Category Archives: Words, phrases & expressions

Thusly, prior to and commence: a posey of pomposity

I think we all know at least one person who speaks as though they’re addressing a courtroom or their own nation — even when they’re in the line for the bathroom or firing off a hasty text. Three tell-tale signs of linguistic pomposity are the words thus (or, even worse, thusly), commence, and prior to — all of which have perfectly sound and simple synonyms without all the airs and graces. Let’s see what some of today’s — and yesterday’s — linguists have to say about them.

Thus (or thus far): Thus, so the OED says succinctly, is “now chiefly literary or formal”. Thus, unless you’re Shakespeare or Chief Whip, use so. “Some people think ‘thus far’ is too snobby or stuffy, but in terms of meaning, it’s the same as ‘so far’.” So says the YUNiversity of Grammar.

Thusly: A couple of years ago, the New York Times‘s After Deadline blog explained why thusly just isn’t a viable word. ““Thus,” meaning “in this way” or “therefore,” is an adverb. “-Ly” is a suffix that turns an adjective into an adverb. Since “thus” is already an adverb, it has no need for “-ly.” So “thusly” is unnecessary — colloquial at best, illiterate in the view of many readers.”

As Mark Davidson says in his book Right, Wrong and Risky: “Thusly gets almost no respect … You need supreme self-confidence to use this much-maligned variant of the adverb thus. Thusly, which word sleuths suspect was coined in the mid-19th century as a humorous American variant of thus, has been taken seriously by almost nobody in America’s usage establishment. Descriptions of thusly have ranged from “superfluous” (Theodore M. Bernstein’s Careful Writer) to “an abomination” (William and Mary Morris’ Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage).”

Prior to: “You are committing an offense against English if you use the phrase prior to as a substitute for the preposition before, according to the “Language Corner” of the Columbia Journalism Review,” reports Davidson. “What in heaven’s name is wrong with before?” Enough said on that subject …

Commence: As Barrie England commented (I thought rather wittily) on StackExchange about the use of commence instead of begin, “My entirely intuitive thought is that begin is less formal than commence. Dylan Thomas began his play for voices, ‘Under Milk Wood’, with the words ‘To begin at the beginning.’ He didn’t, with good reason, write ‘To commence at the commencement.’”

Commence, which at one time was described by the OED as “precisely equivalent to the native begin“, has been variously described as a “formal”, “fancy” or “stilted” alternative; Merriam-Webster acknowledges that it is often considered “pretentious”, “old-fashioned”, “inappropriate”, “bookish”, or “pedantic”. As Longman pointed out, even back in 1874 George Eliot used the word ironically in Middlemarch: “Things never began with Mr. Borthrop Trumbull; they always commenced, both in private and on his handbills.”

Fowler did concede that certain circumstances prescribe the use of the more formal alternative: “In official announcements commence is appropriate: the play-bill tells us when the performance will commence, though we ask each other when it begins. The grave historical style also justifies commence, & historians’ phrases, such as commence hostilities, keep their form when transferred to other uses, though we begin, & do not commence, a quarrel; similarly we commence operations, but merely begin dinner.”

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About these “formal words” generally, Fowler in his Modern English Usage offered his own typically quirky explanation. “There are large numbers of words differing from each other in almost all respects, but having this point in common, that they are not the plain English for what is meant, not the form that the mind uses in its private debates to convey to itself what it is talking about, but translations of these into language that is held more suitable for public exhibition. We tell our thoughts, like our children, to put on their hats & coats before they go out; we want the window shut, but we ask if our fellow passenger would mind its being closed; we think of our soldiers as plucky fellows, but call them in the bulletins valiant troops. These outdoor costumes are often needed; not only may decency be outraged sometimes by over-plain speech; dignity may be compromised if the person who thinks in slang writes also in slang; to the airman it comes natural to think & talk of his bus, but he does well to call it in print by another name.”

“Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,
Our bending author hath pursu’d the story,
In little room confining mighty men,
Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.”

— William Shakespeare, Henry V

Slated, capped and palaver: what do they mean to you?

If a yoghurt is “slated for Sochi”, does that mean it failed to tickle the tastebuds of Russian athletes, or that it’s on board the supply vessel heading for the Olympic village? Hmmm. It probably depends on whether it was an American or a Brit using that rather strange turn of phrase about that particular foodstuff. (And someone did actually say that in print.) If something was capped in England, it was probably costing too much money, but to Americans it might well have been leading up to something even better. And whereas a palaver on either side of the Atlantic is much ado about nothing, it’s merely a discussion among Yanks but more of a big nuisance to the Brits.

