Currying favor

Have you ever wondered where the expression to “curry favor (or favour)” comes from? It means to seek favor or to ingratiate oneself by fawning, flattery or sycophancy. And it has nothing to do with the exotic flavor of Indian curry.

To understand its origins we need to look at each word separately.

“Curry” in this case dates back to an Old French verb conraier meaning ‘to prepare’ or ‘to put in order’. In Middle English this translated to currayen, leading to the modern verb “to curry”: to clean, rub down, groom or dress the coat of a horse, often using a curry-comb. Another expression using this verb “curry” in its equestrian sense is “a short horse is soon curried”. Poor little horse.

Favor is an Anglicized/bastardized version of the old word favel, meaning yellow, fallow, or dun – or a horse of one of these brownish hues. Related to the word fallow, its meaning was also entangled with that of a similar-sounding old French word favele, meaning “lying” or “deception”. How this evolved into the “favor” of our expression dates back to a famous poem, Roman de Fauvel (“The Romance of Fauvel”), written in the 1300s by a Frenchman named Gervais du Bus. (The poem is probably best known for its musical setting by Philippe de Virty in the Ars Nova style.) It tells the story of Fauvel (whose letters are all initials of cardinal sins), a “favel” or fallow donkey or horse, which in medieval times was a symbol of duplicity, greed or deceit. In Du Bus’s morality tale, which served in its time as a satirical social commentary on the corruption of 14th-century Church and State, those in the higher echelons of wealth and power would stroke and groom this conniving beast, engaging in an insincere form of flattery by “currying Fauvel”.

Hence, from the Old French correier fauvel, to the Middle English currayen favel, the expression to “curry a fallow-colored horse” and ultimately to “curry favor” has evolved. It’s understood to have entered the English language at the turn of the 15th century as “curry favel”, and only in the 1500s did it assume its current form. The OED cites two early instances (with slight spelling variations) from the 16th century:

c1510 Barclay Mirr. Gd. Manners (1570) Fvj, Flatter not as do some, With none curry fauour.

1557 N. T. (Genev.) Matt. viii. 20 note, He thoght by this meanes to courry fauour with the worlde.

And now for something somewhat different …

This morning on one of American Public Media’s radio news shows I heard a commentator say the following: “It’s somewhat of an exaggeration.” Would I ever hear those words said on BBC Radio 4, I thought? Probably not. But why not?

Something of and somewhat have similar meanings in different forms of speech: somewhat is an adverb used to qualify an adjective (“he is somewhat rude”) and something of qualifies a noun instead (“he is something of a jerk”) – although I’m not entirely sure what grammatical form something of is. (If you know, please let us know in the comments section: is it a prenominal adjective, or perhaps a prenominal noun, or simply a noun and pronoun?) Many would argue that somewhat of is an error, in which the two uses are wrongly confused and combined. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, somewhat used as a noun/pronoun instead of something is archaic. But I believe this usage has become standard – if still somewhat colloquial – in American English, more or less supplanting something of in everyday speech, if not in writing. However, I think it’s jarring to most British ears.

And this isn’t to say that there aren’t BrE colloquialisms involving the word something that strain the American ear. “My back hurts something awful!”: You would be unlikely to hear that in an American gym. But now let’s take a look at British regional dialects and accents, and we might get closer to understanding why something and somewhat have become somewhat interchangeable, at least on American shores. In Yorkshire, and perhaps in the West country (or in Hardy’s Wessex), you’d be likely to hear that sentence pronounced somewhat differently: “Me back ‘urts summat awful!” Summat is the northern dialect version of the word something, and of course it sounds much closer to somewhat (and some would argue that it’s actually derived from somewhat, rather than something). Perhaps it lingers from the Old English use of somewhat in place of something – and it’s not unusual to find American words and pronunciations more closely resembling Old English rather than modern English.

