Language Quizzes 1-25

1-What Olympic athlete's name is an anagram for ablutions?
2-What is the only US state that doesn't share a letter with its state capital?
3-Name a Micronesian palindromic resident?
4-Name a professional sports team whose placename & nickname are composed solely of letters worth 1 point in Scrabble?
5-Name a city in North America of at least 10 letters where every letter has an odd alphabetical position?
6-What do these words have in common? barometer-comparison-cybernetics-timberline?
7-Name a word with 5 consecutive vowels?
8-Name 2 words that are antonyms & homophones to each other?
9-Name an American city whose last 5 letters are an anagram to its first 5 letters?
10-Name these 2 anagrammed musicians?   ascertains-narcoleptic
11-Name these 2 anagrammed directors? Old West action- On set sir, scream
12-Name these 2 anagrammed actorrs?  costumier -semolina
13-Name these 2 anagrammed US VPs?    grow a penis- I need job
14-Name these 2 anagrammed Canadian PMs?   pure, truer idea-I mourn blarney
15-Name these 2 anagrammed poets?   toilets-best way
16-Name a country and a country's capital that are anagrams?
17-What do these words have in common?  tangerine-raincoat-manger
18-What do these 2 words ahve in common?   foregone-remained
19-Name 2 placenames with 3 consecutive dots?
20-Name 2 European cities that are anagrams to each other?
21-What SW US city and Midwest city are anagrams to each other?
22-What country is named for its geographical position?
23-What do these words have in common?   defeat-menopause-first
24-What do these words have in common?  Dixielander-interregnum-transmigration
25-What do these words have in common?   pram-pants-piano

mother's day

(This article appeared in the May Senior Times)

Reflections on baby talk and mutant English

Howard Richler

May 2012

This article is dedicated to my daughter Jennifer, born in Quebec, who gave birth to Maya Ruth Richler-Stoffman on April 5th in Bloomington, Indiana.

The Oxford Companion to the English Language (OCEL) is missing an “s” at the end of its title. The OCEL has headings for more than 400 varieties of our multitudinous language, such as Australian English, Singapore English, and Canadian English.
I’ve never even heard of some of the varieties, such as Babu English, which is described in OCEL as “a mode of address and reference in several Indo-Aryan languages, including Hindi, for officials working for rajahs, landlords, etc.”
My mother tongue, Quebec English, is actually one of these mutations listed in OCEL. In my dealings with the outside world, I’m constantly being reminded, if not chided, about the distinctiveness of my English.
Some years ago, while toiling in the steel industry, I couldn’t reach a customer in Newfoundland and in my recorded message stated that “my local is 222.” I found out a week later why the person never phoned me back. My reference to “local” made him think I represented a union—I should have used the term “extension.”
I would think that many a mother born in Quebec, but bringing up her children elsewhere, is likely to have her mongrel English roots sussed out were she to use the word “suss” as a noun in a prenatal class.

Howard Richler’s daughter Jennifer with 3-year-old Judah and nearly-new Maya Ruth. Photo courtesy of Howard Richler

