Aught

AUGHT: “1. Anything; 2 : all, everything – for aught I care” – Merriam-Webster.com

Last week, we linked to Merriam-Webster.com’s useful limericks on correct word use. But Otto spotted a usage mistake amidst the lessons on correct usage. The horror!

High school English teacher Anne was the first one to spot it (after Otto), buried within the limerick on enormity:

Of the subject of semantic upheaval
Some critics would make it illegal
They think that enormity
Is a verbal deformity
When its meaning is aught but “great evil”

Of course, we applaud Merriam-Webster.com’s valiant attempt to educate folks that enormity does not mean “great size,” but “great evil” (only 11 ½ years after Lexicide.com’s valiant attempt)! However, aught does not mean “nothing” or “zero.” In fact, it means the opposite – see Merriam-Webster.com’s own entry above.

So read correctly, the limerick says enormity means anything but “great evil,” which of course is not what the author intended. It is true that many writers use aught as a synonym for “zero,” most commonly in numerical measurements (for example, “double aught” buckshot), years (“the flood of aught four”), or sometimes both – the cartridge G.I.s fired during both World Wars is designated .30-’06, read “thirty-aught six,” a .30 caliber round adopted in 1906.

But if aught doesn’t mean “zero,” why do we use it that way when the term we really want is naught. Brits often use naught as a synonym for the null digit, and even Yanks pulls it out as a stand-in for “nothing” (“It was all for naught!”). According to most sources, aught may have stemmed from someone mishearing “a naught” as “an aught.” This sort of thing happens frequently and even has its own name – metanalysis.

But that doesn’t erase the existence of aught, a word understood to mean “anything” or “something” in Samuel Johnson’s time. So once again, Lexicide must embrace Safire’s maxim: never use a word to sow confusion, however unintentional. Aught has two accepted meanings, antonyms of each other. Naught has but one. Use naught.

— Otto E. Mezzo

References: Aught at Merriam-Webster.com

Your head will spin: Uses of ‘naught,’ ‘aught,’ and ‘ought’, Columbia Journalism Review

Examples of metanalysis

Oh look. Usage Limericks (at Merriam-Webster.com)

You attract more ants with honey than vinegar, so the saying goes. And as my kids will tell you, you can get more likes with humor than finger-wagging (a lesson we at Lexicide have yet to learn). Reader Eddie shared this amusing (not bemusing) set of mnemonic limericks from Merriam-Webster. In addition to bemuse, they cover unique, enormity, and incentivize, all Lexicide veterans.

We Made You a Bunch of Usage Limericks. You’re Welcome.

But not all is right here in Pedantia. Yes, the article contains a usage error itself. Did you spot it?

— Otto E. Mezzo

Begging the question (h/t to Jonah Goldberg)

Yesterday, Otto sent me this excerpt from Jonah Goldberg’s G-file:

As long-time readers know, from time to time I vent my spleen on the misuse of the phrase “begs the question.” Every day, someone on TV or radio gets it wrong…. So for the umpteenth time, “begging the question” involves assuming a premise — usually the premise in dispute — is true. It does not mean to raise a question.

Ever since our first article, I promised to address begging the question, whose persistent misuse always irritated me. Nine(!) years later, the article remained unwritten, so I gather this was Otto’s not-very-subtle hint it was time for me to put up or shut up. Fair enough.

Except Mr. Goldberg pretty much did my work for me. In fact, he provides some examples of begging the question. My favorite (because it’s current and trendy):

Everyone’s eating Tide pods, because eating Tide pods is the hot new craze.

Another one I like, this one from Grammarist:

Freedom of speech is important because people should be able to speak freely.

And my favorite, from the New York Times:

YOU: I can’t understand why the news media give so much coverage to Lindsay Lohan. It’s ridiculous. She’s not that important or newsworthy.

ME: What? Of course she’s important and newsworthy! Lindsay Lohan is a big deal. Why, just look at the newsstand. People magazine, The Post, you name it. She’s everywhere.

In other words, Lindsay Lohan is newsworthy because she’s all over the news. Some other excellent examples can be found here.

