Word Nerd

The Hall of Fame...from a word nerd's perspective

So Sean and I visited the Baseball Hall of Fame last week, as a planned detour on the way to his cousin Michelle's wedding.  A slightly longer detour than perhaps was necessary, thanks to some questionable GPS advice.  But definitely worth the detour.  Verrrrrry cool, and full of amazing memorabilia - like Cy Young's jersey from the World Series,

and the not one, but two balls from the two different no-hitters my dad has seen (I mean, how many people do you know who have seen two no-hitters live?!  And, should I be hyphenating no-hitter?).  I didn't realize that the two balls were coincidentally next to each other, as I could only remember the Mel Parnell game (Jim Bunning was the other).

That being said, any good word nerd is always on alert.  Apparently the person in charge of the captioning the photos at the HOF does not read the NYT's "After Deadline" column (scroll down to the first part bullet of "In a Word"):

And of course, I had to pay homage to baseball's most ubiquitious crossword puzzle clue:

Go Phillies!

Happy Belated

I hope that they don't revoke my Word Nerd moniker because I totally missed Dictionary Day last week.  Though if they don't do it for that (and no, I have no idea who "they" are...the current editors of Merriam-Webster?), maybe they will when I confess that it's totally lame?  But since Erin McKean thinks it's lame too (or at least needs some work), I'm probably safe.  Or maybe the fact that when I Google it, I don't get any hits associated with the M-W website???

Anyway, happy birthday, Noah.  Now when is Samuel Johnson's birthday...(September 18).

What-EVERRRRR

I guess my only comment is that I personally don't mind this word so much as long as the emphasis is on the second, and not the third, syllable. 

And with apologies to my friend Matt in SF, when I heard this story teased on WBZ on my drive home from work I was certain that the most hated word would surely be this one. 

Pass the Febreze, Please

We left a sippy cup of milk in the Civic over the weekend.  A leaky sippy cup.  For three or four days.  Needless to say, the problem became sharply clear to me yesterday when I climbed into the car at the end of the workday.  A full-car shampoo today failed to improve the situation.  So on the way home this evening, Tyler asked, "Mommy, what is that difficult smell?".  I thought that this was a very interesting - and apt - way to describe the situation. 

Word looked up this week:

synecdoche

On Language

All politics asides, word nerds everywhere were surely as saddened as I was to learn today of William Safire's passing. He probably could have answered (or has already in one of his thousands of columns) the following two questions:

Did the mortgage broker who I heard on NPR yesterday simply make a "speako" (a spoken typo, as coined by my friend Stephanie from Cal) when he said that someone was fighting "tooth and neck"?  I assumed that he meant "tooth and nail"...but 1. is there a "tooth and neck" saying (answer: if there is, I can't find it on the internet), and 2. where did "tooth and nail" come from (here is one post regarding its origins...but is it accurate?)?

Is it commonplace for the Brits to refer to a billion as "a thousand million" (which I think is what a billion is)? Watching a documentary about the history of English last week, the narrator referred several times to something in the billions or trillions as "a thousand million" of x or y.  The first time he did it I thought he was just being quirky, but after the third time I figured not so much. But then according to this site, an American billion and a British billion are not necessarily the same thing.  Who knew?

Numerology

So Zoe was born on 8/8/08, officially began walking on 9/9/09...so what's she going to do on 10/10/10?  I guess we'll find out in 12 months...

Happy Travails to You

I was listening to NPR on the way to work the other day - couldn't tell you what the story was about - and the broadcaster used the word "travails".  But the way she pronounced it was "trav-EYE-uls". 

Really?  Have I been pronouncing the word incorrectly for 30+ years?  Does it need to be added to my list of words that I ESCHEW saying because I can never remember the damn pronunciation?

Uh, nope, guess not. 

Words looked up this week:
garrulous
feckless

Rivers Edge

Is the name of a new development near Wellington Circle (at least according to all of signage), and it bugs me every time I drive past.  As far as I can tell, it's only near one river (the Mystic) so I'm pretty sure that means an apostrophe belongs in there.  I'm not sure which would make me less likely to buy something there (putting aside for the moment the many real reasons that I won't be moving to a one-bedroom condo anytime soon) - the poor punctuation or the fact that the name reminds me of the creepy Crispin Glover/Keanu Reeves movie, which was at least grammatically correct. 

Perhaps the developers could have used the above book (which I miraculously restrained myself from buying when I spotted it the other day).  But doesn't it look like the kids would love it?  I think I ought to go back and buy it...Zoe's birthday is this weekend, after all.

Ack!  I just Googled their website and although the apostrophe has been appropriately added to the name of the property, the title of the website is...The Residence's at River's Edge.

Sigh.

Okay, time to get off my high horse and go play a little Scramble.

What's another word for awesome?

Amazing!  Fantastic!  Wicked cool! (granted, the last one is technically two words)

How have I not visited this site before?

Alter Ego

So I was bored tonight and was curious what interesting things I would find if I Googled "Word Nerd", and came up with lots and lots of proofreading services as well as this blog.  The blog is more book-oriented than word-oriented, but good stuff if you're looking for ideas for your next read.  My one criticism is the self reference in the third person...but maybe that's just my own quirky peeve?

Non sequitur:  Today is August 1st which I think means that WBCN is no more...at least as I knew it growing up.  Okay, so it hasn't been like that for a long time, having seemingly lost its way a good 5-10 years ago.  Regardless, it was the station I listened to throughout high school and college.  RIP Big Mattress, Elevator From Hell, Nocturnal Emissions, and all the rest.