Category: Language

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I noticed a new word the other day while browsing though the internet. Josh Marshall, at Talking Points Memo has devised a short hand for the term throwing someone under the bus, Marshall now writes underbus. I have to admit I like it. I knew immediately what he was referring to and it abbreviates the phrase into a new verb that can be conjugated effortlessly. Four stars for underbus.

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I can’t believe I find myself in the position of defending Piers Morgan but such is the world we live in that a pompous ass like Morgan has become the voice of reason. Tucker Carlson tried to get Morgan to use the word faggot. Morgan politely declined which didn’t satisfy the feisty Carlson as he fired off a round of faggots. He then wondered why he couldn’t say the N word.

Interestingly Carlson used the N word instead of the actual word. The repercussions for the N word were too much even for him. He knew enough not to say the actual word which also means he knows why he shouldn’t say faggot. Free speech comes with repercussions. He thought he could get away with faggot but knew enough not to gamble on saying the N word. And he has the balls to complain he doesn’t understand. He understands all too well.

When people complain that they can’t use words like faggot or the N word, they are being incredibly disingenuous. They understand the meaning of these words. They are derogatory and hateful words. People use them to hurt people and that’s why most people avoid using them. People know that and choose their words carefully as a way to manage their way through civil discourse.

In the good old days, say 50 years ago, a White man could say the N word without much of price. Thankfully this has changed. The audience for people willing to hear a White man say the N word without repercussions has gotten infinitesimally small. You are free to say it but there will definitely be a price as there should be.

But, why then do Blacks get to use the N word and he can’t. Well, hmm, let me think about that one. Maybe, and I am just guessing here, it might be that for a good portion of American history that whites used the N word as a way of putting Black people down. A White person carries some historical baggage for racism so it becomes important for them to avoid using the N Word to avoid looking racist. Blacks, on the other hand, do not bear this same historical baggage so are better able to get away with using it. Yes, it is unfair but then life is unfair.

The annoying thing about this whole kerfuffle is that Carlson understands perfectly well why he shouldn’t say faggot and the N word. Pressing Morgan to partake in it was a childish attempt to undermine Morgan’s good manners. To Morgan’s credit, he refrained from getting pulled into Carlson’s nonsense. But if it is so darned important for Carlson to say faggot or the N word without social cost, I suggest he attend a KKK meeting, I am pretty certain he could get away with it there.

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I just used the term underage girl while writing about the Epstein Files. It bothered me as I felt it was redundant. A girl, by the very meaning of the word, is underage. Girl is sufficient. Right?

I think this is due to the fact that, in the past, girl was used to describe young women. So if I said girl, people might think I was talking about an adult and not someone who was underage.

I debated this for quite some time before I opted for underage girl. I just think it more clearly describes who I was talking about.

But am I wrong?

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Furious Spain Flood Survivors Hurl Mud At King, Queen And Top Government Officials.

I had read the above Huffington Post headline three or four times before I realized it was just bad grammar. It should read Furious Spanish Flood Survivors. The first couple of reads, I thought why is Spain flooding survivors and hurling mud at the King and Queen. Now you may claim I am being nit picky here but this seems really basic here. Spain is a noun which is doing something while Spanish is an adjective describing the survivors.

It is confusing and makes for difficult reading.

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Just to show you the power of almost 60 years of misspelling.

I was writing something with the word tragedy in it. I wrote tradgedy instead and a red line, signaling that I have the incorrect spelling, appeared. I refused to believe it. I convinced myself that it must be some sort of British/American spelling disagreement even though I was using an American English spelling tool. Then, I was intrigued by this error because there must be some interesting history behind it so I investigated further.

And I was shocked to learn that I was wrong in USA or in the UK. Tragedy is only spelt one way and that is tragedy. This is pretty embarrassing because I am pretty sure that anytime I have used tragedy in the past, I spelled in tradgedy.

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Since I have started writing on a daily basis, I have discovered that sometimes I have trouble coming up with the right word or phrase to actually explain what I am thinking. It happens frequently. I stop writing then and try to think of the right word.

