Ample Teeth

 

Ample Teeth

 I turned 76 this past Sunday. Throughout the day I kept thinking of the song, “Seventy-six Trombones” from the 1950s musical, “The Music Man.”

 Then I thought how many words trigger other words. We have simple pairs, for example: bacon and eggs, first and last, and knife and fork. Others may trigger several options: I mention rock and you may immediately think and roll or and a hard place.

 Checking the Web for word associations, I discovered a verbal fluency test: the “Controlled Oral Word Association” test, known as COWA. Prompted by cowa, I immediately thought of bunga, although I wasn’t sure what cowabunga meant. I learned that it’s “an expression of exhilaration, delight, or joy, often used in the context of surfing or skateboarding,” according to Google. Then I realized that cowabunga is a single word so it doesn't fit today’s word association theme. (So, disregard this paragraph.)

 Instead, let me tell you about the time a friend and I were testing each other on collective nouns of animals. (I think one can fit that kind of game into the word association category, don’t you?) You know, I say puppies and you say litter, right? I say starlings, you immediately say flock. Wrong; it’s murmuration. Anyway, it was my turn to test him and the word was pigs. Unhesitatingly, he responded Bay of, referring to the location where the 1961 failed US attempted invasion of Cuba began.

 Then there are the psychiatrists who use word-association exercises to delve into your subconscious to discover what’s really behind your garlic press obsession.

 Some triggers may be idiosyncratic, perhaps arising out of family history. If anyone in our family says ample… someone will jump in instantly and say teeth. (It’s too complicated to explain.)

 Any less puzzling examples? Just wait and …

 [300 words]

 

And now, word of a freebie: If you’d like an electronic advance review copy of my latest book, to be released in mid-December, please let me know. The new book is another in the devotional vein, published by Mt. Zion Ridge Press, which has now done four of my books. It’s titled Always Ready: A Christian Mandate. It focuses on Jesus’ parable of the ten bridesmaids, five of whom are ready when the bridegroom arrives—and five are not. The book explores the expectation that Jesus has of us that we always be at the ready to follow Him.

 If you’d like this advance copy, my hope is that (if you like the book), you’ll consider buying a hard copy for yourself, buying it for someone else, or telling the world how absolutely, incredibly splendid it is and who in turn will tell others to buy it for themselves, or buy it for someone else, or tell….

What The H*ll...

 

What the H*ll…

Today we’ll look at the pseudo-sanitizing role of the asterisk when you need to use taboo words that you cannot use. So we play a curious game, as I did with the title of my book about words, Meet The Dog That Didn’t Sh*t. Paradoxically, we use the taboo word without using the word. Everyone who’s an English speaker, and older than maybe 9 or 10, knows exactly what’s meant when you write f*ck, n*gger, or d*mn.

You’re not supposed to use these words in polite company. So you engage in this peculiar exercise of using them without actually stating them. The asterisk serves as a kind of neutralizing agent, or an insurance policy, protecting you from any charge that you’re using a bad word while you’re doing precisely that. Doing so is like driving with diplomatic plates; you have absolute immunity. You haven’t violated current norms. Admittedly, these norms are in constant flux; some previously taboo words now drop their asterisks, while others now require them.

Let’s turn to my favorite joke about taboo words. (Taken from Meet The Dog.)

Once there were two young brothers. The five-year-old announced it was time for them to start using bad words. Of course, his four-year-old brother agreed. The next morning Mom asked the boys what they wanted for breakfast. Seizing the moment, the older boy said, “Oh, what the h*ll, I’ll have Wheaties.” Horrified, the Mom spanked the boy, gave him a lecture on acceptable words in their family, and sent him to his room hungry.

She then turned to the younger boy, terrified as he watched what had happened. “And you?” she demanded. He replied, “Well, I’m not sure, but you can bet your *ss it won’t be Wheaties.”

If only the boys could have incorporated asterisks into their responses.

[300 words]

Famous Last Words

 

Famous Last Words

Supposedly, Lord Palmerston’s last words were, “Die, my dear doctor? That’s the last thing I’ll do.” A witty comment from a former UK prime minister.

