Sunday Night Journal, August 5, 2018
08/06/2018
This is about language and literacy, and may come across as grumpy old man stuff. I really don't feel grumpy about it, though. Well, all right, I admit I do find it annoying, just a little. But mainly find it amusing, and interesting. Language develops, and frequently the developments are accidental and involve ignorance and/or confusion. And I don't want to sound like I'm coming down really hard on other people's mistakes, because I certainly make enough of my own. In fact this post is probably a trigger or catalyst for me to make a bad one, or have someone point out an old one.
I don't know what the statistics say, but it seems pretty obvious to me that in my lifetime there has been a decline of literacy in several senses of the word. One of these is ignorance of certain words and expressions that were once absorbed from print, seen first and heard later (or perhaps both more or less at once), but are now heard first and maybe never seen at all until some young person, raised on TV and the Internet, has a need to convert them to text. Their general import has been grasped, but the words themselves have been confused with homonyms or near-homonyms, resulting in a mistaken choice for print. And presumably an explanation, also mistaken, has been un- or half-consciously supplied as background. It's that apparent reasoning that I find most interesting.
I began to notice this some time ago, not only in casual personal communications but in journalism where the writer was presumably paid and standards of some sort ought to apply. I jotted down several of them, by which I mean I wrote with a pen on a scrap of paper, which I have just located on my desk. I thought of it a few days ago when I saw an ad for a literary magazine on Facebook which invited me to "Take a peak" at their latest issue.
toe the line -> tow the line
I've always thought the original expression had a military origin, meaning something like "Line up precisely and stay that way." I pictured soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder in a straight line, toes touching a line, real or imaginary, directly in from of them. According to Wikipedia, that's the most likely possibility, although not the only one. But in any case the word is "toe," not "tow," and the meaning is more or less what I said. That has long been generalized to mean, in a word, "conform." In my experience its most frequent use has been to refer to conformity of speech by members of some organization, especially regarding communication with those outside. This has been helped along because the word "line" has for some time been used to refer to an officially approved and supported idea or doctrine, especially in politics, as in "the party line." "He's not sure this legislation is a good idea but he'll toe the line when he talks to the press."
So if you're a young person who's never done all that much reading you may have grown up hearing that phrase on TV but never have read it. And your young head makes the best sense it can of it: the politician in question will "tow"--i.e. carry, i.e. repeat, i.e. stick to--the official "line." If you have to put the idea into text, "tow the line" is what you write.
defuse -> diffuse
As in "The manager spoke calmly to the angry customer in an attempt to diffuse the situation." This makes a kind of sense: instead of conflict seen as a bomb that needs to be defused, it's seen as a kind of poisonous cloud that can be diffused.
moot -> mute
As in "It's a mute point." A "moot point" has a legal origin meaning that the point, whatever it is, has no more legal relevance. We generalized it to refer to something related to a debate or discussion but of little or no consequence to the resolution. "Whether the evidence was enough to convict him is a moot point, because he died before the case came to trial." It's easy to see how one hearing this, not knowing the word "moot," would semi-reasonably think it was "mute"--a point that does not speak to the question at hand.
throes -> throws
As in "death throws." I suppose the image here is more or less correctly grasped as a sort of convulsion. But I find it macabre, and a little funny in a macabre way, because it pictures something a good deal more vigorous: the corpse-to-be actually throwing itself about the place, hurling itself across a room. Or, less morbidly, "He was in the throws of infatuation."
cite -> sight
As in "He was sighted for drunk driving." You know, the police saw him driving drunk, so they arrested him.
site -> sight
As in "Emergency workers are on sight at the accident." We know they are there because we saw them. It's hard to believe that many people don't know the word "site," so this may just be the textual equivalent of a slip of the tongue--something I do fairly often when typing, actually. But I have seen it in news stories.
pique -> peak
As in "It peaked my interest." This makes the original expression, "piqued my interest," a good deal more emphatic: interest brought to its maximum point, not merely aroused.