So that begs the question (ha!) whence this misunderstanding comes? As Otto alluded to in a previous article, it’s a bad translation — in this case, of petitio principii, Latin for “assuming the starting point.” but petitio can also be translated as “begging” or “petitioning.” I can’t find evidence that this mistranslation is responsible for the misuse of the phrase, but it makes sense. “Asking for the question” is literally what the illiterate do when they beg the question. Here’s an example from three hours ago, on BBC.com:

Permanent toilets will be built along 40 routes where there is limited access to facilities… AA president Edmund King said the investment was “welcome relief” but it “begs the question about facilities for their passengers”.

As you can see, many have covered this incorrect usage. There’s even a whole website devoted to it! So I’ll leave you the links, along with my plea to beg the question correctly forthwith. After all, the world needs fewer lexicides and more logical fallacies.

— Lex

P.S.: The Los Angeles Times has a likely culprit for the proliferation of begging the question‘s lexicide. From a January 25, 2018 column:

Years ago I wrote in this space that I don’t recall ever hearing someone use “beg the question” to mean “raise the question.”…

… Lately I hear “beg the question” every week or two, and it’s always used to mean “raise the question.” All of a sudden, it seems this usage is everywhere.

What changed? Easy. I started watching television news.

References:

Jonah Goldberg’s G File at National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/456069/conservatives-political-center-gravity-space-between-us

http://begthequestion.info/

Grammarist: http://grammarist.com/rhetoric/begging-the-question-fallacy/

New York Times: https://afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/begging-the-question-again/

Examples from Texas State’s Philosophy Department: http://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/Begging-the-Question.html

“Mayor of London to spend £6m on toilets for bus drivers”, BBC News, 13 February 2018: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-43048596

Grammar Girl: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/begs-the-question-update?page=1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

http://www.latimes.com/socal/burbank-leader/opinion/tn-blr-me-aword-20180125-story.html

Here were false etymologies (only a year late)

Facebook. It’s for old people, so my teenaged son tells me. It’s so senior-oriented, in fact, it offers a feature called Memories. See what you posted one year ago, two years ago, ten years ago – because of course you don’t remember. I SAID, “YOU DON’T REMEMBER!”

But sometimes Memory Lane is a great place to be. Last January, I solicited suggestions for your favorite false etymologies – backronyms, folk etymologies, etc. Well, I never got any, so I let the issue drop (and nursed no hurt feelings, I swear). But I shouldn’t have, because while no one commented on the website or on Lexicide’s Facebook page, quite a few of you added comments on my personal MyFace page. Thanks to Memories, they came back to me last week!

Let’s start with D.C. Dave, who offered up two false etymologies linked to people: nasty and crap. Nasty supposedly originated with political cartoonist Thomas Nast (who invented the Republican elephant and Democrat donkey, in addition to the caricature of Uncle Sam we know so well). Not true – the word long pre-dated the 1800s, when Nast employed his cutting, nasty wit. Likewise, crap comes to us from the Dutch krappe, not the toilets promoted by Thomas Crapper.

Dave also pointed out that butterfly is in no way a confusion of flutter-by. Thanks to L.A. Scott for reminding us this transposition of initial consonants is called a Spoonerism in honor of the Revered William Spooner, its most famous practitioner.

L.A. Scott then noted that Azusa does not derive from “Everything from A to Z in the USA.” While that was a promotional phrase used by the town’s Chamber of Commerce, the name comes from an ancient Amerindian place name. (Scott also claimed “his heart broke when [he] found out it was a retcon.” Here’s a tissue, Scott.)

Philly-based writer and frequent contributor Andrew had a slew for us: tip from “To Insure Promptness” (heard that one), posh from “Port Out Starboard Home” (also heard that one), and E. J. Korvette from Eight Jewish KORean war VETs. I had never heard of E. J. Korvette or the folk etymology, but Wikipedia and Snopes pointed me in the right direction.

Riffing off Azusa, Andrew also chimed in that Yreka, California, did not originate with the word BAKERY read in reverse, Mark Twain’s claim notwithstanding. Also that 2001: A Space Odyssey’s* HAL 9000 was not so named because the letters HAL directly precede IBM by one alphabet space. I had heard that one and it never made sense. If HAL is the descendant of IBM, shouldn’t it be the JCN 9000? Anyway, HAL is a contraction of Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer. That comes straight from Arthur C. Clarke. Take it up with him.

