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Welcome to Wordwatch Towers where you’ll find lots of stuff about how to write well. Please scroll down to read the latest posts or explore the Wordwatch Towers vaults for more information about punctuation, grammar and how to use the English language.
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Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin’ kanga-bloody-roos
I was going to make this quick, but then I found a poem, and that led to a YouTube clip… any-old-how, my word of the day is ‘tmesis’, and – by complete coincidence – ‘any-old-how’ is a brilliant example of it.
Possibly the only word in the English language to begin with the letters ‘tm’, ‘tmesis’ is a noun and means the practice of separating a word with another word (as in ‘old’ inserted into ‘anyhow’).
These days, it’s a device that is mostly used for emphasis and humour. In Blighty, for example, we are very fond of inserting the mild expletive ‘bloody’, as in, for example, ‘abso-bloody-lutely’. It’s interesting to note that you have to insert the interloping word in the right place for it to ‘work’. ‘Ab-bloody-solutely’, for example, doesn’t cut the mustard.
Other examples include:
- Some-damn-where
- A-whole-nother
- Inde-goddam-pendent
The plural is ‘tmeses’ and it’s derived from Greek meaning ‘cutting’ or ‘to cut’.
The Australian writer John O’Grady (1907-1981) provides some brilliant examples of tmesis in his 1959 poem The Integrated Adjective including ‘e-bloody-nough’; ‘kanga-bloody-roos’; and ‘Tumba-bloody-rumba’. (Tumbarumba is a town in New South Wales, Australia.)
The Integrated Adjective
I was down on Riverina, knockin’ round the towns a bit,
An’ occasionally restin’, with a schooner in me mitt;
An’ on one o’ these occasions, when the bar was pretty full
an’ the local blokes were arguin’ assorted kinds o’ bull,
I heard a conversation, most peculiar in its way,
Because only in Australia would you hear a joker say,
“Where yer bloody been, yer drongo? ‘Aven’t seen yer fer a week;
“An’ yer mate was lookin’ for yer when ‘e come in from the Creek;
“‘E was lookin’ up at Ryan’s, an’ around at bloody Joe’s,
“An’ even at the Royal where ‘e bloody never goes.”
An’ the other bloke said “Seen ‘im. Owed ‘im ‘alf a bloody quid,
“Forgot ter give ut back to ‘im; but now I bloody did.
“Coulda used the thing me-bloody-self; been orf the bloody booze,
“Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin’ kanga-bloody-roos.”
Now their voices were a little loud, an’ everybody heard
The peculiar integration of this adjectival word.
But no one there was laughin’, an’ me I wasn’t game,
So I stood around an’ let ‘em think I spoke the bloody same.
An’ one of ‘em was interested to ask ‘im what he’d got-
How many kanga-bloody-roos he bloody went and shot-
An’ the shootin’ bloke said, “Things are crook; the drought’s too bloody tough;
“I got forty-bloody-seven, an’ that’s good e-bloody-nough.”
An’ this polite rejoinder seemed to satisfy the mob,
An’ everyone stopped listenin’ an’ got on with the job,
Which was drinkin’ beer and arguin’ an’ talkin’ of the heat,
An’ stickin’ in the bitumen in the middle of the street;
But as for me, I’m here to say the interestin’ news
Was “Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin’ kanga-bloody-roos.”
And here’s a wonderful reading of the poem by the Australian actor Jack Thompson.
Eclogues and shivering sizars
Philip Larkin
Why do writers use words that many, if not most, readers won’t understand? And, more importantly, did you know that a sizar can shiver? I’ll come back to that.
Here’s the first word: eclogue
And here’s where I stubbed my toe against it (from Robert Macfarlane’s review of the Edward Thomas biography, Now All Roads Lead to France, published in the Guardian):
Even as the plains of Belgium were being scorched … the poets were still living out their eclogue, with conversation the labour and poetry the harvest.
And the definition of ‘eclogue’? It simply means a short poem, especially, apparently, a ‘pastoral dialogue’ (whatever that is; I did google it, but got distracted by some shiny things). See Oxford Dictionaries. So, there you have it. Tempted to use it? No, nor me.
Next up, also in the Guardian: sizar. John Banville, writing a review of The Complete Poems by Philip Larkin, suddenly and bizarrely asserts:
…yet the wealth and profusion of detail within it would purblind Larkin’s own shivering sizar.
Here’s a quick quiz for you:
A sizar is:
a) Always cold, that’s why it shivers
b) A ration of bread or beer
c) An undergraduate at Cambridge University or at Trinity College, Dublin, receiving financial help from the college and formerly having certain menial duties
The answer is c, but the word derives from b which is an obsolete meaning of the word ‘size’. See Oxford Dictionaries.
Larkin went to Oxford University. He couldn’t have been a sizar, shivering or otherwise.
Oh, and don’t get me started on ‘purblind’, which is an adjective. Not a verb.
When correct grammar doesn’t help
- Image via Wikipedia
The Daily Mail got its headline about Etta James’ death spectacularly wrong even though it was right. If you see what I mean.
