commentary Archives - Page 3 of 13

Dictionary.com: Is mistress offensive?

https://www.dictionary.com/e/mistress-and-other-words-that-have-no-male-counterpart/

Mistress is a problematic word in so many ways. First is in its abbreviation, Mrs. No, I don’t have a problem with women using the title* (nor if they prefer Ms., as my own wife does). But whereas Mr. is pronounced “mister”, Mrs. carries the elided pronunciation “missus”. If you are writing dialog in a script, the general rule is to spell abbreviations, symbols, and numerals out (Elm Street instead of Elm St., sixty-seven dollars instead of $67). How do you do that with Mrs.? Because “missus” is not a word, the generally accepted solution is to simply write Mrs.

Dictionary.com also asks if the very word mistress is offensive or sexist. The site agrees with Huffington Post and the Associated Press that it is:

Referring to someone as a mistress may seem more acceptable if there were a similar term we could apply to men, but there isn’t quite one.

However, we could apply the same logic to why a writer should use the word mistress – because there really isn’t another good word for the person in question. Adulterer, while technically accurate, is too sanctimonious, homewrecker too judgmental, and lover too literary (as Dictionary.com admits). Mistress is a word we all understand to mean “the woman with whom a man has an affair.” I’m not sure the “kept” implication is still there in 2019. But I get the objection. If a woman takes a male lover who’s not her husband, what is he called? Mister or master obviously don’t work. Gigolo has other connotations. Courtier? Consort?

The AP just chucks out the words and suggests you re-write the sentence. But the beauty of English words is how they pack whole thoughts into a short construction of letters. Bezos’ mistress tells you everything you need to know without resorting to the passive “Sanchez and Bezos were romantically involved.” Likewise, actress reads more smoothly than female actor, or actor (female), as I expect the Oscar will one day be renamed. To be clear, I call all my women thespian friends actors. There is no difference between what they do on stage or in front of the camera and what their male castmates do. Actress belongs in the same dustbin as poetess, huntress, and baxter (a female bake-ster). I do have a special place in my heart for editrix, but have never worked up the nerve to call any of my women editors that, since they could fire me. When I was a teenager, waitress was still in common use. After a brief flirtation with waitron, waiter for both men and women seems to have won the day. Except there is that musical on Broadway.

To be continued.

– Otto E. Mezzo

*No, Mrs. need not be followed by the husband’s name. Emily Post says so:
https://emilypost.com/advice/the-mrs-question/

Demonyms: Citizens’ Arrest

Back in October, I asked what one called residents of Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Atlantic City, etc. This is because Reader Eddie suggested they should be Citizens, as in Oklahoma Citizens, and so on. As is typical of my readership, I got a lot of smart-alecky responses to my serious inquiry (“Okies, Mormons, vagrants”) but no sober, informed data.

That’s because I didn’t consult Wikipedia (the ever-reliable font of sober, informed data!). Turns out there is an entire article called List of adjectivals and demonyms for cities. Huzzah!

Rummaging through the list, you’ll find someone from Carson City is a Carsonite (since the city was founded on silver mines, I find the mineral-oriented “ite” suffix appropriate). A Kansas City resident is a Kansas Citian (blech). Oklahoma City is home to Oklahoma Cityans (double blech), and SLC supports its population of Salt Lakers. Atlantic City is not relevant enough to be on this list, apparently.

A couple of interesting demonyms show their colors here. I did not know people from Buenos Aires are Porteños. Ho Chi Minh City dwellers still call themselves Saigoners or Saigonese, and if you hail from Mexico City, you are thankfully not a Mexico Cityan, but a Capitalino.

And sorry, Eddie. The uniform demonym for ville (Nashville, Louisville, even Seville) is villian, not villain.

Retro (a retrospective on retrograde)

RETRO: “Imitative of a style or fashion from the recent past.” – Oxford English Dictionary

Reader David Elliot commented on last month’s article:

I understood the term ‘retro’ as we use it in English coming to us from the French adjective ‘rétrograde’ originally, used as a shortened bit of slang in the 60s.
I believe that’s the earliest use in English vernacular and commercial copy to mean throwback or vintage (not its academic or scientific use).
So, that makes the Mossberg mark that much more precise.

D.E. is right on the time frame. Almost all authorities date retro to 1960s France, with common usage in English booming in the early 1970s. But here sources diverge as to whether retro derives from rétrograde, as he cites, or rétrospectif. Merriam-Webster favors rétrospectif whereas the OED (Lexicide’s go-to source) throws its beret in with rétrograde. Two French dictionaries cite rétrospectif as the source.

Rétrospectif is directly equivalent to the English retrospective (“looking back”), so that etymology makes sense. I wondered, however, if rétrograde carries the same negative color as its English counterpart. Here’s where I consulted with French teacher Erin, who in turn contacted one of her French amis. She replied: “C’est négatif et obscurantiste.”