Below are the subtly different definitions of these words determined by who is uttering them, along with some examples recently published in the media. (Except where stated, the definitions are from Oxford Dictionaries — the British-English and American-English versions.) Because the words are used differently — contextually and linguistically — by Americans and Brits, there isn’t usually any confusion or ambiguity when they’re being communicated to trans-Atlantic counterparts; indeed, at this point both meanings are pretty well understood, if not in actual usage, on either side of the pond (at least in the case of slated and capped), even if they might still give pause. To my mind, a performance that has been slated — even if it is for a future date — still sounds like something not to get excited about.

Slated:

British: “criticize severely”. Tom Service, writing about a Bruckner symphony in The Guardian, wrote that “a contemporary critic slated its ‘nightmarish hangover style’, but Bruckner’s last completed symphony contains music of sheer, breathtaking magnificence.”

American: “schedule; plan”. In an NBC News headline, some Chobani yoghurt “slated for Sochi [was] held up at U.S. customs”.

Capped:

American: “provide a fitting climax or conclusion to; follow or reply to (a story, remark, or joke) by producing a better or more apposite one”. Discussing Russia’s figure-skating team winning the gold medal in Sochi yesterday, AP sports writer Barry Wilner wrote: “It was victory capped by the freshness of Lipnitskaia.”

British: (Cambridge Dictionaries): “to put a limit on the amount of money that can be charged or spent in connection with a particular activity.” In The Guardian, the UK’s health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, was quoted as saying that “with hindsight, she wished GPs’ earnings had been capped.”

Palaver:

British: “prolonged and tedious fuss or discussion”. (Commonly used in the phrase “what a palaver”.) In the Evening Standard, gallery co-owner Tamara Beckwith, referring to selfies, was quoted as saying: “I’ve tried taking one and it was such a palaver.” Reporting on supermodel Naomi Campbell’s refusal to use her allocated dressing room for the National Television Awards, the Kildare Nationalist quoted a source telling The Sun newspaper: “What a palaver. Apparently Naomi wants something more luxurious so the team have had to scrabble around trying to find something suitable nearby.”

American English: “prolonged and idle discussion; verb – to talk unnecessarily at length.” In a report on the recent debate on creationism between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, the New Republic’s writer said: “My friend said that no, Ham wasn’t lying—he truly believed the palaver he was spewing.”

Strangely, the Brits seem to have broadened the definition of this word, which remains similar to its original meaning on American shores. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, palaver dates from 1733 (implied in palavering), “talk, conference, discussion,” sailors’ slang, from Portuguese palavra “word, speech, talk,” traders’ term for “negotiating with the natives” in West Africa, metathesis of Late Latin parabola “speech, discourse,” from Latin parabola “comparison”. Meaning “idle talk” first recorded 1748. The verb is 1733, from the noun. Related: Palavering.”

In the news (Feb 7)

That Gerund Is Funky …

Language and usage in the news this week: an unfortunate subtitle fail by the BBC, an unusual style guide, a Superbowl ad that needed an edit, and further discussion about just how important French really is. Plus, this week’s weird word of the week …

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Oops! In a subtitling blunder, the BBC rang in the Chinese New Year by welcoming its viewers to the “year of the whores”, as The Independent gleefully reported.

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Continuing an ongoing argument about the importance of French and whether it’s a language in decline, Zach Simon in the Huffington Post writes a rebuttal to John McWhorter’s piece in The New Republic entitled, “Let’s Stop Pretending That French is an Important Language.” As Simon points out: “As the 9th most-spoken language in the world, it’s not as though French is going to go the way of Cherokee anytime soon.”

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One of my favorite articles of the year so far is this critique – an amusingly positive one — by The Guardian of Buzzfeed’s style guide, which the internet giant decided to share with the world this week. More on style guides are to come in an upcoming Glossophilia post.

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“Less bottles”? Really? Shouldn’t she have said “fewer bottles”? As Slate reported, Scarlett Johansson’s SodaStream ad could have done with a good edit.