I think I've also seen "peek my interest," which makes less sense. I have not seen anyone refer to a fit of peak. Or peek.
apprise -> appraise
As in "You will be appraised of any changes to this policy." As with "pique," this one is probably just ignorance of the existence of the original word, and substitution of one that the person knows. But I guess it's not like the others in that it's just pure mistake, not a plausible use of the incorrect word, except in the vaguest way.
beg the question -> beg the question
This is not exactly the same sort of thing, as it doesn't involve use of the wrong word, but it does involve misunderstanding. It doesn't mean "provoke the question." It's a semi-technical term for the logical fallacy of assuming a conclusion in the premise of an argument. (See Wikipedia.) It's a very understandable misconstrual. And it's a fitting instance for this discussion because, as the Wikipedia article explains, it is itself the result of a misunderstanding like the others I've listed here. Also, someone who encountered it through reading is more likely to know its original meaning.
foreword -> forward
All right, in this case I am grumpy. This one deserves no mercy. Anyone who is writing about books and has occasion to mention a foreword ought to know the word. But there is a kind of very loose sense to it, as the foreword can be seen as forward of the main text.
If you have other instances of this sort of thing, I'm interested in hearing them.
The "take a peak" I referred to earlier I'll ascribe (not "subscribe") to straightforward old-fashioned typographical error.
*
Slightly related. I think I'll keep to myself the location of the book of which this is the cover. It is on public display. I can't believe I'm the only one who ever noticed it, but it seemed to have been there for a while.
Inclimate weather.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet Cupo | 08/06/2018 at 09:14 AM
Is there a person peeking (not peaking) through that top word?
AMDG
Posted by: Janet Cupo | 08/06/2018 at 09:16 AM
Augh! Top hole on the upper left of the sign? You should never type a post while thinking about something else.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet Cupo | 08/06/2018 at 09:18 AM
I'm glad you clarified that...to a degree. I still don't get it though. What sign?
"Inclimate weather"--perfect example.
Posted by: Mac | 08/06/2018 at 09:28 AM
Oh, it is a book cover. There is a little circle that looks to be a punched hole to the left of the word "The." It looks like someone is peeping through it.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet Cupo | 08/06/2018 at 10:00 AM
Hmm, yeah, I guess it does, though I wouldn't have thought that if you hadn't pointed it out.
Posted by: Mac | 08/06/2018 at 10:46 AM
I just typed in “take a peak” in MS Word and the “peak” was underlined in red. When I typed in “peek” there was no underline. Then I did a search on the "peak" phrase in Google and at the top of the results page it asked: “Did you mean: ‘take a peek’?”.
Odd that nothing like that happened with the ad for that literary magazine. Or maybe it did, but the writer said, nah, "peak" is the way to go.
Posted by: Marianne | 08/06/2018 at 06:28 PM
I was lazy in my description of it. I really shouldn't have called it an "ad." It was a Facebook post. Technically an advertisement I guess, but not a carefully produced one. No spell or grammar check. Still, a mildly shocking mistake from a literary magazine. I looked at the post a couple of days later and it was still "Take a peak." Interesting that Word caught it.
Posted by: Mac | 08/06/2018 at 06:55 PM
"each one did their best" and gender correctness in all forms
Posted by: Beth Brooks | 08/06/2018 at 08:33 PM
That "they/them/their" usage bugs me, too, but it seems irreversible. I was shocked several years ago to learn that its usage goes back a whole lot further than I had any idea of. I always thought it was a '70s feminist thing but if I'm not mistaken there's an instance of C.S. Lewis (!) using it.
Posted by: Mac | 08/06/2018 at 09:18 PM
one foul/fowl swoop > one fell swoop
verse > versus
"It will be Pitt verse Penn State in this week's big game."
Or even worse, "verse" used as a verb, such as "If Pitt wins this game they will verse WVU in the next round."
Posted by: Rob G | 08/07/2018 at 05:58 AM
Ha. Haven't encountered either of those. The "verse" one make any kind of sense. And that last example...good grief. Sports commentators tend toward wacky stuff like that. Like turning "defense" into a verb. "They will find it hard to defense the run."
Posted by: Mac | 08/07/2018 at 07:45 AM
This is a different thing because it's not written, but I want to gripe about it. One of my children linked to a YouTube video on which the speaker used the word instructoring. If we put extra syllables into a word, I guess it makes us sound more intelligenter.
Now that I think about it, I'm sure I've heard this more xxxxxx-er construction on NPR.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/07/2018 at 08:23 AM
Oh, there are so many of those horrors. That's as bad as any I've heard. "Administrating" is similar. I think it does come from a very misguided impulse that it sounds intelligenter.
Posted by: Mac | 08/07/2018 at 09:03 AM
Don't know whether it's proper or not, but I hate "gift" as a verb.
And "reach out to" as a replacement for "contact" or "get in touch with." Hate that too, and refuse to use it.
