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]

---------

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'

-------

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}

--------

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]

--------------

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

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]

-----------

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

------------

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)

thing is

It's a term of law and governance from the Nordic, Germanic races. The Early English knew it as a council of elders, a court with its judges, a meeting of lord and thanes, and, from that meaning, the matter to be decided by the assembled men (always men of course) who did the deciding.

It's grown since then.

One source tells

The thing "what's stylish or fashionable" is recorded from 1762. Phrase do your thing "follow your particular predilection," though associated with hippie-speak of 1960s is attested from 1841. Used colloquially since 1602 to indicate things the speaker can't name at the moment, often with various meaningless suffixes, e.g. thingumbob (1751), thingamajig (1824).

And from OED:

'to see his things'
1550 in Acts Privy Council — The Lord Admirall desired licence to go into Lincolnshire for a moneth to see his thinges that he had not seen of a long tyme.

'go you thing'
1598 SHAKESPEARE Henry IV, Pt. 1 — Go you thing, go.

'my thing is'
1652 J. FLETCHER Wild-goose Chase — Well, there is something, Sister. Or. If there be, Brother, 'Tis none of their things, 'tis not yet so monstrous; My thing is Mariage.

'quite the thing'
1775 F. BURNEY Diary — Mr. Bruce was quite the thing; he addressed himself with great gallantry to us all alternately.

'things are in a good way'
1776 S. FOOTE Bankrupt — Never fear, things are in a very good way.

'such a thing'
1813 J. AUSTEN Pride & Prejudice — It would have been such a thing for me! The quiet, the retirement of such a life, would have answered all my ideas of happiness!

'I'll tell you...'
1831 T. C. GRATTAN Jacqueline of Holland — I'll tell you a thing, Bishop Zweder; you know as little of the bold candour of chivalry as this English earl does of the guile of priestcraft.

'know (or not know) a thing'
1844 R. W. EMERSON New Eng. Reformers in Ess. 2nd Ser. — We are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.

'the thing had clean disappeared'
1893 R. L. STEVENSON Catriona — Wi' the bang and the skirl the thing had clean disappeared.

'old man, the thing is'
1915 J. GALSWORTHY Freelands — Look here, old man, the thing is, of course, to see it in proportion.

'done a thing (or not)'
1956 M. DICKENS Angel in Corner — I haven't done a thing all day, and I'm as tired as a dog.

'that poetry thing'
1906 ‘H. MCHUGH’ Skiddoo! — When it comes to that poetry thing he thinks he can make Hank Longfellow beat it up a tree.

'not my thing'
1936 G. B. STERN Monogram — If pottery's your thing. Mountains are not my thing. The sea is my thing.

'make a thing'
1952 E. GRIERSON Reputation for Song — Steady on, Laura... Don't let's make a thing of it.

'having a thing with'
1959 P. D. CUMMINS tr. D. Dolci Rep. from Palermo (U.S. ed.) — One of my pals..found out he was having a thing with a gorgeous blonde.

'a black thing'
1967 N.Y. Times — Few whites are journeying to Harlem for entertainment. ‘It's a black thing now... It's by blacks and for blacks and you don't see many whites up here.’

'boy things'
1983 M. MACKIE Exploring Gender Relations — Similarity provides a basis for shared activities, in this case, doing ‘boy things’ or ‘girl things’.

'a guy thing'
1991 J. PHILLIPS You'll never eat Lunch in this Town Again — I entertain us both with a brief negotiation, not something I care to do, but I know if I don't he'll think I'm a wuss and feel compelled to rip me off. Not his fault. It's a guy thing.

'a thing for books'
1994 N.Y. Times Bk. Rev. — Sally Beaumann clearly has a thing for fat books.

'a thing for my friend'
2006 Cosmopolitan — I'd had a thing for my friend Jon since I'd met him two years earlier, but because we were part of a group of friends, we'd done nothing more than flirt.