Now let’s take somewhat, which in BrE is now considered rather formal, stuffy, or archaic. Unless they’re in the House of Lords, Brits tend to work with other words and expressions when they want to downplay or ‘de-emphasize’ the adjective that follows: “She’s a little shocked by the discovery,” or “he was relatively new to the industry”. Rather and quite are other modifying adverbs that can take the sting out of an extreme adjective, but rather confusingly, they are both often used to add rather than take away emphasis. See this earlier post on Glossophilia: https://glossophilia.org/?p=77

Fowler was forthright (and somewhat scathing) in his derision of the word somewhat and other ‘shock-absorbers’ like it: “Somewhat has for the inferior journalist what he would be likely to describe as ‘a somewhat amazing fascination’. …What first moves people to experiment in the somewhat style is partly timidity – they are frightened by the coming strong word and would fain take precautions against shock – and partly the notion that an air of studious understatement is superior and impressive; and so in our newspapers ‘the intemperate orgy of moderation is renewed every morning’. Cf. the similar use of comparatively and relatively as shock-absorbers.”

I wonder if Fowler’s description is more about the English mind-set than its lingo: “timidity”, “studious understatement” and “intemperate orgies of moderation” sound somewhat British to me …

It’s fortuitous – but is it fortunate? Only in America, it seems …

In a recent e-mail to my Dad, I told him about an event that had seemed ‘very fortuitous’ to me (because of my understanding of the word to mean a mixture of coincidence and good fortune). He was surprised that I would have qualified such an adjective, which to his mind can’t be found in different grades or extremes: in the same way that something is either unique or it isn’t, he would argue that an event or happening either is or isn’t fortuitous.

Over to my Dad, Brian Barder, for his research and comments on the matter. It’s fortunate for me – and, I admit, in this case fortuitous – that I have an American passport: he’s let me off the hook because of it …

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s interesting that you reckon that “fortuitous has extra connotations of luck or good fortune (unlike accidental or coincidental) – and there are definitely different extremes of good luck and fortune”, which is not confirmed by the big OED Online:

fortuitous That happens or is produced by fortune or chance; accidental, casual. fortuitous concourse of atoms: see concourse n. 3a. fortuitous event (Law): see quot. 1856.

1653 H. More Antidote Atheism (1712) iii. xv. 135 This Argument against the fortuitous concourse of Atoms.

1712 J. Addison Spectator No. 293. ¶4 The highest Degree of it [sc. Wisdom] which Man can possess, is by no means equal to fortuitous Events.

1806 R. Fellowes tr. Milton Second Def. in Wks. (Bohn) I. 240 This extraordinary kindness..cannot be any fortuitous combination.

1823 Scott Peveril I. Pref. Let. p. iii, A fortuitous rencontre.

1856 J. Bouvier Law Dict. U.S.A., Fortuitous event, a term in the civil law to denote that which happens by a cause which cannot be resisted..Or it is that which neither of the parties has occasioned or could prevent.

1865 Pall Mall Gaz. 27 Oct. 6 The epithet he [Lord Palmerston] applied to the coalition of parties against him on the China question in 1857—‘a fortuitous concourse of atoms’.

1877 W. Sparrow Serm. xviii. 241 Neither fortuitous nor necessitated, but entirely under the governmental control of the great and good God.

absol.

1855 H. Spencer Princ. Psychol. iv. iii. 530 All physical relations whatever, from the absolutely indissoluble to the fortuitous.

(“Fortune” in that definition obviously means chance, neither good nor bad fortune and certainly not luck as in ‘lucky’.)

Do you have a copy of Bob Burchfield’s 3rd edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, which has an excellent essay on ‘fortuitous’? As I thought, the idea that fortuitous has some connection with fortunate is an error that began to creep in towards the beginning of the C20 because of the coincidental (fortuitous!) resemblance between the two words, although they have completely different origins — fors (chance) in the case of fortuitous, fortunus (luck, fortune) for the other. The first edition of Fowler described the use of fortuitous to imply fortunate as a straightforward malapropism. Burchfield reluctantly admits that the error is now becoming so common that it’s probably in the process of becoming acceptable. His entry concludes:

Plainly the new meaning is knocking at the door. But readers of this book are urged meanwhile to restrict the word to its traditional (“accidental, by chance”) sense. When an intrusive meaning contains a seed of ambiguity, it is advisable to stay with the older ones.

I’m chuffed to see that Burchfield’s piece starts by quoting a letter of 1987 to him from a friend: “How sad it will be to lose ‘fortuitous’ to the Visigoths.” The friend who wrote that to him was me. I’m still sad to see a good and useful word lost! I hardly ever use it nowadays for fear that I will be thought not to know that in its original and most respectable usage there’s not a hint of good luck or fortune, and that that misapprehension arises purely from a kind of homophonic pun.

