Usage Monday: "The Ush" & "My Pleash"

I've had it on my mind for a long time, and I'd like to open up discussion about how on earth we should be abbreviating words like "usual" and "pleasure," as in "the ush" and "my pleash."

Most successful slang abbreviations stick to the letters that actually exist in the full-length word, like "what's the 'haps'" for "happenings." But in the cases of "usual" and "pleasure," there's a shushy "zsh" sound that's hard to capture without spelling out the entire word. If you use an "-sh" to shorten "usual," you end up with a word that looks more like it should be pronounced "[r]ush." To get that zsh sound in there, you'd think that maybe you could just write "uzsh," but again, that looks like it could be pronounced several wrong ways. Udge? Uztch? Adding the vowel sound that comes after the "s" might help, but there's no way to write that. It would look like "us[ua]" or something with far more symbols than the original word has letters. And we could always go with a "yoo-" beginning, but Dear Lord what kind of funhouse would that turn our language into?

I have no idea what would work, and a cursory Google search didn't produce any smart ideas. So I leave it up to you: help me figure out how to abbreviate these tricky, szhushy words, or face the very real possibility of never being able to write them down!!

Usage Wednesday: "Alumni"

Here we are, mid May, on the eve of so many young adults' graduation ceremonies. Ex-students, you can't even fathom the future that lies before you: unimpeachable strides in solar and wind-generated power, floating malls, babies that do calculus. You will live in skyscrapers on the moon, and your cars will know not the acrid stench of gasoline. You will wear clothing made of paper, and, with my help, you will use the correct endings for the word "alumnus." Godspeed, tissue vests!

Latin for "pupil" or, more literally, "foster son," alumnus refers to an ex-student of an educational institution. We've all heard of "alumni events," and we all have a basic knowledge of the fact that non-English languages typically use gendered suffixes (in Spanish, a boy is a niño and a girl is a niña). And so we all have this vague understanding that we should be changing the endings for "alumnus," but unfortunately, we didn't all take Latin.

This is a guide for when to use which endings of "alumnus." Just shortening it to "alum" can be a good solution sometimes, but it doesn't always work. Basically we have two different situations, and unless you went to an all-girls school, you only have to pay attention to the first one.

Rules for ex-students of co-ed schools:
-Singular: although "Alumnus" technically means "male ex-student," only a psycho Latin teacher would fault a girl for using it to refer to herself. Use "alumnus."
-Plural: just use "alumni." Not "alums," but "alumni." It means what you want it to mean and it makes it sound like you know what you're talking about.

Rules for ex-students of all-girls schools:
-Singular: a girl ex-student is specifically an "alumna."
-Plural: several girl ex-students are "alumnae." 
BUT I'd be willing to venture that if you went to an all-girls school, you'd know this by now, as it would be plastered all over everything.

The "alumnus" confusion comes from people not wanting to offend either gender by leaving them out. Unfortunately, the past was just like that. Girls were counted in with the boys and more nobly referred to with male suffixes. Whatever, at least we're allowed to learn in college now. And have jobs and stuff. And run grammar blogs.

alumni > alums

Usage Wednesday: Denizen Labels!

Yesterday I got an awesome email: "Garner's Usage Tip - Denizen Labels (1)." !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Denizen labels are the different suffixes you add to a city-name to create a label for a citizen, like "Atlantan" or "New Yorker." Judging by the "(1)" in the subject line, my inbox has wayyy more useful suffix info in store. Cowabunga!!!!! 

Below are George R. Stewart's general suggestions for how to go about labeling people (*spacing mine):

Loose guidelines do exist for naming denizens. George R. Stewart, a historian, developed seven guidelines that H.L. Mencken called "Stewart's Laws of Municipal Onomastics." They were cited in the best up-to-date work on this subject, Paul Dickson's Labels for Locals (1997):

(1) if the place name ends in "-a" or "-ia," add "-n" (Alaska, Alaskan) (California, Californian);

(2) if the name ends in "-i" or a sounded "-e," add "-an" (Hawaii, Hawaiian) (Albuquerque, Albuquerquean);

(3) if the name ends in "-on," add "-ian" (Oregon, Oregonian);

(4) if the name ends in "-y," change the "-y" to an "-i" and add "-an" (Albany, Albanian);

(5) if the name ends in "-o," add "-an" (Chicago, Chicagoan);

(6) if the name ends in a consonant or a silent "-e," add either "-ite" or "-er," depending on euphony (Maine, Mainer) (New Hampshire, New Hampshireite);

(7) if the name ends in "-polis," change that to "-politan" (Minneapolis, Minneapolitan).