There aren’t many words we don’t know at Lexicide, but obscurantist (in English) definitely drove us to the dictionary. (Obscurantism is “the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known,” according to Oxford.) So oui, rétrograde is just as much of an insult in the francosphere as it is the anglosphere.

Reader Andy also commented on retrograde and retro:

It’s funny how “retro” has become a word unto itself. It’s not merely a descriptive prefix, or an abbreviation for “retrograde,” but it seems to specifically refer to style or design, and it carries a positive (or at least nostalgic) connotation.
It’s also oddly specific. Nobody would refer to Conestoga wagons or Gregorian chant as “retro,” though they come from earlier times. It seems to me that “retro” refers to the zeitgeist of Americana in the 1950s through perhaps the 1980s, though I expect this will expand as the population ages. “Retro” needs to have occurred within living memory and needs to have been part of a pop-culture movement that has definitely ended, AND has since been re-imagined or mythologized.

Having studied philosophy in college, we’re not surprise Andy latched on to this. Of course, retro is not pinned to a specific era, but to nostalgia, and one can’t be nostalgic over things one didn’t live through. The Wikipedia article offers a good summary on retro’s origins and future.

– Otto E. Mezzo

At -ese (A diversion on demonyms)

I always wondered why people and things from China and Japan are Chinese and Japanese, and not, say, Chinan and Japanian. As someone with Chinese ancestry, the word in English always had an exotic ring – a foreign ring. Growing up, none of my contemporaries in Virginia were an -ese. They were French, British, Irish, German, Swedish, Italian, Mexican, or African. Chinese and Japanese stood out, and when you’re a kid, that’s bad.

The suffix -ese still has an alien ring to my ears, which may be why the writers of Star Trek chose Klingonese as the demonym as opposed to Klingonian or Klingonite. Even Portuguese has an otherworldly air, even though it’s a kissing cousin to Spanish. Certainly Togolese and Congolese, which follow no orthographic logic in their formation, describe to me dense, inscrutable people.

But the origins of the suffix -ese are not so exotic to European folk. They come to English (as so many words do) from the French -aise. Examples: Lyonnaise, hollandaise, and mayonnaise. No American is going to call mayonnaise exotic.

Thinking of demonyms for people from China brings up a suffix I didn’t cover last time: –man. Chinaman once carried the same neutral color as Englishman or Frenchman, only to gain its offensive tone the more it was spat instead of spoken. As you can see, what’s interesting about Chinaman is that it adds the -man suffix to an unmodified place name instead of the descriptor demonym. Chineseman would be more consistent. Of course, this is all before we get to the possible controversies of using “man” to describe both men and women. So a man from Man (the Isle) is a Manxman. But so is a woman from Man.

— Otto E. Mezzo

From StraightNorth.com: 150 Business Jargon Fixes

When business writers resort to business jargon, it’s because they lack the time, creative energy or subject mastery to find a more exact word or phrase.

No truer words have ever been spoken. While Lexicide has explored the far reaches of English language word usage, we started off decrying lazy, jargony, incorrect business writing. This article sums up 150 of the most common clichés in the workplace. We’ve covered awesome, bleeding edge, epic, evangelist, (most) unique, incentivize, leverage, utilize, and out of pocket. But what made me laugh in this piece was how many of these hoary expressions we use at my workplace. Not a meeting goes by without a deep dive and a granular drill down to mission critical action items at the end of the day.

Enjoy. https://www.straightnorth.com/company/marketing-resources/150-business-jargon-fixes/

On Demonyms (Part II)

In July, we started down the path to demonyms, beginning with your comments. But your comments, they’re only the beginning.

One question a number of commenters asked is “how are demonyms formed?” Why do some place names get -ian, others -ese, and still others -ish? That’s a good question, and like so many other orthographic oddities in English, the answer is unsatisfying. Basically, because English.

For example, Gary asked where the demonyms Mancunian and Glaswegian (for, respectively, Manchester and Glasgow) came from. Manchester is simple. Its old Roman name was Mancunium. That name was (supposedly) adapted from the native Celtic name for the locale, which was then further Latinized by adding -chester, which means “fort.” The suffix -chester is sometimes Anglicized -caster, as in place names like Doncaster or Lancaster – there one can see where our word castle derives.

And that’s Latin for you. In fact, this dead language probably has more influence on demonyms than any other. The suffixes –an and -ian are Latin. Wait, let’s list as many suffixes as we can:

-an/ian/anian/onion
-ard
-asque/esque
-ene
-egian
-eño
-er
-ese/-aise
-i
-ic
-ish
-ite

Notice something? With two exceptions, every one of those suffixed is Latin-derived. -An and its variants was the most common Roman designator. –I designated tribes (for example, the Helvetii in Switzerland). All the others come from French or Spanish. Except or -er and -ite, from German and Greek, respectively.

