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SITE RESUSCITATION | JUST THE WAY IT IS | June's tips focused on commonly misspelled (though not always truly difficult) words. A few I didn't include are liquefy (why is it not liquify, like liquid?), category (often misspelled catagory, since the sound after the t is actually pronounced uh), and surprise (since we don't pronounce the r, people often omit it. Some of the words I included last month (and others like them) could more likely be spelled correctly if people were more familiar with words that English has borrowed from other languages, especially Latin and Greek. Here are a few for your review. Latin derivation: pernicious: The issue for spellers is whether the end of the word should be spelled "cious" or "cous." In this word the choice is relatively easy: a c followed by an i is pronounced "sh" (whereas, for example, raucous has no i because there's a "k" sound rather than "sh"). adjacent: The question here is whether it should be ent or ant. In some words the only answer is to memorize the word. Here, fortunately, the solution is simpler, and it's similar to the solution above. A c followed by ent will be pronounced like an s; followed by ant, as in vacant, the c will be pronounced like a k. amicable: The able/ible choice creates the problem. Here the solution is easy: A c followed by able is pronounced like a k; a c followed by ible is pronounced like an s. incriminate: This one is relatively easy, as most of the letters can be clearly heard, and words with ate endings in which the ate is pronounced (like the word ate) are verbs. obstinate: Here's the other side of the coin: in this case the ate is pronounced "ut." This word is an adjective; the tendency is to misspell this word with an ant ending. You'll have to memorize this word. Greek derivation: matriarch: The arch in Greek is usually pronounced "ark" (except in the word arch). Other examples include patriarch, architect, archetype, and archipelago. chronic: Similarly, the ch is pronounced like a k, as in chord and chorus. homonym: Homo and nym are typical Greek roots, so it's a good idea to get a handle on how they're spelled. endemic: Pandemic and epidemic are other common words with the "demic" root. adamant: Here's one word that there are no tips for. It's impossible to guess how the second and third a should be spelled. AUGUST 2007 TIPS Time for some summer fun and maybe a few new ideas. Here goes. • What is an eponym, and why should I care? An eponym is a word that originates from a person’s name. Some are more obvious, such as Gatling (as in Gatling gun), newton, madeleine, melba, watt, Fahrenheit, and macadamize (a process for paving roads). Others are more subtle: angstrom, boysenberry, dahlia, forsythia, gardenia, greengage, macadamize, mercerize, poinsettia, praline, salmonella, saxophone, shrapnel, sideburns, zinnia. Some eponyms are derived from mythology, including tantalize and narcissistic. A particularly interesting one is spoonerism, named for a quirky nineteenth-century British professor named Spooner, who was infamous for reversing sounds of words, usually initial sounds (such as “May I sew you to another sheet?” and “a well-boiled icicle”). • How many common English words are of Dutch origin (like English, a Germanic language)? Though I don’t have a specific number, there are quite a few that we know and/or use often: landscape, uproar, waffle, decoy, walrus, caboose, yacht, easel, holster, furlough, harpoon, trawl, beleaguer, wiseacre, brackish, slurp, buckwheat, freebooter, bowery, howitzer, cockatoo • How many common English words have been borrowed from (or influenced by) Old Norse and other Scandinavian languages (which are from another branch of Germanic languages)? Again, I don’t have a specific number (and who cares, anyway?), but some of the words may surprise you, partly because they aren’t just nouns and adjectives, and also because many of them are basic elements of English vocabulary: Fro (as in “to and fro”), raise, skirt, they, their, them, law, ugly, wrong, skulk, scowl, drown, loose, fellow, gate, bask, call, die, get, hit, scream, skin, window, knife, root, haven, husband, cast, scrape, happy, ill, low, rotten, seemly, odd, billow, blight, clumsy, doze, maelstrom, geyser, saga, nag, scamp Of course English speakers borrowed more words from French, Latin and Greek than from these Germanic languages, but virtually all of the words above are integral to English grammar and/or vocabulary.
SEPTEMBER 2007
TIPS Recently I heard a puzzle question on National Public Radio about a word
that is in common use now but did not exist 10 years ago (I didn't hear the
answer). Of course many new words and expressions could fit that description, many
of them related to new technologies, others related to changes in society or
other phenomena. Some new scientific and technical words are created by using Greek and
Latin roots, suffixes, and prefixes, but I'll focus on the technique of
creating words by combining existing words from a variety of sources. Though
this is not a new phenomenon, the rate of creation continues to increase. One category involves food. Using hamburger as a model, fast-food
restaurants have concocted other menu items by considering –burger a
root word (which of course it isn't). Thus they have created words such as
steakburger, cheeseburger, and tofuburger (I made this
one up, but it may exist on the West Coast.) Sometimes parts of words (like burger) come to be considered
separate entities that can be transferred to other words and made into
suffixes to craft new creations. A typical example is -teria, from
cafeteria, which has given us unsightly words like gaseteria. The
–mat of automat has produced words like laundromat. The
-oree from jamboree and -rama from panorama have
suffered a similar fate. Modern civilization has given us smog (smoke + fog),
motel (motor + hotel), brunch (breakfast
+ lunch), broasted (broiled + roasted),
chunnel (channel + tunnel), guesstimate (guess
+ estimate), and Popemobile. Science and technology have also produced a number of blends.