 If you're from Narnia, you're Narnian! If you're from Winterfell, you're Winterfeller! If you're me, you're Nerdly Mannbottoms.

In the end I guess I just never realized that someone had figured out all of this for us. Denizen labels!

Usage Wednesday: Reconnoiter

This morning I received my first Usage Wednesday request. This makes me very happy. Jess, this usage error's for you!

To look at the word "reconnoiter" is to see Latin roots screaming at you. Eighth grade foreign language class taught us that "conocer," "connaître," and "conoscere" are cognates that mean "to know." More specifically, you use these words when talking about knowing people. Thus, to your average SAT taker and adult person, "reconnoiter" looks like it most likely means "to re-meet-up" or something like that. Re-know-people. But that's not what it means at all!

"Reconnoiter" is a word I heard maybe twice in my life before hearing it a million times in the Deadwood season 1 episode, "Reconnoitering the Rim." Without purposefully giving too much away, the plot follows a man who has just bought a plot of land that's hopefully full of gold he can prospect. He has to walk the circumference of his property to get familiar with it, and they refer to the walk as "reconnoitering the rim." This makes sense because "to reconnoiter" means "to make a preliminary inspection of, especially in order to gather military information" (according to the American Heritage Dictionary). And so

Reconnoiter = to observe or inspect something in order to gather information
Reconnoiter ≠ to meet up with people later

You could even buy the episode on Amazon, if you wanted. Or just reconnoiter the internet and you'll find it somewhere else.

Usage Friday: Comprise

"Comprise" is one tricky gentlewoman of a word. The first time I heard about something being "comprised of" its parts, it felt like I was among an audience of geniuses. But then, decades later, I found out that I'd been using the word all wrong. In fact, I was using it backwards. A whole comprises its parts!

Samantha Garner wrote a great explanation for the word "comprise," and I'm assuming from her last name that she's heir to the Great American Usage Legacy of Bryan Garner:

According to Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, the word "comprise" means, "literally, 'embrace.' A zoo comprises mammals, reptiles and birds (because it 'embraces' or 'includes' them.)" As "comprise" is a synonym for "embrace" or "include", adding the word "of" at the end is incorrect, because one would not say something was "embraced of" or "included of." These are clearly incorrect. When using the word "comprise", remember that it means "include" or "embrace", and you will correctly omit the word "of" from the phrase.

Furthermore, Garner explains that it's not as simple as reversing the subject and direct object:

Another common mistake in using the word "comprise" is mixing up the relationship between an object and the elements that make up that object. An example of this confusion can be seen the sentence, "mammals, reptiles and birds comprise a zoo." Since "comprise" is a synonym for the word "include", practice replacing "comprise" with "include" and see if the sentence still makes sense. Doing this, the above sentence means, "mamals, reptiles and birds include a zoo," which most people would identify as very incorrect. If you want to talk about the parts that make up a larger whole, use the word "constitute" instead. Using the above example to illustrate, the animals constitute a zoo, but a zoo comprises animals.

So with that information, I will hereby attempt a few sample sentences correctly using the word "comprise" (or replacing "comprise" with a better word):

1) A good playground comprises a jungle gym, a water fountain, and at least three swings.

2) Beer and cheese constitute beer-cheese soup.

3) The goat's lunch comprised three tin cans, a duffel bag, and a pencil sharpener.

A whole comprises ("includes") its parts. Its parts constitute the whole.

Thanks, Garner Family!

Usage Fridays: "He and I" vs. "Him and me"

Suburban Atlanta's Star 94 radio station used to have a show called "Steve & Vikki." The afternoon djs hung out with a monkey named Doctor something and played "Can't Get Enough of You Baby" by Smash Mouth all day. But guess what! One day Vikki's radio banter set me straight on one particularly tricky grammatical issue: the old "I/me" debate.

Steve had said something along the lines of "Tom went to the game with my wife and I," and Vikki corrected him. "Did you know that should be 'my wife and me'?" she asked, and Steve did not know. Vikki went on to explain that when you're dealing with "I/me," you should take out any extra pieces to help yourself figure out what's right. So if you took out Steve's wife (God knows Steve never does), what he said would be "Tom went to the game with I," which is obviously wrong. Because you would say "Tom went to the game with me," you should say "Tom went to the game with my wife and me."

