Word Nerd

Typos, Typos Everywhere

Ack!  It's been a tough past 24 hours.

On Yahoo.com...Eva Longeria

On Channel 7 news..."bigomist"

On a delicious bottle of beer...Formmagio Kitchen

On a wine list, reisling

Much better.  Thanks for listening.

Words looked up this week:
macadam
grommet
plebiscite

We Are the Chompions

Recently, I heard two different colleagues talk about their desire to move a project forward.  One was "champing at the bit", the other was "chomping at the bit".  It got me to wondering if one was considered non-standard, and which one came first?

I found a couple of good pieces and blog posts that discuss the same question. Champ is the elder statesperson by about 200 years, though it seems to be rarely used today without the "...at the bit" part.  That being said, it's still defined not only as a synonym for "chomp" but also "to show impatience".  You probably wouldn't say that you were "chomping" to do something without the "...at the bit" part, but the fact that horses do chomp at their bit when excited or anxious, lends the "chomp" substitution to work just fine (though I suspect that grammar prescriptivists would promote "champ" as the champ in this debate). 

On another word nerd front, how is it that I'd never heard of this website until this past Friday?  

Non sequitur:  Seriously, I don't get Pinterest.  Everything looks cool, but what exactly am I supposed to do?  Bueller?

Word looked up this week:
picayune

 

Damn Yankees

During a story on the BBC's Newshour last week, one of the reporters said "...to use that horrible American term, "closure"...". Huh. I'll readily concede that the British have it all over us when it comes to their lovely-sounding accents, but I didn't realize that we were also guilty of butchering the vocabulary of the language.

Turns out, there are quite a few words and phrases attributed to the US that our friends across the pond don't much care for. I agree with quite a few of them, though some of them seem much more efficient to me (such as "alphabetize" instead of "making an alphabetical list"). Regardless of what anyone says, I think English's history of sponginess is what makes it, for better or for worse (ginormous), so robust and interesting.

Another phrase I saw last week that the British probably won't like? Using "pants" (or perhaps, trousers?) as a verb. But as one of my supervisors at Guinness (at my London internship, back in the day) used to say, "What can you expect from a colonist?". I still stand by my preference of drinking my tea black, thank you very much.

Words looked up this week:

riposte

funerary

ablative

Grab Bag

* Why are aspersions always cast?  Can they ever be thrown, tossed, lobbed, or volleyed?  And am I the only one who didn't realize that the word's primary definition (according to Merriam-Webster) pertains to religion?  

* During the most recent GOP debate (they are still strangely fascinating to watch), I heard "earmark" used for the first time in this way (as a predicate nominative, I believe):  "He's an earmarker!"  Talk about insulting.  Though apparently these accusations have been going on for awhile; I just haven't been paying attention (can you blame me?).

* Though or although?  I've heard some say that "although" is the more "proper" form of the two.  Turns out, it's likely just a matter of preference because "though" pre-dates "although" by a century or two.  Grammar Girl does give examples to show that although they are interchangeable in most instances, there are times when only though makes sense.   

* Earlier this week, Sean and Tyler went to Fisher Turneries for lunch.  He always calls it that, which I love both because it's cute and because it's spoonerism-like.

* Favorite Zoeism of the moment:  In the mornings she will ask, "Is it wake time up?"

Words looked up this week:

fungible

recondite

taiga

alacrity  

Ousted

I'll admit it; I'm cranky tonight. Devastating Super Bowl loss. Back-to-back nights of insomnia. Harvard headed to yet another Beanpot consolation game and BC up 4-1 on NU in the second game. So yes, I'm cranky, and ready to call out a few online typos I spotted earlier today:

UGGs. For what their merchandise costs, I would think the ad agency they use is large enough to employ a full complement of proofreaders. Perhaps they all called in sick today? The UGGs ad on Boston.com (that could still be found as of 9:45pm) congratulates Tom Brady for an oustanding season. Was it merely a Freudian slip, having to do with the way the Patriots were ousted yesterday? Perhaps. As an aside, the page on which I noticed the offending ad included what may have been the worst blog post I've ever read on any sports website.

Groupon. I'm not sure which is worse, the typo, or the fact that the yoga studio involved didn't notice it. Not that anyone would have been confused trying to find a town called Beverley Farms. But still.

I was actually starting to feel a little better, having gotten those off my chest. Then BC scored again. Shorthanded. Sigh.

Words looked up this week:

uxorious

carapace

(Articles of) Faith in Gronk

Apparently, Rob Gronkowski didn't major in Spanish in college. But better to call yourself "party" and not a pastry (even though it turns out that's a myth), right?

The interview in question, which I saw wonderfully described on Yahoo! Sports ("Rob Gronkowski, encapsulated in one sentence..."), got me to thinking about articles. Yes, really.