But note supposedly. Or, as one of my dictionaries of quotations specifies, “Attrib.” That is, attributed.

Other supposed or attributed last words were from Oscar Wilde, who on his deathbed said of his new bedroom curtains, “Either they go, or I do.” (Some sources say he was commenting on the wallpaper.)

That’s the trouble with these imaginative last words. Who knows for sure that these were indeed their last spoken contributions. For one thing, people in their last hours and minutes may be incoherent, hallucinating or otherwise unclear.

But even if these various sayings were recorded accurately, can we be sure that they were actually the last thing the person said?

Take Voltaire for example, a strident critic of Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular. He supposedly responded to the priest who was urging him to denounce Satan by saying, “Now is not the time to make new enemies.” But did he say it? An alternative claim, citing the doctor tending him, says that he cried out in despair, “I am abandoned by God and man! I shall go to hell!”

He is usually credited with the first one; it’s more entertaining and certainly less unsettling.

I can’t predict if I’ll be hallucinating on my deathbed and saying things like, “Bring me the penguin, Chucky,” or “Who’s eating my slippers?” If I’m coherent, will I dispense desperate final instructions: “Remember that the Honda needs an oil change”? Or pointless words of advice “Don’t sleep in the subway, darling.”

Alternatively, maybe I’ll write my last words and silently point repeatedly to what I’ve written. It might begin: “I’d like to tell you in 300 words…”

[300 words]

A Pointless Competition

 

A Pointless Competition

I was recently in a doctor’s waiting room where there was a sign on a door that read, “Do not block door.” Yet there was a clear and ample pathway leading to and from the door; I would have had to go out of my way to move furniture or seek other objects to block the entry. It would have been different if this were a fire exit and near clutter that would have been a hazard in an emergency.

By contrast, a reasonable sign would be “Do not smoke/No smoking.” That’s a behavior that one might realistically need to address.

The likelihood of someone blocking the door was remote. “Do not block door” was a waste of words. They might as well have had signs that read:

·         Do not set fire to the furniture

·         Do not stab yourself in the foot

·         Do not bite other patients

·         Do-it-yourself surgery not permitted

The likelihood of needing to forestall any such actions is close to zero, one would hope.

Which brings us to this blog’s first competition. I’m offering a prize: one of my recent books (see below*). It will go to the reader who emails me what I think is the funniest or most absurdly pointless sign (or signs) that you can imagine appearing in a doctor’s waiting room. Deadline: July 25.

The books are:

·         I’ll be Your Server: The Heart of Christian Discipleship

·         Meet the Dog that Didn’t Sh*t:101 Reflections on Words and Their Magic

·         Sit, Stand, Walk, Run: A Vocabulary for the Christian’s Journey

·         The God Who Blesses

·         Your Photo on God’s Fridge Door: 101 Parables and Analogies for Today

See Amazon for more information about these titles.

* I can send the prize only to someone in the USA or Canada; sorry.

May the most imaginative reader win.

[300 words]

Vocabularies and Fingerprints

 

Vocabularies and Fingerprints

Each Friday I volunteer at the Barton School, at Spokane’s First Presbyterian Church. The School’s mission is to help non-English speakers improve their fluency. I’m constantly struck by the students’ courage and tenacity in trying to figure out the complexities and inconsistencies characterizing English.

Then there’s their vocabularies. I’m often surprised by the basic words (in my opinion) that they don’t know and even more surprised by some that they do. Our vocabularies are like our fingerprints: Unique. I’m convinced that none of our vocabularies perfectly overlaps with anyone else’s.

Which brings me to my list of words or phrases. When I’m reading I look up words I don’t know. Well, usually. Then I enter them in a Word document (that’s appropriate). Occasionally I update my list, as I’ve done this month, culling a few that I’ve remembered.

You see, that’s my problem. Merely looking up an unknown word usually isn’t enough to recall its meaning when I encounter it again. As I tell my students, repetition is needed for a word to become a permanent resident in one’s vocabulary.