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This week’s weird word of the week:

Callipygian: adjective: having beautifully proportioned or finely developed buttocks. From the Online Etymology Dictionary: “1800, Latinized from Greek kallipygos, name of a statue of Aphrodite at Syracuse, from kalli-, combining form of kallos “beauty” + pyge “rump, buttocks.” Sir Thomas Browne (1646) refers to “Callipygæ and women largely composed behinde.”

Hayashi kotoba: musical cheerleading

When the curtain rises on the Winter Olympics tomorrow, two weeks of cheering and chanting in the languages of the 88 competing nations will begin. But these rallying cries that are so inherent to the theater and experience of sporting events aren’t confined to the fields, courts and stadiums of athletic competition: there’s another kind of cheer-leading going on in the musical and arts arenas of Japan.

At Music From Japan‘s upcoming festival in New York and Washington DC, The Ryukyuans — a band from Okinawa — will be singing traditional and contemporary folk songs from their region, and what you might hear during the performance is a type of musical cheer-leading embedded in the songs themselves. Translator, artist and teacher Sharon Nakazato explains how these rallying and rhythmic “hayashi kotoba” often color and vitalize the folk songs of Japan:

“Sa-a! Ei-i sa sa! A-a-i ya!” The lyrics to most Japanese folk songs are liberally spiced with so-called “hayashi kotoba”, spirited words and phrases that mostly have no literal meaning today but take a similar form to cheers at sports events. They might have been actual words in early times: a few are traceable to ancient Japanese forms of address or felicitous invocations, and one recent theory has their roots in ancient Hebrew! But however they came to be, “hayashi kotoba” fulfill several important roles in present-day Japanese folksongs: they create a convivial and exciting atmosphere; they cradle and bring focus to the narrative; they fill in syllables where needed for the lyrics’ rhythm; and, through their familiar associations with festivals and with bounty and blessings, they bring an immediate sense of exhilarated celebration to the occasion. In all parts of Japan, where song serves as a vital community unifier, the “hayashi kotoba” being sung by the audience along with the performers often brings heightened fervor to an event. Nowhere is this truer than in the Ryukyus.

At the Awa Odori, Japan’s largest dance festival, the dancers engage in call-and-response rallies with the cheering crowds, chanting and exchanging hayashi kotoba to whip up the rhythm and temperature of the event. You’ll hear cries of “Yattosa, yattosa!”, “Hayaccha yaccha!”, “Erai yaccha, erai yaccha!”, and “Yoi, yoi, yoi, yoi!” (This reminds me of the rallying cry among opera singers — “toi, toi, toi” — which is covered in an earlier Glossophilia post on the superstitions of wishing luck in the theatrical and performing arts worlds.)

Different kinds of hayashi kotoba are explored by Jane Alaszewska in Analysing East Asian Music, edited by Simon Mills. She explains that “Hayashi kotoba are speech-like phrases. These serve a variety of functions in performance. The most common phrase, kinayare kinayarei, invites the audience to get into the spirit of performance. Others such as tabatabata and kitakitakitei do not have a textual meaning but add an extra rhythmic dimension to performance. Some hayashi kotoba, particularly those in Semon Kudoki, are nonsense rhymes with rude double meanings. In Kumao-ji-deiko the o-se tends to imitate the hayashi kotoba rhythm. In this older style, only the performers call out hayashi kotoba but in shin-deiko these are also called out by the audience as encouragement to the performers.”

In the news (Jan 31)

In language news this week: different ways of pronouncing Hyundai, the ‘ax versus ask’ question, whether commas are really necessary, and more. Plus a new Weird Word of the Week …

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According to the BBC, there are at least three different approved ways of saying Hyundai, depending on whether you’re in South Korea, the UK or US. “The original Korean pronunciation is closest to HYUN-day (-hy as in Hugh, -u as in bun, -ay as in day, stressed syllables shown in upper case). Hyundai UK, including its adverts, has a different way of saying it: high-UUN-digh (-igh as in high, -uu as in book, British anglicisation). … Hyundai’s US operation…uses the pronunciation HUN-day (-h as in hot, -u as in bun, -ay as in day, US anglicisation).”

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The ‘ax’ versus ‘ask’ question: linguist John McWhorter, in a Los Angeles Times op ed piece, asks: “Using ‘ax’ for ‘ask’ dates back to at least Chaucer, so why do we consider it illiterate today? … As a black linguist, I have come to expect that, during question sessions after any public talk I give on language, someone will ask: “What’s with ‘ax’?”

