Meander, second post

Newspapers owners and editors recognized the usefulness of the telegraph soon after the technology became available to them. Although the financial community quickly became the dominant users, newspapers, railroads, governments, and military establishments were not slower in recognizing its value. The technology's value to financiers is many-fold: financial markets rely heavily on flows of information. Speed is essential and the size of transactions is such that transmission costs are unimportant. And last but hardly least, the information needed can be captured in short messages. In varying (lesser) degrees, the telegraph's other prime users shared these incentives. For all of them costs were a major concern and all but the railroads found it a challenge to keep messages brief.[1]

From the outset news was seen as a main content of telegraph transmissions, perhaps the main content. The letters of Alfred Vail, co-developer of telegraphy in the early 1840s, show the transmission of news to have been one of his main goals for the technology. Even before the telegraph was opened for public use, he employed it to send news of a presidential nomination.[2]

Newspapers saw that they could reap great benefits if they could contain costs. They and the financial community were also challenged to prevent the technology from being abused. Neither group wanted to have their messages intercepted by competitors, neither wanted interruptions of service from wire-cutting, and neither wanted to be duped by false information. A cooperative telegraphic service, the New York Associated Press, was one early means for newspapers to deal with all these threats.

The New York Herald was one of the five founding members of the NYAP. The most innovative paper of its time, it made extensive use of the new technology.[3] This anecdote shows the high costs and some of the perils of news telegraphy in a time when the network of wires was still small.

In New York, the principal journals formed an association, many years ago, to telegraph in common, sharing the expense (this was the NYAP). Each journal was, however, at liberty to order for itself any extra intelligence, giving the others, or any of them, the option of sharing it.

Mr. Jones[4] relates that one of the earliest telegraph feats, after the extension of the telegraph lines west to Cincinnati, was brought about by the agency of the "New York Herald," and before any regular association of the press was formed in New York.

"It became known that Mr. Clay (the presidential candidate) would deliver a speech in Lexington (KY), on the Mexican war, which was then exciting much public attention. Mr. Bennett, editor and proprietor of the 'Herald,' desired us to have Mr. Clay's speech reported for the paper. We at once proceeded," says Mr. Jones, "to make arrangements to carry it into effect. We had a regular and efficient reporter already employed in Cincinnati; we also had one in Philadelphia in cooperation with us.... From Lexington to Cincinnati was eighty miles, over which an express had to be run. Horses were placed at every ten miles by the Cincinnati agent. An expert rider was engaged, and a short-hand reporter or two stationed in Lexington. When they had prepared his speech it was then dark. The express-man, on receiving it, proceeded with it for Cincinnati. The night was dark and rainy, yet he accomplished the trip in eight hours, over a rough, hilly, country road. The whole speech was received at the 'Herald' office at an early hour the next morning, although the wires were interrupted for a short time in the night, near Pittsburg, in consequence of the limb of a tree having fallen across them. An enterprising operator in the Pittsburg office, finding communication suspended, procured a horse, and rode along the line amidst the darkness and rain, found the place, and the cause of the break, which he repaired; then returned to the office, and finished sending the speech." The cost to the Herald was about £100 (or $500 in the currency of the day).
-- The electric telegraph by Dionysius Lardner and Edward Brailsford Bright (J. Walton, 1867)

In time, the New York Associated Press would evolve into a national organization called simply Associated Press. By the turn of the 20th century the AP had organized itself to achieve remarkable speed and economy in delivering news to its member newspapers. As part of this effort telegraphers of the old NYAP had developed a set of abbreviations that were something like the ones used by court reporters. A 1905 article on AP written by its head manager explains:

The [AP] telegraph operators are men of exceptional skill, and receive higher salaries than are paid by the telegraph or railway companies. To expedite their work, they use automatic sending-machines, which greatly exceed hand transmission in speed, and employ a system of abbreviations which can be sent with surprising rapidity. The receiving operators take the letters by sound and write them upon a type-writer, and since no one is able to manipulate a Morse key as swiftly as he can operate a type-writer, there is a constant effort to hasten the sending in order to keep pace with the ability of the receiver. The following example will illustrate the system of abbreviation. A message is sent thus:



And it is rendered thus by the receiving operator:

The Supreme Court of the United States to-day decided that the power of the President of the United States does not extend to the Philippines, on the ground that all past congressional legislation on the subject is unconstitutional.

In the larger cities, where many copies of the messages are required, a sheet which has been immersed in wax is used in the type-writer. When written upon, it forms a stencil, which is placed upon a rotary cyclograph operated by an electric motor, and as many as three hundred copies of the message may be reproduced in a minute. One of these is thrust into an envelop bearing the printed address of a newspaper and shot through a pneumatic tube to the desk of the waiting telegraph editor in the newspaper office. Even this almost instantaneous method of delivery is too slow, however, for news of a sensational character. A bulletin wire connects the Associated Press office with every evening newspaper in New York, and the bulletins are flashed over it by operators of the highest skill in emergencies. When the result of a great race arrives, the receiving operator shouts the news through a megaphone, and every sending operator in the room flashes it over his circuit.

-- "The Associated Press, News-Gathering as a Business" by Melville E. Stone, The Century, Volume 70 (The Century Co., 1905)

From a book published in 1897, this shows the AP telegraph room in New York. At these desks the telegraphers would both key outbound messages and receive inbound ones. When receiving they would listen to the Morse dit-dahs that were emitted from the elevated square devices, transpose the code to English, and write out the results on sheets of paper.

{source: "Great Business Operations — The Collection of News" by T.B. Connery, Cosmopolitan, Volume 23 (Schlicht and Field., 1897)}

Taken in 1923, this shows a man transcribing a telegraphic transmission using a typewriter. He's listening to the dit-dahs that have been keyed at the other end of the line and mentally transposing them into English. As he does this he types the text. As you can see, the box at his ear is a telegraph receiver with a sounding board. In front of him there's another of these "sounders". (The location is the White House; I couldn't find a photo that showed an AP operator doing this job.)

{Telegraph Room, White House, 8/1/23; source: Library of Congress}

Phillips Code was the dominant shorthand method used by AP, other news agencies, and the newspapers themselves. Western Union and the other offices where the public at large would send telegrams would transmit each word in full without abbreviation. They normally charged per word and, since the service was relatively expensive, a compressed language called telegraphese evolved as a cost saving measure. This pidgin English was necessarily ambiguous and given to creative and frequently humorous manipulation.

