Are you 21st-century awesome, or 17th-century awful?

“Are you awesome?” That’s the question that Crunch, the gym chain, is using in its New Year campaign to attract new customers. Presumably we’re in slang-land here, and Crunch is asking if you’re fabulous or fantastic — not whether you’re inspiring awe or terror. (The idea seems to be to invite everyone to join the “club of awesomeness” …)

What if Crunch were asking “are you awful?” That might seem awfully odd to 21st-century English-speakers, for whom awesome is super, outstanding or excellent, whereas awful means just the opposite: nasty, bad or monstrous. But these virtual antonyms didn’t start out that way, and if Crunch had been around at the end of the 16th century it could have used the adjectives interchangeably in its advertising campaign — and would probably have ended up filling its gyms with Gods rather than mortals. At the root of both words is the old English word awe, a noun defined by the OED as “reverential fear or wonder”, and the adjectives in question were formed by adding a suffix — “-some” and “-ful” respectively. These suffixes serve to form adjectives that are full of, characterized by, or able or tending to the noun that they follow: hence beautiful means full of beauty; helpful, tending to help; burdensome, characterized by burden. And so, as logic dictated, both awesome and awful started out meaning the same thing: inspiring awe ….

So how, when and why did these synonyms part company and go their separate ways? The answer lies largely in the evolution of their core word, awe, which in its old English infancy was anchored in the context of God and man’s perception of deity, ie. a feeling of reverence and respect mixed with fear and even terror. Awful emerged at the beginning of the 14th century as the first adjective born of this worshipful state. It wasn’t until the very end of the 16th century that its younger sibling, awesome, made its first appearance, entering the vernacular at around the time that awe was just beginning to move into more secular contexts, inspired by what the OED describes as “what is terribly sublime and majestic in nature, e.g. thunder, a storm at sea”. So awful and awesome were synonymous for a couple of centuries, both describing phenomena — religious, natural or man-made — that inspired a sense of wonder, amazement, or reverence. When Queen Anne visited St. Paul’s Cathedral after it had been destroyed by the great fire of London and rebuilt by its original architect, Sir Christopher Wren, she famously told him that she found the new cathedral “awful, artificial and amusing”. Wren was suitably flattered by the compliment … (Back then, like awful, artificial and amusing also had different meanings.)

As the 18th century wore on, the meanings of awful and awesome began to shift in their emphasis, coming to represent the “ying and yang” respectively of awe in all its nuance and historical complexity. Awful tended increasingly to emphasize the element of fear and dread that religious awe inspired, rather than the wonder more associated with human and natural forces, feats and accomplishments. Awesome began to hijack the good, positive, wondrous qualities that awful eventually shed from its meaning. The OED still defines awesome as “inspiring awe; dreaded”, and gives “marvellous” and “excellent” as its slang definition. The definition of “unpleasant”, “horrible”, or “of poor quality” now assigned to awful is deemed colloquial, and only when the adjective is used poetically does it revert to its original sense of “inspiring awe”.

Never mind the whys and wherefores

“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”

When Shakespeare’s Juliet utters her anguished words — in possibly one of the most quoted and most misunderstood lines in English literature — she is asking her beloved not where he is (as might be suggested by the word wherefore), but why he is who he is. It is because of the feud between the families into which they were respectively born that their love for each other is beyond the bounds of possibility; why, Juliet asks, did Romeo have to be a Montague? Wherefore is an archaic conjunctive adverb, dating back to Middle English, meaning “why”, “for what reason”, “because of what”. Percy Shelley seemed to like making use of the poetic interrogative, as evidenced in his revolutionary poem A Song to the Men of England, in which he asks repeatedly why the English workers don’t rise up and question their masters and oppressors. Here are the first three stanzas:

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save
From the cradle to the grave
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?

Wherefore was also used not just to start a question, but also as a synonym of and more formal alternative to the adverb therefore (meaning “as a result”, “on which account”, “for this reason”). “The rain was falling, and wherefore we sought shelter.”