Here are five of these entries, giving you a small sample of the English words I’ve encountered.

Ambisintrous: Clumsy with both hands. (Remember “ambidextrous”? Then there’s that delightful line, “I’d give my right hand to be ambidextrous”?)

Capgras syndrome: A mental health condition that leads you to think people have all been replaced by exact doubles.

Iatronudia: The tendency of some women to pretend to be sick so they can be seen unclothed in front of their doctors.

Retronym: A term referring to a noun and a modifier that specifies the original meaning of the noun, usually required by technological advances, to clarify meaning. Examples: rotary phone, snail mail, analog watch.

Siffleur: A professional whistler.

Maybe I’ll remember these now.

[300 words]

Friends Old and New

 

Friends Old and New

This month I’ve been re-reading some of my favorite books, relishing other writers’ mastery of words. One of my most-loved books is an anthology of short stories by H. H. Munro, who wrote under the pen name of “Saki.” Sadly, he was killed in World War I at the age of 45. Here are two examples of his inventive mind at work. Who knows how much more he might have brought us had he lived.

·         “The people of Crete make more history than they can consume locally.”

·         “‘Waldo is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death,’ said Clovis.”

Then there’s Never Rub Bottoms With A Porcupine, an anthology published by the English magazine, the New Statesman. It’s a compilation of responses to the publication’s literary-style competitions, to which readers respond with sometimes brilliant imagination. One competition (repeated occasionally) requests imagined proverbs of “a self-evident nature.” Three examples:

·         “Gloves make a poor present for a man with no hands.”

·         “A bald man does not fear gray hair.”

·         “A knowledge of Sanskrit is of little use to a man trapped in a sewer.”

But I’ve read new material too, including a book by Roy Peter Clark: The Glamour of Grammar. He provided a colorful reminder to keep a sentence’s subject and verb as close together as possible: “The creation of meaning… requires a subject and a verb, the king and queen of comprehensibility. And the king and queen are most powerful when they sit on adjacent thrones rather than in separate castles far away.”

Especially memorable for me, however, was his example of a Twitter message he encountered: “There’s a dead squirrel in the driveway. Mrs Liebowitz is worried that the death might be gang related. She’s checking FOX News to be sure.”

Ah, the joys of reading.

[300 words]

 

Are You Hangry?

 

“Are you hangry?”—The Conversation

You: “Funny how monosyllabic has five syllables, isn’t it?”

Me: “Yes, English is full of curiosities.”

You: “Such as?”

Me: “Take the letter A. If you start spelling out numbers (1, 2,  3...), you wouldn’t use the letter A until you reached a thousand.”

You: “Speaking of numbers, forty is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order.”

Me: “Regarding alphabetical order, English has a handful of words with each vowel, in order, once only. For example, abstemious and facetious.”

You: “How about this: can you think of any words beginning and ending in und?”

Me: “How about underground? Any others?”

You: “Yes: underfund. My turn: What are the only common words in English that end in -ngry?”

Me: “That’s easy: angry and hungry.”

You: “The Oxford English Dictionary now includes hangry, which combines angry and hungry to mean ‘bad tempered or irritable as a result of hunger.’”

Me: “I’m left handed. So one of my favorite words is stewardesses.”

You: “Because?”

Me: “It’s the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.”

You: “I don’t know if there’s a right-handed equivalent. But I like uncopyrightable; it’s one of only a few words that have 15 letters, none of them repeated.”

Me: “Sort of the opposite of bookkeeping, which has three repeats in a row.”

You: “I like words containing other words. My favorite is therein, which gives you 13 words using consecutive letters: the, he, her, er, here, I, there, ere, rein, re, in, therein, and herein. If you wonder about er, it’s okay. Merriam-Webster says it’s an interjection, usually indicating hesitation.”

Me: “Does anyone else care about all this?”

You: “Almost certainly not.”

Me: “Interesting word, almost. It’s the longest commonly used English word with all the letters in alphabetical order.”

You: “Oh.”

[300 words]