ignotum

There’s a poem I wrote several years ago that I never published anywhere, don’t know why. It would probably be best suited for a kids’ book, or at least a book for kids who don’t mind a couple of bits of Latin tossed in (in other words, just the best kind of kid). It’s not serious poetry, but I’m fond of it. Here it is:

Absent
by James Harbeck

This is a picture of something I lost.
I bought it somewhere; forget what it cost.
I’m pretty sure that it didn’t get tossed.

I took this picture the following day
just to recall that this thing got away.
It’s not for art; it has nothing to say.

There on the table you’ll see there’s a space
where it would be if it sat in its place.
I’m holding that spot for it now, just in case.

Have a good look so you’ll identify it
if, on some mission, you happen to spy it –
just bring it back here and end my disquiet.

You see, it’s the absence ’twixt table and air –
just look at the picture; there’s no need to stare,
you can see at a glance: it’s the thing that’s not there.

So bring me my thing and I’ll toss out this photo
the moment I have it concrete and in toto,
as large as the life and no longer ignoto.

Until then, I’m keeping this space in its spot.
But if it comes never, it won’t get forgot—
I still have my snap of the there that it’s not.

Now, what’s the unknown word in there? Ignoto. (You’ve probably seen in toto before.) Indeed, you won’t find it in a dictionary. Certainly not in an English dictionary. It’s unlikely you’ll find ignoto in a Latin dictionary, either.

So I just made it up? No… I knew the word ignotum, Latin for “unknown” (neuter; masculine is ignotus, feminine ignota). A dictionary will give you the nominative form. But the dative/ablative form is ignoto. Meaning (according to context) “by, from, or to the unknown”. So there. Now you know.

But this word ignotum, now. I like it. It’s a good word. As I sit here writing this, I’m listening to Magnum Ignotum, composed by Giya Kancheli and performed by members of the Koninklijk Filharmonik Orkest van Vlaanderen. It’s a delicate and dark piece, full of the great unknown. Which is what magnum ignotum means: “great unknown” (I admit it does look like it means “large bottle of wine without a label”).

The taste of ignotum? I’m tempted to say “I don’t know,” but actually I do. It has a strong taste of ignorant and other ignore words, naturally; they’re related. It may also remind you of ignoble, though I would not say that the unknown is per se ignoble, though the anagram gum on it rather is. And it has airs of ingot and I got ’em, both of which convey senses of gaining value – does the unknown add value? Often it does. Omne ignotum pro magnifico, as the saying goes: “everything unknown is taken as great” – the unknown tends to be exaggerated in value or importance.

At the heart of this word is that /gn/, the tongue stopping at the back and releasing with a nasal at the front; it makes me think of having a cold. But it made the ancient Greeks and Romans think of knowing: the gno root shows up in a variety of words relating to knowledge.

I don’t suppose we really need this word as an addition to English; we have a word already, unknown, which happens to be cognate – the un like the in that became i in ignotum, the know coming from the same Indo-European source as gno. But it fills a nice little spot, an obscure word for the obscure, even an unknown word for the unknown. Why not? If you look up ignotum you’ll likely first find the potted phrase ignotum per ignotius, “the unknown by the more unknown”, referring to an explanation that is more obscure than what it is explaining. Mounting confusion – sure to put some gum on it. How ignoble. But sometimes fun.

clerihew

How would you like to be an eponym?

I suppose it would depend on how you came to be eponymous. Some people have diseases named after them because they identified them (Down, Parkinson, et al. ad naus.); others have diseases named after them because they had them (legionnaires, for instance). Some people have forms of humour named after them because they inspired them (Spooner); some have forms of humour named after them because they created them.

In this last set belongs a certain Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who, as a British schoolboy, penned a little loose-rhythm quatrain:

Sir Humphry Davy
Was not fond of gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

(Was not fond of was later revised to Abominated.) He subsequently penned a number of others on the same model. Another example:

Sir Christopher Wren
Said, “I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls
Say I am designing St. Paul’s.”