Stories of this practice are often apocryphal. In one well-known example a magazine editor supposedly cables Cary Grant's agent: "HOW OLD CARY GRANT" to which Cary Grant himself replies "OLD CARY GRANT FINE HOW YOU".[4] Apparently newspapers did not always use Phillips Code, because quite a few of these tales involve reporters in the field. One of the best known goes like this: "Once the transatlantic cable was established, from 1860 onwards, cablegrams were charged per word, 6/- initially, soon reduced to 1/-. A newspaper editor cabled a lazy foreign correspondent YUNEWS. The reply - UNEWS. The editor cabled UNEWS UNJOB".[5] This exchange is a bit easier to understand in another version of the story: "A London news editor worried about the silence from a foreign correspondent cabled WHY UNNEWS. The reporter wired back UNNEWS GOODNEWS, to which the editor replied UNNEWS UNJOB.[6]

The biographies of Evelyn Waugh say that he actually did help perpetrate a well-known bit of telegraphese. In 1935 he covered the Italian invasion of Ethiopia for the Daily Mail. Soon after he arrived in Addis Ababa his editor sent a wire telling him to investigate the rumored killing of an American nurse: "REQUIRE EARLIEST NAME LIFE STORY PHOTOGRAPH AMERICAN NURSE UPBLOWN" Waugh investigated and swiftly replied: 'NURSE UNUPBLOWN.'[7]

In his comic novel, Scoop, Waugh made good use of this experience. He has his inexperienced and naïve reporter receive a cable from his editor saying "NEWS EXYOU UNRECEIVED" and has the character, Boot, ineptly reply: "NOTHING MUCH HAS HAPPENED EXCEPT TO THE PRESIDENT WHO HAS BEEN IMPRISONED IN HIS OWN PALACE BY REVOLUTIONARY JUNTA HEADED BY SUPERIOR BLACK NAMED BENITO AND RUSSIAN JEW WHO BANNISTER SAYS IS UP TO NO GOOD THEY SAY HE IS DRUNK WHEN HIS CHILDREN TRY TO SEE HIM BUT GOVERNESS SAYS MOST UNUSUAL LOVELY SPRING WEATHER BUBONIC PLAGUE RAGING."[8]

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Some sources:

Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen on wikipdia

Associated Press on wikipedia

Henry Morton Stanley on wikipedia

Electrical telegraph on wikipedia

Phillips Code on wikipedia

Alfred Vail on wikipedia
"Alfred Lewis Vail (September 25, 1807 – January 18, 1859) was a machinist and inventor. Vail was central, with Samuel F. B. Morse, in developing and commercializing the telegraph between 1837 and 1844.[1] Vail and Morse were the first two telegraph operators on Morse's first experimental line between Washington, DC, and Baltimore, and Vail took charge of building and managing several early telegraph lines between 1845 and 1848. He was also responsible for several technical innovations of Morse's system, particularly the sending key and improved recording registers and relay magnets. Vail left the telegraph industry in 1848 because he believed that the managers of Morse's lines did not fully value his contributions."

Walter Phillips

Sketches old and new by Walter Polk Phillips (J. H. Bunnell & company, 1897)

Journalism in the United States, from 1690-1872 by Frederic Hudson (Harper & Brothers, 1873)

Memoirs of Henry Villard

News over the wires

"The Associated Press, News-Gathering as a Business" by Melville E. Stone, The Century, Volume 70 (The Century Co., 1905)

"Great Business Operations — The Collection of News" by T.B. Connery, Cosmopolitan, Volume 23 (Schlicht and Field., 1897)

Early history of the electro-magnetic telegraph, from letters and journals of Alfred Vail by Alfred Vail (Hine brothers, 1914)

Sir Henry Morton Stanley

The Humours of Newspaper Enterprise, Chambers's journal Volume 72 (W. & R. Chambers, 1895)

Telegraph Lore

The electric telegraph by Dionysius Lardner and Edward Brailsford Bright (J. Walton, 1867)

Favorite Quotations by Mike Harney

Last word 'No invention more clearly showed the benefits of brevity than the telegram'

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Notes:

[1] prime users; why railroads terse

[2] Early history of the electro-magnetic telegraph, from letters and journals of Alfred Vail by Alfred Vail (Hine brothers, 1914)

1843

April 30th, "Telegraphed all day. The 2 wires worked well 22 miles." May 1st, "Telegraphed all day. In the afternoon announced the nomination of Mr. Frelinghuysen."

This seems to have been the first message, by telegraph, of a public nature.

May 2nd, Vail to his wife: "I yesterday announced the nomination of Henry Clay and Frelinghuysen to Washington."

October 14th, Washington. A. Vail to G. Vail: "Prof. M. returned on Friday—I am busily engaged here in telegraphing Election News."

[3]

The introduction of the telegraph was its great theme. Morse had no greater friend and supporter than the Herald. It felt that with the electric wire a new impulse would be given to the country and to the Press. It liberally used the wires from the first flash over them. It has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in tolls. One of the probabilities of the future is that the Herald, as well as all others, will have all its news come by telegraph — that the mails will be as obsolete as stage-coaches.
-- Journalism in the United States, from 1690-1872 by Frederic Hudson (Harper & Brothers, 1873)

[4] This was Alexander Jones. He managed the New York Associated Press in its early years and then moved to the New York Herald where he eventually became the commercial editor.

[4] Earnest efforts have been made to track down the origins of this story. See The Legend of Cary Grant's Telegram and How Old Cary Grant? Old Cary Grant Fine, How You?.

[5] Martin White, in an email to the Telegraph (U.K.): Over to you: Telex messaging, Geiger counters and statistics

[6] World Wide Words, Issue 697, 31 July 2010

[7] Twentieth-century English by Christian Mair (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

[8] Black mischief: Scoop; The loved one; The ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh, edited with an introduction by Ann Pasternak Slater (Random, 2003)

Meander

The other day I saw a glitch in book review which reminded me of a recent post on the diminishing role of editors newsrooms and publishing houses. Every day we see evidence of the mistakes made by editors too rushed to give full attention to their work and, more rarely, we see — when they've time enough — how much they're able to contribute to the success of a piece of writing.

The glitch was either a typo or the result of some other bit of inattention. It appears in Geoffrey Nunberg's review of The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick. The review appeared in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago. It's James Gleick’s History of Information and in it Nunberg summarizes a section of the book on a kind of shorthand used by people sending telegrams: "frugal customers hit on the expedient of using economical abbreviations for common messages, like 'gmlet' for 'give my love to' — texting avant la lettre." The mistake is the use of gmlet where gmlt is intended. Gleick is talking about the compressed style that came to be called telegraphese. He quotes Alfred Vail, Morse's partner in inventing the telegraph. Vail said telegraph users could make their communications private as well as compressed by using a simple system:

{The American electro magnetic telegraph, with the reports of Congress, and a description of all telegraphs known, employing electricity or galvanism by Alfred Vail (Lea & Blanchard, 1845)}

Vail's method of compression reminded me of a long-ago friend who worked at the home office of an international conglomerate. Her job was to key messages into a Teletype machine for overseas transmission. The TT machine, or Telex, is a mechanical device for converting keyboarded text into a variation of Morse code. Because this code is limited to 64 characters or codes, the Telex has a very simplistic keyboard — 32 keys, giving UPPER CASE LETTERS, numbers 0-9, some symbols, a spacebar, and the switch (two shift keys) from letters to numbers/symbols and back.

Teletype operators would communicate with each other as well as preparing and sending their business messages. They'd do this using a compressed lingo like Vail's gmlt. The only one I remember is BIBI, used to say goodbye to the receiving operator. (As I said, TTs output only upper case letters.) A brief web scan turns up a few more: TX = thanks and TKSVM = thanks very much; CUL = see you later (this could be rendered as BCNU. In Britspeak LO = hullo, GA OM = go ahead old man, and TTFN = ta ta for now. I got these from a discussion on the origins of internet shorthand.

When punching the keys, the operator simultaneously generates both typed output on a roll of paper 8.5 inches wide and hole-punched output on a roll of 1.5-inch paper tape. It's the holes in the paper tape that get translated into the signal which is then transmitted to another TT machine, possibly one half way around the globe. The TT operator had to be both quick and accurate: quick because telex transmissions were high priority, expensive communications, and accurate because, although it might be possible in theory, in practice you didn't correct a hole-punched tape.

This is the Model 28 TT used in newspapers, large businesses, and government offices from the end of World War II up to the mid-1960s.