Then there are

'wild things'
'a queer thing'
'a funny thing'
'the least thing'
'thinking things over'
'get things done'
'take things as they come'
'from the beginning of things'

From my current read:

'praying things to come out'
The spontaneity and savage freedom of the plant life in this land of alternate hot sun and warm showers at last blurred and made insignificant to me the men who braved it in silk hats and broadcloth there, and the trains, and the jewellers, shops, for my experience of vegetation was got on my knees in a London suburb, praying things to come out of the cold mud. Here, I began to suspect, they besieged us, quick and turbulent, an exhaustible army, ready to reconquer the foothold man had hardly won, and to obliterate his works.

'beat our poor weak bodies against an adamant thing'
Our captain is a very excellent master mariner, but occasionally he likes to test the security of his absolute autocracy, to see if it is still sound. I never knew it when it was not; but yet he must, to assure himself of a certainty, or to exercise some devilish choler in his nature, sometimes beat our poor weak bodies against the adamant thing, to see which first will break. I will say for him that he is always polite when handing back to us our bruised fragments. Here he was giving us a day's freedom, and one's first city of the tropics in which to spend it; and we agreed with him that such a waste of time was almost unbearable, and left hurriedly.

There's a verb form, as in De-Thinging Thursday, or this mystery:

The Taoists constantly said, "To thing things, but not to be thinged by things." The things which assist the transforming and nourishing processes, these are not merely in the category of things (i.e., not to be thinged by things). The distinction between those two classes consists in whether they have enlightenment or not.
-- The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy By Fung Yu-LAN

And I've already quoted the Cooper Square duo:

Girl: Aaron! Hi!
Guy: Hey! Are you going to the thing?
Girl: Yeah, the thing!
(guy starts walking away)
Girl: Wait, Aaron! Hold up!
Guy: What?
Girl: Did you see that puppy?
Guy: Yeah, I pointed at it and laughed at it a few times.

And from the same source:

Father: Yeah, Shakespeare didn't write too many kids' plays.
Small child: Why?
Father: Um, it just wasn't his thing.

-- Central Park

There's more, if you're inclined: Definitions of thing on the Web

{Schlock Mercenary; Wednesday, December 8, 2004}

blazing belly fur

Girl: Aaron! Hi!
Guy: Hey! Are you going to the thing?
Girl: Yeah, the thing!
(guy starts walking away)
Girl: Wait, Aaron! Hold up!
Guy: What?
Girl: Did you see that puppy?
Guy: Yeah, I pointed at it and laughed at it a few times.
--Cooper Square (Overheard in New York)

Pronouns

As the Fowlers point out, it's easy for writers to entangle themselves in pronominal puzzles:

Mr. Sidney Lee's study of the Elizabethan Sonnets, the late Mr. Charles Elton's book on Shakespeare's Family and Friends, and Professor Bradley's on Shakespearean Tragedy — a work which may be instructively read with Professor Campbell's ' Tragic Drama in Aeschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare' — remind us that the dramatist still holds his own with the publishers. The last two or three weeks have seen two new editions of him. — T.

The writer has thoroughly puzzled himself. He cannot call Shakespeare Shakespeare, because there is a Shakespeare just before: he cannot call him he, because six other persons in the sentence have claims upon he: and he ought not to call him the dramatist, because Aeschylus and Sophocles were dramatists too. We know, of course, which dramatist is meant, just as we should have known which he was meant; but the appropriation is awkward in either case. The dramatist is no doubt the best thing under the circumstances; but when matters are brought to such a pass that we can neither call a man by his own name, nor use a pronoun, nor identify him by means of his profession, it is time to remodel the sentence.

-- The king's English abridged for school use by Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler (The Clarendon press, 1918)

A grad student named Jessica Love has written an entertaining article on the study of pronouns: They Get to Me; A young psycholinguist confesses her strong attraction to pronouns by Jessica Love, in The American Scholar. She tells us linguists have a technical term for pronouns that show up without context (the way thing appears abruptly above); they call them "unheralded," a word which yields up nice associative rings. These pronouns are royal beings who arrive at the portcullis without fanfare, having neglected their majestic obligation to send forth couriers warning of their approach. They surprise, as does death by violence on field of battle. They perplex, showing up unpredicted and causing us to wonder at their antecedents. Poetic, even in the negative, as in the quote with which OED favors us:

1845 NEALE Euphratean Angels iv. in Seatonian Poems (1864) 7 "Yet not unheralded by fear, The End of all things shall draw near."