You see, for many Quebec anglophones a “suss” is their word of choice for a pacifier but this term is only to be found among English-speaking people deriving from Quebec. It comes from the French-Canadian term for a pacifier—suçon or suce—and derives from the French word sucer, “to suck.” Even in France, this term would be largely unknown as the definitive word there would be une tétine.
This mongrelization is not unusual, as the term “pacifier” for many products we associate with babies varies quite a lot in the English-speaking world. The term “pacifier” in the United Kingdom is largely unknown and the definitive term for such is a “dummy” because the device is an artificial teat. In North America and the U.K., many people use such other terms for pacifier as binky or nuk (or nuk-nuk). Binky was actually a brand name for a pacifier introduced by Playtex in 1948 and produced until 1977. Nuk derives from the Nuk baby product company, which was established in Germany in 1964.
Interestingly, the term “binky” grew beyond the sense of pacifier and is often used to refer to a young child’s blanket, stuffed animal or other prized possession.
To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, British English and North American English are two languages separated by an ocean, and we see this chasm in many terms we use associated with babies. After all, “popping” a baby in a cot in Britain just means placing it there, whereas stating that you “popped” a baby in a North American crib might get you arrested for harming an infant.
In England, a nanny changes a baby’s nappy, not its diaper. This word was first used in English in the 14th century when it referred to a textile fabric and by the next century it referred to a linen fabric.
It is in the 17th century that the word is first used to refer to a baby’s napkin or cloth. The word nappy is a version of napkin and its first citation in the OED is in 1927.
The term pram to refer to a baby carriage
goes back to 1884 and I was surprised to discover that it is actually a shortening of the word perambulator.
Nowadays this term has succumbed to the more descriptive push chair.
hrichler@gmail.com
Howard Richler’s book From Gay (Happy) to Gay (Homosexual) and other mysterious semantic shifts will be published by Ronsdale Press in 2013.

 

Prepositional Ending

Don't end sentences with prepositions? What are you talking about?

by

Howard Richler

Freshman: “Sir, can you tell me where the dining hall is at?”

Professor: “Don't you know that you shouldn't end a sentence in a

preposition?”

Freshman: “OK, can you tell me where the dining hall is at, asshole?”

From the time we entered high school we were taught not to end sentences

with a preposition; to do so was ungrammatical. Why it was ungrammatical,

however, was never explained.

Mind you, there were some rebels who discounted this prescription. In

Fowler's Modern English Usage, first written in 1925, by Henry and Francis

Fowler stated “It was once a cherished superstition that prepositions must be

kept true to their name and placed before the word.” Fowler adds that this

practice was seen as “inelegant” and “represents what used to be a very

general belief, and is not yet dead.” Almost a century after Fowler wrote

these words, the canard is still not properly dead and buried.

In an attempt to give this “superstition” a proper funeral, I thought it might

be instructive to explain how it came about in the first place. If we must

fault some group or person, the blame falls on English Puritans and Dryden;

John not Ken. Let me explain.

If you remember your English history, in the mid 17^th century the country

undergoes a civil war. On one side you have the monarch Charles I and on

the other you have Parliament with many of the parliamentarians being

Puritans. The Puritans prevailed and Charles I is beheaded as a result. The

Puritans viewed many pastimes such as drinking, gambling and theatre as

vices and as a result for over two decades when the Puritans held power no

new plays were published. When Charles II reclaimed the throne some years

later the theatre was restored but naturally there was a dearth of new plays

for almost thirty years.

John Dryden was a late 17^th century poet and playwright who took umbrage

that the public preferred the plays of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare

over his, particularly because these gentlemen had been deceased for over

fifty years.

When his play The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards was staged in 

1672 he ended it with an epilogue criticizing his audience's greater

appreciation of the works of Shakespeare and Jonson over his and his

contempories, and asserted that his own plays were far wittier than theirs.

Dryden, however, was not through with his braggadocio and trash-talk. Two

years later he published this play in book form an added an essay in which

he chastized the Immortal Bard for his “carelessness and ...lethargy of

thought.” One of Shakespeare's and Jonson's faux pas was allowing

sentences to end in prepositions such as in As You Like It when Rosalind

says to Orlando “Who do you speak to?” He was particularly scathing in

this essay to Jonson's play Catiline where a line reads “The... dens of beasts

could not receive the bodies that those souls were frighted from.” Dryden

characterized the use of a preposition at the end of a sentence by Jonson and

his ilk as “a common fault.”

Dryden, however, realized after writing this essay that in some of his

previous works he too had ended sentences with prepositions and went back

and corrected passages where he had committed this postpositional sin.

