Words unclear on the concept

Perspicuous:  (pr-spky-s)

adj.

1. Clearly expressed or presented; easy to understand: perspicuous prose.

2. Expressing oneself clearly and effectively: a perspicuous lecturer.

I admit it - I never looked this one up. But Zizek did. Leave it to the philosophers to use an obscure, difficult-to-pronounce term to mean "communicate clearly and effectively."

#i'mprocrastinatingpacking

I was rapturizing yesterday about the # thing in Twitter and how it seems to have filled some kind of linguistic void for people. It was meant to do a fairly simple thing (group posts about the same event, like blog post tags), but people en masse have adopted it and started using it for a less easily defined, but still very specific effect in both Twitter and the outside world. This is the same process by which any artificially introduced element of language turns into a real part of the language, and... it's just kind of weird. Because it's not really a word or a grammatical arrangement or anything you'd normally think of as being an element of language.

Here is an article that is pretty good about it: How Twitter's Hashtag is Changing Communication. Though I think more proper linguistic study could be done about it. And no doubt is being done right now by the next crop of linguistics thesis students.

And, of course, there's a part about people making a # hand-gesture that reminded me of something I read in the Onion almost a decade ago, proving that really a lot of my brain storage space is...doing very important work: Finger-Quotes Lady Now Doing Hand Parentheses

ground vs ground

Because it's nice to be positive sometimes, behold this craigslist post:

ANTIQUE SNUFF BOX - $120 (Westmount)

---

Lovely little treasure.
Snuff is ground tobacco.

I stared at this for a little bit, thinking about some kind of narcotic truffles, before my brain sorted itself out.

It's really quite the all-purpose word though, eh? "I had grounds to search the parade grounds for coffee grounds that were ground into the ground." Nice.

Tongues, cheeks, clichés

You know what I really hate? Damn, I hate it so much I don't even want to type it, because that means I'll have to see it for the rest of the time that this window is open. But I'm strong.

It's this expression "tongue planted firmly in cheek." This is, I can only assume, meant to be a cute original way to avoid using fellow cliché "tongue in cheek." Okay, but guess what. It's not cute, and it's not original. It's ugly, it's stupid, it's so overused that it has pretty much overrun the original phrase, and it HURTS MY SOUL! It's like "why use three perfectly good words with a designated meaning when we could use five idiotic cutesy-poo words to say the same thing but make Erin cry?"

I hate you, blog and magazine writers who say this. Hate.

Peek vs. Peak

This from the Montreal Gazette review of Coco avant Chanel (I know you had nothing to do with this Hayley!)... one can only blush to think of the implications.

The funniest bit about it is...well, there're two funny bits. One is that this quote is used, confused homonym and all, in large type, on the ad for this movie that appears in the paper. The second is that this quote is used, despite the fact that this is a two-star review, and the reviewer did actually mean "this is the only reason you could possibly want to see this movie."

Freakin' freakin'

I have to know. Do any teenagers actually say "freakin'"? I see this word invariably when adults are trying to write teenage parts in their books, but I never said this myself or knew anyone who did. Maybe occasionally in jest, when imitating a parent or something, but never seriously. Which causes me to wonder - where did adult writers get the idea that the inclusion of this word will cause a character to resonate with teen readers?

"Look to" vs. "Look at"

Cage match!

This is fairly mysterious to me, since it seems so clear, but I recognize that prepositions can be horrible beasts.

So. When you have your eyes, and you have somebody standing in front of you, and your eyes are registering that person, you are looking at them. You are not looking to them.

I suspect this might be an issue in Southern USA speech? This is a bare-bones hypothesis based on the fact that the two authors who I've seen use this regularly are both from the South, so it's probably wrong, but it's the best I've got so far. If this does turn out to be a regional dialect thing, then more power to it.

However. If you do say this, you should realize that it's going to sound very odd to a lot of readers. Looking to has a very specific meaning which is going to short-circuit with what you're trying to say and cause them anxiety. When you look to somebody, you're seeking their support and guidance, not just registering them visually:

• Benji Rat looked at me, wondering if I had a treat.
• Benji Rat couldn't reach his treat dish, so he looked to me for a boost.