It’s in its third incarnation, as a noun meaning reason or explanation, that wherefore has survived the longest and remains in current usage, in the expression “whys and wherefores”. Curiously, neither of the words in this tautologous phrase generally goes out in public except in the other’s company (either reasons or causes would normally step in for whys or wherefores on its own), and they really only work as nouns in their plural form (rarely would you hear about a single why or wherefore). But there is a notable exception: Gilbert & Sullivan, in their jaunty song from H.M.S. Pinafore, tell us not to question why love is blind to rank, class and station. Wherefore did they choose this singular version of the phrase? Never mind the whys and wherefores …

Never mind the why and wherefore,
Love can level ranks, and therefore,
Though his lordship’s station’s mighty,
Though stupendous be his brain,
Though your tastes are mean and flighty
And your fortune poor and plain.

— Gilbert & Sullivan, HMS Pinafore

Are you sat comfortably?

“Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.” Many British readers will be sad to learn the news of the death of Daphne Oxenford, who uttered those famous words every afternoon for a couple of decades in the 50s and 60s as she introduced the BBC radio show Listen With Mother . The Telegraph‘s obituary is here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9781409/Daphne-Oxenford.html

Nowadays, are we sat comfortably?

Google the words “was sat”, and you’ll get a lot of information about the standardized test that American high school kids take to get into college. That’s what s, a, and t mean — in that order — to most Americans: the three-letter word (well, the acronym) just makes them feel a bit sick. (It’s a lot like what most middle-aged Brits now feel when they read or hear the words clunk and click …)

Anyway, back to “was sat”. As my schoolfriend Fleur recently asked me: “How do you and your Glossophilia chums feel about ‘was sat’ as against ‘was sitting’? I notice that it is now creeping past editors into published fiction. Personally – it grates, but is it now in common usage and allowable?”

Well, my gut reaction is the same as Fleur’s: it grates on me. But I’ve been living in America for 15 years, and this is not something you ever hear on these shores (unless you’re chatting with a Brit — especially one from up North — on his hols). Whether in the past, present or future, you are/were/will be sitting or you sit/sat/will sit. But you rarely, if ever, are, were or will be sat. Replacing the present or past progressive (sitting) incorrectly with the past simple or past participle (sat) seems to be a regionalism from the North and West of England whose use has become so frequent and widespread that it’s now a standard British colloquialism. “She was sat in front of the TV when her husband arrived home.” But I think this practice still grates on many English ears.

There is arguably one use of “was sat” that is legitimate: when the verb “to sit” (usually followed by “down”) is used transitively — ie. when someone is sitting something or someone else, and it’s used in the passive past tense. “She sat me down to tell me the bad news” can technically be phrased passively as “I was sat down to be given the bad news.” Even in this transitive, passive form the “was sat” sounds awkward; most writers would probably rephrase the sentence, perhaps reverting to the active use of the verb. And “seat/seated” is preferable to “sit/sat” when the transitive verb is needed: “The waiter seated us next to the window”, hence, “We were seated next to the window”.

In Christopher Edge’s book Twelve Minutes to Midnight, he writes: “She felt herself lowered gently down until she was sat slumped against the wall of the cell.” Is Edge using the transitive passive form of sit here, since the suggestion is that someone else is lowering her into a seated position? In that case, wouldn’t the gentle lowering be part of the seating process and therefore not precede her state of being sat, as suggested by the word until? Or is the colloquialism now passing muster — as Fleur suggests — and escaping the modern editor’s red pen?

No thank you, Mr. Spielberg

Here is the letter that Daniel Day-Lewis sent to Steven Spielberg soon after being offered the role of Abraham Lincoln in the iconic director’s historical biopic — which was still at that point just a script in Spielberg’s eye. The gist of Day-Lewis’s note? Thanks but no thanks, Mr. Spielberg. But good luck with the movie. Would Liam Neeson, who was Spielberg’s second choice for the presidential role (and very nearly graced our screens in the pic now tipped for Oscar domination), have nailed it?

“Dear Steven,

It was a real pleasure just to sit and talk with you. I listened very carefully to what you had to say about this compelling history, and I’ve since read the script and found it in all the detail in which it describe these monumental events and in the compassionate portraits of all the principal characters, both powerful and moving. I can’t account for how at any given moment I feel the need to explore one life as opposed to another, but I do know that I can only do this work if I feel almost as if there is no choice; that a subject coincides inexplicably with a very personal need and a very specific moment in time. In this case, as fascinated as I was by Abe, it was the fascination of a grateful spectator who longed to see a story told, rather than that of a participant. That’s how I feel now in spite of myself, and though I can’t be sure that this won’t change, I couldn’t dream of encouraging you to keep it open on a mere possibility. I do hope this makes sense Steven, I’m glad you’re making the film, I wish you the strength for it, and I send both my very best wishes and my sincere gratitude to you for having considered me.”