This whole "I/me" issue stems from two largely unacknowledged pronoun cases in the English language. "I" is nominative ("I went to the game" or "It is I!") and "me" is objective ("Don't thank me" or "Your clothes -- give them to me."), but your average, everyday American radio host isn't going to think about pronoun cases. They don't care if the first person did the action or had action done upon it. They just want $$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

So if you're in a jam and you don't feel like delving into pronoun theory, just do what Vikki does and take out whatever extra words might be muddling the issue. Cases don't change just because you have a friend with you:
"Harry and me went to jail" --> "Me went to jail" --> definitely not; so it must be "Harry and I went to jail"
"Get Felix and I a hot dog" --> "Get I a hot dog" --> no way dummy; so it must be "Get Felix and me a hot dog"
"Jane's mad because of Barack and me" --> "Jane's mad because of me" --> that actually is right, but nobody's mad because of Barack on this blog, so deal with it; there is no right answer.

and so
"With him and me" > "with him and I"

And as a rule of thumb, "I/me" errors only make you sound like an an arrogant toolbag if you're already an arrogant toolbag. Otherwise you're just trying to live, man. Pronouns is whack.

I notice that all my usage posts now end with my precise opinion of how un/forgivable each error is and how much of a jerk you are if you accidentally phrase something the wrong way. Please allow a a humble addition: if you keep a blog that posts regularly about usage errors, you are clearly writing all of this from the toilet and living a stinky, fart-filled life. That's I!

Usage Wednesday: Mano E Mano

Sometimes it's only right to fight. Sometimes, you gotta throw down those nerd books you're holding, put up your dukes, and start punching wildly. A little "mano e mano," if you will.

"Mano e mano," which refers to a one-on-one fighting style, is often translated as "man to man." Oh boy is that wrong. First, there's the plain fact that "mano" means "hand" and not "man" in Spanish. "Man" is not "mano" just like "hand" is not "hando." It's unfortunate but it's so, so true.

Another issue is that the letter "e" is more of an Italian word for "and" than a Spanish one. "Mano" still means "hand" in Italian, so "mano e mano" would technically be Italian for "hand and hand." But I think what we're shooting for is "hand to hand [as in combat]," and so that would be "mano a mano" (interestingly, correct in Spanish and Italian).

Mano a mano (as in "hand to hand") > mano e mano (as in "man to man")

& I am prepared to fight you on this.

Usage Wednesdays: Daylight Saving Time

This Sunday we all jumped an hour closer to our inevitable deaths. We begin Daylight Saving Time, a time during which we "save daylight" by having more of it.* Which brings me to the common usage error of the week:

Daylight Saving Time > Daylight Savings Time

Thankfully, no one cares. "Daylight Savings Time" makes just as much sense to us now because we can easily imagine the savings we keep in the bank. Eventually, though, we'll spend all our sunlight and have to revert back to Standard Time. Booooo.

*How on earth would using up more daylight be in any way SAVING it for later use?? Usage is so stupid sometimes. But it's not my job to judge; I'm only here to be your human usage dictionary.

More like Daylight Shaving Time anyway, am I right, you know it's true.

Usage Wednesdays: "Laxadaisical"

Since I've been running perpetually late on posts for the past few weeks, I'm throwing an easy one up for your (mild) usage interest:

Lackadaisical > laxadaisical

"Laxadaisical" = "lax" + "lackadaisical"

"Lax" is an oddball shortcut leading straight back to Latin, and it means exactly what you think it means.

"Lackadaisical" apparently comes from the old interjection "lackaday!," which is short for "alack the day!," which is very similar to the interjection "alas!" Although the internet is failing to explain to me why something that means "alas" would turn into something that means "easygoing," I think I've pieced it together. If you're in a situation where you're pushed to say, "alack the day!," then you've probably got a huge mess on your hands. So you might as well lackadaisically be like, "whatever." Fubar, right? Snafu!

The real takeaway from this common usage error is that you're better off not ever bringing it up. Nobody wants to hear that they just said it wrong. Everybody uses the error, and everyone knows what the error means. This is just for your own personal edification.

And so you don't have to go around wondering if it has to do with lacking a daisy or something?