The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors says briskly: “due to or charaterized [sic] by chance: not fortunate or well-timed.” The Times Style Guide says “fortuitous does not mean fortunate. It means by chance or accident. Do not confuse.” The Economist Style Guide says “FORTUITOUS means accidental, not fortunate or well-timed.”

However, I see with some gloom that Webster’s College Dictionary, 9th edition, a dictionary of American English of course, does give “fortunate, lucky” as a second definition of fortuitous. Most of the (American) online dictionaries follow Webster. But there’s also this rather good summary:

The traditional, etymological meaning of fortuitous is ‘happening by chance’: a fortuitous meeting is a chance meeting, which might turn out to be either a good thing or a bad thing. Today, however, fortuitous tends to be often used to refer only to fortunate outcomes and the word has become more or less a synonym for ‘lucky’ or ‘fortunate’ ( the ball went into the goal by a fortuitous ricochet). Although this usage is now widespread, it is still regarded by some people as incorrect.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fortuitous

It seems that the word has already been lost, not to the Visigoths as I wrote to Bob Burchfield, but to the Americans. So I suppose you’re off the hook.

Whomever Horton hears in Whoville

We’ve become used to hearing the over-correction of “you and me” to “you and I”: She’s hosting the party for you and I … He’s just like you and I. I think of it as a case of grammatical positive discrimination – or linguistic political correctness: if you’ve been rapped over the knuckles once too often for uttering an apparently illegal phrase (you and me”), without understanding when and why those three words sometimes do work legitimately in that order, you might err on what you think is the side of grammatical correctness, defaulting to a Pavlovian avoidance of an oft-forbidden phrase.

There’s a new over-correction going on in Whoville, and that’s the increasingly frequent incorrect use of whomever in the place of whoever. What is it about that little ‘m’ in the middle of the word that makes people feel so grammatically lofty? Whomever is the new you and I; it’s bandied about with the same lack of understanding of the subject-object issue at the heart of the matter, and in the mistaken belief that inserting an ‘m’ is invariably but unaccountably more grammatically correct.

“Whomever wants this apple can have it” is clearly wrong. Whomever is used only to refer to the object of the verbal sentence or phrase – ie. the person ‘on the receiving end’ of the verb. The only word in this sentence that can be identified – by any stretch of the imagination – as an object is the apple, not the person wanting or having it.

We can be more forgiving when we start moving into more murky and dangerous waters: when whoever (or, wrongly, whomever) becomes the subject of a clause that is in itself the object of a sentence. Take these examples below.

1) Incorrect: “We will support whomever wins the Presidential election.” Correct: “We will support whoever wins the Presidential election.”

At first glance, whomever seems to be the object of the sentence – the person whom we will support. However, “whoever wins the Presidential election” is a single person or grammatical ‘package’ – an ‘object clause’; and within that clause – which is itself the object of our support – there is an unequivocal subject (whoever/any person) who is doing the winning. Therefore whoever takes the subjective rather than objective (whomever) form.

2) Incorrect: “We will support whoever the country elects as President.” Correct: “We will support whomever the country elects as President.”

In this case, the person elected is still the object of our support, contained in the object clause. However, this time, within the object clause (“whomever the country elects as President”), the subject is the country; it is not the whoever/any person who is doing the electing. And therefore whomever takes its objective form within the clause.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“And so, all ended well for both Horton and Whos, and for all in the jungle, even kangaroos. So let that be a lesson to one and to all; a person is a person, no matter how small.”

10 Things Brits Say … and What Americans Think We Mean

“What we say: “I’m easy.”
What Americans hear: “I always have sex on the first date.”“

Thanks to BBC America’s “Mind the Gap” for this lovely post:

http://www.bbcamerica.com/mind-the-gap/2012/08/14/10-things-brits-sayand-what-americans-think-we-mean/

10 Things Brits Say…and What Americans Think We Mean

By Ruth Margolis | Posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2012

This is a pretty bird but “fit bird” has an entirely different meaning. (Photo/AP)

We may have invented the English language but that doesn’t mean our version is always understood by those who share our mother tongue.