Spielberg read this letter aloud before presenting the award for best actor to Day-Lewis at the New York Film Critics Circle awards on Monday evening; the Hollywood Reporter was on hand to transcribe it.

Aren’t we all glad that Day-Lewis chose to pursue a career in acting rather than writing?

Read more in Vanity Fair‘s new issue.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2013/01/daniel-day-lewis-lincoln-steven-spielberg-rejection-letter?mbid=social_facebook

Fowler & Fowler on prepositions, idiom and the art of language

Fowler & Fowler’s complex article on prepositions in their book The King’s English (first published in 1906) is worth reading if only for the opening paragraph. Though characteristically pompous in tone, the introduction can be read as a more general treatise on language and writing, with its assertion that a true command and understanding of preposition usage (read language) is acquired not from the study of dictionaries and grammars, but by sheer instinct, feel, and “good reading with the idiomatic eye open”. More than a century after these words were set down in their formal Edwardian prose, they remain as wise and pertinent today, and probably ring true for many modern editors, linguists, language commentators — and writers themselves — who understand that good writing and language composition are elusive skills that can’t easily be taught or explained.

“In an uninflected language like ours these [prepositions] are ubiquitous, and it is quite impossible to write tolerably without a full knowledge, conscious or unconscious, of their uses. Misuse of them, however, mostly results not in what may be called in the fullest sense blunders of syntax, but in offences against idiom. It is often impossible to convince a writer that the preposition he has used is a wrong one, because there is no reason in the nature of things, in logic, or in the principles of universal grammar (whichever way it may be put), why that preposition should not give the desired meaning as clearly as the one that we tell him he should have used. Idioms are special forms of speech that for some reason, often inscrutable, have proved congenial to the instinct of a particular language. To neglect them shows a writer, however good a logician he may be, to be no linguist — condemns him, from that point of view, more clearly than grammatical blunders themselves. But though the subject of prepositions is thus very important, the idioms in which they appear are so multitudinous that it is hopeless to attempt giving more than the scantiest selection; this may at least put writers on the guard. Usages of this sort cannot be acquired from dictionaries and grammars, still less from a treatise like the present, not pretending to be exhaustive; good reading with the idiomatic eye open is essential. We give a few examples of what to avoid.”

Taking the mick, and slagging people off

I think it’s very telling that there’s no real American equivalent for the British saying “to take the piss out of someone”, or its slightly kinder version, “taking the mick (or mickey)”. (Yanks do have “mock” and “make fun of” at their disposal, but neither conveys the same sense of fun and frivolity at the heart of the British expressions.) It strikes me that this is more a reflection of a cultural difference than of any linguistic parting of ways. It’s widely acknowledged that Brits are generally blessed with a profound and developed sense of irony: it’s in their genes, and it pervades the British sense of humor — along with a wicked cynicism — in an almost Jungian way. And another important marker on the British DNA humor strand is that of laughing at someone else’s expense, or making fun of them. Americans are inclined to keep the target of funny self-deprecation strictly to themselves; even an affectionate prod at a near one or dear one is often considered too risque, or just downright mean, unless the obligatory “just kidding” sign flashes mercilessly throughout the joke. But taking the mickey out of others is a British sport. Actually, it’s a national pastime. Dame Edna Everage (of Australian rather than British extraction) has taken this ‘piss-taking’ to an extreme, but you don’t have to look far to find it in British living rooms, pubs and popular culture. A favorite segment of Graham Norton’s prime-time TV chat show is when he invites audience members to tell a story, and then having teased, mimicked and “taken the mickey” out of his willing victims during their toe-curling introductions, he tips them backwards while they’re still in the throes of recounting their tales. It’s British humor at its belly-aching best. And invariably, Norton’s special American guest, there from Hollywood to plug his or her latest flick, looks on with a mixture of confusion and disbelief while the Brits howl with laughter at the wretched storyteller, now upside down with their legs all asunder. So why is it that Americans don’t have an equivalent expression to describe their “taking the piss”? Because they generally don’t indulge in that sport — or if they do, it’s not regarded as funny.