Here’s the original headline used by the MailOnline:
At Last singer Etta James dies at 73 after battle with leukaemia
Read it and wince. Of course, the headline writer simply meant to highlight At Last, one of the songs most associated with Etta James; the punctuation and grammar are correct. But this is how it can so easily be read:
At last, singer Etta James dies at 73 after battle with leukaemia (‘last’ not capitalised, and followed by a comma).
The MailOnline later changed the headline to read:
Grammy-award winning singer Etta James dies at 73 after battle with leukaemia
(There’s a discussion to be had about whether there should also be a hyphen between ‘award’ and ‘winning’ there, but I’ll not go down that road today.)
With thanks to Craig Silverman. See his screen grabs of these headlines here.
And in honour of Etta, here is a Wordwatch first: Etta singing At Last. (Not, Etta singing, at last.)
Set in stone? Misquoting Martin Luther King Jr
Image via Wikipedia
Here, writ large, are the perils of editing.
For ‘reasons of space’ a Martin Luther King Jr quote carved into a new memorial in Washington was amended to read:
I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.
But King actually said this:
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.
The words are part of a sermon given in 1968, shortly before his death. The poet Maya Angelou said the shortened version made King sound like ‘an arrogant twit’. And its general tenor is all the more misleading because King’s humility is evident in the sermon, for example, here:
If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long.
And he also spoke at length about the ‘drum major instinct’ being potentially ‘destructive’. The sermon should be read in full.
I am fascinated by this because it illustrates the power of words and how changing, rearranging and truncating can emasculate, enervate and distil into meaninglessness (or a different meaning altogether). All subtlety is lost.
Here’s my take on it:
Note King’s initial use of the word ‘yes’. In the overall context here it sounds more like a judicial pause for thought than an affirmation. Then, after the comma, he uses that all-important word ‘if’ (he makes no assumptions) followed by ‘you’. Note the contrast with the categorical, unthinking and egotistical ‘I’ which kicks off the truncated version.
Having considered the idea that others may want to deem him a drum major, he moves from hesitancy to embrace the term (using it three times), as if to say, ‘I’ll work with what I’ve got’, but taking care to define its application. His definition places the emphasis on noble ideas and aspirations: not himself. And still, he makes it clear that it is others who may want to say these things, not the ‘I’ of the inaccurately quoted version.
Also missing from the inaccurate version is the hypnotic rhythm of the repetition and the power of the concluding thought, which gives further depth and perspective to the preceding lines.
Thankfully, the inscription is to be amended. Not all things set in stone are set in stone.
As annoying as someone with a clinically diagnosed condition
Image via Wikipedia
He just annoys me, I don’t really hate anyone in life.
But I’m very bad, in the House of Commons, at not getting distracted, and the endless, ceaseless banter, it’s like having someone with Tourette’s permanently sitting opposite you. I’ve got to learn to tune it out.
That was the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, speaking to the Sunday Telegraph about the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls. Tourette syndrome (or Tourette’s syndrome) is an inherited neurological condition.
The jibe is all the more surprising because Cameron’s own son, who died at the age of six in 2009, had severe epilepsy and cerebral palsy.
Would Cameron ever say, “It’s like having someone with epilepsy and cerebral palsy permanently sitting opposite you”? I think not.
Downing Street later issued an apology saying that the remark was ‘off the cuff’. Oh, that’s OK then. And during an interview on BBC TV, Cameron again apologised and said: “It’s a lesson for me that, in the Commons, I have to try to tune out the noise and try to concentrate on trying to answer the question.”
Well, that’s a good lesson, but here’s a better, more apposite, one for him:
To find out if it’s OK to use a particular word or phrase in a particular context, it’s a good idea to substitute something comparable to check it out, as in ‘epilepsy’ and ‘cerebral palsy’ in Cameron’s remark above. How about ’Down’s syndrome’? Er, no. ‘Learning difficulties’? Nope. ‘Tourette’s’? That would be no again, then.
Clinical terminology should not be hijacked to use as a term of abuse and Mr Cameron should not provide unthinking prime ministerial endorsement of such use.
Red herrings
Public reaction has been interesting. Comments have included the assertion that Cameron was insulting Balls, not people with Tourette syndrome. But this ignores the egregious fact that we are automatically expected to equate clinical conditions with abusive insults (a special Wordwatch award to anyone who can provide an example of a clinical term being hijacked to express praise or appreciation).
Others have expressed the usual ‘this is political correctness gone mad’ argument in response to criticism of Cameron’s remark. A lovely catch-all rebuttal which attracts much vigorous nodding and saves the bother of having to explain why it’s OK to insult someone by comparing them to a person who has an inherited neurological condition.
One or two people with the syndrome have stated that they are not offended. Good. But that doesn’t negate my arguments above.
Words are tools. They should be used, especially by people in public life, to help demolish our knee-jerk association of disability with negativity, not reinforce it.
You can find out more about Tourette syndrome on the Tourettes Action website.
Deceptively drinkable
Image via Wikipedia
Sometimes words are deceptive and sometimes beer is drinkable. Badger beer is both: its label proudly proclaims it is ‘deceptively drinkable’. I tried a sip or two and can report that it most definitely is. Of course, you still don’t know whether to buy any because as Oxford Dictionaries explains, deceptively is a deceptive word having two opposite meanings:
- to a greater extent than appears; or
- to a lesser extent than appears.