She says,

I used to be a normal psycholinguistics graduate student. I wanted to study how the mind parses improbable metaphors, unintelligible accents, and quirky syntax. Sexy things. Things that would play out well at parties.

I imagined myself dropping newspaper headlines like “Iraqi Head Seeks Arms” into conversations with beautiful people. I would defend Internet chatroom slang on local radio. I would exchange holiday cards with Steven Pinker.

But something has happened. I am in my third year of graduate school, and I have fallen in love. I have fallen for pronouns. It’s hard to shut me up about them.

And she tells a little story:

The next day, the postdoc I share an office with listens to my story about buying a catnip candle so that I could watch my cat roll endearingly on the carpet while the scent wafted across the room, and how it didn’t quite turn out that way, how instead my cat pounced on top of the candle and the fur on his belly instantly broke into flame. When I say all this and four hours later the postdoc sees me and shakes his head and says, “They should be illegal,” I know that by they he means catnip candles. Unheralded, see? The source of that blazing belly has seared itself so prominently on both our minds that it doesn’t even need to be mentioned to be there.

And she concludes:

Lucky for me, there are plenty of pronouns in need of more study — the diectics (here, there), the reflexives (himself, themselves), the interrogatives (who, what), the possessives (his, mine), the indefinites (somebody, anything) — each with its own relatively unexamined life. Or, for the freshest pronoun around, I could always coin one myself.

In Baltimore, some teenagers already have: their candidate, yo, is a new gender-neutral third-person personal pronoun. As in Yo was tuckin’ in his shirt or Yo sucks at magic tricks. If yo sticks around — and if it spreads — maybe we can put the ever-awkward he or she to rest forever. And what would that mean? What consequences could that have for how we think about our world? Empirical question. Send in the psycholinguists.

On this topic, I'll let them have the final words, but note that their advice of 1918 is hardly better than the grammatical tangles they wish to solve:

They, them, their, theirs, are often used in referring back to singular pronominals (as each, one, anybody, everybody), or to singular nouns or phrases (as a parent, neither Jack nor Jill), of which the doubtful or double gender causes awkwardness. It is a real deficiency in English that we have no pronoun, like the French soi, son, to stand for him-or-her, his-or-her (for he-or-she French is no better off than English). Our view, though we admit it to be disputable, is clear — that they, their, &c, should never be resorted to, as in the examples presently to be given they are. With a view to avoiding them, it should be observed that (a) the possessive of one (indefinite pronoun) is one's, and that of one (numeral pronoun) is either his, or her, or its (One does not forget one's own name: I saw one of them drop his cigar, her muff, or its leaves) ; (b) he, his, him, may generally be allowed to stand for the common gender, (c) Sentences may however easily be constructed (Neither John nor Mary knew his own mind) in which his is undeniably awkward. The solution is then what we so often recommend, to do a little exercise in paraphrase (John and Mary were alike irresolute, for instance). (d) Where legal precision is really necessary, he or she may be written in full. Corrections according to these rules will be appended in brackets to the examples.

Anybody else who have only themselves in view. — RICHARDSON, (has ... himself)

Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte, in novel-writing as in carrying one's head in their hand. — S. Ferrier. (one's ... one's)

The feelings of the parent upon committing the cherished object of their cares and affections to the stormy sea of life. — S. Ferrier. (his)

But he never allowed one to feel their own deficiencies. — S. Ferrier. (one's)

Which leaves each free to act according to their own feelings. — S. Ferrier. (his)

Suppose each of us try our hands at it. — S. FERRIER. (tries his hand ; or, if all of us are women, tries her hand)

Everybody is discontented with their lot in life.—BEACONSFIELD. (his)

Or, maybe not quite the last, since you've been dying to tell me the entertaining quote at top does not illustrate problems with pronouns. To which I reply, "that's the thing" and walk away.

rastling with the dialect

Bin more 'n a hunred year ago this guy with the uppity name — Maximilian Schele de Vere — put out this book — Americanisms: the English of the New world — in which he tells the rubes how us Amuricans talk.