I think you can see the model. The first line is someone’s name (typically someone famous). This sets a pattern of usually two stressed syllables per line, but that is very loosely handled. The poem has two rhyming couplets, and tosses in some biographical detail about the person (Bentley’s books of clerihews include Biography for Beginners (1905), More Biography (1929), and Baseless Biography (1939)). It is important that the poem be amusing!

We note that the poems are not called bentleys. That would sound rather posh, and in particular would associate them with expensive cars typically driven by old-money types of people. (Even in Toronto, where Jaguars are a common sight and Lamborghinis can be seen driving by on infrequent occasion – and of course BMWs are more common than dirt – I see only a few Bentleys a year.) They are also not called edmunds. That would have some echoes of Shakespearean characters and a few other literary presences, and at the same time would be too well-known a person name to be all that distinctive. And it can’t help that it’s a sort of blunt sound with a dull vowel in the middle.

No, they are Clerihews, the least common of his three names. Clerihew is actually a Scottish family name, and in fact I know someone who comes from that family. [See the comments below for more on its origin.] You probably do not, as it really is not a common family name (neither is Harbeck, but I must say Clerihew has a certain idiosyncrasy that Harbeck does not). It seems almost to be the name of a bird, something like a curlew or a whippoorwill or perhaps a heronshew, or some other thing such as a creature like a fitchew hiding in the greenhew. Or perhaps an architectural feature like a clerestory in some mews.

The opening cl has a crisp clarity and cleanliness, a touch of class, though perhaps clerkish. All the vowels are front vowels (although the last one moves into a /w/), so there is a brightness to it, and the wheeze or sigh of the /h/ in the middle adds a softness, as of a pale or pastel hue – or a person breathing whew or phew.

The word as a whole anagrams to whericle, which is not a word but really should be; may I suggest that we now christen it one and use it to name a clerihew-type poem featuring not a person but a place, and (since the order of the word is reversed in four pieces) with the place name at the end, not the beginning, and starting (naturally) with where:

Where is an immenser
Historical dispenser
Of cheese, stone, and hassle?
Caerphilly Castle.

Where will you traipse
Over hills of peaches and grapes,
But find no cranberry bog in?
The Okanagan.

Where did the English entrench
Use of, and resistance to, French
More than at claret tastings?
The Battle of Hastings.

Most of the other words you can find in clerihew are not particularly related: chew, while, rice, rile, where, crewel; I do think rich is semantically relevant, but it doesn’t have much of the flavour of clerihew.

The big challenge of clerihews, aside from being witty, is to find a rhyme for the name; this can be on the difficult side at times. I’ve written a few recently for friends’ names, and you can see the contortions sometimes necessary:

Arlene Prunkl
Knew a little spunk’ll
Serve you in writing
And all kinds of uniting.

Antonia Morton
Waits for men to come a-courtin’:
Be they clients, be they lovers,
She knows her way between the covers.

Paul Cipywnyk
Doesn’t settle for what he’s giv’n: ich-
thyologic or prosaic,
He’s reliably apotropaic.

Margaret Gibbs
Keeps dolls in cribs.
She sees no analogy
Between that and genealogy.

They make a fun little challenge. (I also do them on request.)

365 words for drunk

I mentioned in my word tasting note for crapulous that I could do blog entries on words and phrases for “drunk” for a whole year. I don’t intend to do that, but I have decided to rise to the challenge and accumulate 365 words (and phrases) for “drunk”. I’m up to 263 351 so far (with the aid of several from other languages), and would like the assistance of my readers and their bibulous compatriots in making up the gap. Have a look at the list so far, and use the comments to add any I’ve missed.

cattery

My friend Alex Goykhman forwarded an ad to me offering a deal: “$49 for 7 Nights of Cattery at the Lonesome Kitty Cat Hotel ($140 value).”

To modestly modify an Amy Winehouse song: What kind of cattery is this?

