Opuscula Words that Make my day

I LOVE LESS-USED WORDS.

I’m not a Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. or Wm. Frank Buckley Jr.; my command of the language, compared to theirs, is sorely lacking.

But I have Merriam-Webster’s (M-W) Word of the day in my inbox (in box? in-box?) to add to my personal treasury of words. In Hebrew, “vocabulary” is “otzer meleem” or treasury (otzer) of words (meleem). I like that

A few of the words M-W sends to me I already know. I remember the admonishment from my primary (elementary, grade) school days: “Use a word three times and it is yours.”

Back in the day, if you used some words even one time you got your mouth washed out – back in the day.

I once worked with a fellow I nicknamed “Third Definition Gregory.” Jess and I worked on a small town newspaper. He often reached down to a word’s third definition for his reports, ergo “Third Definition Gregory.”

A few readers might have thought ol’ ’’Third Definition” was inconsiderate, using words which which they were not familiar. I, on the other hand, considered part of being a good “journalist” was gently educating the readers. To be honest, educating some readers is akin to leading that proverbial horse to water.

There are a few words that I use so often I probably should be arrested for their abuse: picayunish and ubiquitous are two that sit at the top of the list. Because I was for many years “in journalism,” I know about the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and by extension, picayunish. The Picayune used to be a fine daily but, as with many newspapers, it became a victim of both tv and the Internet. Now it lingers on as NOLA.com.

When I labored as an Enterprise Risk Management practitioner, all of my “risk lists” included the ubiquitous other, the risk my client and I failed to discover but had to prepare to avoid or, at least, mitigate. Not an easy task.

IN ANY EVENT, I subscribe to M-W’s Word of the Day and when a word of particular interest to this scrivener (amanuensis) pops up I do a quick copy-n-paste of the word and its definition (sometimes “daffy-nition”) into a file I titled simply as “Favorites” - in my case, followed by LibreOffice’s Writer extension: “odt.”

The file has more than “just” words. It also has HTML codes I use once in a blue moon¹. Don’t be too confident that you can correctly define “blue moon.” In truth, Favorites.odt is a catch-all for things I want at hand “in the event of.” One of these day I may get around to organizing the contents, One of these days.

My grand-daughter, too young to have any interests other than social media, learned to love – at 7 years old – a Webster’s desk dictionary. I promised it to her to keep her hands off my unabridged. (It is so heavy she could barely lift it.) Hopefully she will sign up for the free M-W Word of the Day – I intend to encourage her.

Why hang on to an Unabridged when a word can be correctly spelled and defined by keying the word in a browser’s address field? Because a. The word may not be on line (unlikely, but …) b. There may be yet another definition c. (The REAL reason) While looking for the word in the unabridged other interesting words are discovered.

Dictionaries can be as fascinating as encyclopedias. Ask any child who has been given the opportunity to sit with real books. (Or adults who have a child’s curiosity. Here I raise my hand.)

The Internet is a wonderful thing for the curious.

The problem – my problem – is that unlike sitting down with a real book, my Internet searches normally are highly focused. I don’t get to see whatever entry came before or after the entry I sought; there are fewer “ah ha” moments when you may sit back and, in the words of Dick Martin², admit that “I didn’t know that.”

When I lived overseas I used to listen to a BBC program on Friday mornings called My Word. It was panel format where the wordsmiths on the panel were challenged to define a word. The definitions were often comical, albeit in the end accurate.

Words have been the tools of my trades – plural – for years. First as a reporter, then as a PR flack, later as a technical writer, and finally as a Enterprise Risk Management practitioner writing reports to everyone from executive management to the folks charged with doing the actual tasks. The executive summaries often were written in simple terms management could comprehend; the instructions for responders were written in terms they used daily. (Know your audience.)

While I no longer write for a living, I still enjoy encountering new-to-me words. When my grandkids (grand-kids, grand kids) are close by, we sit and “read” the dictionary. When they are distant, I have M-W’s Word of the Day. (I’d prefer to sit with the grands.)

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Sources

1. http://tinyurl.com/ybpezsha

2. http://tinyurl.com/ybpm3q3y

PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.

