What Modern English and Modern Poetry Owe to Renaissance England

by Francis Blessington

More than four hundred years ago, writers of the Renaissance, or Early Modern Period, refashioned our language into standard English. We can read Elizabethan texts without translation or gloss — well, almost without gloss — unlike Old or Middle-English works. Beowulf requires pre-study in the language and a dictionary, and Chaucer's works are often — perhaps too often — read in translation but need at least textual notes if not a glossary. We can understand Shakespeare even in performance, but The Second Shepherd's Play would have to be adapted or translated for modern audiences because the changes that have occurred in English from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century are fewer and less basic than the changes that occurred from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. More ... 

  A Bilingual Pun Is Twice the Fun

by Richard Lederer

• Why do the French need only one egg to make an omelet? Because in France, one egg is un oeuf.

• Have you stayed at the new luxury hotel in town? It's a site for soirees. More ... 

  Deadline

by Julian Burnside

The winter edition of the Australian Bar News did not contain a column about words. For the first time in fourteen years, I missed the deadline. More in despair than anger, I looked up deadline in the OED2. In its meaning relevant here, "a time by which material has to be ready for inclusion in a particular issue of a publication," it is first recorded in 1920. The Chicago Herald & Examiner of January 2 that year notes a play called "Deadline at Eleven" that was about to be produced. Not surprisingly, it was a play about a newspaper. Although this meaning of deadline is fairly recent, it is now the commonest use of the word. That is probably a good thing, because an earlier American use of the word was much more literal and threatening: during the American civil war, a deadline was a line drawn around the bounds of a military prison. Any prisoner who crossed the deadline was liable to be shot. In 1868, B. J. Lossing's History of the Civil War noted that: "Seventeen feet from the inner stockade was the 'dead-line,' over which no man could pass and live." More ... 

Book Excerpt

  Movie Speak

by Tony Bill

baby (spot) A 500- to 1,000-watt Fresnel light.

baby plate This piece of equipment, known in New York City as a pigeon, has almost as many names as it has uses. Originally designed for mounting baby fixtures to the top of set walls, it is also used as the world's lowest stand by nailing it to a floor or on an apple box. More ... 

Vocabula Revisited

  The Perfect Word Is the One That Will Do

by Ira Nayman

Writers are encouraged to strive for the perfect word, or in French, le mot juste. (Everything sounds better in French.) This is the word that perfectly captures the physical or psychological essence of the subject of the sentence. Like most ideals, we rarely ever actually achieve it (if writers truly searched for the perfect word in every sentence, few pieces of writing would ever be finished), but it does give writers a goal.

Humor writers, especially those who write topical humor, however, have a choice of several words or phrases to complete a joke successfully. Thus, rather than the perfect word, they can settle for the word that fits. More ... 

Two Poems

  At Forty

by Jana Moore

I would like to speak
passionately of my work
saying it is in my blood

to have the brown skin of a woman in Rio
to welcome each morning from rice fields or mountains
to push my hands through

the wind
the water
the topsoil More ... 

Fiction

  The Lost Dialogues: Socrates to Himself

by Michael Jay Katz

Socrates: Hello, Socrates — with no moon tonight I hardly recognized you.

SOCRATES: That's a silly thing to say — but I suppose old men can be allowed a bit of foolish talk.

Socrates: I'm only talking because it's so quiet. There's not a soul stirring here in the marketplace.

SOCRATES: Why are you out so late?

Socrates: When you get old, you have trouble sleeping. After dinner I can hardly keep my eyes open; then I wake in the dead of night and can't fall back to sleep.

SOCRATES: So you walk through the empty streets?

Socrates: Yes, I walk and talk to myself. More ... 

Shibboleths

  On Being a Jerk

by John Kilgore

jerk (jürk), n. 1. a quick, sharp pull, thrust, twist, throw, or the like: a sudden movement. . . . 4. Slang. a contemptibly naïve, fatuous, foolish, or inconsequential person.

For a while, now, I have been musing on this odd collocation of meanings. Why should jerk, of all words, be one of the most popular and versatile of American insults? What makes it the riposte of choice for so many mild-to-medium injuries, the descriptor of choice for a certain brand of clueless inconsideration? Why do we wield it, as sword and shield, with such satisfaction? More ... 

Postcards from Babel

  A Charm of Powerful Trouble

by Amalia Gnanadesikan

Traditionally, speakers of the Australian aboriginal languages Dyirbal and Yidiny had to watch their words with unusual caution. There were the normal, everyday words that one could use with normal, everyday people, and then there were the special words that a man would have to use in the presence of his mother-in-law or a woman would have to use in the presence of her father-in-law. Not a single noun, verb, or adjective of the normal language could be used in front of these taboo relatives — or indeed in front of anyone from the section of the tribe to which these relatives belonged. There were thus two words for everything. This is a long way to go to lend linguistic support to incest taboos. More ... 