And I’ve noticed another slang phenomenon that might also reflect the way we think rather than just our verbal resources. Take a look at the wide and often colorful vocabulary of pejorative slang used respectively on either side of the Atlantic to describe — or more accurately to “slag off” — our fellow human beings. The words are universally not very nice. And some are more vulgar, cruel, or descriptive than others. But looking more closely, and comparing derisive British slang words with those of Americans, I’ve noticed that Brits tend to voice their contempt for their compatriots more on the grounds of their stupidity, idiocy or social inadequacy (and even of their social standing) than of their behavior or attitude towards others, whereas the Americans are honing in on the mean, nasty or bloody-minded rather than on the intellectually-challenged. Naturally there are many exceptions, but there does seem to be a distinct pattern.

There’s a sub-category of terms used as variations on or synonyms of the universally understood word nerd: someone who is intelligent, knowledgeable or expert (sometimes obsessively) in a particular field (especially scientific or mathematical), socially inept, studious, and any or all of the above. Variously described as swots, dinks, dorks, dweebs, and geeks, these social unfortunates can, I think, be safely consigned to their own unfortunate linguistic ghetto, however mean or undeserved their monikers might be. So I’ve taken them out of this exercise in slang comparison, leaving these two colorful lists below illustrating how we respectively slag off our fellow men. Do you think they say something about the way we judge our compatriots on either side of the pond?

British slang:

berk (idiot)

chav (working- or low-class: pejorative)

div (stupid person; idiot)

git (fool; idiot)

numpty (stupid or ineffectual person)

oik (person from low social class: pejorative)

plonker (idiot; fool)

sod (annoying or unpleasant person)

tosser (unpleasant person, with loser tendencies)

wanker (unpleasant person, with loser tendencies)

twat (idiot)

twit (fool)

pillock (idiot; fool)

prat (idiot; fool)

prick (unpleasant person; jerk)

wally (idiot; fool)

American slang:

asshole (unpleasant person; jerk)

doofus (stupid, foolish person)

douche-bag (unpleasant person; jerk)

jackass (unpleasant person; jerk)

jerk (unpleasant person)

mother-f***er (unpleasant person)

schmuck (unpleasant person)

scumbag (unpleasant person)

sleazebag (unpleasant person)

son of a bitch (unpleasant person)

Divided by a common language

As George Bernard Shaw famously noted, “England and America are two countries divided by a common language.” Most of the time we know exactly what our friends across the sea (or ocean) mean, and our vocabulary, grammar and phraseology are sensibly in synch with each other. But every now and then, our innocent comments or statements can cause confusion or amusement — or at worst, offense — to those on the other side of the Atlantic, often because of a simple, tiny word. A Brit complaining that his roommate can be “a complete twat” will undoubtedly raise a Yankee’s eyebrows. (Br. Eng.: fool, idiot; Am. Eng.: vulgar slang for vulva). The British Prime Minister and I have both regretted joking publicly about the word being the past tense of “tweet”, little realizing how smutty we sounded at the time.

Here are some expressions and basic vocabulary that can seem a little weird, stilted, silly, or downright rude and smutty to the ears of our friends across the pond.

I live in that street. I live on that street.

I quite like it. I quite like it.

I’m having faggots for tea. I’m eating meatballs for dinner.

Tea or coffee? I don’t mind. I don’t care.

She has a new lease of life. She has a new lease on life.

I’m getting the lie of the land. I’m getting the lay of the land.

We’re visiting her in hospital in a fortnight. We’re visiting with her in the hospital in two weeks.

No fear! No way!

I’m meeting my husband tomorrow. I’m meeting with my husband tomorrow.

I borrowed my teacher’s rubber. I borrowed my teacher’s eraser.

I’m taking my bum-bag when I go on holiday. I’m taking my fanny-pack when I go on vacation.

He has his dog on a lead. He has his dog on a leash.

He went to public school. He went to public school.

I take it in my stride. I take it in stride.

The dog is definitely on heat. The dog is definitely in heat.

I’d like to talk to him. I’d like to talk with him.

The exception that doesn’t necessarily prove the rule

It’s an expression that F. G. Fowler mournfully decried as one of those “popularized technicalities”, about which he offers “two general warnings”: “first, that the popular use more often than not misrepresents, & sometimes very badly, the original meaning; & secondly, that free indulgence in this sort of term results in a tawdry style.”