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Opuscula “In” is in, “Into” is out

WHEN I WAS A YOUNG LAD, Back when Hector was a pup¹, the difference between “in” and “into” was explained thusly:

Three boys were swimming in the creek.
A fourth boy jumped into the creek to swim with them.

I cannot recall the last time I read – or heard – “into” correctly used.

Famous authors infamously misuse the word “in” when the word they should have used is “into.”

Perhaps their English is different than mine.

Perhaps misuse of “in” is an acceptable Fowler-ism².

Or, perhaps, it simply is a matter of being too lazy to teach – and learn – “proper” English.

American English – more correctly U.S. English since Canada is very much “American” being on the North American continent – is a long-time victim of Madison Avenue (i.e., advertising) and now of smart phones and limited character text messages that encourage (force?) use of abbreviations and emoticons/emojis. (Yes, Virginia, there ARE differences between U.S. and Canadian English.)

Admittedly some abbreviations are better than keying or saying the words they represent. SNAFU and WTF are two that immediately come to mind.

OVER THE LINGUISTIC RAINBOW

Everything is “over” or “under” when it should be “more than” or “less than.”

Tv had made the ignorant masses so accustomed to the misuse of over and under that the only time anyone hears or reads “greater than” (>) or “less than” (<) is when the subject relates to computers.

I am driven “bonkers” every time I hear “Under than $200” – or any amount – when the “under” is 1¢: $199.99.

Although I admit it is picayunish, the U.S. does NOT have “pennies.” The Brits have pennies and the Germans have pennies. The U.S. has cents (despite, or in spite of, the long ago “penny post card”.)

One red cent. There is no obvious link between “cents” – which due to their value are on life support – and “sense” (common or otherwise) which our politicians on both side of the aisle seem to shun like a plague. FYI: President Lincoln’s profile does NOT appear on all one cent coins.

According to the tv talking heads (and their never-identified writers), something might be terribly unique.” The only thing “terrible” about “terribly unique” is the “terrible” part. Unique, as are a few other words, is not modifiable. Something is unique or it is not. Period. Full stop.

My Spouse, who has English as her fourth language is so accustomed to my screams of outrage when I hear a modified unique (e.g., most unique, very unique) she often beats me to the punch.

A BAD SPEL^cq

Back in the day, grammar/primary/elementary school scholars – weren’t we all? – were taught to “spell a word as it sounds. Today, spelling seems to have reverted to Shakespearean times. Rather than moving on from phonetic spelling to correct or “standard” spelling our ritin has bekom fonetik again, largely thanks to the shorthand of electronic media.

Thanks to “electronic media,” fewer and fewer people read. Granted, there are those who borrow or buy e-books, but reading paper books is almost passe’. (I’m a geezer and a frequenter of my Local Lending Library.)

The consequences of NOT reading are (at least) two-fold.

1. Small vocabularies and
2. Lousy speleng^cq

(If truth be known, I’m dependent on the word processor’s spell check.)

Spelling became a “lost art” years ago. As a reporter in a small town, I was allowed to read some collegians’ appeals to the local court to forgive certain misdemeanors. The appeals were laughable, at least to the judge and to this scrivener. The errors might have been expected from a third grade student, but from a college sophomore? Inexcusable.

I don’t expect everyone to be a Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. or Wm. F. Buckley Jr., political opposites but sharing a love – and knowledge of – the English language.

An aside. I have never met anyone named “Senior.” There may be a person whose given or family name is “Senior,” but we have yet to meet. Juniors I’ve know aplenty, and a few with numbers after their surname. Traditionally, when the senior person dies, the “junior” is dropped from the son’s name.

Merriam-Webster offers a daily email with a “Word of the Day.” Subscriptions are free. It’s not as good as reading a book and learning a new word by looking it up in an Unabridged or even on-line, but it’s a start to vocabulary building.

I once worked with a fellow I nicknamed “Third Definition Gregory.” Mr. Gregory was fond of using a common word’s third definition (assuming here was one). I was forced on more than one occasion to resort to the Unabridged. Unfortunately for the world, “Third Definition” became a PR flack in the City-East (NYC) and his words were lost in a puff of fluff.

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Sources

1. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sin1.htm

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwFVOU3zkRc

PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

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