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The BBC’s Mind the Gap blog identifies 10 American speech habits that grate on British ears.

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Slate asks: will we use commas in the future? “In some ways commas are like ketchup and mustard. We’re glad those things exist. They surely make our french fries and hamburgers taste better. But we’d all survive without them.” Is this really so?

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WWW: Weird Word of the Week:

This week’s word is batterfang: verb: To assail with fists and nails; beat and beclaw. Etymology unknown.

Firstly, first ever, and first and foremost: a superfluousness of firsts

Adam and Eve: the first ever man and woman

First up: first ever. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves. I just can’t help it: when I see the words “first ever” used as an adjective, my skin crawls and my red pens stand on end.

First means first, second means second… (you get the idea). There’s no such thing as “slightly first”; it’s an absolute adjective like unique, complete, empty or dead that can’t be modified, diluted, or used comparatively. If something or someone is or came first, it can’t be made more so by adding ever; he can’t be “more first” than her (in the same way that she can’t be “more dead” than him — although that concept is now sadly up for argument, given recent heartrending stories in the news). So why the constant use of “first ever” — which seems especially to litter the language of PR and marketing? When I see that phrase preceding a premiere, debut, record-breaking achievement or any such definitive claim to fame, I just want to cry foul — although I can never help but wonder why it’s never hyphenated, as it presumably would or should be if it were “proper” … (There’s more below on ever used as an intensifier — although I still argue that you can’t intensify first.)

Secondly: firstly. As Bill Bryson says in his Dictionary of Troublesome Words, “the question of whether one may write firstly or not when beginning a list of points constitutes one of the more inane but most hotly disputed issues in the history of English usage. De Quincey called firstly “a ridiculous and most pedantic neologism'”. Strunk and White advise: “Unless you are prepared to begin with firstly and defend it (which will be difficult), do not prettify numbers with -ly.” Thirdly and lastly, Fowler sums up the argument: “The preference for first over firstly in formal enumerations is one of the harmless pedantries in which those who like oddities because they are odd are free to indulge, provided that they abstain from censuring those who do not share the liking.”

Now here’s another tautologous problem with first, in its role as an adverb. When it’s used with words like announce, conceive, create, or reveal — as in “there was an outcry when the statue was first revealed” — first can be superfluous. Surely something can’t be revealed or created twice, so how can it be first revealed? See below for a similar argument about the possible superfluousness of ever.

Lastly but not leastly: first and foremost. As Bill Bryson says succinctly: “Choose one.”

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“When will he ever finish that book?” One could argue that ever is superfluous in that context: take it away, and the meaning of the question — whether it’s rhetorical or not — is still clear. “Why did we ever start this discussion?” Fowler in his Modern English Usage was characteristically dismissive, describing it as “often used in uneducated or ultra-colloquial talk as an emphasizer of who, what, when, & other interrogative words, corresponding to such phrases in educated talk as who in the world, what on earth, where (can he) possibly (be?).” But there are those who argue that ever can be used effectively as an intensifier of interrogative words (although not for absolute adjectives or superlatives like first or largest, as in my first and foremost pet peeve above). Bill Bryson defends this usage eloquently, arguing first that it “has been well established for the better part of a century and can thus be defended on grounds of idiom.” He adds a second and “perhaps more important consideration, … that ever often adds a useful air of embracing generality. If I say, ‘Have you been to Paris?’ there is some ambiguity as to what span of time we are considering. If, however, I say, ‘Have you ever been to Paris?” you cannot doubt that I mean at any time in your life. In short, there may be a case for using ever carefully, even sparingly. To ban it outright is fussy and unidiomatic and can easily lead to unnecessary confusion.”

In the news (Jan 24)

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky. Words and language in the news this week.
Plus the start of a new weekly series: WWW: Weird Word of the Week

On National Reading Day in the U.S. (Jan 23), Jon Stewart describes what a book is on the Daily Show. (Thanks to Grammarly on Facebook.)

Continue reading →

The Beatles’ lyrics: lore and lowdown

“It was 20 years ago today.” Well, it was actually 50, and it wasn’t today, but on February 9, 1964, The Beatles made their first live television appearance in the United States on the Ed Sullivan Show. That now legendary performance marked the start of the U.S.’s love affair with the four-man band from Liverpool — which before long would capture the minds and hearts of people all over the globe. The world’s fascination with the Fab Four had begun.