To finish, Airworthy Andy the Floridian pilot reminded Christians and non-Christians alike that IHS never stood for “In His Steps” or “In His Service,” as some claim (the Him being Jesus of Nazareth). The Christogram IHS long pre-dates modern English anyhow – the early Christians used IHS as a shortened form of Jesus’ Greek name, ΙΗΣΟΥΣ (S being the Latin form of the Greek letter sigma). And yes, this is likely where the blasphemous utterance “Jesus H. Christ” originates.

So our thanks for all your contributions, only a year late. Ah, Memories!

– Otto E. Mezzo

*Does it seem weird to write about the events in 2001: A Space Odyssey in the past tense, since 2001 is, like, seventeen years ago? Yes. Yes, it is.

Nonplussed

NONPLUS: “to cause to be at a loss as to what to say, think, or do; perplex” – Merriam-Webster.com

Ergo: NONPLUSSED: perplexed, at a loss for words

What is it about the word nonplussed that so confuses English speakers? Is it the etymology (from the French non plus, meaning “no more,” as in “Sacre bleu! I am so vexed I have non plus to say!”)? Not likely. I would say most people who use nonplussed in writing or speaking couldn’t give two sous where it came from. Exhibits A through C:

Lhota was nonplussed about getting caught cussing on the mic, said MTA officials.

“I asked Joe Lhota if he said that, and he shrugged his shoulder and said ‘that sounds like me’,” said agency spokesman Jon Weinstein.

MTA chief drops F-bomb on hot mic, New York Post, November 15, 2017

Swift, for her part, acted appropriately nonplussed by Corden’s behavior, giving him a mix of side-eye glances and resigned blinks worthy of Pam from The Office.

Watch James Corden become Taylor Swift’s worst-ever backup dancer, Entertainment Weekly, December 8, 2017

Australia captain Steve Smith nonplussed about Ben Stokes’ potential Ashes appearance, GiveMeSport.com, December 1, 2017

And that last headline makes Steve Smith sound like the idiot, when in fact he never uses the word. From the article:

Australia captain Steve Smith said, “it does not bother us either way” regarding Ben Stokes’ potential appearance in this year’s Ashes down under.

So why do people use nonplussed to mean “uncaring,” “unbothered,” or even “uninterested”? The common explanation is when Anglophones see non, they think “not.” Although that’s a non-convincing argument, as nonplussed would translate to “not better” (or “not plusgood,” for you Newspeak fans). That’s not the same as “not bothered.” Not at all.

Once again, the likely explanation is someone somewhere heard the word and became nonplussed (i.e., confused). He then repeats the word with the wrong definition, and the lexicide continues. Who was this someone? Likely an American (possibly a Canadian), as Oxford Dictionaries pointedly describes the incorrect definition as North American. Doesn’t bother me. Not at all.

— Otto E. Mezzo

Commutation (spotted in the Orange County Register)

“And it’s not just changing work habits to lower commutation stress. Good says certain employers are becoming leery of potential workers who’ll require a long trip to work, fearing burnout from the commutation.”

So this is an article about the justice system, right, and the commutation of sentences. It sounds as if attorneys, corrections officers, and prisoners find the lessening of prison time stressful. Because that’s what commutation means, right?

COMMUTATION: “1. The action or process of commuting a judicial sentence; 1.1 The conversion of a legal obligation or entitlement into another form, e.g. the replacement of an annuity or series of payments by a single payment; 2. The process of commutating an electric current.” — OxfordDictionaries.com

Oh, but as usual, we would be wrong. This article deals with the stress of commuting, as the headline so correctly states:

Southern California commuting ranked as nation’s most stressful

And yet the article uses commutation five times instead of the more widely accepted commute. What gives?

We’ve noted this habit of tacking on additional letters to sound erudite. So now convicted felons, instead of finding their sentences reduced, will be consigned to driving ninety minutes in hellishly slow traffic. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.

— Otto E. Mezzo

Reference: http://www.ocregister.com/2017/11/06/southern-california-commuting-ranked-as-nations-most-stressful/

Dotard

DOTARD: “An old person, especially one who has become weak or senile.” – OxfordDictionaries.com

It’s not every day the interwebz lights up with word talk. Leave it to the North Korean dictator and his, um, sparring partner in the U.S. to change that:

“I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire…” – Kim Jong Un, September 22, 2017

The dotard he referred to was, of course, U.S. President Donald J. Trump. But what is a dotard? everyone asked.