I’ve discussed the confusion that can arise from use of the word ‘deceptively’ in a previous post which you can read for free. But please note I may send you an invoice as the phone company Orange has apparently changed the definition of ‘free’ to mean ‘we’ll trouser your money’ and I have decided to follow its example. A prominent advertising poster recently spotted at an Orange phone shop simply reads:
Now free from £10.50 a month
A classic piece of Orwellian doublethink, methinks.
All this talk of beer and Orwell reminds me of a wonderful piece the author wrote for the Evening Standard in 1946 about his ideal pub, the poetically named Moon Under Water, in which ‘…everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century‘. Unlike most pubs, Orwell explains, the Moon Under Water ‘…sells tobacco as well as cigarettes, and it also sells aspirins and stamps, and is obliging about letting you use the telephone’.
For free at a reasonable cost, I hope.
Necessarily avoidable headlines
Image by reinvented via Flickr
It’s easy to nitpick, so I will.
Here’s a headline from The Independent newspaper today:
24,000 unnecessary deaths from diabetes every year
So diabetes causes some necessary deaths? Who gets to judge?
Of course, the headline writer should have used the word ‘avoidable’ instead of ‘unnecessary’. Mainly because it’s accurate.
Meanwhile, over at the Guardian, the headline writer manages to avoid the whole necessary/unnecessary judgement call with this:
Diabetes report reveals 24,000 a year die from condition avoidably early
More accurate, but horribly inelegant. It’s nearly Christmas, so I’ve rewritten it for them and won’t send an invoice:
Diabetes report reveals 24,000 avoidable early deaths each year
So now I’m obsessed with the whole diabetes/some people deserve to die/necessary/unnecessary/avoidably early thing and whizzed over to The Telegraph to see how it’s coping. Here we go:
Up to 24,000 people with diabetes are dying unnecessarily every year …
Is it just me, or does that sound as if they’re doing it to be deliberately annoying? (You know, as in nitpicking unnecessarily.) Perhaps if we just ignore them they’ll stop it and find something more useful to do instead.
Larger than something very large indeed
Science, eh? Lots of big, off-putting words and whatnot. Sums, too, usually. Plain language? Not so you’d notice.
Until now.
My plain language award for 2011 goes to the European Southern Observatory (ESO). It’s building an extremely large telescope. The telescope’s official name? You will never guess, it being science stuff and all, so just read on:
The European Extremely Large Telescope.
E-ELT for short.
This is an amazing piece of kit: the world’s ‘biggest eye on the sky’ as the ESO, in a slightly more poetic frame of mind, describes it.
I’m presuming it supersedes the Very Large Telescope (yes, that’s its official name), which makes me wonder what the next, even bigger, telescope could possibly be called. The Really Extremely Large Telescope? The You Think THAT Was Big Telescope?
Speaking of plain language, the excellent Plain English Campaign has just announced its Golden Bull awards for 2011. These highlight examples of gobbledegook in public life. It’s not a vintage year for the awards, in my opinion, but worth it to find out that Harrow Council, here in the UK, has a ‘Personalisation Implementation Team’.
I have no idea what it does, but I’m guessing not astronomy.
Vegas the dog
Image via Wikipedia
I’m trying to describe Google+ to someone who’s not that au fait with the internet and social networking and all that jazz. Kind of a place where you meet people online and chat and do stuff. But not if you’re a dog called Vegas. Sorry, Vegas. You’re banned. Bad dog.
Now, where was I? Oh, yes, neologisms. Specifically, ‘nymwars’. Horrible, isn’t it? I didn’t know what it meant and had to look it up. And it’s all to do with the fact that Google+ has decided it likes being very bossy and strict and will only allow people to open an account if they use their real name. As Wikipedia explains, ‘nymwars’ refers to the conflict that has arisen over this policy. The word is derived from ‘pseudonym’, meaning a fictitious name.
It’s all a bit sinister and Orwellian. I’ve got a languishing Google+ account that I (ahem) may have opened under a false name*; apparently I get four days to ‘fess up and proclaim my real name to the world before I’m thrown out to join Vegas in the doghouse. Because pets are not allowed to have a Google+ account either (Vegas is specifically named and shamed on the Google+ verboten list); this is a ‘violation’ (blimey) along with – heaven forfend – opening an account as a couple. Nope, not even if you’re married. Step away from the keyboard. For shame. What were you thinking?
This is what Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, was thinking: “The Internet will work better if people know that you’re a real person rather than a fake person.”
Because people who give their real names are never fake. And a couple is a fake person. Eric said so.
Planet Weird AKA Google+ also offers, in its ‘game room’, the opportunity to ‘humiliate a pig, or just click wildly at anything that moves’. I’ve witnessed the latter, but it involved beer and a marked inability to pronounce a real name, let alone use one to open a Google+ account, so I can’t enlighten you further.
*Said for rhetorical effect. Not true at all. I would not dream of deceiving Eric.