{Model 28-ASR; source: skyscrapercity.com}

You can hear what a Model 28 sounds like in this mp3 from sounddogs:
TELETYPE - MODEL 28 TELETYPE MACHINE: RUN

This is the Model 35 which replaced it. You can see the tape output in this photo.

{Model 35-ASR; source: tpsoft.com}

This is the Model 33 of about the same vintage as the 35-ASR. Though less robust, it was cheaper and more compact than the 35 and was thus found in smaller businesses and government agencies. When it came out in the mid-1960s mainframe operators noted that its paper tape output could be used to prepare computer code. Thereafter you'd often see versions of this machine in the computer operation centers. This is the TT model that's most familiar to people my age.

{source: tpsoft.com}

This shows the keys on the Model 33. By counting the keys you can tell there's a new larger character set in use. The larger set became possible in 1963 when the code was upgraded from the International Telegraphy Alphabet developed in the 1930s to a new set called the American Standard Code for Information Interchange — encoding was expanded from the 5-bit format that had been used since the 19th century to a new 7-bit one. (Since the tape was wide enough to accommodate an 8th bit,provision was made for use of an optional check digit. Hence ASCII is usually thought of as 8-bit code.) The ASCII set included control characters for use by computer operators as well as ones useful in TT transmissions. If you look at the key caps you can see these special codes. The "rubout" key was the TT's "delete" key; it instructed the TT to ignore the previous line of tape punches. Though it might have allowed for use of lowercase letters, the TT version of ASCII remained all caps.

{source: ASR 33 Teletype Information}

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Some sources:

Telegraphy

SMS language

Teletype

Teleprinter

Telex

Baudot code

ASCII

Teletype ASR-28

Emoticon

The electric telegraph

The New Shorthand - OMG! DYKWIM?

New Online Shorthand

Teletype Corporation - Teletype Model 28 Page Printer

teletype

The telegraph instructor by George M. Dodge, 1901

92 Code

Over to you: Telex messaging, Geiger counters and statistics

The origins of 'Net shorthand

ASR 33 (Automatic Send/Receive)

Torrey Pines Software museum on the TP software site

I Guess!

Before he wrote his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Henry Fowler and his brother Francis wrote a little language guide called The King’s English (2d ed., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1908). Like it's big cousin, TKE takes a pragmatic view. The authors tell us usage nannies are frequently downright wrong in what they proscribe and they say what's right is often no more than what the ear tells us is right. They also give plenty of examples of turgid, ugly, vague, awkward, ambiguous, and misleading prose.

In its section on Americanisms the book says our U.S. idioms are foreign words "and should be so treated." But it also says many of these vulgarities have deep English roots. "I guess" is the first example. F and F say the English man on the street would instantly name that phrase as a pure Yankee original. But, they say, it's not so. "Inquiry into it would at once bear out the American contention that what we are often rude enough to call their vulgarisms are in fact good old English. I gesse is a favourite expression of Chaucer's, and the sense he sometimes gives it is very finely distinguished from the regular Yankee use." They add, however, that good old English doesn't always, as in this instance, make "good new English." One is advised not to use "I guess" when writing the King's English. They say new Americanisms, are all well and good, but — good old English or not — they belong in American speech and writings, not English: "English and the American language and literature are both good things; but they are better apart than mixed."

Not surprisingly, the nineteenth century dictionaries of American usage give special attention to "I guess." One says educated citizens condemn it. Another says: "There is, probably, no word in the Dictionary that has given more occasion to animated discussion than this; [it is] quoted almost by every writer in America as one of the most obtrusive and repulsive Americanisms."[1] Another says English purists have mercilessly, but quite wrongly, twitted Americans about it.[2] Linguists point out that the English in England have long used "I guess" to mean "I conjecture" and people there as well as in the US would say "I guess" when unsure of a result.

What Americans would (most colorfully) do and English (boringly) not dare is to use "I guess" when there is no uncertainty. One lexicographer explains thus: "The only difference between the English and the American use of the word is, probably, that the former denotes a fair, candid guess, while the Yankee who guesses is apt to be quite sure of what he professes to doubt. As he only calculates when he has already solved his problem, so he also guesses when he has made sure of his fact. 'I guess I do,' is with him an expression of confident certainty. He is, however, quite as prone to go to the other extreme and to use the word without any other meaning than mere 'thinking,' as when he says: 'I guess he is well,' or, 'I guess I won't go to-day.'" Another gives as example this emphatic assertion: "Jem, would n't you like a julep to cool you off this sultry morning?" "I guess I would!"[3] Yet another dictionary gives this usage: "'I rayther guess there's petticuts goes with them mud-mashers.' The gal she flamed up at that, and says she: 'I guess you're barkin' up the wrong saplin'.'"[4] And here's one more:

Rev. Mr. Selah (to desk editor of the Daily Roarer) 'Mr. Seezars, are you going to publish my prayer in full?'

Desk Editor 'In full? Well, I guess not. (Changing his tone) 'However, we'll do what we can for you. By swiping out the flub-dub and guff, I guess we'll have room to put in the points.' (Detroit Free Press, August, 1888).[5]

The author of an article published in 1881 gives this fanciful derivation:

When an American says, "I guess so," he does not mean "I think it may be so," but more nearly "I know it to be so." The expression is closely akin to the old English saying, "I wis." Indeed, the words "guess" and "wis" are simply different forms of the same word. Just as we have "guard" and "ward," "guardian" and "warden," "Guillaume" and "William," "guichet" and "wicket," etc., so have we the verbs to "guess" and to "wis" (in the Bible we have not "I wis," but we have "he wist"). "I wis" means nearly the same as "I know," and that this is the root meaning of the word is shown by such words as "wit," "witness," "wisdom," the legal phrase "to wit," and so forth. "Guess" was originally used in the same sense; and Americans retain that meaning, whereas in our modern English the word has changed in significance.[6]

I guess I'll let John Farmer have the last words. He closes his treatment of "guess" with these:

'What is your age?' asked Colonel James
(that dreadful question to a lady).
'I GUESS I am about forty.'
'You GUESS? Don't you know?'
'Well, forty next June.'
-- New York Herald, March 27th, 1888.

She walked into the dry goods store
      With stately step and proud,
She turn'd the frills and laces o'er,
      And pushed aside the crowd.
She asked to see some rich brocade,
      Mohairs and grenadines,
She looked at silk of every shade —
      And then at velveteens.
She sampled jackets blue and red,
      She tried on nine or ten,
And then she toss'd her head, and said
      She GUESS'D she'd call again.
-- Texas Siftings, June 23rd, 1888.[7]

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Some sources:

Americanisms: the English of the New world by Maximilian Schele de Vere (C. Scribner & company, 1872)

Dictionary of Americanisms, a glossary of words and phrases usually regarded as peculiar to the United States by John Russell Bartlett (Little, Brown and Co., 1889)

Americanisms, old and new by John S. Farmer (London, Priv. print. by T. Poulter, 1889)

Glossary of supposed Americanisms by Alfred L. Elwyn (Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1859)

Current Americanisms, a dictionary of words and phrases in common use, by T. Baron Russell (London, Howe, 1893).