Well, we can feel quite certain that it has to do with cats one way or another. Aside from its being the Lonesome Kitty Cat Hotel, the formation cattery is quite unlikely to come from any false cognate such as the cata in cataplectic, catabasis, catastrophe, and so on. And cat is cognate with words throughout European languages (even borrowed into the non-Indo-European language Finnish as katti, which I particularly like). It even shows up in Byzantine Greek as κάττος kattos (meaning we could justifiably have had cattophile and cattophobe rather than the more opaque ailurophile and ailurophobe). The best guess is that the etymon was in Ancient Egypt, but we – hey, look, a kitty!

Now, where were we? Ah, yes. The issue with this word is twofold. First of all is the issue of the multiplicity of meanings of cat (as opposed to The Multiple Cat, which is the name of a musical group who made a CD that I happened to pick up in a bargain bit titled “territory” shall mean the universe). This is illustrated by the assertion that the Web has gradually transformed from a cathouse to a cathouse – i.e., the videos occupying most of it, the joke goes, have shifted from smutty to kittycat. (See thedailywh.at/2011/11/14/all-cats-all-the-time-of-the-day/ for an amusing extended riff on this.)

Second is the ery ending. There are different kinds of words that end in ery, as illustrated by just the set of words ending in ttery: lottery, battery, buttery, cattery, chattery, cluttery, flattery, fluttery, God-wottery, guttery, hattery, hottery, littery, lottery, mattery, muttery, nattery, nitwittery, nuttery, plottery, polyglottery, pottery, rattery, rettery, ruttery, scattery, shattery, skittery, slattery, slottery, sluttery, smattery, spluttery, sputtery, stuttery, tattery, tittery, tottery, twittery. Some are adjectives formed on words ending in er; we can rule that out in this case, as there is no catter for something to be like. Some are mass objects referring to a kind of thing, such as pottery; others are mass objects referring to some more abstract thing that is pervasive in some context, such as polyglottery and God-wottery; others are mass objects referring to a condition or state of being, such as sluttery; and some are referring to a place where things are made and/or kept, such as hattery.

So here’s the thing: cattery, according to dictionary definitions, and as shown in general use even still if you search it on the web, is a word for a place where cats are raised and/or housed. So, yes, it’s a cathouse, but the kind where actual cats sleep – the Lonesome Kitty Cat Hotel is a lodging in Toronto for cats for when their owners are away. (Now, think for a moment: $49 for 7 days for the other kind of cathouse? Or even $140? Really?) But in that case it would be 7 nights of a cattery, no? Where’s that indefinite article? Its absence makes the word a mass object: the ad appears to promise 7 days of kitty-catness, or of being surrounded by or playing with cats, or something similar – no need to catalogue all possible nuances.

I must admit, 7 days of that kind of cattery would be quite appealing – if only I weren’t allergic. Let me tell you, the thought of seven days free of allergy and playing with kittens honestly brings tears to my eyes, I would enjoy it so much. But you can’t always get what you want. Just as the word cattery is double-crossed in the middle, tt, I have been double-crossed by nature.

So it goes. But cats are all around us, and their action in inaction and inaction in action is the way of the play of the world. For the multiplicity of cats, territory shall indeed mean the universe: we are in a cattery of cattery, all of us from the bottom of the gutter to Cat Deeley and Kim Cattrall; all is a fractal of cat fur. Just as your tongue, in saying cattery, reaches quickly like a paw from under the couch to pull in a bit of string or food, all things are subject to the subtle little paw of the cosmic cat, catching at the catenary from catabasis to catacomb, catalyzing all from cataract to cataclysm, alternately cataskeuastic and catastrophic. But I don’t wish to be catachrestic. I will simply say that the world is cattery, seven times a cattery, seven times seven – which is 49, which is how much it would cost for week of cattery.

I was going to end with that, but, given the season, I will tack on a poem I wrote almost exactly 20 years ago:

Cassandra the Cat

Cassandra the cat sits smugly, placidly purring;
outside, a violent winter storm is brewing.
Cassandra wants none of that; she’ll stay by the fire
and enjoy guests who give the odd drop of egg nog to her.