1. What we say: “Sorry”
What Americans hear: “I sincerely apologize.”
Saying sorry is like a national tic, which means we Brits rarely use the word to convey a heartfelt apology. This is baffling to Americans who will, on occasion, reply with something like, “Why, exactly, are you sorry?” “I’m not,” you’ll say, confused. “Sorry.”

2. What we say: “How do you do?”
What Americans hear: “Please provide a rundown of your most recent medical.”
Despite how it sounds, this is a formal greeting and not an invitation for commentary on a person’s quality of life. But Americans sometimes take it literally and have no problem replying truthfully, with a list of ailments.

3. What we say: “Cheers”
What Americans hear: “To your good health”
In the U.S., this is what people say when they clink glasses in the pub. We do this too but Brits have other uses for this word, all of which will flummox your American friends. Like when we say “cheers” instead of “thank you.” Signing off a phone call or an email this way will leave U.S. folk wondering why you’re toasting them.

4. What we say: “You know what I mean?”
What Americans hear: “Did you comprehend what I just said?”
This British conversation filler isn’t even weighty enough to count as a rhetorical question. Nonetheless, Americans will take it at face value and seek to reassure you that they did indeed understand your last statement.

5. What we say: “I’ve got the right hump.”
What Americans hear: “I have a hunchback.”
Sometime Brits see fit to borrow camels’ dominant physical attribute to help explain that they’re annoyed or frustrated. We’re not, in fact, opening up about a crippling disfigurement.

6. What we say: “It’s a bit dear.”
What Americans hear: “It’s slightly adorable.”
When we Brits want to politely say something is too expensive, we might roll out this quaint old expression. Not a good idea if you’re trying to haggle with an American: they’ll take it as a compliment.

7. What we say: “I got off with this fit bird.”
What Americans hear: “I disembarked with an athletic pigeon.”
Don’t expect Americans to even attempt a translation here. But if they do manage to guess that “got off with” means “made out with”, be sure to clarify that what you mean by “bird.”

8. What we say: “I went to public school.”
What Americans hear: “I went to a school my parents didn’t pay for.”
Americans with a snobbish bent will lap up tales of posh British schooling. However, your use of the word “public” may well throw them off. Begin by explaining that, in the U.K., public school is the same as private school. Or, decide not to have this conversation in the first place because it’ll make you sound like a twit.

9. What we say: “I’m easy.”
What Americans hear: “I always have sex on the first date.”
Even the ultra laidback Brits who use this expression might still take issue with the American translation. To avoid misinterpretation, plump for something more on the nose like, “I don’t mind.”

10. What we say: “All right, darling?”
What Americans hear: “How are you, love of my life?”
Save prudish Americans’ blushes by not directing this informal version of “How do you do?” at them. Worse still is the West Country version, which substitutes “darling” for the infinitely more bewildering and inappropriate “my lover.”

Have you had any issues with Americans not understanding your lingo?

If cities have sexes, do languages have personalities?

As Angela Carter said, “Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.”

Is it about the people? Not according to John Berger. “Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and this hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.”

Do we as a people reflect the character of our native tongues? If Stephen Fry’s portrayal of the English language is accurate, we’ve nothing to be proud of. “The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore.”

35 new words added to the OED

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/136111#ixzz22OL3i99X

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The Oxford English Dictionary is a warehouse of over 600,000 words. Despite this large arsenal, we continue to coin, clip, and blend new words into existence, and the OED folks pump some of these new words into their dictionary. Here are some more recent additions with their official definitions.