“The exception (that) proves the rule” is meant to be a logical — and legal — statement in which a particular stated exception actually clarifies, defines or implies a general rule by its own logic. A sign warning that “the bank will be closed on Monday, Oct 14 to mark Columbus Day” is an exception proving the rule that the bank is generally open on Mondays. “For the calculus quiz next week, calculators are not permitted in the classroom.” This memo to high-school mathematicians proves that as a rule they are allowed to bring their calculators into the classroom, but in this case — for the test — an exception is being made.

This widely-used expression, stemming from a Latin legal principle exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis (“the exception confirms the rule in cases not excepted”), which was based in turn on a concept first proposed by the Roman philosopher and lawyer Cicero, has evolved through years of misunderstanding and misuse to mean the exact opposite of its original, logical and actually very useful premise. Falling into one of the murky categories of illogical beliefs, old wives’ tales, or simply expressions said in jest or irony (much like that of Sod’s Law for unlucky Brits or Murphy’s Law for unfortunate Americans), the once informative exception now serves as a rather silly assertion: that when something occurs that is not ‘by the book’ or that breaks our rules of understanding or expectation, it only goes to prove what we take for granted as a rule. Take this example: “We never take an umbrella with us on our annual summer trip to the Greek islands. When the heavens opened on Julia’s wedding in Corfu, only Aunt May stayed dry under her parasol. It was a big wet exception that proved the rule.” (The rule we can infer from this is that it never rains in Greece in the summer.) Fowler sums up the twisted logic of the expression’s misuser: “A truth is all the truer if it is sometimes false.”

Next time you’re focused on the exception, be mindful that it’s testing — or even reminding us of — the rule, but it’s not really the pudding in which the proof is to be found.

“New Year on Dartmoor” – by Sylvia Plath

New Year on Dartmoor
This is newness: every little tawdry
Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,
Glinting and clinking in a saint’s falsetto. Only you
Don’t know what to make of the sudden slippiness,
The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant.
There’s no getting up it by the words you know.
No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe.
We have only come to look. You are too new
To want the world in a glass hat.

— Sylvia Plath, December 1961

‘Vite, ‘trude and ‘herit: when ‘in’ is not not

Inhospitable, involuntary, invisible, incoherent, intolerable … It seems intuitive and it’s often inferred that “in-” words mean the inherent opposite — or inverse — of the word that “in-” precedes. Or maybe not. “In-” does not invariably indicate “not”; decapitate the “in-“, and you’re left with an invalid, incomprehensible word (see all the bold “in” words in this sentence). Inherit, incense, incumbent, invite and intrude are just a few further examples of the innumerable in-words that are unviable (yes, that is a word, but inviable is not) without their first two letters. And in a very few instances, when you take away the “in-“, you have a synonym — or something that comes in-terestingly close in meaning to the original intact word. Go figure.

Famous and infamous: mean almost the same thing. F = celebrated; well-known. I = notoriously bad (and notorious means well-known, especially unfavorably).

Habitable and inhabitable: mean the same thing. Both mean that can be inhabited.

Valuable and invaluable: mean very similar things. V = of great value, price or worth; I = valuable beyond estimation, priceless.

Fix and infix: can mean the same thing. F = mend, repair, make firm or stable; I = fix (a thing in another).

Dent and indent: can mean the same thing. D = mark with a dent. One definition of I = make a dent in.

Flammable and inflammable: mean exactly the same thing. As the OED notes: “Flammable is used because inflammable can be mistaken for a negative (the true negative being non-flammable). Inflammable, the original word that was in standard English usage from the 16th century, derives from the Latin inflammare meaning to kindle or set alight. Flammable was deliberately introduced and its use encouraged in the 1920s by the National Fire Protection Association, which was understandably concerned that the word inflammable was commonly being misunderstood to mean non-flammable or fire-proof.

*****

Below are a few further examples of words that look as though they might or should have different meanings:

Disassociate and dissociate: mean the same thing: Both mean disconnect or become disconnected; separate.

Iterate and reiterate: mean the same thing. I = repeat; state repeatedly. R = say or do again or repeatedly.

Cogitate and excogitate: mean almost the same thing. C = ponder; meditate. E = think out; contrive.

Appertain and pertain: mean the same thing. Both mean to relate or be appropriate (to).