Dryden's Law represents the first time this dictate had been invoked by any

writer. It was an age where Latin was regarded as the most sublime

language and notwithstanding that Latin exhibited much flexibilty, it was

not possible to put a preposition at the end of a Latin sentence. In English,

though, it is possible and grammatical to boot which explains why writers

such as Shakespeare had done so. Expecting English, a Germanic language

to conform to Latinate rules makes as much sense as expecting an English

bishop to pray to Jupiter.

In any case Dryden's prescription caught on and by the 18^th century while

ending a sentence in a preposition would not get you drawn or quartered, it

was nevertheless regarded as very poor form. In Bishop Robert Lowth's

1762 A Short Introduction to English Grammar he avers “Placing a

preposition inside a sentence is more graceful and perspicacious and much

better with the solemn and elevated style.” A century later in Henry Alford's

1864 The Queen's English we read “There is a peculiar use of prepositions

which is allowable in moderation but must not be too often resorted to. It is

the placing of them at an end of a sentence as I have done in the words

'resorted to'.”

So now that we know that Dryden dictate not to end a sentence with a

preposition was basically a publicity stunt to elevate his stature and

diminish the standing of Shakespeare and Jonson, I hope you will agree

with me that it represents pedantic nonsense up with we should not put.

Howard Richler's book From Gay (Happy) to Gay (Homosexual) and other

mysterious semantic shifts will be published by Ronsdale Press in 2013.

hrichler@gmail.com

What's with Dickens?

What the Dickens? Dickens was also a great wordsmith

by

Howard Richler

This year marks the bicentenary of one of the all-time literary greats — Charles Dickens. No other author has provided us with so many memorable characters who are recognizable to so many people. Here is a brief sampling of these personages: Artful Dodger, David Copperfield, Fagin, Little Nell, Oliver Twist, Pip, Scrooge, Tiny Tim and Uriah Heep. And aside from Shakespeare, no other writer has endowed us with so many works that are considered classics. For example, on the “Greatest Literature of All Time” site, these eight works by Dickens are listed: Bleak House, A Christmas Carol. David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Hard Times, Little Dorritt, Oliver Twist, and A Tale of Two Cities.

Therefore expect be be inundated this year with books that mark the 200 year anniversary of the birth of this remarkable man. Since the age of 15, Dickens life was characterized by constant activity and metamorphoses. At different times he worked as a legal clerk, a courtroom and parliamentary shorthand reporter, a journalist, an actor a magazine editor and manager of theatrical productions.

Dickens wrote in a didactic style that revealed the squalid nature of Victorian society characterized by its widespread poverty and lack of justice for those on the bottom rungs of the pecking order. Many of his most memorable characters are portrayed negatively and serve as examples of the hypocrisies of the British class system and the cruel practices of capitalism in 19^th century Britain.

Dickens, however, was hardly a saint. He saddled his wife Catherine with ten children and after 22 years of marriage decided that she wasn't worthy of him, and then coerced her into a separation while constantly mocking her to his friends. Dickens is also on record of making many statements that, regardless of the different sensibilities prevalent in 19th century England, strike us as abjectly racist. Dickens met Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1862 and in a letter Dostoevsky penned years later he related that Dickens had told him “that all the good, simple people in his novels.. are what he wanted to have been, and his villains were what he was.. his cruelty.. hs shrinking from those whom he ought to love.. There were two people in him, one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite.”

While Dickens place in the pantheon of literature is widely recognized it is not as well known the contributions he made to the English language. The OED sports almost 10,000 quotations from him and among authors he is the sixth most cited individual. He is credited with being the first person to use 258 words and phrases that include “aglitter,” “bachelor apartment,” “boredom,” “bowie knife,” “butter-fingers,” “cloak and dagger,” “coffee shop,” “corkscrew” (verb sense), “devil-may-care,” “dustbin,” “facts and figures,” “flummox,” “gonoph” (to mean pickpocket, from the Hebrew word for thief), “ never say die,” “pay off,” “preggers,” “prima ballerina,” “put the kibosh on,” “sawbones” and “sit-down” ( noun sense). Even more extensive are the lists of words where he is the first person to use it in a particular context. Here we have “arabesque” (to mean “fantastic”), “balance ( to steady the body under the influence of opposing forces), “balloon” (cartoon sense), “bedevilment” (maddening trouble), “card” (to mean “original character”), “circuit (to mean “route of performers”), (the) “creeps,” “escape (mental or emotional distraction), “gay dog” (man given to self-indulgence), “humane” (to cause minimal pain), “job” (to mean “responsibilty”) , “nasty” (to mean “serious”), “peck” (to mean “kiss”), “revolver” (gun sense), “stunning” (to mean “splendid”), “to whom it may concern,” and “up” (a rise in prosperity).