1. Bling (n): Expensive, ostentatious clothing and jewelry.
*
2. Bromance (n): A close but non-sexual relationship between two men.
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3. Chillax (v): Calm down and relax.
*
4. Crunk (adj): Very excited or full of energy.
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5. D’oh (ex): Exclamation used to comment on a foolish or stupid action, especially one’s own.
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6. Droolworthy (adj): Extremely attractive or desirable.
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7. Frankenfood (n): Genetically modified food.
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8. Grrrl (n): A young woman regarded as independent and strong or aggressive, especially in her attitude to men or in her sexuality (A blend of “Grrrr” and “Girl.”)
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9. Guyliner (n): Eyeliner that is worn by men.
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10. Hater (n): A person who greatly dislikes a specified person or thing.
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11. Illiterati (n): People who are not well educated or well informed about a particular subject or sphere of activity.
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12. Infomania (n): The compulsive desire to check or accumulate news and information, typically via mobile phone or computer.
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13. Jeggings (n): Tight-fitting stretch trousers for women, styled to resemble a pair of denim jeans.
*
14. La-la Land (n): A fanciful state or dream world. Also, Los Angeles.
*
15. Locavore (n): A person whose diet consists only or principally of locally grown or produced food.
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16. Mankini (n): A brief one-piece bathing garment for men, with a T-back.
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17. Mini-Me (n): A person closely resembling a smaller or younger version of another.
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18. Muffin Top (n): A roll of fat visible above the top of a pair of women’s tight-fitting low-waisted trousers.
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19. Muggle (n): A person who is not conversant with a particular activity or skill.
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20. Noob (n): A person who is inexperienced in a particular sphere or activity, especially computing or the use of the Internet.
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21. Obvs (adv): Obviously.
*
22. OMG (ex): Used to express surprise, excitement, or disbelief. (Dates back to 1917.)
*
23. Po-po (n): The police.
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24. Purple State (n): A US state where the Democratic and Republican parties have similar levels of support among voters.
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25. Screenager (n): A person in their teens or twenties who has an aptitude for computers and the Internet.
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26. Sexting (n): The sending of sexually explicit photographs or messages via mobile phone.
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27. Textspeak (n): Language regarded as characteristic of text messages, consisting of abbreviations, acronyms, initials, emoticons. (wut hpns win u write lyk dis.)
*
28. Totes (adv): Totally.
*
29. Truthiness (n): the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true.
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30. Twitterati (n): Keen or frequent users of the social networking site Twitter.
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31. Unfriend (v): Remove (someone) from a list of friends or contacts on a social networking site.
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32. Upcycle (v): Reuse (discarded objects or material) in such a way as to create a product of higher quality or value than the original.
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33. Whatevs (ex, adv): Whatever.
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34. Whovian (n): A fan of the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who.
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35. Woot (ex): (Especially in electronic communication) Used to express elation, enthusiasm, or triumph.

Brand name or generic noun?

Do you know your brand names from your common nouns? Check your knowledge here …

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/93858#ixzz22IJ7b5Aw
–brought to you by mental_floss!

1. You might think you’re riding around on a Jet Ski, but if it’s not made by Kawasaki Heavy Industries, it’s just a personal watercraft.

2. Bubble Wrap is probably the greatest contribution made to our society by Sealed Air Corporation, which they rightly trademarked.

3. The term Onesies, referring to infant bodysuits, is owned by Gerber Childrenswear. According to their website, the trademark is aggressively enforced. (Twosies and Funzies also belong to Gerber.)

4. Jacuzzi is not only a brand of hot tubs and bathtubs; they also make mattresses and toilets.

5. The Crockpot, a brand name for the slow cooker, was originally developed as a beanery appliance.

6. Fluffernutter is a registered trademark of the makers of Marshmallow Fluff, Durkee-Mower, Inc.

7, 8 & 9. Frisbee is currently owned by WHAM-O, but a legal battle to make this word and several others generic is underway. In 2010, Manley Toys Ltd. challenged WHAM-O, arguing that the terms Frisbee, Hula Hoop and Slip’n Slide have already become generic in the public lexicon. Personally, I think Ultimate Flying Disc sounds cooler than Ultimate Frisbee anyway.

10. Chapstick is a brand name of lip balm produced by Pfizer. In the event that you find yourself enjoying this product too much, websites dedicated to helping Chapstick addicts are available.

11. The perfect time to remind a friend or family member that Kleenex is a brand name for a tissue is right when they are desperately begging you to hand them one.

12. Ping-Pong was trademarked in 1901 as a brand of table tennis products named for the sound the ball makes when it hits the table.

13. On their website, Microsoft suggests that unless you are using their software, your PowerPoint is a “presentation graphics program.”

14. When Q-tips were originally released, they were called Baby Gays. The name was changed to Q-tips—the “Q” standing for quality—in 1926. Although they have changed hands several times since then, Unilever owns the brand today.

15. Two hockey-player brothers designed Rollerblade inline skates from a pair of old roller skates in 1979. They were the only brand of inline skates until the mid-eighties, when several other companies emerged.