Cassandra goes vaulting off the top of the couch,
scampering under the chair of a startled guest,
and, after a whirlwind tour of the house,
comes back to the fire and quickly returns to rest.

Cassandra is master of all that she surveys;
that small plate of cakes could be hers, if she wanted,
but no, she won’t bother to get up off her duff –
she’s just finished eating, so she’s not even tempted.

Cassandra, in later evening, covers the heat vents,
and, purring, prowls the hallways and the stairs
searching for hitherto unforeseeable e-vents
and mice and spiders to catch all unawares.

Cassandra the cat, you furry door-mat, you owner of home and hearth,
you never pause to realize your net equivalent dollar worth,
but content you lie by fireside and sit on the laps and lick the cups of specially invited guests,
never believing that you could be freezing in cold and snow with nowhere to go in a darkened alley on a hungry belly, if it weren’t for your magnanimous hosts!

Cassandra the cat twitches her tail, looks up
with one eye, smiles, purrs and returns to her nap.

Math… amazing

Every so often someone will forward me one of these “amazing!” math tricks, and I will of course feel compelled to explain just how outrageously simple the math in them actually is. The latest one going around is even simpler and more obvious than most, and yet people still seem impressed by it:

Take the last two digits of the year you were born, add your age this year, and it will add up to 111. Amazing!

I have to say, I’m kind of amazed that it’s not gobsmackingly obvious to absolutely everyone who can add and subtract two digits. But so many people will do anything to avoid arithmetic, so it seems to have that “magic wand” quality pretty readily.

So OK. Say someone were to send you an email that said “The year you were born plus your age this year equals 2011 – but only this year! Amazing, huh?” Wouldn’t you find that obvious? Now, 2000–1900=100, and you were born in the 1900s (we assume no one under 12 years old got the email), and it’s 2011 now…

Put it another way: if you subtract 1900 from everything, as though 1900 were the year 0, this year would be the year 111; and if you start with the last two digits of your birth year, you’re subtracting 1900, so…

There are some really cool number tricks out there. But you don’t too often see them being passed around in emails, because different people have different definitions of “cool”.

At the very least, they could try tricks that use more than just disguised simple addition and subtraction. For instance, there are fun facts such as that your age (or any two-digit number) plus the reverse of your age (e.g., 49+94) will always be divisible by 11 (in fact, it will be 11 times the sum of the digits in your age); your age minus the reverse of your age, or the reverse of your age minus your age (e.g., 94–49) will always be divisible by 9; your age minus the sum of its digits (e.g., 49–13) will also always be divisible by 9… And the digits of any number divisible by 9 will always add up to a number divisible by 9, which means if you have any two-digit number divisible by 9 and add its digits, you will get 9 or (in the case of 99) a number the digits of which add to 9.

All of this is explainable with simple algebra on the basis that a two-digit number cen be represented as ten times a one-digit number plus another one-digit number, e.g., 49=(4×10)+9.

So for any number 10x+y (e.g., 40+9, where x=4 and y=9), the reverse will be 10y+x (e.g., 90+4), meaning if you add 10x+y (the original number) to it you get 11x+11y (e.g., 40+9+90+4=44+99), and if you subtract the reverse you get 9x–9y (e.g., (40+9)–(90+4)=40+9–90–4), and if you subtract the sum of the digits (x+y, e.g., 4+9) you get 9x (because 10x+y–(x+y)=9x, e.g., 40+9–(4+9)=36). And of course 10x+y+10+x=11x+11y=(x+y)×11.

So assuming a person of a normal adult age, you can say

1. Take your age (e.g., 49).
2. Add the digits together (e.g., 4+9=13).
3. Subtract that from your age (e.g., 49–13=36).
4. Add the numbers of the resulting number together (e.g., 3+6).
5. The answer is 9.