Dickens, however, is not responsible for the expression “What the Dickens”? The first citation of the word is in 1599 in Thomas Heywood's King Edward IV-Part I and Shakespeare used the term in 1616 in Merry Wives of Windsor. Dickens, here serves as a euphemistic word for “the devil.” The word, “Dickensian,” however, to refer to Dickens style or the conditions that the author describes first surfaced in our language in 1881 only eleven years after his death.

Howard 's book From Gay (happy) to Gay (homosexual) & other mysterious semantic shifts is being published in Spring 2013 by Ronsdale Press.

To sanction or not to sanction

To sanction or not to sanction the non-sanctioned use of sanction

by

Howard Richler

Prosecutors had been seeking a five-year prison sentence but the decision effectively lifts the threat of any sanction against the 75-year old media tycoon{Silvio Berlusconi}.

National Post-Feb 25, 2012

“{The company Lavalin} did and would not sanction an attempt at an extraction mission or any other action that would contravene local or international laws or regulations,” Ms. Quinton said in an email. National Post- Feb11, 2

In the first quote the word sanction is used to mean a penalty but two weeks earlier the word means authorize. How can the National Post copy editors sanction such confusion? I mean is sanction good or bad?

The easy answer is that sanction when used as verb usually means “permit” but when used as a noun it invariably means a “penalty.” Complicating matters even further, dictionaries are at odds on this issue. For example, Merriam Webster, Cambridge , and Encarta only recognize an approving sense for the verb whereas, the OED, Canadian Oxford, and American Heritage allow that it can denote a punitive sense. Since using the word in this manner might be misunderstood, it might be wise to say “issue sanctions against” to eliminate the possiblity of non-comprehension.

The OED explains how the dichotomy in meanings occured. “Sanction” first surfaces in English as a noun in the 1570s and the OED relates that the word derives from the Latin sanctio, “decree” where it referred to the “action of ordaining as inviolable under a penalty.” Thus sanctions most often refer to measures taken by authorities to discourage courses of actions that are not approved of by muckety-mucks. Perhaps because it is more efficacious to dissuade with a stick than to persuade with a carrot, the punitive sense of the noun took hold. Interestingly,when used in the singular, as in “UN sanction or “Church sanction” often the word is used to mean approbation.

We first see the verb sense of sanction in the 1770s and consistently it has been used in the original sense of endorsement or recognition by an authoritative decree. This is the intended meaning in Edmund Burke's 1791 An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs : “Tests against old principles, sanctioned by the law.” The “penalize” sense of the verb sanction seems to have arisen in the middle of the 20th century, and although this usage is not inherently illogical, I would advise against employing it unless the context makes your intention perfectly clear. Hence in 2010 when Sarah Palin told right-wing political commentator Glenn Beck “We're not having a lot of faith that the White House is going to come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea is going to do,” we assume because of her politics that she didn't have the approval sense of the verb sanction in mind. (However, I stand to be refudiated, on this point.)

Notwithstanding the above, in the last five years I've noticed an increasing use of the verb sanction to mean “penalize.” This is no doubt caused because the punitive sense of sanction to refer to actions taken by a nation or an alliance of nations against another as a coercive measure to enforce a violated law or treaty is the most common usage. In the process of back-formation this sense gets extended to the verbal sphere. Though this use of the noun only developed in the 20^th century, I predict this usage will eventually represent the dominant verbal sense and one day sanction the noun and sanction the verb will live in harmony.