Usage Wednesdays: "Y'all" v. "Ya'll"

Everyone does it. Politicians do it, moms do it, even the Atlanta airport did it. Sometimes, it really does seem like you can spell it "ya'll." But you can't. It's got to be "y'all," and here's why:

"Y'all" is the Southern contraction of "you all." It's a fun word to reach for when you want to sound really nasal ("yawwwl"), and it's also reasonably shorter and more fun to say than "you all." It's such a fun word, many people have come to think that maybe it's the party animal of words and doesn't have to follow any rules at all. Alas! No word is a party animal.

Contractions work by smushing two words together, deleting some of the middle letters, and replacing those letters with an apostrophe. Here are a few examples of the pattern (replace the [blank] with an apostrophe) :
I'm = I[ a]m
Don't = Do n[o]t
He'll = He[ wi]ll

Knowing that, you have two different potential meanings of "y'all" depending on where you put the apostrophe:
Y'all = Y[ou ]all
Ya'll = Ya [wi]ll

And that's a pretty big longshot. "Ya will?" Come on, guys. Come on. And so, ipso facto, the case is closed: the apostrophe goes right after the Y in "y'all."


Y'all > ya'll

Y'all'll come back now, ya hear?

Usage WEDNESDAYS?!?!: "Alot"

For the next few weeks, Mondays shall henceforth be devoted to zombies due to the airing of new Walking Deads on Sunday nights at 9pm Eastern on AMC. Until I come up with a zombie-related common usage error, we're moving usage day to Wednesday! Uhh????? That's right. Wednesdays. It's the perfect solution.

Which brings me to something I like "a lot": when people spell it as two words.

"A  LOT" > "alot"

While looking up fancy usage dictionary entries for "alot," I found that everybody's got a rule for it but nobody's got a reason for it. According to The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, it's considered "substandard," and according to various other usage dictionaries, examples of "alot" have only really been culled from emails and tv transcripts. Some modern grammarians (you know, the cool ones) have decided that "alot" could be fine for shorthand, but it's still not standard. So don't put it in your papers.

Those are the rules. The only good reason I can come up with is that "a lot" must refer to a large (metaphorical) space capable of containing very much. Like a parking lot. If you filled up a parking lot with your shit, you'd have a lot of shit. In this way, my reason would be that English as an evolving language simply hasn't yet decided to include "alot" in its variant-spellings pool. It probably will in a few hundred years.

In the end, who cares? We all know what you're talking about. In the grand scheme of grammar, this rates pretty low.

THX ALOT 4 REDING!

Usage Mondays: "Expresso"

Boy, would I love some coffee right now. I just had a few cavities filled this morning, and I haven't been able to drink any because I'll just drool it all over my shirt. So instead of drinking it, I've decided to talk about it. Oh coffee, what a treat you are. I like you just like I like my men - full of milk.

The common usage error I'm looking at today is "expresso." This fancy Italian coffee, which serves as the foundation of Starbucks itself, is actually named "espresso," with an s. "Espresso" comes from the Italian "esprimere," which means "to press out." This is a reference to the pressing of finely ground espresso coffee during the brewing process.

I would guess that the x comes in when people think of how quickly they'll be moving once they drink their espresso. They'll be "running express," as they say. But they shouldn't say "expresso" because it isn't a word.

Verdict: ESPRESSO > expresso

But now that that's done with, it might be fun to look at what makes espresso different from regular drip coffee. Fun for me, that is. After my 3 months of summer work at the Barnes & Noble Cafe featuring Starbucks Coffee in 2005, I think I know a little something about this teensy brown bean we call Joe.

Espresso is coffee that has been so finely ground, it resembles powdered sugar. You pack it really tightly so that when the boiling water passes through it, it takes about 30 seconds to brew. Espresso comes out a little thick, and it's served in a tiny mug called a demitasse.

Drip coffee is roughly ground coffee that's brewed by dripping boiling water through the grounds, so it takes longer to brew than espresso. Because the water spends more time in contact with the coffee, it comes out with more caffeine than espresso, to my surprise. It's also totally fine to dress drip coffee with milk and sugar, whereas I feel like it might be a little gauche to do that with espresso. But that's just coffee feelings, not coffee fact.

Lattes are a small amount of espresso mixed with a large amount of steamed milk. That's what most of the drinks at Starbucks are. The only non-espresso coffee drink there (besides a drip coffee) is a Cafe au Lait, which is when you fill half the cup with coffee and half with steamed milk. There's also a Red Eye, which is when you put a shot of espresso into a cup of drip coffee. But everything else, that's espresso.