Here's 2 bits out o' it:

Allow, to, is constantly used in the Middle and Southern States in the sense of affirming a statement. "I allow that's a good horse," in Southern parlance means, I assure you." Mother is perfectly ridiculous," a young South Carolina lady said; "she allowed she'd switch me if I didn't go home, and she picked up a bit of brush. I up with another, and told her to come on." (Putnam's Magazine, June, 1868.) It is frequently, also, used in a more vague sense, corresponding with the "guess" of the East and the "reckon" of the South, as in John Hay's recent lines:

But I come back here allowin'
To vote as I used to do.
-- (Banty Tim.)

And

Peert — frequently written peart, and in all probability a corruption of pert — is common in all parts of the Union. It is one of the good old words, used once upon a time by English writers, but now obsolete in England, while surviving vigorously in America. "You shall know them by their very gate; they walk so peartly about." (Burroughs, On Hosea, p. 115 : 1652.) "Fust rate, never felt pearter in my life. Tell ye what, that was a busting medicine." (Lippincott's Magazine, March, 1871, p. 246.) "He observed that the master was looking peartish, and hoped lie had gotten over the neuralgia and the rheumatism; he himself had been troubled with a dumb ager since last conference, but he had learnt to rastle (wrestle) and pray." (F. B. Harte, Luck of Roaring Camp, p. 166.) Perk, pronounced peerk, is probably but another corruption of the same root.

Bonus for Yankee speakers:

Pandowdy, a dish consisting of stewed apples, into which the crust covering them has been stirred, and "bearing," it has been said, "to apple-pie the relation of the vulgar to the well-bred," is, no doubt, the descendant of Halliwell's pandoudle. The word, like the dish, is known only in New England.

{the real dowdy stuff; source: Gourmet(!)}

See also: History and Legends Cobbler - Crisps - Crumble - Brown Betty - Buckle - Grunts - Slumps - Bird's Nest Pudding - Sonker -Pandowdy

you could look it up

Many, many sources call the Haiti earthquake apolocalypic and many, many have more recently dubbed our recent heavy snow a snowpoccalypse.

It's a bit of a surprise to find that apocalypse and apocalyptic only recently came to mean "great devastation" and "greatly devastating." Time past, when people used the words they meant the recording of a prophesy not the Armageddon being prophesized. They were talking about the Book of Revelation which is also known as the "Apocalypse of John." To them, the words meant "revelation, prophesy" and "pertaining to the Revelation of St. John."

The Greek, ἀποκάλυψις, means*

1) laying bare, making naked,

2) a disclosure of truth, instruction

a) concerning things before unknown
b) used of events by which things or states or persons hitherto withdrawn from view are made visible to all

3) manifestation, appearance

The OED has our modern meaning of apocalypse and apocalyptic as 2008 draft additions.**

The new usage, apocalypse for Armageddon, seems so natural that it's surprising that it didn't come about earlier. As the wikipedia article on apocalypse says:

Today the term often refers to Armageddon or the end of the world, which may be a shortening of the phrase apokalupsis eschaton, literally "revelation at the end of the æon, or age". In Christianity The Apocalypse of John is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.

I suspect the identification of the book with the event persisted because of a now lost familiarity with the numerous books of prophetic writings that were called apocalypses. Thus, for example, Google Book Search turns up these apocalypses in book titles: Apocalypse of Baruch, Apocalypse of James, Apocalypse of Abraham, Apocalypse of Peter, Apocalypse of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Paul, Apocalypse of Daniel, and Apocalypse of Elijah. The word was used almost interchangeably with revelation, though it particularly seems to have meant the dream-like vision as of a veil lifting to show events to come.

I'm not the only one who's raised this topic blogingly.

{Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Durer; source: conncoll.edu}

-------------

Notes:

* See Blue Letter Bible: apokalypsis

**From the OED:

DRAFT ADDITIONS JUNE 2008 — apocalypse, n.