16. According to legend, Scotch tape earned its name when a frustrated customer told a 3M scientist to “take it back to your Scotch bosses and tell them to put more adhesive on it.” Today, Scotch “Magic Tape” is only manufactured in one place in the world: Hutchinson, Minn.

17. The permanent marker was invented in 1956, but the Sharpie wasn’t introduced until 1964. Today, the products are almost synonymous with one another.

18. In 1899, Pearle Wait sold his recipe for Jell-O to Orator Woodward for $450. In 1902, sales for the product were around $250,000. Today, the gelatin dessert is owned by Kraft.

19. Tupperware is a brand that got its name from its creator, Earle Silas Tupper.

20. George de Mastreal invented Velcro when he discovered that burrs stuck to matted dog fur. Today, it is the world’s most prominent brand of hook and loop fasteners.

21. Weed Eater is owned by Husqvarna Outdoor Products.

22. Don’t ask BIC what’s in their line of correction fluid. The exact ingredients of Wite-out are confidential.

23. Johnson & Johnson manufactured gauze and adhesive tape separately until Earle Dickinson had the idea to combine them to create Band-Aids for his accident-prone wife.

24. The Zamboni is an ice resurfacer named after its inventor, Frank Zamboni.

25. TASER is a trademark of TASER International, and shouldn’t technically be used as a verb. To be fair, “Don’t hit me with that electroshock weapon, bro!” is probably hard to shout under duress. Bonus fact: TASER is an acronym. It stands for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle.”

26. JC wrote that Dumpster is a brand name, which is true, although the word has become largely genericized and the trademark is not widely enforced. The Dumpster got its name from the Dempster Brothers Inc., who combined their name with the word “dump” to create the Dempster Dumpster.

27. Novocain is actually the brand name of Procaine Hydrochloride owned by Hospira Inc. Thanks to H.D. for the info!

28. Thanks to Krebscy, I will never again make the mistake of offering my guests a Popsicle, a registered trademark of Unilever. Like many great things in life, the Popsicle was invented by accident. As the story goes, one winter night in 1905, 11-year-old Frank Epperson left a mixture of soda and water with a stick in it on his porch. Almost 20 years later, Frank began selling his creation at a lemonade stand he was running and the treat has been popular ever since.

Today, Unilever recommends that you call generic frozen pops on a stick “pops,” “ice pops” or “freezer pops”. Although, depending on where you’re from, offering someone a “pop” could get very confusing.

29. Everyone knows Post-its, a trademark of 3M, were not the invention of Romy and Michele. A very different duo is responsible—Dr. Spencer Silver invented the adhesive in 1968 and scientist Art Fry thought up a practical use for it in 1974. In 1980, Post-its were available for sale. Thanks to Ken!

30. The Ouija board was first introduced by Elijah Bond in 1890 as a practical way to communicate with spirits, making dealing with a pesky ghost much more convenient. Today, it is trademark of Hasbro Inc. Thanks to Romeo Vitelli passing this on!

31. Vic brought to our attention that Plexiglas, which got its start in World War II aircraft canopies, has since become the better-known name for acrylic glass or poly(methyl methacrylate).

32. No matter how many picnics you’ve been to or how much time you spend at the water cooler, you’ve never had a drink out of a Styrofoam cup. Expanded Polystyrene is the generic name for the material that we typically think of as Styrofoam. The brand is a trademark of the Dow Chemical Company that is made in sheaths for construction projects and is never named in the shape of a plate, cup or cooler. Thanks to Matt for the tip!

33. Geekinsight, which I hope is a family name, pointed out that Thermos is a registered trademark. Although the Thermos was invented in 1892, it wasn’t paired with a lunch box until 1953. The set, which originally featured a picture of Roy Rogers, sold more than 2 million units in the first year.

34. Robert Chesebrough invented Vaseline, now a registered trademark of Unilever, when he was 22 and he observed oil workers smearing residue from drills on their skin to heal wounds. Twenty years later, in 1880, Vaseline was selling throughout the United States at the rate of one jar a minute. Thanks for the info, Ken!

35. X-acto began in 1917 as a medical company that created syringes. Eventually, they began creating surgical scalpels that evolved into the hobby knives that we associate with X-acto. As Patrick told us, X-acto is a brand and a division of Elmer’s.

Read the full text here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/96072#ixzz22IJOKrHU
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Period or no period? Obama made his choice. What’s yours?