Of course, you want to gussy this up with something fancy. Add in some other calculations to distract. Instead of step 5, maybe say

5. Multiply by the last two digits of the year.
6. The answer is 99. This always works!! But it will only work this year!!! And not again for a hundred years!!!! OMG it’s amazing tell all your friends!!!!11

or, if you think they can handle the math (!), say

5. Now add your age to the reverse of your age (e.g., 49+94).
6. Divide the result by the sum of the numbers in your age (the number in step 2).
7. Multiply this by the number from step 4.
8. The result is the answer to the question “Who’s the greatest hockey player of all time?”!!! OMG Gretzky rules!!! Number 99 forever!!!!

Even this is pretty straightforward for people who like to think about numbers. But there aren’t that many of us. Anyone who graduated from high school is officially able to figure this sort of thing out easily. But as long as people think math is hard and mystifying…

I suppose you could argue that the general “Numbers! Oh noooooes!” attitude people tend to have in our culture allows them actually to have fun with simple things like this, but it deprives them of the much greater fun they can have with more complex number problems, and it makes them easy marks for misleading advertising, misleading politicians, and so on. And generally vulnerable to making dumb mistakes. There’s a classic Dilbert cartoon (two of them, in fact) illustrating this – see http://search.dilbert.com/comic/40%25%20Sick.

This statement is false

Last weekend my brother and I were discussing the statement “This statement is false.” Today a colleague mentioned a similar statement, “The following statement is true. The previous statement is false.” Another colleague likened this kind of pure self-contradiction to the Cretan paradox, also known as the Epimenidean paradox: the statement “All Cretans are liars” said by a Cretan, which would seem to be a false if it’s true and true if it’s false.

But the difference between the Cretan paradox and pure self-contradiction is that the Cretan paradox has a real-world referent. It makes a statement about something external to the assertion. Pure self-contradiction has no real-world referent. It makes an assertion about nothing other than itself and thus has no truth value ascertainable.

As it happens, the source of the Cretan paradox is something Epimenides wrote in support of the immortality of Zeus:

They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,
For in thee we live and move and have our being.

Epimenides was himself a Cretan. Thus we know through simple pragmatics that he must have been excluding himself without saying so. To treat it as a paradox is to be disingenuous. It’s fun sport, but in the end it just shows one of the things you can’t do in logical reasoning.

Statements such as the Cretan paradox are an illusion caused by conflation of one level of analysis with a higher level of analysis: an evaluation of the members of a set cannot itself be a member of the set evaluated; evaluation is a comparison of something against one or more criteria from an external perspective – what is being analysed is subsumed within its perspective. Once we acknowledge that the statement “All Cretans are liars” cannot be part of the set of statements evaluated (making it thus a simple problem in pragmatics rather than a trick of logic), we identify an unstated assumption that makes it function, without which we get a sort of Escher staircase illusion, something that can’t exist in the real world.

But with mutually evaluative statements such as the pure self-contradictions, each must be on an evaluative level above the other – each must subsume the other within its perspective. And at the same time each has no further reference; it has no claim to truth or falsehood as the set of all other statements by Cretans does (and as that set’s members individually do).

Analyzing an utterance or set of utterances is like weighing an object. In order to weigh an object, you have to lift it (or anyway support it) and you have to be resting on something that is not part of what you are weighing. In the Cretan paradox, we see that the statement that pretends to be part of the set of Cretan statements is actually weighing them and so cannot be part of them; it is evaluating them against their real-world references – that’s what it’s resting on. In the mutual contradiction case we’re looking at, each is weighing the other, and neither rests on anything else, because neither is being evaluated against anything external to itself. It’s like two dudes trying to lift each other simultaneously. In empty space.

Meaning in human communication, ultimately, is not a question first of all of logic; it is a question first of all of pragmatics. All communication is behaviour; when you utter something, you are doing something with the aim of producing a certain effect. The person hearing you will be conjecturing what effect you are trying to produce and responding accordingly. Logic helps serve this function, but pragmatics is the true basis. And the pragmatic value of things such as paradoxes is sport – mental play, fun. And a demonstration of the invalidity of certain kinds of reasoning.