Christian Church. The events described in the revelation of St John; the Second Coming of Christ and ultimate destruction of the world.
1862 R.I. Schoolmaster (Rhode Island Commissioner Public Schools) 8 22/2 There are those who..think they already behold its fearful apocalypse terminating in darkness and in blood. 1947 N. FRYE Fearful Symmetry (1990) iii. 67 The apocalypse will necessarily begin with a slaughter of tyrants, and Christ came, Blake says, to deliver those bound under the knave. 2008 Washington Post (Electronic ed.) 28 Jan. C3 Eddy sends an e-mail to thousands of like-minded Christians announcing: ‘The End Days have arrived. The Apocalypse and the Rapture are at hand.’

b. More generally: a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; a cataclysm. Also in weakened use.
1894 J. SWINTON Striking for Life 357 Comrades of Chicago!.. In these times there are..prophecies of approaching apocalypse... It will surely come. 1940 Common Sense Mar. 4/2 Washington is preoccupied with the threat of apocalypse across the Atlantic. 1980 Bookseller 26 Jan. 316/2 Although most people are saddened by the enforced abandonment of some titles, no one is prepared to interpret it as the publishers' apocalypse. 1994 Time 24 Oct. 33 While the poor are bewitched by dreams of peace and plenty, the rich are preparing for an apocalypse.

DRAFT ADDITIONS JUNE 2008 — apocalyptic, adj. and n.

Of, relating to, or characteristic of a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; cataclysmic. Also in weakened use. Cf. APOCALYPSE n. Additions.
1918 F. J. C. HEARNSHAW Democracy at Crossways 2 Among the apocalyptic events four stand pre-eminent. They are (1) the Russian Revolution of March; (2) the entry of America into the War; [etc.]. 1943 R. LOWELL in I. Hamilton Robert Lowell (1982) 88 The razing of Hamburg, where 200,000 non-combatants are reported dead, after an almost apocalyptic series of all-out air-raids. 1970 Harper's Mag. Apr. 53/1 The apocalyptic scenario spells itself out rather easily: an indefinite prolongation of the war in Vietnam, or a re-escalation. 2001 FourFourTwo Aug. 117/1 The festive period saw an apocalyptic 5-1 home defeat to Leyton Orient. 2005 Observer 11 Sept. I. 22/2 At the hint of a dirty bomb or some other apocalyptic onslaught, societies could become ‘decivilised’.

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,"

what's banal

A few weeks ago I did a post on clichés & so perked up a bit on seeing a piece by Ron Rosenbaum in Slate telling us The Catchphrase of the Decade. It's a tour de force of the hot, warmed over, and moribund; up-coming, out-going, and just hanging. He jams it full of every overworked usage imaginable and wants us to know:

It's not a trivial subject. In domestic politics, for instance, we had the misbegotten political framing device public option, which, in masking a complex hidden agenda, baffled even potential supporters. We also saw how misbegotten "philosophical" clichés like the banality of evil continue to cheapen thought. So much can be compressed in an often ambiguous, deceptive way into so few words. And once these words calcify into catchphrases, their influence, left unexamined, can make us stop thinking about what we're saying or say things we don't think about until we catch ourselves and catch on that we've become prisoners of our catchphrases. -- isn't this decade about the things that have been taken away from us? The "holiday from history" after the end of the Cold War. Being able to focus on whether it makes a difference what " 'is' is." (It is what it is!) All that frivolity taken away by 9/11.

My favorite is one I had to look up: "/sarc." or sometimes just "/s".

You can hear Ron Rosenbaum discuss this topic on a radio interview on WNYC 31 Dec: 'Stay Classy,' 'Off the Island': Catchphrases of the Decade Thu, 31 Dec 2009

Have you done any thinking "outside the box" this decade, or encountered any "game changers?" Here to tell us more about the catchphrases that became a part of our lexicon in the 2000s is Ron Rosenbaum , columnist for Slate and author of "The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups." He recently wrote an article about the decade's memorable catchphrases. From the innocuous ("Just sayin"), and the smug ("How's that workin' out for you?") to the spiritual ("It is what it is"), and the stylish ("Stay classy").. there's a catchphrase here for everybody, and a surprisingly apt top pick.