As a huge fan of the ellipsis, I can’t understand why no-one suggested those three tantalizingly forward-thinking dots, instead of the “full stop”… And surely if the slogan represents an imperative (despite forward not being a verb), an exclamation mark would have served a better purpose.

But periods aside, why didn’t Obama stick his neck out and choose forwards, instead of forward? According to the OED: “The present distinction in usage between forward and forwards is that the latter expresses a definite direction viewed in contrast with other directions. In some contexts either form may be used without perceptible difference of meaning; the following are examples in which only one of them can now be used: ‘The ratchet-wheel can move only forwards’; ‘the right side of the paper has the maker’s name reading forwards’; ‘if you move at all it must be forwards’; ‘my companion has gone forward’; ‘to bring a matter forward’; ‘from this time forward’. The usage of earlier periods, and of modern dialects, varies greatly from that of mod. standard English. In U.S. forward is now generally used, to the exclusion of forwards, which was stigmatized by Webster (1832) as ‘a corruption’.

Forwards unambiguously denotes direction, in a way that forward doesn’t. But who wants a whiff of corruption in their campaign slogan?

I’ve never noticed the period after the The Wall Street Journal. on its masthead. How quaint.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444840104577553020326811222.html

Punctuation Nerds Stopped by Obama Slogan, ‘Forward.’

From Both Sides of the Aisle, a Question: Is Ending It With a Period Weird?

The. Obama. Campaign. Slogan. Is. Causing. Grammarians. Whiplash. Even for some in the president’s orbit, the final punctuation on ‘Forward.’ slams the brakes on a word supposed to convey momentum.

By Carol E. Lee

The. Obama. Campaign. Slogan. Is. Causing. Grammarians. Whiplash.

“Forward.” is the culprit. It was chosen to reflect the direction Mr. Obama promises to take the country if re-elected. It also is designed to implicitly convey the opposite: that likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney would set the nation in reverse.

Simple enough. Except the moment seven characters became eight, things got complicated. Period. Even for some in the president’s orbit, the added punctuation slams the brakes on a word supposed to convey momentum.

“It’s like ‘forward, now stop,’ ” said Austan Goolsbee, the former chairman of the National Economic Council who still advises the Obama campaign. He added, “It could be worse. It could be ‘Forward’ comma,” which would make it raise the question: “and now what?”

The president signed off on his own slogan, but evidently isn’t sold. “Forward! Period. Full stop,” he has joked to his campaign staff, according to an Obama adviser.

On that, if on nothing else, Mr. Obama has bipartisan support.

“It’s sort of a buzz kill,” said Rep. Pete King (R., N.Y.).

The period was a subject of a spirited debate as Mr. Obama’s senior advisers and outside consultants spent hours in a conference room at their Chicago campaign headquarters deliberating over the perfect slogan, according to an adviser who was in attendance.

Does a period add emphasis? Yes! Does it undermine the sense of the word? Maybe!

David Axelrod, the president’s longtime messaging guru, is a champion of the period. “There’s some finality to it,” Mr. Axelrod said. For those who think it stops “forward” in its tracks, he has a suggestion: “Tell them just to put two more dots on it, and it’ll seem like it keeps on going.”

The period debate hasn’t been confined to the upper echelons of the Obama campaign. Politicians, grammarians and designers who brand people and products have noticed it, too.

“There’s been some speculation that the period really gives the feeling of something ending rather than beginning,” said Catherine Pages, an art director in Washington, D.C.

In 1992, George H.W. Bush’s line, “Who do you trust?” generated chatter about the use of “who” versus “whom.” Dwight Eisenhower’s 1952 slogan “I like Ike” is clearly a sentence, but didn’t include a period. George W. Bush’s “Yes, America Can” slogan included a comma; Mr. Obama’s “Yes We Can” chant four years later did not.

Meanwhile, the title of the super PAC supporting Mr. Romney, “Restore Our Future,” seems to bend the rules of space and time, if not grammar.

Those who brandish red pens for a living are divided on whether Mr. Obama’s campaign slogan passes muster.

“It would be quite a stretch to say it’s grammatically correct,” said Mignon Fogarty, author of “Grammar Girl’s 101 Troublesome Words You’ll Master in No Time.” “You could say it’s short for ‘we’re moving forward.’ But really it’s not a sentence.”