A new dictionary of Americanisms; being a glossary of words supposed to be peculiar to the United States and the dominion of Canada, by Sylvia Clapin (New York, Louis Weiss & Co., 1902)

Slang and its analogues past and present, A dictionary, historical and comparative of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years. With synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, etc. by John S. Farmer (London, Printed for subscribers only, 1890)

"English and American English" by Richard A. Proctor in The Gentleman's magazine, Volume 251 (F. Jeffries, 1881) -- reprinted in "ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH" by Richard A. Proctor in Appletons' journal, vol. 11 (Volume 11 (D. Appleton and Co., 1881)

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Notes:

[1] The first author John Farmer — Americanisms, old and new by John S. Farmer (London, Priv. print. by T. Poulter, 1889). The second is Maximilian Schele de Vere — Americanisms: the English of the New world by Maximilian Schele de Vere (C. Scribner & company, 1872).

[2] A new dictionary of Americanisms; being a glossary of words supposed to be peculiar to the United States and the dominion of Canada, by Sylva Clapin (New York, Louis Weiss & Co., 1902).

[3] First quote from same source; second from Dictionary of Americanisms, a glossary of words and phrases usually regarded as peculiar to the United States by John Russell Bartlett (Little, Brown and Co., 1889).

[4] Current Americanisms, a dictionary of words and phrases in common use, by T. Baron Russell (London, Howe, 1893).

[5] Slang and its analogues past and present, A dictionary, historical and comparative of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years. With synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, etc. by John S. Farmer (London, Printed for subscribers only, 1890).

[6] "English and American English" by Richard A. Proctor in The Gentleman's magazine, Volume 251 (F. Jeffries, 1881). The OED does not support Proctor's etymology. It gives no connection with "wis"; asserts that the word probably comes from (or is at least related to) the Old Norse geta, to get, guess.

[7] Farmer, Slang and its analogues past and present

well written

I've been thinking about this quote from my recent blog post: "the incessant dribble of mini-messaging has made most people's daily use of written language brutally factual in character, more private ad copy than prose."

The statement may be literally accurate; who can say? Taking "mini-messaging" to be tweets, Facebook status statements, and the like, it may well be that most writers make no effort to craft handsome prose. But out of each day's millions of tweets and 'statuses' many are a pleasure to read. Some have poetic force, some are neatly aphoristic. Others are moving, arresting, or funny.

I like the ones that make good use of deadpan humor. Some of this is black: "Blowing out my candles, I wanted to wish for world peace. But then you harmonized the end of Happy Birthday so I had to wish for you to die."[1] Some is gentle: "Dear guy that asked me out in high school & is now a millionaire: I am entirely shallow now and will reconsider. XOXO, Summer." Some is pleasantly gross: "It's breathtakingly beautiful, the dim light of the office fridge filtered through the fine mist of a really good sneeze." Some graphic: "1) Watch women walking ahead of me slip on ice. 2) Mentally write tweet about her slipping. 3) Slip on ice. 4) Mentally rewrite tweet." Some mildly intimate: "Plucked one eyebrow, but am too lazy to pluck other one. Instead I shall live out the rest of my life looking suspiciously intrigued."[2]

The "incessant dribble of mini-messaging" quote comes from Adam Haslett's excellent article in FT: The art of good writing. One of his worries is that online communication via email and social media produces "a kind of death of the sentence by collective neglect." From Strunk & White and other style nannies writers have gotten the mistaken idea that you should always try to eliminate the inessential, use the one right symbol to stand for bunches of words, and make prose muscular by paring it down with Hemingway concision.

I thought about this today while absorbing blog posts by two favorite writers.

The first is a young woman born in Ireland, now living in London. A couple of days ago she wrote a brief reminiscence called Lay Of The Land and today she writes of a brief encounter with Seamus Heaney: Let The Hare Sit. There's no point in my copying extracts; both pieces are short and you should go there and read them. And do, too, make the jump out to read Heaney's poem, The Creggan White Hare to which she links.

The second writer is a Swarthmore history professor who also has made two recent posts on his blog. His are longer and not personal but issue-oriented. The first takes the outpourings of anger in Eqypt and other Mid-East countries as a starting point and moves on to reflect on the effectiveness governing elites everywhere. It's Falling Walls, Burning Buildings, Gutting Budgets, and in it he says,

In the past decade, both global and local political classes have offered nothing but enfeebled incremental, technocratic and self-absorbed fumblings to a succession of shared economic and social crises, hemmed in on all sides by both self-inflicted and exterior constraints. Not even evident self-interest can push some national elites towards reform: now in Egypt, yesterday in Zimbabwe, tomorrow who knows? rulers, ministers, bureaucrats continue commit elaborate forms of social suicide, driving not only their people but their own fortunes towards the abyss, sometimes in the most transparently avoidable ways.

I’d welcome the uprisings and rejections save for the dreadful likelihood that in most cases nothing better lies behind it. No one knows the way out of this cul-de-sac, nobody has a better idea. In many cases, those most disaffected by or angry about the deterioration of the nation-state’s capacity and vision have still more horrible or destructive ambitions in mind, where the best thing we could hope for would be a bewildered, enfeebled liberal democracy weakly steered by weary technocrats lacking in all conviction.

The second post is about the practical value of courses in liberal arts colleges, whether it's enough to say that students gain the ability to think critically and that this is an extremely valuable life skill. The post is Skills, Competencies and Literacies, Oh My and in it the author says

If a parent asks me, "What will my child get from studying with you and your colleagues for a price tag that will buy me a house in some real estate markets" and my answer is solely, "They will understand the mysteries of the world a bit more deeply" or "They will be a better person", those are legitimately repellent or unworthy answers for a great many people. (And we shouldn’t be particularly pleased with the parents who will be satisfied with the idea that we’re making a future elite a bit more cultivated and dignified.) I can’t understand why we would ever insist on those as solitary or exclusive answers. I would say instead, "They will be better at almost any job they choose to do and any life they choose to lead, in ways that I can describe quite concretely, and part of being better is that they will understand the mysteries of the world more deeply and have begun to explore the art of being human within those mysteries".

These writers do not seem to be struggling to pare down their prose to minimal essentials. They appear (to me) to be using the words they need to get across what they have to say. And they both succeed very well. The more you read of them, the more you appreciate their styles. They aim to communicate and appear fully confident in their ability to do so. Their prose is lucid and never seems overworked or intended simply to impress.

My first author doesn't give her name. The second is Timothy Burke.

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There are good photos on ganching. I particularly like the one on the Lay Of The Land post but can't show it here because the owner asserts full copyright protection. The owner of this (somewhat similar) photo permits sharing under a creative commons license.

Oliver Perkins took this photo of fields in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It appears on his flickr photostream

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Notes:

[1] The king of black humor might well be Jonathan Swift who wrote "Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse." Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub (1704).

[2] Here are a few more. Some of these are like the one-liners of standup comics.

• Don't ask her about the band-aid don't ask her about the band-aid don't ask her. “What happened to your face?” Dammit.
• Full of peace and calm this morning. Googled my symptoms and found out I died in my sleep.
• I'm proactively rewarding myself in advance for not procrastinating later by taking a nap right now.
• "I taught the dog a new trick! Watch this!" He points at dog and says "Look cute!" I want to roll my eyes but damn, that dog IS cute.
• I'll never be the girl who walks in the room and commands everyone's attenHEY! Can you at least finish reading this tweet?!
• If Europe goes bankrupt, I might buy Portugal as a fixer-upper. Depends on the number of bathrooms.
• Day 65 of unemployment. I buy a party hat for my cat, think about knitting him a matching cape.
• I was *so* not into things before not being into things was a thing.
• I made eye contact with someone in traffic and then didn't let them merge. I feel like a Bond villain.
• The Census shows there are 82.8 million Moms. None of them can believe that you're going outside in THAT.
• Realized I haven't received a forwarded urban legend email in days. Sensing a great disturbance within my Mother-in-law's computer.
• Open my favorite web forum…50 people arguing about a coffee grinder reviewer's motivations…close my favorite web forum.