Howard Richler's next book From Gay (Happy) to Gay (Homosexual) and other mysteriuos semantic shifts will be published by Ronsdale Press in 2013.

This article appeared recently in the legal magazine Lexpert:

Millennial Mantra

---

In the 1950s, everything was “neat.” Nowadays, overstimulated teens capture the zeitgeist with their own mot juste
"OH MY GOD! I gotta tell you what happened at Jason's party last night. It was, like, so incredibly random.”
The utterer of the above words (overheard recently at a Starbucks) was, perhaps not surprisingly, a text-maniacal teenager. If, however, you happen to be a polite and mature person who refrains from eavesdropping on adolescent conversations the way I do, I should explain the meaning of the italicized word. For adherents of old school thinking, the word “random” brings to mind its traditional dictionary definition, which describes something “without a pattern.” However, for people under 30, its most common sense is “out of the norm.”
Whether the skinny, peppermint-mocha-drinking young lady felt that what happened at Jason's party was “exciting,” “weird,” “lame,” or “gross,” I didn't have a clue, nor did I have the temerity to ask for clarification. Complicating matters, some people use the word to mean “inconsistent” or “inconsequential.”
“Random” also does double duty as a noun (as in, “He's such a random"). Paul McFedries's website wordspy.com states that, when employed as a noun, the word denotes that the person in question is outside the hacker community. He gives this as an example: “I bailed out of that Net seminar because it was just a bunch of randoms asking bogus questions.” Judging, however, from other usages I've spotted of “random” as a noun (as in, “I'm just going for coffee with some randoms") it's also often used to refer to an indistinct group.
Not only is the new sense of random being used ubiquitously by English speakers from Canada to New Zealand, but I have spotted it making inroads in other languages, such as Italian, Spanish, Québécois, French and German in much the way that “cool” and “okay” have become international buzzwords.
Not everyone is on board with the word's recent evolution. The new usage has spawned much disdain, particularly on Facebook. For example, there is a Facebook page called “I hate people who say (and misuse) the word random” with 304 members; another called “Society against the overuse of the word ‘random'” with 180 members; and yet another called “Campaign against inappropriate use of the word random,” which sports 301 members.
At this last site, readers are warned, “For several years we have witnessed the proliferation of ‘random’ propositions. It's time to call time on this irritating phenomenon. Inappropriate use of this word (which, incidentally means ‘made, done, happening or chosen without method or conscious decision’ - Source: Webster's Dictionary) only serves to furnish you with the appearance of being ignorant, inarticulate and unsophisticated. Do yourself, and your peers, a favour by banishing it from your tedious patter.”
Alas, this usage has even filtered into mainstream writing. A New York Magazine article two years ago was entitled “Six Random Michael Jackson Pop-Culture Moments.” And judging from the innumerable Internet usages I spotted, random can be synonymous with “cool,” “fun,” “exciting” and “distinct” but it can just as easily mean “silly,” “inconsequential,” “distasteful,” “strange” or “impossible.” The word appears to mean everything and nothing, although a closer look does show signs of sense behind the nonsense.
Back in 2003, Ken Ringle declared in the Washington Post that the Age of Aquarius had been supplanted by the Age of Random. Ringle surmised that the youth of the third millennium have been “so overwhelmed by the randomness of the stimuli assaulting them that they selected ‘random’ as their adjective of choice,” and added that he viewed “random” as the flip side of the 1950s favourite adjective, “neat.”
According to lexicographer Ben Zimmer the “random” age began in the late ‘60s. Zimmer spotted the following definition of “random” from the MIT student paper, The Tech, in 1971. As an adjective: “peculiar, strange, unpredictable, or inexplicable.” As a noun: “a person who happens to be in a particular place at a particular time ... a person who is not a member of a particular group, an outsider.”
I suppose it is a testament to the importance of geek culture that the term eventually spread into mainstream culture to become one of the mantras of the new age. Even the Oxford English Dictionary, the greatest tome of our language, has leant credence to the mutation, showing definitions of “random” that reflect its new meanings.
Like, how random is that?
Howard Richler's latest book is Strange Bedfellows: The Private Lives of Words. He can be reached at hrichler@gmail.com.