Posted by: Rob G | 08/07/2018 at 01:16 PM
YES and YES.
Posted by: Mac | 08/07/2018 at 02:50 PM
I have to admit I frequently catch myself typing "reach out to" and switching to "contact."
Two that I hate are "action" and "solution" as verbs. (I was once in a meeting where the leader said, "We're not going to solutionize this right now.")
Posted by: Don | 08/07/2018 at 06:44 PM
I once posted a picture from Day of the Dead where a lot of arms had burst through the wall and were grasping for a woman. That is what I think about every time I hear "reach out to." I accompanied the picture with a request to remove that phrase from the English language.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/07/2018 at 07:54 PM
[laughing] That's perfect.
"solutionize" is pretty horrible. Very similar: "problem-solve" as a verb: "We need to meet and problem-solve this issue." While we're at it, I don't much care for the general substitution of "issue" for "problem."
I think I'm immune to "reach out"--I mean as something I might fall into, at least for now. It has two strong associations for me: the old phone company commercial "Reeaaach out, reach out and touch some one-un" and smarmy pop psychology.
Someone recently mentioned hearing someone else say "I'm going to self-medicate myself."
Posted by: Mac | 08/07/2018 at 10:18 PM
A new one I've heard just in the past couple weeks is "effort" as a verb: "We're efforting to have H.R. take the lead on this matter."
A lot of this junk is vacuous corporate-speak: bureaucrats trying to sound intelligent.
Posted by: Rob G | 08/08/2018 at 05:37 AM
A supervisor from years ago would always say "challenge" in a very chipper voice if I used the word problem. Although it annoyed me at the time (I was in my 20s and easily annoyed) I kind of like it now, at least better than "issue".
Posted by: Stu | 08/08/2018 at 07:46 AM
What about "to think Christianly"? Looks dubious to me. I won't say in a public forum where I just saw it.
Posted by: Stu | 08/08/2018 at 08:10 AM
Sounds dubious to me, too, though I can't say exactly why. Awkward, anyway.
I would prefer "challenge" to "issue," too.
"efforting," like "instructoring," is just beyond even the weakest justification. "Vacuous corporate-speak" is right, and there may be a book about it. There was a web site (or page) that I ran across sometime not too very long ago devoted to exhibiting and mocking what the woman who ran it called "corporate guff." For some reason the site/page was being removed, but she may have written a book about it. Might be fun. Or might just be depressing.
Posted by: Mac | 08/08/2018 at 08:27 AM
I am trying to think of the poor English teacher who is trying to teach a class full of kids who were raised hearing this stuff. At first I was thinking that it was no different than trying to teach kids who speak in some sort of ethnic idiom but no. Those have their own rules. This stuff has no rules.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/08/2018 at 09:38 AM
Not as far as the details of word use are concerned, but clearly there is an unspoken rule that one should always inflate and/or obscure whatever actual meaning, if any, the speech may have.
The woman's name is Lucy Kellaway, and if you search for "corporate guff" you'll get a lot of her stuff. Here's the piece I was thinking of. The page is apparently behind a paywall...sometimes. I tried it from one computer earlier and went straight to it, later from another computer and had to click past a survey to see the article.
https://www.ft.com/lucycolumn
Posted by: Mac | 08/08/2018 at 12:23 PM
Some of the examples made me laugh out loud. "effort" as a verb makes an appearance, with several others.
Posted by: Mac | 08/08/2018 at 12:25 PM
I don't remember where - but in the last day or so I saw "Straw Man" used as a verb. I really should get off the internet...
Posted by: Don | 08/11/2018 at 09:19 PM
You know, I think I may have heard that, too. I know I've heard similar things. "Let's blue-sky this and see if we come up with anything."
Posted by: Mac | 08/11/2018 at 10:30 PM
Is there a difference between those two and gaslight?
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/12/2018 at 06:17 AM
This is killing me.
Posted by: Louise | 08/12/2018 at 07:14 AM
Janet, I think the differnce is that "gaslight" has always been used as a verb. The others are objectionable because people are using traditionally noun or adjective based metaphors as verbs - probably so they fit better in a tweet.
That said, I have found "gaslight" grating since my son told me that the "woke" kids in student government had started using it to talk about conservatives - and then I started seeing it pop up in political columns (on both sides).