I got most of these via a Google search for 'best tweets.'

words well placed

Adam Haslett does well in reviewing the new book by STANLEY FISH: How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One. The review is The art of good writing on the Financial Times web site.

Haslett says "the form and rhythm of sentences communicates as much meaning as their factual content, whether we’re conscious of it or not" and quotes a variety of them from Lincoln, David Foster Wallace, William Trevor, WG Sebald, and Paul Harding.

These are good selections (go there and see). They're better than the ones Slate has solicited in Nina Shen Rastogi's Brow Beat blog post, Stanley Fish's Top Five Sentences—Now with Reader Contest! or Stanley Fish's own favorites (quoted by Rastogi).

Haslett points us to misdirections by Ezra Pound, Hemingway, and Orwell, who came down hard on complex sentence structure and nuanced prose, and he quotes Geoff Kloske's warning that "the incessant dribble of mini-messaging has made most people’s daily use of written language brutally factual in character, more private ad copy than prose."

Like many, Haslett reminds of Strunk & White's undue influence on modern prose. But he doesn't condemn the two for failings of their readers: "The trouble with the book isn’t the rules themselves," he says, "which the authors are sage enough to recognise 'the best writers sometimes disregard', but the knock-on effect that their bias for plain statement has tended to have not only on expositional but literary prose."[1]

I was recently asked to contribute a short appreciation to a web site devoted to a favorite author. In responding I said how much I like her natural descriptions and gave this as one example: "A puddling of snow still lingered in the hollows; and far off, the higher hills of the Frontier Country were still maned and crested with white; but nearer moors showed the sodden darkness of last year's heather, and the wind that always harped along the Wall had gone round to the West, and the green plover were calling." The sentence appears in an historical fiction by Rosemary Sutcliff called Frontier wolf (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980). It reads well out of context, and even better when encountered while coursing the novel.[2] I won't claim it's all-time greatest prose but I like it better than Fish's selections or the sentences contributed by those who responded to Slate's challenge.[3]

{source: http://blueremembered.blogspot.com/}

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Notes:
[1] Linguists Geoff Pullum and Ben Zimmer have stronger feelings about S&W. See, for example, this Q&A by Paul Mulshine in the Newark Star Ledger:

Q. Your colleague Geoff Pullum, at Language Log, has made it his personal goal to tear down Strunk and White. What’s wrong with "The Elements of Style?"
A. Pullam (sic) has been debunking the argument that this is the one book people should be using as guide to language. I find Strunk and White had a tenuous grasp on grammar. Many of their smaller rules are wrong, such as the blanket rule against using the passive voice.
       Their larger rules are something you could never disagree with: "Omit needless words." If you knew which words were needless, you would not need the advice.
-- On language, Ben Zimmer gets the last word | NJ.com

And see Pullum's erudite article, The passive in English, in his Language Log in which he writes:

The people who criticize the passive the most tend to use it more than the rest of us. George Orwell warns against the passive in his overblown and dishonest essay "Politics and the English language". E. B. White does likewise in the obnoxiously ignorant little book he coauthored with Strunk, The Elements of Style. Both of these authors have a remarkably high frequency of passives in their work: around 20 percent of their clauses with transitive verbs are cast in the passive, a distinctly higher frequency than you find in most of the prose written by normal people who don't spend their time pontificating hypocritically about the alleged evil of the passive.

[2] Here's some of the context.

[The two hunters headed] up a side glen where alder and hazel crowded the banks of a small fast burn. The burn was coming down in spate, running green with melting snow-water from the high moors, so that they must follow the bank a good way before they could come to a good crossing place; but between the darkly sodden wreck of last year's bracken and the soft grey drift of the sky, the catkins were lengthening on the hazel bushes, making a kind of faint sunlight of their own, and in one especially sheltered place, as the two young men brushed past, the first pollen scattered from the whippy sprays so that they rode through a sudden golden mist. Even here at the world's end, spring was remembering the way back, and for a moment a sense of quickening caught almost painfully at Alexios somewhere below the breastbone...

The burn had widened into a chain of shallows, and they splashed through easily enough, the hounds shaking themselves as they scrambled out on the further bank, and headed up through the steep woods towards the lip of the glen.

The hazel woods fell back, and now they were out into open country; high country that climbed higher yet. Half melted snow lay puddled in every hollow, and the wind had an edge to it like a scold's tongue, for all that it blew from the south-west. But even up here there was the sense of quickening. The first blossom clung like stray sparks to the dark masses of the furze, and there was the green rooty smell of things growing, and the air full of the lonely bubbling mating-call of curlew that had come up from the estuary as nesting time drew near. It was a day when scent would lie close to the ground but long lasting; a good hunting day.

'Luath has a scent,' Cunorix said quietly.

And looking down, Alexios saw the big hound standing suddenly tense, muzzle raised a little and faint tremors running his whole length to the ragged plume-tip of his tail. A moment later, Luffra had it also. The two riders waited, their ponies reined close, careful to make no sound or movement that would draw their attention away. Then with no sound the two great hounds were off, and Alexios and Cunorix, driving their heels into their ponies' flanks, were after them.

It was a long hunting and a hard one...

-- Extract from Chapter 5, "Wolf Skin" in Rosemary Sutcliff's Frontier Wolf. I reproduce this under fair use provisions of copyright and will remove it if shown that I'm wrong in doing so.

[3]The site's owner, Anthony Lawton, saw the blog posts I'd done on Sutcliff and asked me to submit something. Here's a link to my contribution:
Blogger Jeff appreciates Rosemary Sutcliff’s evocative writing, and here are links to the blog posts I've written about her writings:

• Secondat: Great White Horse
• Secondat: reaching across a collision of cultures
• Secondat: The apple tree blooms white in the Land of the Living
• Secondat: a wind that harps on the wall

thingy

Erin McKean took on verbification in last Sunday's Boston Globe.[1] We friend and unfriend, we Google, we TiVo, we Photoshop, we party! Verbing comes naturally; so much so that about a fifth of our verbs were originally nouns.[2] Shakespeare did it much and well.[3] It can humorize language and the subject itself is a source of humor, as Bill Watterson knew well.[4]



It's not long since McKean's colleague, Sam Allis, vented his prejudices on the subject. He says he likes "sext," but not "caveat" or "impact" and ends, lamely, with the obvious: it's all a matter of personal likes and dislikes.[5] Some people may cringe on hearing "we have to decision this." Others detest "I'm going to gift him this" or "I'm going to re-gift this hideous clock we got as a wedding present." But many converted nouns enliven the language and eliminate wordy constructions. Why shouldn't we "text" our friends when the alternative is "sending a text message" to them?

You can verb names as Xander shows us: "Does anybody else feel like they've been Keyser Söze'd?"[6] The politics of confirmation hearings has given us "Borked" and (with less success) "Lewinskyed." And speaking of her, the use of passive-voice confessions is, we all know, Clintonizing ("mistakes were made").