My own imagination not casting up any up-to-date overworkages for inspection, I thought first to offer up some old ones from my tender youth (reet!) but on opening Eric Partridge's A dictionary of catch phrases, I found myself looking at these few with a canine flair:

The dogs are pissing on your bluey (swag). 'Wake up!' 'Something unpleasant is happening to your little world.' 1970s, Australia

The dogs have not dined. Late 19th c.; addressed to one whose shirt is hanging out at the back and therefore inviting the attention of any playful dog.

A hungry dog will eat a dirty pudding. c. 1850; deprecates fastidiousness;

Better than dog-running from Blockhouse, not as good as a run ashore in Instambul. 1971. Means 'fair to middling.' Dog-running is running your sailboat in the morning.

Don't be an Airedale! Early 1920s. Don't be such a bitch.

Anyone who hates children and small dogs can't be all bad (coined by WCF of course)

Busy as a dog building a nest in high grass. Said of someone very intent on a chore.

A case of the tail wagging the ...

Done up like (or dressed up like) a dog's dinner. c. 1945. British Army term for wearing dress uniform.

Like Hunt's dog, which will neither go to church not stay at home. From 17th c. Applies to a most unreasonably discontented person.

I have to see a man about a dog. From 19 c. Answering a question about where you are going when you don't want to say (e.g., lavatory, or out to buy some — prohibition era — liquor).

I might as well plough with dogs! From 17th c. All this is most ineffectual.

Let the dog see the rabbit! or show the dog the rabbit! 1900s-1920s. Let the good times roll.

Rosenbaum's previous piece in Slate was about a catchphrase that's been on my mind lately. In The Evil of Banality, he says

To my mind, the use of the phrase banality of evil is an almost infallible sign of shallow thinkers attempting to seem intellectually sophisticated. Come on, people: It's a bankrupt phrase, a subprime phrase, a Dr. Phil-level phrase masquerading as a profound contrarianism. Oooh, so daring! Evil comes not only in the form of mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash types, but in the form of paper pushers who followed evil orders. And when applied — as she originally did to Adolf Eichmann, Hitler's eager executioner, responsible for the logistics of the Final Solution — the phrase was utterly fraudulent.

I think it's a mistake to believe that evil can't coexist with ordinary (quite banal) civility (as I wrote a few months back). The phrase came to mind last month when I read these last paragraphs in The Journal of Hélène Berr:

The monstrous incomprehensibility and illogical horror of the whole thing boggle the mind. But there's probably nothing to work out, because the Germans aren't even trying to give a reason or a purpose. They have one aim, which is extermination.

So why do German soldiers I pass on the street not slap or insult me? Why do they quite often hold the metro door open for me and say: "Excuse me, miss" when they pass in front? Why? Because those people do not know, or rather, they have stopped thinking; they just want to obey orders. So they do not even see the incomprehensible illogicality of opening a door for me one day and perhaps deporting me the next day: yet I would still be the same person. They have forgotten the principle of causality.

There's also the probability that they do not know everything.

The atrocious characteristic of this regime is its hypocrisy. They do not know all the horrible details of these persecutions, because there is only a small group of torturers involved, alongside the Gestapo. ... They have stopped thinking, I keep coming back to that, I think it's the root of the evil; it's the solidest prop of this regime. The destruction of personal thought and of the response of individual consciences is Nazism's first step. ... The only truthful report worthy of being written down would be one that included the full stories of every individual deportee. ... It must never be forgotten that while it was happening, the human beings who suffered all these tortures were completely separated from people who did not know about them, that the great law of Christ saying that all men are brothers and all should share and relieve the suffering of their fellow men was ignored. Horror! Horror! Horror!
-- (Tuesday, 15 February 15 1944)

good will, again

I mentioned that good will overtook me while in church Christmas eve, but — sad to say — the words themselves more than the feeling. I thought of what the shepherds heard and wondered what it meant, then let my mind wander to variants. Good Will, I thought wouldn't be a bad handle for Shakespeare. A good will is one that survives probate intact, of course, and financiers like to trade in the goodwill of businesses, meaning something like the value of their reputations. It occurred to me that some believe the good will inherit the earth and, if so, it may be that no good will come of it. I wondered whether the phrase Good Will Hunting might have multiply layered meanings in the movie of that title (which I haven't seen). And some obvious variants came to mind: God's will, the goad that will prick, and, as my Indiana grandma might have said, 'it's a good while since I've seen you.'