An Introduction to Sclgnqi: Pronunciation Guide

Nearly a decade ago, as an exercise in what my wife would undoubtedly call “geek humour,” I began writing an introduction to an invented language, Sclgnqi. I didn’t get very far, but I did complete the pronunciation guide. I dug it up to quote from for my word tasting note on sternutatory. Herewith I present it in entirety, for those whose sense of humour is as frankly odd and language-geeky as mine can be. It’s not polished or revised. So what. You paid how much to read this?

Before your have a klagnat’s hope of speaking the most beautiful, profound and logical language in the world, you must learn how to pronounce it. As you have been all your life speaking this flabby worm of a language English, this will take practice. You will never be able to walk down the street in Qhalgnna unless you practice the following sounds for three hours a day for at least two years:

My veil of tears

Herewith a poem (and following note) from my book Songs of Love and Grammar, which will be forthcoming if and when I find a publisher or give up and publish it myself with an on-demand web publisher. The poem is about eggcorns. What are they? Read on…

Oh, woeth me! I’ve fallen hard,
hosted by my own petard!
In one fowl swoop, my just desserts
have been served up – and, boy, it hurts!
I have betrayed my love, but plead
compulsion by deep-seeded need!
Whole-scale short-sided wrecklessness
has got me in an awful mess.
My Jane was straight-laced; I was cursed,
chalk-full of need to slack my thirst.
Although our lives were going fine,
I just couldn’t tow the line.
When on a small site-seeing tour,
I took a pretty southmore’s lure:
jar-dropping beauty, looks to kill –
with baited breath I stood stalk still.
“I have a view that’s quite unique,”
she said. “Let’s go and sneak a peak.”
Why did I heed her beckon call?
Free reign of passions leads to fall,
but what I thought led straight to hell:
“She’ll tie me over – my as well!”
We didn’t buy our time that night;
we cut straight to the cheese on sight –
I won’t mix words: our will to dare
just grew like top seed then and there.
As if possessed of slight of hand,
in never regions we did land
(to name a view would be too course
and put the cat before the horse).
When all was done, I had the sense
I’d face cognitive dissidence,
but thought I’d pawn off bold-faced lies.
At last I had to realize
my power mower was not one-of
when I got news that caused my love –
a note a few months later: “Soon your
southmore will produce a junior.”
I got a mindgrain; I could see
a storm in the offering for me.
My Jane was cued in, bye and bye,
and she raised up a human cry
in a high dungeon. “You’ve done wrongs!
Let’s go at it, hammer and thongs!
The chickens have come home to roast!
I won’t lie doormat now! Your toast!”
She caused a raucous with abuse
and anger I could not diffuse.
Her words were nasty – so profound,
my vocal chords can’t make the sound.
She was a bowl in a china shop,
beyond the pail. I said, “Please stop!
The dye is cast! It’s not the place
to cut off your nose despite your face!
Don’t get your nipples in a twist!
You give me short shift! I insist
I’m utterly beyond approach!
Don’t treat me like a mere cockroach!”
She cried, “My cause for consternation
is not a pigment of the imagination!
There’s a bi-product of your lust!
Get out! You fill me with disgust!”
The point was mute; my chance was past,
so I gave up the goat at last.
Fate accompli, forgotten conclusion –
my morays were my dissolution.
And so, without further adieu,
here’s some advice that’s trite and true:
It would be who of you to trust your gut;
nip wayward passions in the butt.
Don’t sow your wild oaks around –
the eggcorns might just bring you down.