Some verbifications only work poetically; you can't see using them in ordinary speech. For example, when Cleopatra explains why suicide is better than being paraded through Rome like a trophy she complains that "mechanic slaves with greasy aprons...shall uplift us to the view...and I shall see some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness i' the posture of a whore."[7]

I would have thought a most extreme example of impractical verbing to have been Heidegger's verbing of the word thing. He uses the German word bedingt to mean bethinged and talks about the things in a work of art thinging the observer. He says that things present in works of art can gather meaning into themselves by a process he calls thinging of things. In a passage of masterful obscurity he tells the reader "by thinging, things carry out world.... Thinging, things are things. Thinging, they gesture &mdash gestate — world."[8]

It turns out, however, that thinging isn't only an arcane philosophic term used by a weird ex-Nazi. It's "an ambiguous verb used to replace a verb that you can't come up with at the moment," as in "Hey mom. Yeah, just got back from, um, thinging my friends" or "Is Kayla dating that guy now? I thought they were just friends..." "No, they aren't dating, they are just thinging now."[9]

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Some sources:

Conversion (linguistics) article in wikipedia

Languaging at Its Best


The Modern Practice of Making Certain Nouns into Verbs on Volokh Conspiracy

Heidegger the Shaman

The Thinging of the Thing: The Ethic of Conditionality in Heidegger's Later Work

Da kine on wikipedia

Thing theory on wikipedia

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Notes:

[1] Verbed!,
Not every noun wants to stay that way, by Erin McKean, in The Word, on boston.com, July 25, 2010

[2] In his book, The Language Instinct (Morrow, 1994), he says, "Easy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes that make English English. I have estimated that about a fifth of all English verbs were originally nouns. Considering just the human body, you can head a committee, scalp the missionary, eye a babe, stomach someone's complaints, and so on -- virtually every body part can be verbed." (Quoted from Grammar Puss on the Harvard web site.)

[3] Shakespearean examples include "I'll unhair thy head." "The thunder would not peace at my bidding". "He ploughed her, and she cropped." "Destruction straight shall dog them at the heels." "Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle."

[4] If I find that I'm violating copyright in reproducing this image, I'll promptly remove it.

[5] Allis writes: "I’m saddened to report 'unfriend' was named Word of the Year in 2009 by the New Oxford American Dictionary. ... Let’s not forget former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who famously used 'caveat' as a verb at a Senate hearing in 1980. This prompted New York Times word guru William Safire to define such usage as 'a new linguistic form called haigravation.' The first Marquess of Argyll reportedly used 'caveat' as a verb — 'But I would caveat this' — in his short address before he was executed for treason in 1661. Does that matter a whit to you?"
-- War of words, The English language is constantly changing, but it doesn’t mean we have to like it, by Sam Allis, Boston Globe, May 24, 2010

[6] "The Puppet Show," Buffy the Vampire Slayer, May 5, 1997. Xander verbifies names quite often. The BuffyGuide explains this one: "In the 1995 movie The Usual Suspects, Keyser Söze was the name of a legendary master criminal whose name was on the lips of everyone who'd witnessed one of his crimes, but who the police couldn't even begin to find. At the end of the movie, it's revealed that he was right under everyone's nose the entire time."

[7] Scene 2 in Act 5 of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra:

Nay, ’tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors
Will catch at us like strumpets, and scald rhymers
Ballad us out o’ tune. The quick comedians
Extemporally will stage us, and present
Our Alexandrian revels. Antony
Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness
I’ th’ posture of a whore.
-- Antony and Cleopatra, Act V, Scene 2.

[8] The quotes come from Heidegger's essay Language which analyzes Georg Trakl's poem, A Winter Evening. Here's the poem:

“Ein Winterabend,” von George Trakl

Wenn der Schnee ans Fenster fällt,
Lang die Abendglocke läutet,
Vielen ist der Tisch bereitet
Und das Haus ist wohlbestellt.

Mancher auf der Wanderschaft
Kommt ans Tor auf dunklen Pfaden.
Golden blüht der Baum der Gnaden
Aus der Erde kühlem Saft.

Wanderer tritt still herein;
Schmerz versteinert die Schwelle.
Da erglänzt in reiner Helle
Auf dem Tische Brot und Wein.



“A Winter Evening,” by George Trakl
Literal translation by Ted Hayes

When the snow falls on the window,
The Vesper bell tolls long,
The table is readied for many,
And the house is well ordered.

Many on their wanderings
Come to the door on dark paths.
Golden blooms the Tree of Graces
From the Earth’s cool sap.

Wanderer steps quietly herein,
Pain turns the Threshold to Stone.
There shines in pure brightness
On the table bread and wine.

“A Winter Evening,” translated by Albert Hofstadter

Window with falling snow is arrayed,
Long tolls the vesper bell,
The house is provided well,
The table is for many laid.

Wandering ones, more than a few,
Come to the door on darksome courses.
Golden blooms the tree of graces
Drawing up the earth’s cool dew.

Wanderer quietly steps within;
Pain has turned the threshold to stone.
There lie, in limpid brightness shown,
Upon the table bread and wine.

--
From Limina.Log:

[9] (urban dictionary)

wha'd he say?

I was looking at the preview squibs for today's games when my eye caught this quote: "This is our bed. We're going to lay in it. We're not going to cry over spilled milk. If there's any level of disappointment in terms of how this thing unfolds, it's going to be on us." The speaker was Steeler's coach Mike Tomlin. It's not a unique instance of the rhetorical freedom that sports figures allow themselves, but it is, as they say, something.

I like better what Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo said before the Middies took on (and beat) Missouri in the Texas Bowl yesterday: "We're going to have 11 guys running to the football. We're like 11 hyenas - we're going to take down an elephant sooner or later."

It's Niumatalolo who countermanded the imperative, winning isn't everything; it's the only thing, by telling an interviewer that football, even when Navy plays Army, is only a game. After the Midshipmen victory in this year's edition, he was overcome with emotion; and he said: "I have great, great respect for these men, and this is just a football game. I mean, that’s all it is, but there’s a bigger picture, and I couldn’t be prouder of our young men [meaning the players for Army as well as Navy]." You can see and hear this brief interview here.

I looked through the recaps from yesterday's bowl games to find other vibrant coach quotes but didn't come up with much:

• "I was embarrassed for the team that we didn't go out and do a better job as far as for the fan base."
• "They came ready to play. There are no excuses for the loss."
• "I don't think we played as smart as we needed to."

Player quotes were a little more colorful:

• "We got gassed; we got tired" (by a defensive end).
• "I wouldn't say the Pony Express" (by a quarterback).
• "Whatever it takes, we have to keep these chains rolling" (another quarterback, reporting what he told the team during the second half).

Winning coaches repeatedly praised the "work ethic" of their teams. That may not seem entirely appropriate for kids playing a game, but it's not unusual. Losers were frequently unable to explain losses and quite often fell back on "whatever reason" in order to convey their mystification:

• "For whatever reason, we didn't play well today,"
• "We were never involved for whatever reason."
• "But for whatever reason, we were not ready to go at the beginning of the game."
• "For whatever reason, we just haven't gotten it done."

I checked the Scoreboard feature of the WaPo sports section and found that the phrase has been used 149 times during the past few weeks. Highlights from the recent past include:

• "It's just one of those things where they don't want to give us credit for whatever reason."
• "The '09 year, starting in January with the playoff game, for whatever reason it just hasn't been good football-wise for me,"

good will

This morning I read an intriguing article by Karen Armstrong, an author whose work never fails to interest. In a short piece called The season has meaning for all, celebrators and skeptics alike, she wrote: "the Christmas story is a salutary reminder that faith has also encouraged radical visions for a more compassionate world." She says the Gospel's two nativity stories, given in Matthew and Luke, used imagined accounts of the messiah's birth to convey the unsettling message that this new religion welcomed outsiders, particularly the poor and marginalized people of the places where the new churches were forming.