Hopefully this exploration of coffee was eye-opening, ha-ha, like the way coffee is. And hopefully you stopped reading a long time ago. I still need that coffee, by the way. Could you tell?

Usage Mondays: Prodigal

Hello and welcome to the 2nd weekly installment of Usage Mondays! Today we will explore the word "prodigal," its Biblical ties, and its checkered past as a compulsive gambler.

Most people are introduced to today's word through Jesus's ever-popular parable, "The Prodigal Son." The parable does not appear in any Gospel besides Luke (15:11-32), and it recounts the story of a rich man and his two sons. To paraphrase:

One day a rich man's younger son went up to him and asked for his half of the inheritance right then and there. This was odd because the father wasn't even dead yet, but because he was very kind and generous and he loved his sons SO much, he was just like "Ok, whatever you want! Have it! I don't care!!!!!" The young son waited around for like two seconds before jetting off into the city to have fun. He gambled, slept around, and "wasted his substance with riotous living." Inevitably, he blew through all the inheritance in a matter of days. 

When the money was all gone, the son thought about going back home but was too embarrassed about what he'd done. So he looked and looked for work until he finally got a job feeding pigs. Unfortunately there was also a famine at the time, so he was starving. In fact, he was really tempted to eat the pig slop. I'm not sure if he ended up eating it or not. Long story short, he'd arrived at rock bottom.

Finally he decided to go back home - BUT he would ask to be accepted as a servant because of all his shame. As soon as he got there, humbled and ragged and disgusting, his father gave him a huge hug and a big kiss and there was absolutely zero discussion of this servant business ever again. In fact, the father slaughtered a fattened calf for the celebration of having his son back.

Meanwhile the other son, the one who never left, was out in the fields WORKING when he heard his brother was back and that there would be a party. Naturally completely pissed off, he refused to celebrate with them. The father came out and invited him in. The son was like, "Hell no, you never slaughtered anything even remotely like a fattened calf for me. And I've been here the whole freaking time."

The father said, "Yes, yes, and that's awesome. Literally, everything I have has always been yours for the taking" (which at this point is true by definition because the younger brother already took half of what the father had, so obviously whatever he has left belongs to the older son. But whatever, this was supposed to be more about God etc). "We thought your brother was dead, but he's not!" cried the father. "It's only right to PARTAY!!!!!!!!!"

That is my translation of the story. But even if you'd read it in NIV or RSV or KJV, you'd get the same two themes out of it: Wastefulness & Returning Home. Wastefulness because of the Prodigal Son's spending habits in the city AND because of the father's massive welcome-home party. Returning Home because, obviously, the Prodigal Son returns home (in contrast to his brother, who never leaves home - but that's just as much of an exploration of theme).

Hence, people feel like "prodigal" must mean "returning home after a long time spent away," when really it DOESN'T MEAN THAT.

"Prodigal" means "lavish, or characterized by profuse or wasteful expenditure." It comes from the Latin "prodigere," which means to drive away or to squander.

That is, the Prodigal Son is prodigal because he made it rain one too many times. Not because he came back home to Pops.

FATTENED CALF'D!

Gangway For Usage Mondays!

Thanks to Tracy Morgan and the rest of the Word Guys over at 30 Rock, "nonplussed" had the night of its life last Thursday. Living it up Hollywood style, just the way it is, in all its natural & definition-based glory. Looks like our ship has finally come in, nonplussed!!!!!!!!!! HONNNNNK HONNNNNK!

Since it is now perfectly clear that my blog has the power TO CHANGE THE VERY GRAMMATICAL TEMPERATURE OF TELEVISION, I realize I have no choice. The people have spoken, and the people want usage errors! Introducing

To kick things off (and to keep me modest), I'm taking a long, hard look at "highfalutin."

"Highfalutin" describes someone who is putting on airs, or otherwise acting extremely self-important and proper (e.g. this blog post). In The American Language, H.L. Mencken states that the word was coined in an 1840s political speech and was but one of several words invented during the early 19th century. Since there is no distinct definition of "faluting" (and we're never "low-faluting" or "mid-faluting"), we are left to assume that it's one of those funny American made-up orphan words, and we are obliged to treat it as it is and not how we believe it should be. 

Verdict:
According to the 2000 edition The Oxford Usage Dictionary by Bryan Garner, "highfalutin" IS a word whereas "highfaluting" is NOT SO MUCH. And furthermore:

"The best course is to do two things: spell the word highfalutin, and avoid being what it denotes."

YA JUST GOT GARNER'D.