Some languages, like Chinese, don't use articles at all. Articles in English are fairly straightforward, since we don't assign genders to nouns and don't do too much in the way of different declensions (though this was not always the case).

Articles start to get trickier in languages like French, where nouns are dubbed either feminine or masculine and the article must follow suit. I wonder why (and will perhaps bother to find out in a future post) nouns ended up with their particular genders? For example, what makes the evening (le soir) masculine when the night (la nuit) is feminine?

Getting the article wrong in many cases will probably do no more than cause minor embarrassment, though in some cases it changes the word completely. Take the word livre. Le livre = the book; la livre = the pound (both the unit of weight and the British currency).

Things get even murkier in German, which throws in a third gender (neuter) for its nouns and where different declensions are alive and well. It's because of these complexities that in high school German we had a go-to noun in each gender that we used whenever necessary, regardless of whether it made sense in the broader scope of the discussion. This is why, 20+ years after my last German class, I can still say, "Wir habe eine Torte gebacken!". This of course means, "We have baked a cake."

But getting back to Gronk, all that really matters is that he's on the field in eight days. Good luck with that ankle, Gronk. Yo soy fiesta!

Words looked up this week:

putative

ablative

cant

aorist

Mistaken Identity

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to praise Steroids, not bury them.

(with apologies to William Shakespeare) I know I don't have that quite right, but I am here to sing the praises of steroids. Not the ones that got Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro in trouble, but the ones that have finally loosened the leather belt that had been tightly cinched around my head since Monday night (a.k.a. a sinus infection). So thank you, prednisone! You too, Avalox. XOXO

Speaking of mistaken identity, what is the female version of a "man crush"? Any suggestions? I Googled it but didn't find anything satisfactory. I ask because it's what I have on Tina Fey, who I used last year on Facebook as my celebrity doppelganger (I don't know what that was all about, either). Not that we're dead ringers, but the list of celebrity 40-something, slightly nerdy brunet women who wear glasses is, as you might imagine, rather short.

But I digress. I just finished her very funny book, "Bossypants". I like her because she's unapologetically smart and successful, bitingly funny, yet still self-effacing and neurotic. Most important, I am fairly certain that she would not find it at all odd or laughable if I confessed to her that I would love to one day participate in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Make no mistake, I'd be lucky to get 4 answers down before the winner was finished and working on his/her second drink at the hotel bar. But it would be awesome.

I have no idea if she's a fellow word nerd; there was no mention of it in the book (the broader nerd theme was thoroughly discussed). But if Jon Stewart can be a word nerd, it's not a huge stretch, right?

Words looked up this week:

carrageenan

apotheosis

fealty

peroration

Juicy Couture

It'd be a stretch to call this the juiciest typo to arrive in years, but...really, ABC? In case you were wondering, it was a trailer for a show called "Revenge" (which I know nothing about, other than the fact that they use an 8 in lieu of the "g" in the title).

 

Non sequitur: I always like to check out Lake Superior State's year-end list of banished words. In this year's offerings, I wholeheartedly support the banishment of "ginormous". But most of the rest of the words or phrases either don't bother me or I haven't heard much (trickeration? pet parent?). A few phrases I'd like to ban in 2012, but fear it won't happen, include "knock it off" and "Can we watch Dora?"

Words looked up this week:

philology

corporeal

fatuous

empyreal

cudgel

Don't Know Much About History

Or geography, as it were.

One of the many perks of working at Harvard is having the opportunity to sit in on great lectures from time to time; our department actual encourages us to do it to get a taste of what's happening on campus. The class I (accidentally) sat in on today "Western Intellectual History: Greco-Roman Antiquity" was very interesting. It probably would've been even more interesting if I'd taken a single Classics or Western Civ course in college, but alas.

I had intended to sit in on "Theism and Moral Reasoning", but unbeknownst to me, I wasn't looking at the right website when I looked up the class location. So, Harvard Hall 104 it was.

But, it was a happy accident - for how else would I have stumbled upon the word revelations that I did? I heard about several groups of people who you might use as nouns today. Vandals! Barbarians! Philistines! (okay, that last one I already knew...and it was not referenced in the class...but you get the point).

He's only the next Martin Score-ceez

That's a quote from "Singles", of course. Or maybe not of course. If you've never seen it, it's worth a watch. That is, I enjoyed seeing it in 1992; perhaps I should watch it again before recommending that it be added to anyone's Netflix queue (isn't queue a great word, by the way? Four vowels in a row, great verb, great noun...).

Spot the typo. In Slate's defense, his name is spelled correctly in the article.

If You Want To Know What Martin Scorcese Was Like as a Kid, Go See Hugo