Do you say "looked to" in the first context? If so, tell me everything.

Tussled vs. Tousled

So, I just thought I'd replicate this photo of Zac Efron, courtesy of the Onion News Network...

Ahem. Actually, I have an excuse for this behavior. And that excuse is called "the difference between tussled and tousled." That difference being that right now this headline says the Onion editors intend to launch a full-blown assault upon the scruff in question, rather than simply rumple it while cooing softly, as they presumably intended. You have been warned.

Bolt upright

Dictionary lesson time! Yay!

There exists an expression: "bolt upright." This is nearly always part of the longer phrase "to sit bolt upright," and it means to sit very, absolutely straight. As in, "The young Lady Grey was rather prone to uncouth slouching, so her tutor, the eminently proper Miss Agatha, would slap her back with a walking-stick if she failed to sit bolt upright in her chair."

Despite the presence of the word bolt, this expression has nothing to do with sitting up quickly. Bolt in this case is actually an adverb, modifying upright. So one does not, upon waking up from a bad dream, "bolt upright." This would be akin to saying "I woke up from my nightmare and absolutely straighted."

I mention it mostly because this is a bit pesky to correct in editing - it's not just a matter of replacing the offending word, it requires at least minor rephrasing and sometimes derails the whole sentence. So better that we all just use it correctly.

I hope everyone had an excellent July 4th - I of course missed it up here in Canada, but I can assure you that I was accidentally setting fire to my lawn in spirit.

The plural of typo is typos

I promise this won't turn into a grammar blog, but I'm going to sneak this one in.

The plural of typo is typos. It is not typo's. Repeat: TYPOS. This is a fairly straightforward example of adding an -s to the end of a singular noun to make it into a plural noun. Like radios. Zoos. Halos.

Anyway, I don't really care that much when people make plurals with -'s. Most of the time, honestly, I think it's a mistake, and if you showed them the word and said "What's the plural of this? How is it spelled?" they would know. But with typo, this mistake is just embarrassing. Because it's a typo on the word "typo." And you see it in the funniest places.

"Our agency will then hire a professional editor to check your work for mistakes and typo's."
"I hate self-published books because they're always full of typo's, and they're badly formatted, too."
"Please be sure that you have checked for typo's before you submit your work to us, or it may be rejected."

See how that just totally destroys your credibility? Yeah.

Um.

Now, I just read a book where the author felt it necessary to give an exhaustive physical description of every character in her book, no matter how minor. This was particularly funny when juxtaposed with the way in which major components of the plot (time elapsed between chapters, whether people were aliens or not, etc.) were left to be inferred, if not just omitted altogether.

My opinion of what constitutes an "exhaustive physical description," however, has just been shot out of the water by a friend who directed me to this unholy monstrosity (original post here)

Click to read.
Warning: The pain. Oh god, the pain.

Discover your beautiful what?

Normally I don't really care about these things - it happens, it's usually a typo, I do it myself fairly regularly and I've never been confused about this whole "your/you're" business.

But this is an ad going out to like a billion people, for a major chain. So there's (they're's?) no excuse.

"pip"

I have a friend from China who reads all sorts of funny books and emails me when she doesn't know what something means. It's amazing the things she finds - she's actually really a good reader, so usually what she'll send me that doesn't make sense to her will be a very poorly worded passage, or a typo or something. But sometimes she's just found a funny expression or a really obscure word.

Today, she sent me a word I have never seen before. I thought it was a made-up word, or maybe that her book was British. Because I know they say "pip pip old chap" and things in British movies. But last I heard they don't say it referring to newly hatched turtles. It turns out that it is a real word, and it means "to break through the shell of the egg pipped> transitive verb : to break open (the shell of an egg) in hatching "

It is truly wonderful that there is a word specifically for being a baby bird and trying to be born. Or turtle. Or duck-billed platypus. I am happy.

Some words I have enjoyed looking at

NHL.com: Lupul scores winner as Flyers end Thrashers' winning steak at five games
Elections Quebec: "Voir a verso/ See to back" There are other ways to vote, stay inform.



who have appropriated kitsch as a (more or less) legitimate postmodern strategy. ... I don't know where this is from, but my money's on the New York Times art review department. I love them with all my heart.