What is there in this phrase?

Since it's Biblical, it's hardly surprising that there's dispute about it.

The Gospel of Luke is the only one that has shepherds being awed by glad tidings. Like the others, it was written in Greek. It's a bit of a surprise that the Greek word the author used — εὐδοκίας (eudokia) — was an esoteric word, appearing in Bible texts but rarely elsewhere.¹ It's likely to have been brought over from a Hebrew word that appears frequently in the Torah, רצון (rason), meaning God's will, favor, or pleasure.² Good will thus seems to be excellent English for the word.³

Although the King James Bible gives it thus, it's also rendered as good pleasure and similar phrases indicating God's pleasure. Still, the translations all convey well being.

So what's the dispute about?

The issue that has been argued over the centuries, and is still debated, is whether God is promising good will among people or making a wondrous announcement to people who please him, those, presumably, who will become Christians now that Christ is born. The King James version reads 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.' Should this be — as the Douay-Rheims Bible has it — 'Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will'?⁴ Most now say yes and I'm not going to disagree.⁵

There's a subsidiary dispute over whether God is addressing all people, including women, or just men. The word in the gospel is ανθρωποις (anthropos), which, in the singular, is literally man-faced, and thus means a man, or a human being. One writer suggests that internal analysis of the text indicates that the gospel author intended the latter.⁶ This makes sense since the author of Luke is more focused on women than the authors of the other gospels. As a wikipedia article points out, this gospel has more characters who are women, features a female prophet (2:36), and details the experience of pregnancy.

As I said in yesterday's blog post, the Gospel of Luke brings out the inclusiveness in the teachings of Jesus particularly with respect to outcasts and fringe members of society. It shows empathy with people who are poor and with oppressed minorities as well as with women. It's in keeping with this characteristic attitude that this gospel, alone of the four, says that the angels and assembled hosts gave the good news of Jesus' birth to a group of shepherds. A modern commentator explains: "To modern romantics the shepherds described by Luke take on the gentleness of their flocks, and in recent centuries they have triumphed over the magi as a better Christmas symbol for the common man. But such interests are foreign to Luke's purpose. In fact, far from being regarded as either gentle, or noble, in Jesus' time shepherds were often considered as dishonest, outside the Law."⁷ I try to imagine what it must have been like for the first people to read or hear this text and comprehend that these renegade types are pleasing to God, are among God's chosen people, and are being invited to become the world's first Christian believers.

Here are some images of ancient texts containing all or part of Luke's gospel. A set of web pages by Timothy W. Seid at the Earlham School of Religion shows how scholars cope with the difficulties of ancient manuscripts such as these. (See Interpreting Ancient Manuscripts and its contents page.) In many cases the pages are damaged and even the most complete and legible lack word spacing and punctuation. There are a lot of scribal errors of transcription. Where one text differs from another, there's often no easy way to determine which is the best.

{Papyrus 75, a codex with 51 surviving leaves containing the earliest segments of the Gospel of Luke. The pages were originally about 10.2 by 5.1 inches and well preserved. Each page is written in a single column of from 38 to 45 lines and each line has 25 to 36 letters. The pages are not numbered. The handwriting is a clear uncial which when compared to other papyri dates the manuscript to sometime between 175 and 225; source: earlham.edu}

{Papyrus 45 fragment containing part of the Gospel of Luke, heavily damaged; probably created around 250 in Egypt.; source: wikipedia}

{St Luke's gospel, Codex Sinaiticus, c.350, one of the two earliest Christian Bibles; contains the earliest surviving copy of the complete New Testament. Consists of parchment from both sheepskin and goatskin. The parchment, originally in double sheets, may have measured about 40 by 70 cm. All codex consists, with a few exceptions, of quires of eight leaves, a format popular throughout the middle ages. Each line of the text has some twelve to fourteen Greek uncial letters, arranged in four columns. source: British Library}