An eggcorn is a misconstrual of a word or phrase on the basis of an inaccurate (but seemingly sensible) analysis of its parts or origins. It uses other existing words or word parts in place of the originals. The term eggcorn is of course one such – the word should be acorn. The six dozen eggcorns in this poem have all been observed “in the wild” – used by real people in earnest, not as jokes (see eggcorns.lascribe.net). The eggcorns (and their proper forms) are veil of tears (vale of tears), woeth me (woe is me), hosted by my own petard (hoist with my own petard), one fowl swoop (one fell swoop), just desserts (just deserts), deep-seeded (deep-seated), whole-scale (wholesale), short-sided (short-sighted), wrecklessness (recklessness), straight-laced (strait-laced), chalk-full (chock full), slack my thirst (slake my thirst), tow the line (toe the line), site-seeing (sightseeing), southmore (sophomore), jar-dropping (jaw-dropping), baited breath (bated breath), stalk still (stock still), sneak a peak (sneak a peek), beckon call (beck and call), free reign (free rein), tie me over (tide me over), my as well (might as well), buy our time (bide our time), cut to the cheese (cut to the chase), mix words (mince words), grew like top seed (grew like Topsy), slight of hand (sleight of hand), never regions (nether regions), to name a view (to name a few), course (coarse), put the cat before the horse (put the cart before the horse), cognitive dissidence (cognitive dissonance), pawn off (palm off), bold-faced lies (bald-faced lies), power mower (paramour), one-of (one-off), caused (cost), mindgrain (migraine), in the offering (in the offing), cued in (clued in), bye and bye (by and by), human cry (hue and cry), high dungeon (high dudgeon), hammer and thongs (hammer and tongs), come home to roast (come home to roost), lie doormat (lie dormant), your toast (you’re toast), a raucous (a ruckus), diffuse (defuse), profound (profane), vocal chords (vocal cords), bowl in a china shop (bull in a china shop), beyond the pail (beyond the pale), the dye is cast (the die is cast), cut off your nose despite your face (cut off your nose to spite your face), don’t get your nipples in a twist (don’t get your knickers in a twist), short shift (short shrift), beyond approach (beyond reproach), a pigment of the imagination (a figment of the imagination), bi-product (by-product), the point was mute (the point was moot), gave up the goat (gave up the ghost), fate accompli (fait accompli), forgotten conclusion (foregone conclusion), morays (mores), without further adieu (without further ado), trite and true (tried and true), be who of you (behoove you), nip in the butt (nip in the bud), sow your wild oaks (sow your wild oats), and of course  eggcorns (acorns).

The onesies

There’s been a lot of discussion about what to call the decade just ending.* But never mind that. What about the decade just about to start, the set of ten years with 1 as the third digit? The one that starts with the last year of the first decade of the third millennium and ends with the second-last year of the second decade of the third millennium? I wish to make a formal proposal: let’s call it the onesies.

Does that sound like something a baby would wear? Yup. Good. After you made your oh-ohs (or done your naughties), you can get in your onesies. Seems to suit the general trend of the world. The infancy of a new millennium… hopefully the best one yet.

I find that onesies is also another name for the game I know as jacks. That’s good: playing pickup while trying to catch the bouncing ball.

And if you’re saying “Why not the teens?” my answer is that the first three years (10, 11, 12) aren’t teens. The teens are a set of seven years – a septennium.

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* No, I don’t mean the first decade of the 21st century, which ends a year from now; I mean the decade after the nineties, which overlaps 9 years with the first decade of the 20th century. Yes, we can do that (see “When does the new decade begin?“). I personally prefer the oh-ohs. But the naughties is also good. Some people like to use the spelling the noughties for distinction. I prefer the naughties precisely because of the pun! I don’t like the aughties not only because it’s not such a good pun (even if you spell it the oughties) but because aught originally, and still also, means “something” and came to mean “nothing” just by confusion (a naught –> an aught).

Email joke writers, please read this

I receive and forward a lot of email jokes. I’m pretty well known among my friends for being a nexus for humour. But in my years of reading emailed jokes, I have observed that there are many people out there who really don’t understand how to tell a joke well. (Worse, if I receive a joke several times over the course of a few years, it typically gets more and more ruined each time I get it – people are destroying it with their unneeded and misguided additions.) I’ve had to edit quite a few just to un-kill them. So I’ve decided to give some advice for those who want to write down some joke they recently heard to send around. Please read this and heed these pointers if you want to be funny. These are not tut-tutting po-faced rules! They are practical advice based on experience. The entire point is to be funnier.