Urinalysis dates to 1889; quasar, which is more recent, combines
quasi and stellar. Camcorder is even more recent,
blending camera and recorder. Another phenomenon reflects the blurring of lines among education,
entertainment, commercials/advertising, editorials, and information, thus
producing words such as advertorial, infomercial,
infotainment, and edutainment. Our beloved federal government is another source of such combinations,
many of them not particularly recent. These include Medicare,
Medicaid, and (unofficially) Reaganomics. Miscellaneous examples include stagflation (stagnation +
inflation), medevac (medical + evacuation), and
claymation (clay + animation).
It’s
hard to discuss pronunciation rules, practices, and mistakes in writing, but
I’m going to give it my best shot. What
made me think about this topic is many recent mispronunciations of the word cache, meaning “a place to store supplies,
etc., or anything stored in such a place.”
This word, which is used often by the military, should be pronounced
“cash” but is routinely pronounced “ca-SHAY.” Unfortunately
“ca-SHAY” is the pronunciation for another word, cachet, which has several meanings, the most common of which is “a
mark or sign that something is of superior quality.” Not even close to what the
soldiers mean! I have no idea how this confusion began. Some
basic rules that are increasingly fuzzy even to native speakers of English involve
the pronunciation of a, an, and the. Let’s review the rules for each. The
distinction between a and an is this: Use a before words beginning with a consonant sound; use an before words beginning with a vowel
SOUND. For
example, a party and a kangaroo; an elephant and an hour (note that the “h” is
silent). As
for the pronunciation of the “a,” we actually say “uh” unless we’re emphasizing
it (which is rare). The
word the has two pronunciations (this
comes as a surprise to many people). In fact, this rule is slipping in parts of
the Some
pronunciations are open to interpretation, and of course some words have
alternate pronunciations or regional variances that are equally acceptable.
(Remember “You say ‘to-MAY-to’ and I say ‘to-MAH-to.’ Let’s call the whole
thing off”?) I
say “puh-KAHN” and others say “PEE-kan” or “pee-KAN.” Same with AYE-prih-kaht”
and “A-prih-kaht” (with an “a” as in “bat”). A
friend from
Hyphens
on the March Try this
quiz: Are the following words now written as one word or two words, or are
they hyphenated? fig leaf,
bumble bee, chick pea, ice cream, leap frog, hobby horse, pin money, log
jam, test tube, cry baby, pot belly, water bed, pigeon hole Like me,
I bet you wondered about some of these. Unlike me, you probably don’t care!
Below are
the answers, according to the recently released sixth edition of the
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary—note that none of these words is
hyphenated! Some are written as one word, others as two. What this list has
in common is that both words in each pair are (or can be) nouns. fig leaf,
bumblebee, chickpea, ice cream, leapfrog, hobby horse, pin money, logjam,
test tube, crybaby, pot belly, water bed, pigeonhole What’s
the reason for the flux (some of these words were formerly written as one
word (“waterbed”); others follow a more common trend by morphing into a
single word (“pigeon hole”)? In between are the expressions that are still
hyphenated. According
to editor Angus Stevenson, people are “not confident about using hyphens
anymore, they’re not really sure what they are for.” I know that’s true! Another
likely reason for the decline in hyphen usage in English is the Internet and
e-mail. Taking the extra time to add a hyphen here and there is just too
much trouble. In
addition, advertisers and designers may see hyphens as a bit old-fashioned,
but dictionary editors base their changes on usage, not on the look or their
personal tastes. In this new edition, they made some 16,000 hyphenation
changes. The main
reason for using hyphens is to promote clarity. For example: “I’ve heard
that there are people eating sharks in this area.” This is very different
from saying, “I’ve heard that there are people-eating sharks in this area.” And this:
“Ninety-odd voters protested the new law.” Compare this to “Ninety odd
voters protested the new law.” But
hyphens have not lost their place altogether. The Shorter OED editor
commended “their first-rate service rendered to English in the form of
compound adjectives, much like the one in the middle of this sentence.” Many hyphenated expressions consist of a pair of words in which the
second word is a verb form, such as “gut-wrenching” and “half-baked.”
Sometimes the first word is a verb form: “my hacked-off boss” and “a
wringing-wet dog.” You’ll just have to get used to this ever-fluctuating trend (see what I
mean?). If you’re not sure about hyphen usage, try checking the dictionary
for two-word noun compounds, and use the above examples as a test. Above
all, be consistent—and open-minded. | SEPT
98 | OCT 98 | NOV 98 |
DEC 98 | JAN 99 |
FEB 99 | MAR 99 |
APR 99 | MAY 99 | JUNE
99 | | WRITING TIPS |
MEET THE DOCTOR | SPLEEN
VENTING | SEAL |
SITE RESUSCITATION | JUST THE WAY IT IS |
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