Posted by: Don | 08/12/2018 at 10:59 AM
Don,
About "contact" instead of "reach out," Nero Wolfe used to get furious when anyone used "contact" as a verb.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/12/2018 at 02:32 PM
"Gaslight" does seem to be pretty much the same as "blue-sky" as a verb. To me the reason the first one doesn't grate is that "light" is a perfectly good verb. Strictly speaking, "gaslight" could mean "light with gas." "Sky" and "man" don't lend themselves to that.
Posted by: Mac | 08/12/2018 at 03:09 PM
Oh shoot, Maclin. When you say somebody is gaslighting you, it doesn't have anything to do with lighting something. A person who lights gaslights is a lamplighter. Gaslight is a noun.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/12/2018 at 03:33 PM
I know that. My point is that "light" is so commonly used as both a noun and a verb that "gaslight" doesn't sound as unnatural as a verb as "strawman" and "bluesky" do. Not that it's more correct, just that it doesn't strike the ear that way. My ear anyway.
Posted by: Mac | 08/12/2018 at 03:52 PM
Nero Wolfe was railing against an inoffensive development, whereas I object to corruptions of our language :)
Posted by: Don | 08/12/2018 at 03:54 PM
Here's something that doesn't really bother me, but I feel like it should - using "dimension" as a verb. Woodworkers will often say something like "I dimensionned all my parts before I started cutting the joinery."
Posted by: Don | 08/12/2018 at 04:11 PM
I see. ;-)
Don, I think dimesionned is awful.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/12/2018 at 06:24 PM
Here's why I think "dimensionned" isn't so awful, while I still don't like it.
I've only encountered it in the context of woodworking. As in all things in this vale of tears, there are opportunities for pride and self-aggrandizement in woodworking, the use of language isn't one of the most prominent. I think "dimensionned" has caught on because it saves a couple of words (and because people repeat what they read), not because people think it makes them sound smart.
Or maybe it's just that I've seen it used by people whose work (in wood) I admire and I give them the benefit of the doubt.
Posted by: Don | 08/12/2018 at 07:31 PM
I don't much like it but it strikes me as less pompous than some of these. "saves a couple of word"--true of many of these, and kind of indicative of American mental habits.
As long as we're complaining, another one that bothers me and seems to have no justification except for saving a word: "transform" as an active rather than passive verb. Not sure that's the right grammatical terminology, but things now "transform" when they should "be transformed." "The car transformed into a boat."
Posted by: Mac | 08/12/2018 at 09:43 PM
All I can think of now is Transformers. ;-) It's all these grandsons.
I'm also trying to figure out if caterpillars transform. I think I could go both ways.
Here's my bête noire: Imma.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/12/2018 at 10:14 PM
I first heard that from a PhD teaching in an institution of higher learning.
Posted by: Janet | 08/12/2018 at 10:21 PM
If you're describing what I think you are, it's distasteful coming from anyone for whom it's not a natural dialect. I.e. most white people. For that matter it's a little annoying when black people write it, when most of them probably know better. In itself though I guess it's no worse than the "I'm ohn" that's the way it comes out of the mouths of a lot of southerners.
Posted by: Mac | 08/12/2018 at 10:41 PM
For instance, me. Though I think I usually get a bit of "g" in there: "I'm gohn go to the store."
That is what you mean, right? "Imma" = "I'm going to".
Posted by: Mac | 08/13/2018 at 07:33 AM
Right, and I imagine that you know that I don't have any beef with any colloquial speech or natural dialect. I pretty much love it. But, this particular thing did not seem natural in anybody's mouth. I am used to hearing the Southern black people who I am around use the same pronunciation that you say you use yourself. "Imma" seemed to come out of nowhere and was suddenly ubiquitous among both blacks and younger whites. Like it was a fun or cool thing to say.
This may just be a grumpy old lady thing, but it grates on me.
I listened to a video of someone talking about A Good Man is Hard to Find a couple of days ago, and he was talking about the things the Grandmother says, and about how old people always say stuff like that. I hope I'm not quite as bad as she is.
Now to read this week's SNJ.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/13/2018 at 08:58 AM
Gaslight (the verb) is what Charles Boyer did to Ingrid Bergman in the creepy movie Gaslight.
Posted by: Robert Gotcher | 08/18/2018 at 06:00 PM
"nuke it out" instead of "duke it out."
Posted by: Robert Gotcher | 08/18/2018 at 06:02 PM
I've never heard it before, but I sort of like "nuke it out."
Posted by: Don | 08/18/2018 at 09:04 PM
Neither have I, and so do I. It's funny.
Posted by: Mac | 08/19/2018 at 07:00 AM