That brings us back to Glaswegian. The etymology of Glasgow is pretty murky (because Scottish). The best anyone can say is that Glasgow roughly means “the green place.” If that’s the case (and we’re not saying it is), it correlates to Norway (the North place) and Galway (the place those crazy residents call Gaillimhe, because Irish), whose residents are – ready? Norwegians and Galwegians.

Wait, Otto, that makes no sense. For your analog to mean anything, Glasgow should be Glasway. It’s not.

Did I mention they were Scottish?

— Otto E. Mezzo

P.S. Yes, I will wrap this up next month.

Fact: 90% of those who use “cognitive” guilty of 0% cognition

Big news broke today: Ryan Gosling’s Neil Armstrong film deliberately omits the planting of the US flag on the Sea of Tranquility. But that fact itself is not the news. It’s Gosling’s quotation:

“So I don’t think that Neil viewed himself as an American hero… I’m Canadian, so might have cognitive bias.”

Unlike Gosling, I am not a psychologist. No, I don’t know if the former Mouseketeer is one either, but he must be, because not many outside the psychology field have occasion to speak of cognitive biases, which, according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, are defined as:

Systematic pattern[s] of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment.

Whatever that means. Here’s a better definition from Chegg.com (an online textbook site):

Mistake[s] in reasoning, evaluating, remembering, or other cognitive process, often occurring as a result of holding onto one’s preferences and beliefs regardless of contrary information.

What a cognitive bias is not is a preference, affinity, or plain old bias based on your nationality. But why admit bias when cognitive bias sounds so much more high-minded?

Lex, who works in bioinformatics (and who studied artifical intelligence and neuroscience) also complained to me about the way his colleagues use cognitive dissonance. No, his colleagues are not brain scientists or behavioral therapists. They’re programmers. And no, they don’t mean the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. (That’s a little better, Wikipedia.) Here’s what they mean:

Want to experience cognitive dissonance? Try reading George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia” while visiting Catalonia. (Macomb Daily)

However, when a heuristic fails and the player’s character dies, they experience cognitive dissonance between what they thought was going to happen and what actually happened. For a Fortnite player, this may be because they were hit by a sniper in what they thought was a secret hiding spot. (The Guardian)

Hey, that one’s relevant and all. Look, kids!

Or this one, from Jezebel, titled My Pussy Is on a Journey of Self-Discovery (yes, it’s SFW):

The cognitive dissonance created by her freshly shorn bod supporting an Elizabethan neck ruff made of soft fur is gone.

So just as cognitive bias is just a fancy word for bias, cognitive dissonance is a high-falutin’ way of saying dissonance, or to put it in even more prosaic terms, Whoa! Didn’t expect that!

But you should. Studies show 90% of people you meet think their vocabulary is more learned than it really is. And that’s a fact.

On Demonyms (Part 1)

I asked my social media friends, “What are your favorite demonyms?” I expected at least one person to ask for a definition – alas, no one afforded me the opportunity to lord my superiority. Curse you, Google.

Just in case you don’t know, and because I’m champing (not chomping) at the bit to tell you, a demonym is the descriptive word designating where one is from. American for someone from America, Chinese for a resident of China, Irish for a citizen of Ireland and so on. Why are some demonyms formed with -an, others with -ese, and yet others with –ish? That we will explore in next month’s article.

For now, here are your responses, bad jokes and all.

Manhattanite Gary of course went straight for the UK irregulars: Mancunian and Glaswegian. The suffixes –nian and –wegian are not typical. But they’re also not singular. More next month.

Bostonian (Massachussetian?) and occasional guest writer Lylah proffered Accidental – someone from Accident, Maryland, which prompted me to ask if someone from Truth or Consequences was a Consequential (or maybe Truthful?). No word on what the residents of Intercourse are called.

Floridian Andy went full-on irregular and pointed out Canuck and Hoosier have zero orthographic connection to Canada and Indiana. Why? he wondered. Why do the children cry?

Roanoker Billy tried to steer us into a galaxy far, far away by offering up Tatooiner, although I wondered if he was referring to the Tunisian locale (spelled Tatouine) where the Star Wars scenes were filmed. Andy took the bait, but I shut that down before all geekdom exploded, noting that fictional demonyms almost always follow established rules (Klingonese, Andorrian, Corellian).

So Andy got back down to Earth with Earthlings. Virginian Jan chimed in with Québécoise, and Ilene loves Yooper (someone from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan) and Liverpudlian. Being a Jaxson herself, it’s no wonder Ilene gravitates to irregular demonyms.

Former North Carolinian Jeff got us back to reality with Durhamite, highlighting another common suffix. Los Angeleno Scott concluded by lamenting there is no good demonym for someone from Connecticut. Considering that’s where he grew up, he should know.