As it happens, I was thinking about one part of the nativity stories while in church Christmas eve. I wondered about the phrase "good will" which, as it also happens, was not in the readings this year. As I'm sure you know, Luke's gospel tell us how angels announced the coming of Jesus to shepherds in their fields at night and heavenly hosts joined them to proclaim peace and good will.

While there are many English renderings of the verse in Luke where the good will of the King James Bible appears,* two that make good sense if not good poetry are 'highest honor to God, peace in the world, and kindness among men' and 'Glory in the high heavens to God, and on Earth peace with favored people.'** Perhaps the best literal translation is the one given by J.K. Gayle in a blog called Aristotle's Feminist Subject: 'Brilliant renown to god in the highest places and on the ground peace in blessed honor to mortals.'***

These literal readings line up well with Armstrong's homily. She tells us Luke's night-watching shepherds did not belong to a class of people who found favor in the culture of their time, and, probably for this reason, his God chose them to be the first to hear the good news. Shepherds, she says, were outsiders, a type "sometimes regarded as sinners by the pious Jewish establishment because they did not observe the purity laws." These members of a social fringe group were the prototype followers of the Christian faith. They were preëminently favored by God to hear of peace and blessings to come.

The authors of the King James Bible, and those who followed their lead, did well in choosing good will as their rendering of the Greek not because of its literal accuracy but because of its subtlety. The online Oxford English Dictionary gives nuances of the phrase in screenful after screenful of definition and usage example. Consider these two examples from Wordsworth and Shelley:

The Horses have worked with right good-will. (The Waggoner 1805)

And I will give thee as a good-will token / The beautiful wand of wealth and happiness. (Hymn to Mercury Translated from the Greek of Homer 1820)

One major strain of these meanings is the association of good will with empathy, a generosity of spirit, and concern for the well-being of others. I found this passage in a book of 1670 on the great fire that had consumed most of London in 1666:

When the will is strongly enclined and byassed [biased] to works of charity, so that a man would fain be a giving to the poor; and a supplying the wants and necessities of the needy; but can't for want of an estate; in this case God accepts of the will for the deed. David had a purpose and a will to build God a house, and God took it so kindly at his hands, that he dispatches an Embassadour to him, to tell him, how highly he resented [meaning the opposite of what this word means to us now] his purpose and good will, to build him a house. The Widows will was in her two mites which she cast into Gods Treasury; and therefore Christ sets a more honourable value upon them, than he dos upon all the vast summs that others cast in. Many Princes and Queens, Lords and Ladies are forgotten, when this poor Widow, who had a will to be nobly charitable, has her name written in letters of Gold, and her charity put upon record for all eternity. The King of Persia did lovingly accept of the poor mans handful of water, because his good will was in it, and put it into a Golden Vessel, and gave the poor man the Vessel of Gold. And do you think, that the King of Kings will be out-done by the King of Persia? Surely no.
-- London's lamentations: or, A serious discourse concerning that late fiery dispensation that turned our (once renowned) city into a ruinous heap. Also the several lessons that are incumbent upon those whose houses have escaped the consuming flames, by Thomas Brooks (Printed for J. Hancock and N. Ponder, 1670)

A second major strain in the OED's definitions of good will suggests the promise held out to the shepherds of tranquility and social justice that will come, all in good time, to people such as them. In the following passage an African-American preacher of the late 19th-century tells his hearers that the world is no pleasant place now, but there will come times when people will live together without conflict and, one is pretty sure, all will be able to hold their heads high.

Once more on the tall cliffs of Mount Paradise rest the melting rays of a setting sun. The bald tops of Gedor, Gibeah, and Mais Elias, as a thousand times before, flame in the distance with burnished gold. Gedor and Gibeah, from their bald tops, without emotion look down on centuries that have rolled away before them, like the mist of the morning. What shifting scenes, what tragedies of life have been played out on their sides and in the vales below. What mighty forces have gone out from before them to subdue the world, and to bring to it, peace and good will towards men. And still old Gedor and Gibeah stand on and on in grim silence, waiting for the perfection of that peace to come.
-- Poems by Howard Marion McClellan, African Methodist Episcopal Church. Sunday School Union. (Publishing House A.M.E. Church Sunday School Union, 1895)

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Notes:

* The Biblos web site's comparative texts for Gospel, Luke Chapter 2 verses 7-14 include:

• King James Bible: 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.'
• New American Standard Bible: 'Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.'
• Darby Bible Translation: 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men.'
• Young's Literal Translation: 'Glory in the highest to God, and upon earth peace, among men -- good will.'
• Douay-Rheims Bible: 'Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will.'

. ** From: luke 2:14 on the shields-up blog.

*** Luke 2:14 in Greek is δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας. The last two words: (1) ἀνθρώποις, anthropos, is in the dative plural masculine, means man-faced, i.e. a human being -- certain, man and (2) εὐδοκίας, eudokia, in the nominative singular feminine, means satisfaction, i.e. (subjectively) delight, or (objectively) kindness, wish, purpose -- desire, good pleasure (will), seem good. Gayle's blog post calls attention to rhymes and word-play in Luke's text in order to show that Luke's inclusive language encompassed women as well as (presumably masculine) poor shepherds.

the power of language

Making fun of other people's colloquialisms is mean. Does anyone ever intend cliché, malaprop, or useless filler-word? Our conversation is rarely reasoned discourse. We give, we take, rapidly, with little forethought, making our contributions to the collective task of conversation.

Writers risk offending potential readers when they call attention to verbal gaffes. Some stigmatize, making fun at the expense of supposed transgressors; think of those who denigrate Palin's "nucular." Other, better ones know about the unselfconscious tuning of expression to occasion (as Steven Pinker with nucular).

A book called Damp Squid receives attention for its top ten most annoying phrases. It's compiled from an Oxford database on language use and thus quite possibly an example of the empty elitist ironic wit that seems to be a chronic disability of highly educated English skeptics. But the database is the scholarly tool used by the Oxford dictionary folks, so the book is unlikely to be snide and maybe not even unconsciously contemptuous. Still, as the title lets on, it's quite British. The top ten list itself, which is being picked up by news sites and blogs, contains few personal irritants. I'd like to see a list that contains the indeed habit of some British academics or all those upside-down posh adverbs, now blessedly fallen from favor: frightfully foremost among them. (The phrase "a Jew, of course, but a frightfully decent one" appeared only once in an early printing of an Agatha Christie novel of 1932, excised in later editions.)

So maybe Damp Squid is worth a read.

I can more definitely recommend a brief exploration of explanations contrived to support mangled clichés that came up when I searched damp squid. A couple of years ago a Times (UK) columnist told readers ‘For years I really believed there was such a thing as a “damp squid” ’ and went on to celebrate some creative etymologies. Some excerpts:

THE OTHER DAY MY ELDERLY country neighbour asked for a bit of help to get his new washing machine into the kitchen. That generation never use “it”, always, “he” or “she”, so I wasn’t surprised to hear the washing machine called “he”, but I was surprised by what followed: “My old washing machine, he’s given up the goat,” he said, in a broad Gloucestershire accent.

“The goat?” I replied. “Are you sure?” “Oh, yes,” said my neighbour, “ain’t you never heard that expression before, given up the goat?” “Well, not exactly . . . where does it come from?” “Ah well,” said my neighbour, “in the old days, when folks didn’t have much, and mainly worked the land, a man would set store by his animals, especially his goat, and when he come to die, he would bequeath that goat to his heirs, and that is why we say, ‘he’s given up the goat’.”

