As Winnie-the-Pooh would say, "Oh Bother." It's a lot more fun catching big fat goofs when you don't have to worry that they might actually be acceptable usages.

But I wouldn't worry too much about this one. Regardless of whether grizzly actually means grizzled or gruesome, it clearly refers to a type of bear. And we can safely classify grizzly in the species Errare grammatica stupida when a writer uses it where grisly was obviously called for.

Proof, proof, proof

I came across this surprising bit of information in a newspaper article:

New research makes this astounding argument—and claims that the physician who supposedly told the truth about Roosevelt's death in 1970 was in fact continuing the deception he had helped create.

Gee, I didn't know FDR lived until 1970.

Most of us who know better have made mistakes like this. And those of us who truly know better don't get caught at it in print. In this case, we would see that the sentence erroneously implies that Roosevelt died in 1970 when the date actually refers to the physician's statement about the former president's death. A forehead slap and a "D'oh!" later, we would rewrite the sentence, bursting with relief that we caught the error before we embarrassed ourselves in public:

New research makes this astounding argument—and claims that the physician, who supposedly told the truth in 1970 about Roosevelt's death, was in fact continuing the deception he had helped create.

Always proof your work. Always.

Homophone

Homophone: A word pronounced the same as another but differing in meaning, whether spelled the same way or not, as heir and air.

My 5-year-old whines, "You won't let me watch TV tonight, or play on your computer, or eat candy!"

I shrug. "C'est la vie."

"La vie," she grumbles.

Beware those fashionable scorpions

Appropriate to the month of Scorpio birthdays, here's an interesting headline:

Scorpion in jeans stings woman at store

What we have here, folks, is a wonderful example of a dangling modifier. Although one assumes that the human and not the arachnid was donning the denim, the sentence gives you no clues. And it's an odd enough story that you don't easily make the correct assumption.

What actually happened is that a woman went to a store in Okinawa, Japan and tried on a pair of jeans. She suddenly felt pain in her right knee and rubbed it with her right hand. The scorpion then stung her right index finger. Store clerks called an ambulance and she was taken to a hospital, where she stayed for five days.

It's not easy to cram a lot of information into the few words allowed in headlines. But surely the writer could have done better. "Scorpion hidden in jeans stings shopper," perhaps. Or, "Woman tries on jeans, stung by scorpion."  Were this blog more popular, I'd hold a contest for the best rewrite. How about a Scorpion hybrid sports car as a prize?

Pens instead of swords

From Psychology Today:

A veteran of the Iraq conflict recently explained ...how writing saved his life over the past year’s readjustment to civilian life, saying, “The phrase, “welcome home” makes no sense, because the battle never leaves me. Writing has given me power over the conflict that is now inside me everyday. Because I write, people can read what military go through long after the media and everyone forgets.” What this former soldier says tells us is that the catastrophic effects of war are not thousands of miles away in the streets of Baghdad; they resonate with urgency in the minds of those who return to the US each day. Fortunately, for a growing number of returning soldiers the curative power of writing combats the soul-destroying nature of terror and war. And the power of those healing words ultimately transforms those of us who read them.