Bethumped with Words

  Ponzi: Caught in the Wizard's Womb of Fraud

by Bill Casselman

Charles Ponzi, after whom the fraudulent scheme that dupes investors was named, was an Italian immigrant who arrived in Boston in 1903 at the age of 21. Ponzi once did prison time in Canada for forging checks. In today's trip down emery lane (ouchies!), we look at the origin of the Italian surname Ponzi and then offer stern words of reproof to the covetous chumps who got taken to the cleaners by the oily slicker, Bernard Madoff.

The Ponzi fraud has been in the news lately because this high-class New York City grifter named Bernard Madoff has allegedly pulled off the most obscenely profitable Ponzi swindle in history — his possible theft? $65,000,000,000! — no mean feat in the midst of greed's most rampant pillage of our planet. If Bernie Boy is convicted, he faces 150 years in the slammer. More ... 

Harrison's Corner

  Beyond Laziness

by Carey Harrison

We need a new word. "Lazy" implies energies not used, disregarded, in abeyance. No one could call a stone lazy. What my dear hapless undergraduates exhibit is a kind of lobotomized passivity that defies easy description. Where the muscle might be lurking, the muscle that could be activated to engage the mind, manufacture memory, and enter the domain of learning, there is no sign of life: no muscle, no sinew, apparently no nervous system. Even amoebas, I reflect, have some acquisitive instincts. Don't amoebas have appetite? My students sit as if drugged, prepared only to report some "personal" like or dislike. And to think that not forty years ago a vocal group of conservative American educationists cited as inappropriate the request, by a teacher, for a student's "personal" view; it was called an intrusion, a violation of privacy! Now admittedly this was in Virginia, in old Virginny where you defended your soul and your Christian conscience with your life. But my goodness, those were the days! The bad old days, I dare say, but what teacher wouldn't feel a little sinful thrill of nostalgia, today, at the thought of never having to perpetually solicit student opinions. No more personhood, to whose validation schools are now entirely dedicated. By heavens, one could actually teach, instead. If, that is, the students are listening. If they're attending, they're probably only waiting for a moment in which to interject, upon request, a chunk of "personal experience," a little piece of their privacy. More ... 

Letter of the Law

  Excuses, Excuses

by Adam Freedman

If you still haven't filed your 2008 tax returns, take heart. You may be suffering from Late-Filing Syndrome.

That's right — it's a disease. Late-filing syndrome became a sensation last October when it was cited by the lawyer for Charles O'Byrne, a top aide to New York Governor David Patterson. There was no dispute that O'Byrne had failed to file tax returns for five years despite being highly educated and having ample income. More ... 

  Language Module 21: Esprit d'Escalier and the Dimwit on the Stairs

Since my family tree is rooted in Canada, I take some pride in the fact that approximately 40 percent of the English vocabulary has French roots. Even if you've never studied French you probably know at least 15,000 French words. Many French phrases convey ideas and situations that would otherwise require several words to adequately describe. My word processor dictionary stores a twenty-word definition for the phrase deja-vu, seventeen for laissez-faire, seventeen for coup de grace, and twenty-two for nouveau riche. In light of our current affaire d'etat, perhaps nouveau pauvre (poor) should be added to the dictionary. More ... 

  Disagreeable English

Although few people can complain of another's grammatical mistakes with impunity, that is, without revealing their own, we are hopeful that "Disagreeable English" will encourage us all to pay more heed to how the language is used — by ourselves as well as by others — while bettering our ability to speak and write it. More ... 

  Clues to Concise Writing

Words often ill serve their purpose. When they do their work badly, words militate against us. Poor grammar, sloppy syntax, misused words, misspelled words, and other infelicities of style impede communication and advance only misunderstanding. But there is another, perhaps less well-known, obstacle to effective communication: too many words. More ... 

  Scarcely Used Words

Inadequate though they may be, words distinguish us from all other living things. Indeed, our worth is partly in our words. Effective use of language — clear writing and speaking — is a measure of our humanness. What's more, the more words we know and can correctly use, the broader will be our understanding of self, the keener our acquaintance with humankind. More ... 

  Mock Merriam

The eleventh edition of "America's Best-Selling Dictionary," Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Frederick C. Mish, editor in chief), does as much as, if not more than, the famously derided Webster's Third International Dictionary to discourage people from taking lexicographers seriously. "Laxicographers" all, the Merriam-Webster staff reminds us that dictionaries merely record how people use the language, not how people ought to use the language. Some dictionaries, and certainly this edition of Merriam-Webster, actually promote illiteracy. More ... 

Free in Vocabula

  Gotcha Grammar^TM

Here are quotations from well-known, and less well-known, people, all of whom have used words ungrammatically or unstylistically. These are unnotable quotes, a collection of solecisms. More ...