{The Codex Vaticanus, a 4th century uncial manuscript in Greek of the Septuagint and the New Testament, written in Greek, on 759 vellum leaves; it is one of the two extant 4th century texts of the Old and New Testament in the form used by the early Christians, the other being the Codex Sinaiticus. The manuscript has been housed in the Vatican Library, founded in 1448, for as long as it has been known, appearing in the Vatican Library's earliest catalogue in 1475. source: historyofscience.com}

{The Codex Vercellensis, earliest surviving manuscript of the Old Latin gospels, circa 350. The MS appears in silver letters, in very narrow columns, on extremely thin vellum stained with purple. Because the codex was used for the taking of oaths in the early Middle Ages, much of it is either difficult to read or destroyed. source: katapi.org}

{Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis, circa 400; written in an uncial hand on vellum; Greek pages on the left face Latin ones on the right; source: historyofscience.com}

{Gospel of Luke in Coptic; source: earlham.edu}

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Notes:

¹ At least according to a highly-sourced Bible study text from Prairie View Christian Church: Euodokia [i.e., Eudokia] in pdf

² "Hans Bietenhard commenting on the usage of eudokia in the LXX, writes, 'The noun eudokia occurs 25 times (only in Pss., Cant., 1 Chr., Sir.). In 8 places it is a translation of Hebrew rason (56 times in MT), good-pleasure, grace, the will of God (40 times in MT). Eudokia can denote the will or pleasure of man (cf. Ps. 141 &140]:5; Sir. 8:14; 9:12), but also the divine good-pleasure, God’s grace and blessing (Ps. 5:13; 51:19 &50:21]; 89 &88]:17; Ps. Sol. 8:22). Sir., in particular, displays the tendency to use eudokia to render Hebrew rason, in order to describe God’s good pleasure, His gracious will, activity and election (e.g., Sir. 1:27; 11:17; 15:15 et al.). Eudokia denotes the divine purpose or determination in, e.g., Sir. 33:13; 36:13; 39:18)' (The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology volume 2, page 818)." source: Euodokia [i.e., Eudokia] in pdf; and see The Gospel of Luke: a commentary on the Greek text by I. Howard Marshall (reprint by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1978)

³ εὐδοκία is also given as satisfaction, i.e. (subjectively) delight, or (objectively) kindness, wish, purpose -- desire, good pleasure (will), seem good. Other synonyms include kindness, kindly intent, benevolence, delight. -- source: Euodokia [i.e., Eudokia] in pdf.

⁴ The Biblos web site gives comparative translations from many sources. See also a post by Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden on their Making Light blog. They give many other renderings of the text in Luke, including Anglo-Saxon and the Middle English and Early Modern translations. A commenter adds one in Esperanto. Here is Lowland Scots: 'Glore tae God i the heicht o heiven, an peace on the yird tae men he delytes in!'

⁵ There has been quite a bit of blogging on this subject this Christmas season. See for example: Round-up of posts on Luke 2:14:

• Jim West
• Doug Chaplin
• Kurk Gayle
• David Ker
• John Hobbins
• Martin
• Shields
• T. C. Robinson
• Suzanne McCarthy
• Chuck
• Grantham
• Chris Wiles
• Joel L. Watts
• Gareth Hughes

And see Translating Luke 2:14 ('Glory to God in heaven and peace to people on earth who please him.') and comment upon this, December 17-18, 2009 ('Glory to God among the highest [beings] and peace on earth among people pleasing [to God].' And also see: The story of the Bible By Eugene Stock (Dutton, 1906) as well as my previous post on this: good will.

⁶ The writer is J.K. Gayle in Getting Luke 2:14 as Glorious Wordplay.

⁷ The Annunciation to the Shepherds (Luke 2:8-14) in Birth of the Messiah by Raymond E. Brown (Anchor Bible, 1999) See also Karen Armstrong's article, The season has meaning for all, celebrators and skeptics alike.