Everyone except us. According to this Washington Post takedown of the word, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Tolkein were fond (if not doting) of dotard. Lex and Otto, while not in our dotage, are very fond of archaic words, so we were surprised to learn dotard is considered past its prime.

Dote’s primary definition is “be extremely and uncritically fond of,” with its secondary, archaic meaning listed as “Be silly or feeble-minded, especially as a result of old age.” (Oxford again). So a dotard is one who dotes (secondary definition). Strange? Not when you consider:

Drunkard

Dullard

Wizard

Niggard

The first two are plain. A wizard was not originally a sorcerer, but a “wise-ard” (Hold your jokes, please, lest Merlin turn you into a newt). And a niggard is someone who niggles over money – a miser. Yes, the word is pronounced like it looks, so you’d do well to avoid using it.

Probably the most common “ard” word is also one shrouded in mystery. According to Bill Bryson’s excellent The Mother Tongue, sweetheart began life as sweetard, only to be back-formed later. The jury is out on this one, as it is with coward, which, while it looks like someone who cows, is more likely derived from cauda, Latin for tail.

But why did North Korea’s supposed god-man pull out such an off word? Blame the Hermit Kingdom’s hermitry. According to the AP, the Korean Central News Agency translated the Korean word for “crazy old man” to the English dotard. Why not the more current “codger,” “coot,” or “lunatic”?

Said one expert, “They’re using very old Korean-English dictionaries.”

— Otto E. Mezzo

References:

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dotard

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dote

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/09/21/a-short-history-of-the-word-dotard-which-north-korea-called-trump/?utm_term=.5211647977a7

https://apnews.com/c2d919f8a5864d838e638d88ac5e8569/North-Korean-leader-Kim-called-Trump-a-what

History (and language) is written by the losers

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am listening to The History of Rome podcast and loving every drama-filled minute of it. As evidenced here in Lexicide, I enjoy history like I enjoy a fine wine — it’s delicious, intoxicating, and overtoned with complex notes that differ depending on the taster.

Sadly, though, I am well into the 400s, and that means the end is near. Rome is currently (in the podcast) besieged or occupied by the various barbaric tribes. The Vandals have North Africa, the Goths Gaul, and the Huns are beating down the Eastern frontier.

If those tribe names resonate in modern English, there is a reason. The Western world owes its philosophy, literary traditions, and political structures to the Greeks and the Romans. You cannot read Keats, Shelley, or Dryden without stumbling over paeans to Classical figures and events. Medieval universities taught in the style of the Romans — grammar, logic, rhetoric. Here in these new United States, George Washington modeled his leadership after the Roman consul Cincinnatus. In fact, his former soldiers in the Continental Army formed the Society of the Cincinnati, named in honor of their “new” Cincinnatus. And you need only walk around the capital city named for him to see the esteem in which the Founding Fathers held the Greece and Rome of antiquity.

This is a great irony, because the English and most Europeans owe their ancestry to the barbarian tribes, not the Greeks and Romans. But whatever. If one can identify as dragonsexual today, I ain’t gonna judge a bunch of Viking descendants who identify with sheet-wearing grape eaters — men who, incidentally, created the terms vandalism, gothic, and Hun as a synonym for the German people.

For example, gothic was only applied to the architectural style in the 15^th century by critics who decried its supposedly Germanic origins. By that time, gothic buildings had been in existence for at least three centuries. But since they supplanted the once-predominant Romanesque style, and since flying buttresses existed only north of the Alps, Italian Renaissance thinkers associated gothic architecture with the barbarians of the north. Gothic architecture enjoyed a revival in England in the 18^th century, right at the same time a new genre of literature emerged — gothic fiction, which used the dark crannies of gothic buildings to create dread in its pages. Bram Stoker’s Dracula may be one of gothic fiction’s most famous examples. And from that, we get goth — not the highly motivated Germanic tribes, but the slightly less motivated teenagers who play at being vampires, wear black eyeliner, and argue over whether Trent Reznor is a sell-out.