I used to wait and come back to the piece and hope that it came to me. Sometimes it did but sometimes it didn’t. When I struggled, I started to use the best word or phrase I can come up to explain what I mean even though it wasn’t really the word I wanted. This allowed me to complete my blog but it bothered me when I did that because it isn’t exactly what I wanted to say and my meaning is a bit off. It is close but not quite right.

I tried the thesaurus thinking that since I am close, the thesaurus will list the correct word. This usually worked but sometimes, remarkably, the word I am looking for wasn’t there. Then I think that the word I was looking for hasn’t been invented yet which I find unbelievable. I am fairly certain that I am not the first person in 6,000 years or so of history to want this word. So where did it go and why can’t I find it?

It also dawned on me that this is the problem with all human communication. No one can quite say what they really want to say because they are missing the right words to say it. In order to communicate, people have to use whatever words come to them in order to move the conversation along. The problem is when the conversation continues with these not quite right words, are we really understanding each other?

So even when we speak the same language and are understanding the words we say, the person we are talking with may not understand us for lack of the right word It is really quite amazing that we get along as well as we do.

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I complain a lot about autocorrect particularly after I quickly type a text and send it without reviewing my text. Invariably, autocorrect has changed something and made my clearly understandable statement into something utterly confusing. But, after you eliminate these mistakes, which technically are mine because I failed to review the text, I do believe my spelling is getting better because of autocorrect.

The other day I typed tattletail and got the old red line. I was mystified. So I typed tattle tail but it occurred to me that this might be wrong because tattle and tail are two valid words so I was forced to looked it up. Boy was I surprised to learn that I have been misspelling tattletail for a long time. It is tattletale not tattletail.

For some reason, a bunny comes to mind every time I think of tattletale. Which makes me think of tail instead of tale. But after reading the definition it makes so much more sense to spell it tattletale than tattletail. And I owe it all to autocorrect.

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Katherine Maher, the new CEO of National Public Radio, tries to defend herself against accusations of her First Amendment ambivalence. She awkwardly replies to her critics in the Wall Street Journal with the following, ““It is by no means a personal perspective; it’s a very bad faith distortion of a nuanced perspective on a policy landscape issue.”  WTF? I have absolutely no idea what she means here. To be fair, I am not sure how Christopher Rufo, one of her critics, determined her position on the First Amendment from this video link.

She speaks in an academic jargon that is meaningless to the vast majority of Americans. This is fine if she is sitting down to lunch in a university cafeteria with a bunch of Social Science professors. On the other hand, if she is trying to defend herself against the idea that she is an Ivory Tower Academic Elitist, she might try using plainer language because, unfortunately for her, every time she speaks she sounds like an Ivory Tower Academic Elitist.

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I was going to mention this in my previous post regarding Ron Johnson (see my thoughts here) but there are two different topics here and so I decided to do two separate posts. Welcome to the windmills of my mind. Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel.

Johnson writes “This is all preplanned by an elite group of people.” Isn’t planned sufficient? What different meaning does the pre give to preplan. Nothing, right?

I was disappointed to find a definition for preplan. It means this travesty has been on the loose for some time and has wandered a bit too far to bring it back into the barn. But, I am sucker for losing causes so please remember to plan and avoid preplanning at all costs. If nothing else using plan will save you some time. I mean thats three less letters to write. That’s something. Pretty please.

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Until recently, I prided myself on being able to spell the most difficult word and if I couldn’t spell it, I could generally spot my error pretty quickly when I edited. As I age, though, I find that this super power is declining. Maybe aging isn’t to blame but I have only noticed the problem since I slipped over the 65 years marker. Whatever the reason, I have noticed my spelling has gone to Hell in a hand basket.

Here are two recent and, once you see them, embarrassing, mistakes. I tried to spell technically as tycnically. I was convinced that the tycn was correct and ically was wrong after I began to edit. I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to change the ically before realizing that perhaps the tycn was wrong. I still think that tycnically is a valid alternative.

Then there was exspell instead of expel. This misspelling I blame on my sounding it out. I say ex spell when it should be Ex pel.

I am not so worried about the actual misspelling because I think that when you are writing and you need to get the word on the page, putting down a close approximation of the word is enough until you go back and edit. But now I can’t see the problem where it once, on review, was easy for me to spot. I now make countless attempts to correct the wrong syllable.

Which means I am down to one super power – parallel parking.