(This article appeared in the March 2012 edition of The Senior Times)

The etymological ingredients of food aren't always appetitizing

by

Howard Richler

In his book Crazy English wordsmith Richard Lederer makes us question the ingredients of many of our foods. After all, there's no egg in eggplant, no peas or nuts in peanuts, and blackberries are green and then red before they are ripe. How can we trust the fruits we eat when a grapefruit has nothing to do with grape and a pineapple doesn't seem to be related to a pine tree or an apple? Are strawberries named for straw? What about raspberries?
In the case of “strawberry,” etymologists are divided on the meaning of “straw.” Whereas some believe it derives from an obsolete sense of the word,“small piece of chaff,” referring to the external seeds, others think it derives from the fact that the plant’s runners resemble straws. “Raspberry” derives from obsolete English word for the fruit “raspis.”

The designations “grapefruit” and “pineapple” highlight the fact that often words are named for seemingly peculiar perceptions. The only resemblance between a grapefruit and a grape is that both are grown in clusters but this was enough for it to be called “grapefruit.” An apple must have been deemed to be the generic fruit for a long time because by the 13^th century, the term “pineapple” was applied in English to “a pine cone.” The word was applied to the fruit in the mid 17^th century, because of its similarity in shape to a pine cone.

Another fruit that named for its perceived appearance was the “coconut.” When 15^th century Portuguese explorers discovered this delicacy in the Indian Ocean islands they fancied that the three little indentations at the base of the large nut looked like eyes. Thinking that these three “eyes” gave the nut the appearance of a grinning face, the named it the “coconut,” coca being the Portuguese word for a grimacing face.

These fruits, however, have tepid etymologies compared to the avocado, which ultimately derives from Nahuatl language of South America where it was given the name ahuacatl, “testicle” because of the similarity in shape. The Spanish conquistadors absorbed this word originally as aguacate but before long the word morphed into avocado, the Spanish word for “advocate.”

In the name of etymological propriety, one might be particularly resistant to eating vanilla ice cream. In Elizabethan England, “vanilla” was thought to have aphrodisiac properties stemming from the fact that the sheath-like shape of the pod of the plant bore a resemblance to the vagina. Nor were the English alone in this gynecological perception as the word “vanilla” comes from the Spanish for “little vagina.” Similarly, you might not want to know that vermicelli is a form of the Italian word form worm, verme. It is so named because when heated it expands and exudes what resembles small worms.

Also not particularly appetizing is the etymology of pumpernickel bread. This coarse bread is the progeny of the unholy union of the New High German, pumpern, “to break wind” and nickel, “goblin” or “devil.” It was claimed that if you ate pumpernickel you’d fart like the devil. The aubergine, on the other hand, enjoys an anti-flatulent heritage. It began its life as the Sanskrit vatinganah that referred to the lack of gas it produces. Sanskrit vatinganah, and went through a transconinental migration eventually to become the Catalan alberginia, and finally French aubergine.

Occasionally, this process can also work in reverse; a non-food word can derive from a food. If sausage represents one of your favourite foods, it behooves me to relate that your bowels are etymologically “little sausages.” The word comes from the Latin botellus, which meant “intestine” or “little sausage.” It is said that the Romans used the same word for intestine as sausage because soldiers noticed a distinct resemblance of the slashed stomachs of their slain comrades to sausages.

Bon appetit.

Howard Richler's next book From Gay (Happy) to Gay (Homosexual) and other mysterious semantic shifts will be published by Ronsdale Press in 2013.

hrichler@gmail.com