The Vandals are a fascinating people. Under their great king Genseric, they actually invaded and occupied North Africa, Sicily, and Sardinia, right on Rome’s doorstep. They are best known for the second Sack of Rome in 455 A.D. From that, vandalism came to be identified with a destruction in the way gothic equated with unrefined aesthetics. Fair? Not a chance. Blame those Enlightenment folks who venerated Rome, gave us America, and denigrated the poor, misunderstood barbarians.

Barbarian, by the way, comes from the Greek for “non-citizen” or “foreigner.” From barbarian, we get the name for the Berber people (because that’s what the Romans called them), and from that we get the Barbary pirates and their home, the Barbary Coast, which not so incidentally is the Roman region occupied by the barbarian Vandals. The word barbarian comes from the supposed babbling (“bar bar bar”) of the uncouth non-Greeks. As a side note, the name Barbara means “outsider.”

Apropos of that, we will explore the twisted, complex identity of the Huns in our next post.

— Otto E. Mezzo

You’re doing it wrong. One easy tip to reading your dictionary.

A reader referred us to this article, which goes beyond the title “Why ‘Woke’ Was Added to the Dictionary” and deep into its subtitle, “You’re thinking about the dictionary all wrong, lexicographers say.”

It’s the age-old debate about art – is its purpose to reflect culture or to shape it? Is a dictionary’s job to provide a reference to existing words or to subtly guide the language? Lest you think the answer is obvious, think of how the inclusion of a word validates its use. Maybe the controversy over woke is not so much a battle over slang or venerable use. It may have as much to do with its recent ubiquity in elevating progressives and their ideas (and by extension, belittling people and stances that are not woke). If woke doesn’t get a place in the dictionary, the thinking goes, criticisms that one is not woke are invalid.

That debate points to a deeper conflict – one over authority. As the article makes clear, it’s dictionary authors themselves who have painted their vocation as one of authority, even as they insist they are merely historians. The article adds that “as a result of this reputation, lexicographers get pushback every time new words are added, especially when it comes to slang or words having to do with race, ethnicity, sex, or bigotry.” Of course. In today’s universe, we are the authority (in our own minds, at least), so we attack everyone who challenges that authority – especially other actual authorities. Artists, politicians, and America’s Founding Fathers are not immune from our purges. Why should dictionaries be?

So before this commentary accretes a word count higher than the article it’s about, let us close with Lexicide’s credo on the shifting body of English words. It’s the same conclusion reached by the article’s author – namely, “the masses are the real authority on language and humble dictionary makers are the recorders and researchers of what’s already going on.”

True, and the masses are so often wrong. But no matter. They are the final word.

— Otto E. Mezzo

h/t Brian

Reference: https://theoutline.com/post/1827/oxford-english-dictionary-added-woke

The Well-Tempered Lexicon

Apropos and continuing the theme of our last entry, I thought I would cover an archaism – really more a piece of esoterica — I encountered recently. My family and I had the pleasure of attending an organ recital in the Wren Chapel (designed by Sir Christopher Wren) in Williamsburg, Virginia. The organist played a piece from Bach’s famous volume The Well-Tempered Clavier and explained what the title meant. To wit, musical temperament refers to the intervals between notes. Whereas modern pianos and organs are tuned to equal temperament (every key plays a note equally higher or lower than its immediate neighbors), Bach preferred instruments that were well-tempered (wohltemperierte). Not everyone agrees what Bach’s well-tempered tuning system was. However, today it refers to a tuning system that compensates for perceived dissonances in the equal tempered tuning.

What Bach did not mean by Well-Tempered Clavier was a harpsichord that was agreeable, which is how most people interpret the title. Some (like myself before this concert) assumed Bach wanted to temper students as a blacksmith tempers steel — that through rigor and practice, they would become well-tempered. Now that I know what Bach meant, my assumption seems pretty weak.

This train of thought brings me to another old phrase in dispute: well regulated, as in the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Let’s ignore every fevered argument in support and against the right to keep and bear arms. (Remember, Lexicide is politically agnostic!) Every legal scholar agrees that in 1791, well regulated meant “well disciplined,” “well trained” and “well equipped.” It did not mean “restricted by laws and regulations,” which is how some read it today. So in modern English, the introductory clause would read: “A well trained and ordered Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”

These two examples show how vital it is we remember these older definitions. Language may evolve, but some of us remember the past so the rest of you aren’t condemned to repeat it. You’re welcome.

— Otto E. Mezzo