— Otto E. Mezzo

Update: Ilene reminded me she is not a Jaxson (someone from Jacksonville, Florida), but a Saint Augustinian.

Sticks, Stones, and Words that Hurt (maybe)

More than a year ago, faithful reader Anne the English Teacher suggested we tackle words with sinister origins – she started with denigrate, a word meaning to “criticize unfairly; disparage” (Oxford). The origin of the word is clear:

Late Middle English (in the sense ‘blacken, make dark’): from Latin denigrat- ‘blackened’, from the verb denigrare, from de- ‘away, completely’ + nigrare (from niger ‘black’). (Oxford)

Anne’s concern is that the very word denigrates black (that is, African-descended) people by associating their skin color and racial signifier with impolite behavior. It goes without saying this can be a problem when it comes to black:

Europeans called Africa “The Dark Continent” for years, partially for its impenetrable geography, but also because of its dark-skinned denizens. That epithet lingered on well into the 20^th century – the Busch Gardens African-themed park in Tampa went by The Dark Continent until the 1990s. Whether you think of darkness or blackness as evil or simply mysterious, the association is one of otherness, something to be wary of.

Could the same argument be made for white? Whitewash can be a negative word, as can whiteout. I think it’s safe to say, though, that these two words don’t make European-descended people shudder when they think of a sudden snowstorm.

But do black people shudder when they hear denigrate, considering most English speakers don’t know the origin? By the same token, do women recoil at hysteria or southpaws when they read the word sinister in my opening paragraph? I think there’s a reason that these words continue on with little controversy (outside college campuses), where an equally innocent word like niggardly does not.

Guest writer Lylah Alphonse and Otto advised against using the word, even if the former head of the NAACP didn’t have a problem with it. (“You hate to think you have to censor your language to meet other people’s lack of understanding,” he said, earning Julian Bond a Lexicide Lifetime Achievement Award.) Even though it sounds like a racial slur, niggard is not – it’s not even etymologically derived from the Latin for “black.” However, I reflexively shudder when I hear it, as I do when I hear chink used to mean a break or flaw, even though I know it’s meant innocently.

But denigrate, hysterical, and sinister don’t seem to stoke the same disgust in decent folk as established slurs or even words that sound likes slurs. Then again, it’s questionable whether most people of color get upset when they hear blackguard, blackmail, or blackball. I’m Chinese-American, and while I’m not cool with Yellow Peril or yellowface, I don’t think twice about yellow journalism or yellow-bellied. But that’s me.

Anne and Spike Lee make a good point, one that Lexicide cleaves to – words have meanings, and the meanings mean something. If you’re the sort who refuses to use black mark in a sentence, maybe you should wave off denigrate, even if its origin was not meant as a slam against black-skinned people. Ultimately, Safire’s maxim (“Never use a word sure to sow confusion.”) and the advertising copywriter’s axiom to “know your audience” should reign supreme.

– Otto E. Mezzo

See also Lylah Alphonse’s Lexicide article, which is about words that people think are offensive but are not, sort of the mirror image of this article.

Reference: Malcolm X, directed by Spike Lee, 1992

Forte

A while back (four years ago, actually!), we covered two words that describe one’s strengths: bailiwick and wheelhouse. We recently had a request to address another synonym: forte.

Forte? No one uses that one wrong. Ah, our intrepid reader said, but everyone pronounces it wrong.

Does Lexicide cover mispronunciations? I thought we only cited misuses, and certainly never misspellings (unless they led to or were the fruit of bad usage). Oh, what the heck. It’s a slow month.

So how does one pronounce forte, meaning strength (as in “haughty finger-wagging is my forte.”) The word is derived from French, which also gives us fort. Forte is the feminine form of “strong,” and it’s pronounced the same as the masculine, with a silent T and sounding similar to the number following three.

But this being English, that will never do. No one expects us to say “Pedantry is my foooorrr.” Should I then pronounce it “fort”? Closer, but not quite exactement.

Confronted with this quandary, most Anglophones take to borrowing the Italian pronunciation: “for-tay,” no doubt channeling childhood piano lessons. Only in music forte means “loud” rather than “strong.” This is confusing, n’est-ce pas?

The best explanation is that “for-tay” is a linguistic hypercorrection. English speakers see a final e on a French word and assume it’s pronounced “ay,” as if it had an accent aigu like consommé. Forte has no such accent, but neither does cache, meaning a hidden stash, yet many Americans hypercorrect it to “cashay.”

Only now we’re back to the commencement and a pedant’s dilemma: pronounce forte incorrectly and be wrong or pronounce it properly and be misunderstood. Given Safire’s maxim, I fear we have to throw our chapeau in with the first option. Hey, at least we ugly Americans attempt to give foreign loan words their due pronunciation, even if we fail. The British don’t even bother.

— Otto É. Mezzo