The only single words that properly end with a period are verbs, Ms. Fogarty added, or interjections such as “wow.”

George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at University of California Berkeley who is well-known in Democratic circles, has a different verdict. He says that the slogan respects the period’s proper use because “Forward.” is an imperative sentence.

“You can look at the period as adding a sense of finality, making a strong statement: Forward. Period. And no more,” Mr. Lakoff said. “Whether that’s effective is another question.”

Joining the Obama campaign is the alternative rock band fun., which added a period on forming in 2008. In a written statement, two of the group’s founders, Jack Antonoff and Andrew Dost, described the punctuation as “our way of sedating the word fun. We love how quick and sharp ‘fun’ is, but in no way do we intend to give people the impression that we’re going to walk into rooms doing back flips.”

On its page-one nameplate and elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal maintains its period, a holdover from the 1800s. No one at the paper knows why the Journal kept it when other papers gradually dropped their traditional periods, a spokeswoman said.

In presidential campaigns, discussions over slogans often focus on pre-emptive damage control. “We’d sit around the conference rooms and have these discussions,” said Steve Hildebrand, a deputy campaign manager for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign. “You wonder if they’re going to catch on; you wonder if people are going to make fun of them.”

Shortly after the 2012 line was unveiled in April, late-night talk show host Jay Leno said, “That’s a good message for Obama. He’s telling voters, whatever you do don’t look back at all those promises I made. Just look forward.”

Mr. Romney has called the “Forward.” slogan “absurd,” and has seized on it to argue Mr. Obama’s policies would take the country “forward over a cliff.”

Mr. Romney’s slogan, “Believe in America” (no period), has its share of critics as well. “I think that’s about as close to a standard slogan as you can possibly get,” said Fred Davis, a Republican media consultant.

Rep. Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a former public-relations manager, said he prefers the period over an exclamation point or nothing at all.

“Forward without a period leaves open the question: ‘In what direction?’ ” Mr. Israel said. “But that’s just the old, frustrated, former public-relations executive in me.”

It is possible the president isn’t the best judge of his own marketing. During his successful 2008 run, Mr. Obama told his campaign staff he wasn’t sold on the slogan “Change We Can Believe In,” according to a book written by close aide David Plouffe.

He also thought the campaign’s signature symbol—a red, white and blue rising sun—was “cheesy,” recalled longtime Obama adviser Robert Gibbs.

The period has mysteriously been dropped in several recent Obama campaign ads. Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said there is no particular reason behind the omission. “Stay on your toes—anything could happen,” he said. “Do not be surprised if we introduce a semicolon.”

Write to Carol E. Lee at [email protected]

A homophone for the masses

I was recently corrected after using the wrong word (homophone) in a public posting. Oops! But I’ll forgive myself, because there’s a fairly subtle difference between the meanings of the two words in question, and they’re relatively obscure in their usage. Well, that’s my excuse, anyway…

I wrote “before the hoards arrive”. A quick Google search of that expression turns up about four and a half million results. So I’m in good company. Of course what I should have written was ‘before the hordes arrive’.

Used as a noun, hoard means a hidden fund or supply stored for future use; a cache. As an intransitive verb it means to gather or accumulate a hoard; transitively, the verb hoard means to accumulate a hoard of, or to keep hidden or private.

The noun horde refers to a large group, multitude, number, etc.; a mass or crowd. It also describes a tribe or troop of nomads (often of Asiatic origin, but applicable to any nomadic group), or a teeming pack or swarm of animals or insects. Used less commonly as a verb (intransitive), it means to gather in a horde.

What probably leads to much of the confusion between the homophones is not just the similarity in meanings (as they share a sense of collection and quantity), but there’s usually a derogatory or undesirable quality implied by both words. The furtiveness and secrecy of a hoard suggests either greed and selfishness or a questionable ulterior motive for the stash. Members of a horde are often savage or uncivilized (hence its common usage as a collective noun for tourists), and more often than not the horde represents a large number of unwelcome and uninvited guests (add mosquitoes to tourists). And yet it could be argued that the words mean just the opposite of each other: whereas one describes a hidden and deliberate collection whose value lies largely in the secrecy of its existence, the other is about as public and overt as you can get, with its strength lying in its number, its pervasiveness, and the fact that it’s distinctly unwelcome.