I am thrilled with this and from now on there will be no more ghosts, only goats. I began to think of other examples of fake etymology, all with their entirely persuasive explanations, a tribute to the exuberance and flexibility of language.

An Italian friend of mine, who learnt her English in America, calls her mobile her “self-phone”. Presumably she has heard it called a cell phone, but never seen the words written down — and it is a phone you use yourself . . .

I laboured long into adult life really believing that there was such a thing as a “damp squid”, which of course there is, and when things go wrong they do feel very like a damp squid to me, sort of squidgy and suckery and slippery and misshapen. Is a faulty firework really a better description of disappointment?

My father was in Ypres (pronounced Wipers) during the First World War, and like many of his generation, came back with bits of French. Ça ne fait rien turned into San Fairy Ann, meaning Stuff You, and then a new character emerged in Lancashire-speak, known as Fairy Ann; a got-up creature, no better than she should be, who couldn’t give a damn. “San Fairy Ann to you” morphed into: “Who does she think she is? Fairy Ann?”

In closing the brief piece the author invited readers to send in examples of other ways in which "English has been good at borrowings and refits, and ways of making sense; even of its mistakes."

The gave some of the response in a follow-up: ‘Communicating with the dead is risky, especially on constipated ground’ which says:

Communicating with the dead is obviously a risky business, especially as they might be buried in constipated ground or, as the Countess of Harewood kindly suggested, have too hastily signed over their Power of Eternity.

One husband told me that his wife likes to say: “'If my mother were alive now, she’d turn in her grave.” I know that’s not quite a fake etymology, but I include it, along with “my words fell on stony ears”. This must be close to bear-faced cheek, which might be a relative of the moveable beast, as in “Easter is a moveable beast — it all depends on when the hens start laying”.

I feel very sorry for the child who nearly choked on his biblical cord, and for the gentleman who feels “out on a limbo”. I think we have all felt out on a limbo sometimes, perhaps especially the lady who “has a milestone round her neck”.

Addendum:

Of Bibliophilia and Biblioclasm, by Theodore Dalyrmple, contains this insight:

The internet is both wonderful and terrible. For instance, it enables patients to learn a lot about their own diseases, and if they are discriminating, sometimes even to save their own lives. But medical information, or opinion, on the internet has probably already killed far more people than it has saved: the fact that Thabo Mbeki, the recently deposed President of South Africa, found a site on the internet while browsing that convinced him that AIDS was not caused by a virus, and that therefore treatment of HIV with drugs was harmful, resulted in untold premature loss of life that it will take many years for the internet to balance by lives it has saved.

stoush

I saw the word "stoush" for the first time today. It showed up in an article about plans for Lance Armstrong to return to professional bike racing in Europe. He plans to participate in the Italian national race, the Giro d'Italia, but may sit out the Tour de France. There's been plenty of reaction in the cycling press. The piece in which my word appears discusses Armstrong's relationship with the current Italian champion Filippo Simeoni, one of many in Europe who believe Armstrong used drugs to win his seven TdeF titles though never caught doing it. Here's an extract:

When asked whether there would be any uneasiness riding alongside Armstrong Simeoni replied, "Well, I certainly wouldn't ride with a spirit of revenge; I personally do not feel bitterness, hatred or revenge." At the time of their stoush in France four years ago, long-time Armstrong associate Michele Ferrari was on trial after being accused of sporting fraud and improper exercise of the profession of pharmacy. Simeoni was one of the main witnesses in the case and the emotions of the case spilled out onto proceedings on the road. Initially sentenced to one year of imprisonment, Ferrari was later acquitted in the second degree by the Court of Appeals of Bologna.

Here's a definition:

Stoush
There was a time when “stoush” (meaning “fight”) was a very common piece of Aussie slang.

But does anyone still say "stoush"?
Stoush was both a noun and a verb: to stoush someone was to bash them or fight them, while a fight was called a stoush. It probably had its highest currency in the late 19th early 20th centuries. In typical Aussie fashion the Great War of 1914-18 was called “the big stoush”. The earliest citation is from a report in the Bulletin in 1893. The source of the word remains a mystery, but the English Dialect Dictionary records a somewhat similar word “stashie” meaning “uproar” or “quarrel”. So stoush may have started life as an English dialect word that immigrated, changed, and then lived on here while it died out back in the British Isles.

I thought of my new word in connection with the stoush that McCain and Palin have been laying on (subject of my last two posts). Their street-fight approach to the campaign came back to mind on reading an article about word scientist James W. Pennebaker. He participates in a group blog where the language used by the candidates for president and VP is analyzed and has just done a brief summary of findings so far. As you'd expect, the analysis shows McCain to be more impulsive and aggressive, Obama more reflective and rational. (As an aside, it's worth noting that the blog has an analysis of Sarah Palin's speeches and interviews which suggests she's a liar.)

And I thought of it again on reading Steven Pearlstein's current column. In it, he attacks the financial managers whose actions precipitated the economic meltdown. He complains about their failure to own up to their responsibility for these actions and says there's a way in which they broadcast their guilt to the world: "Court reporters will tell you they can always tell the innocent from the guilty on these kinds of perp walks, and the Wall Street crowd yesterday looked particularly guilty, unable even to conjure up a soothing word to a nation fretting over its shrunken 401(k)s, or a simple thank you to taxpayers for having saved their bacon. Their silence and invisibility throughout this crisis attests to the moral and political bankruptcy of a financial elite that is the perfect match for the financial bankruptcy they have now visited upon their investors, their creditors and their customers."

It's Pearlstein who's making a stoush in this case but that's not his word for the day. The piece closes with this: "There's a word that captures the instinct to take bold moves in the midst of a national crisis -- it's called leadership. We've seen quite a bit of it these past few weeks from public officials like Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Sheila Bair, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, John Boehner -- even George Bush. Wall Street, by contrast, has served up a nothing sandwich, a lack of leadership that's been stunning."

what you say

In a column entitled Words Of Mass Infuriation Anne Applebaum takes notice of an article in The Telegraph on the annoying things people say. Articles on language tend to be tedious debates between pedants and pragmatists, or at best vehicles for some tepid humor. The one in the Telegraph is somewhat each. My favorite example of the British vacilation between its own and our American clichés comes from a reader named Nick Godfrey who wrote:

I hear what you're saying but, with all due respect, it's not exactly rocket science. Basically, at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is you have got to be able to tick all the boxes. It's not the end of the world, but, to be perfectly honest with you, when push comes to shove, you don't want to be literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. Going forward we need to be singing from the same songsheet but you can't see the wood from the trees. Naturally hindsight is 20/20 vision and you have to take the rough with the smooth before proceeding onwards and upwards. The bottom line is you wear your heart on your sleeve and, when all is said and done, this is all part and parcel of the ongoing bigger picture. C'est la vie (if you know what I mean).

Applebaum's piece, which focuses on political verbal pablum, stimulated a fine contribution from a reader with the email handle kenonwenu:

The government nowadays speaks a language I would describe as Orwellian-Manichaean.

Remarks by the President on Homeownership at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Washington, June 18, 2002
http://www.hud.gov/news/speeches/presremarks.cfm

"Let me first talk about how to make sure America is secure from a group of killers, people who hate -- you know what they hate? They hate the idea that somebody can go buy a home. They hate freedom; that's what they hate...

..I want to thank the choir for coming, the youngsters for being here. I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."

{cartoons from the Telegraph article}