Papers, books, web sites — indeed whole careers — have been devoted to the study of The Beatles and everything the band’s members created, sang, uttered, argued about, wore, drank, inhaled, consumed, loved and hated — both collectively and individually — during and after the course of the band’s reign at the top of the charts. Analyses of its lyrics alone form the subject of several books; the words of The Beatles’ songs are seen as providing clues and insights into the minds and mysteries of this legendary quartet about which we can’t seem to know enough.

Glossophilia takes a romp through this most famous garden of prose. Straight from the horses’ mouths, John’s and Paul’s own words (as well as those of George and Ringo) tell some of the stories behind the lyrics and what inspired and fed them. From bus rides to breakfast cereal ads, a cab driver’s photo ID to a beloved pet, acid trips to Disney movies, the stories are endlessly fascinating and sometimes myth-busting. The adventure begins with a look at the “Paul Is Dead” theory and the lyrics that helped fuel this outlandish idea; Glossophilia then journeys through some of the songs — in roughly the order they were written (recording dates are in parentheses) — with comments from the lyricists themselves. By no means an exhaustive survey, this is a selective collection of entertaining insights from the men who gave us some of our favorite songs. Most of the quotes are taken from a handful of publications: a substantial interview given to Playboy magazine in 1980 by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, excerpted in the magazine in January 1981 and later published in full as All We Are Saying by David Sheff in 2000; Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, the 1998 biography by Barry Miles; and The Beatles Anthology, 2000.

“Paul Is Dead”?

Continue reading →

Whistle while you work it

“All the world is perpetually at work, only that our poor mortal lives should pass the happier for that little time we possess them.” — Temple

Most of us work. It’s what we do for much of our waking lives. In fact, the notion of work is so embedded in our psyche that the very word pervades all aspects of our lives — even when we’re at play. The word with so many definitions (it takes up several pages of the OED) has never been confined to just its core meanings of toil, labor and employment; more than representing simply the opposite of play, it embraces countless notions of intention and activity in as many different guises. Work takes a proud place in the Oxford Dictionaries’ list of the 1,000 most frequently used words. And recently it has begun to work its way idiomatically even further and more pervasively into the lingo. But let’s start with our more traditional understanding and use of the word.

“Fodder, a wand, and burdens, are for the ass; and bread, correction, and work, for a servant.” — Ecclesiasticus 33:24

Even in its core context — that of employment — work can refer to so many of aspects of its own self, showing off its versatility before it’s even left the workplace. Continue reading →

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Jan 17)

Hostile attitudes towards both the Welsh and Irish languages, the American Dialect Society’s curious word of the year, and certain adjectives under attack from a prestigious music magazine are all making the news this week.

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“‘World-class’ and other adjectives that should be banned from 2014” was the subject of an article in Gramophone magazine, written by its reviews editor Andrew Mellor. “The misleading and debasingly ubiquitous use of adjectives like ‘young’, ‘exciting’ and ‘dynamic’ probably has more to do with a chronic lack of imagination (and a good thesaurus) than deceit,” he argues. “But when it comes to the dubious description ‘world-class’, the intention and the result are rather more dangerous.” Read on to find out why.

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The American Dialect Society has chosen the word because as its word of the year. Why? Because … the New York Times‘s ArtsBeat blog explains why.

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In Cambridge, England, the City Council has banned apostrophes in place names. The decision to outlaw the punctuation from new road names, according to Cambridge News, has been branded by grammar gurus as “‘deplorable’ and condemned as ‘pandering to the lowest denominator’, especially in a city renowned for learning.”

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An ad for a job in Pembrokeshire, UK, has sparked some controversy. The county council has been accused of a “scandalous attitude” towards the Welsh language after its website said applicants for social work jobs need not “worry” if they were not bilingual. As the BBC reports, “language pressure groups claim the Pembrokeshire council statement was “an insult” to people living there.” In other news about the Welsh language, there’s a report before European ministers highlighting concerns about the delivery of health and care services through the medium of Welsh. According to the BBC, “it comes as experts say they are already worried by a fall in the number of Welsh speakers, particularly in the traditional heartland areas of north and west Wales.”

And the Irish language is also said to be under attack: in another accusation of the Council of Europe has said that there is a “persisting hostile climate” towards the Irish language in the Northern Ireland Assembly; RTE has the story.