The Economist

The Economist

Given the cost I am not an ongoing subscriber to The Economist, a superb magazine that covers world events. I sign up on alternate years and benefit from a mini-liberal arts education each week.

The magazine also publishes a year-end guide, in which its well-informed editors predict what the next year will look like. This guide, plus a recent weekly issue, touched on two word-related topics that I thought worth sharing.

One was a piece on national anthems and their often blood-curdling calls to patriotism. As the writer notes, “an improbably large number drip with blood. This variously streams generously (Algeria); spills purely (Belgium); dyes the flag red (Vietnam); or waters the furrows impurely (France).” The first verse of France’s stirring Marseillaise “contains the charming and apparently bucolic line: ‘Do you hear in the countryside…’ it begins.” The writer asks, “What can the sound be? Cows lowing? The wind in the vine leaves? No: it is ‘the roar of those ferocious soldiers. They’re coming … to slit the throats of your women and children.’” (Did the French soccer team’s coach remind them to sing the bit about ferocious soldiers before their dramatic World Cup final with Argentina?)

The second article addressed a familiar theme: inflated job titles. Instead of meeting a receptionist as you enter an office, you may encounter “someone far grander: a lobby ambassador.” The article said one job ad for this role specified the person is expected to “curate experiences” for visitors. So, you as a visitor “might think you are asking someone where the toilet is; in fact you are having an experience with a brand ambassador.”

As I finalize my 2023 New Year’s resolution, I realize the need to elevate my rebranding efforts as I curate my readers’ experiences.

And just call me Mr. Ambassador

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Mumpsimus

I don’t remember when I first encountered the word mumpsimus. But it immediately became one of my favorites. Here’s why.

1.      It’s sharply focused. It means “someone who clings to an error despite all the evidence that the person is wrong.” Mumpsimus zeroes in on a particular situation with sharp, clear definition.

2.      Mumpsimus has a fascinating origin. The word comes from a Catholic priest who mangled the Latin wording in saying the Mass. When he should have said “sumpsimus,” meaning “we have received,” after the Eucharist, he said mumpsimus (which is meaningless) instead. Even though the error was repeatedly pointed out to him, he refused to correct his wording.

3.      When I first encountered mumpsimus I read a story that illustrated its meaning. A mental patient insists that he is dead. His psychiatrist asks him, “Do dead men bleed?” The patient says, “No.” So the doctor takes a needle and pricks the patient’s finger and a drop of blood oozes out. The patient looks at his finger in wonderment and says, “Wow, so dead men do bleed.”

4.      The unusualness of the word leads me to appreciate the richness of the English language. Now and again we meet a new word, which we realize is a perfect fit for a particular need. And we say, “Thank you, English, for giving this to me.”

5.      Finally, there’s the word’s utility. Mumpsimus is perfect for describing people who, for whatever motives, refuse to accept the facts. Perhaps it’s out of habit, like the priest getting the wording wrong. Or maybe it’s easier to cling to an error than make a painful change.

Mumpsimus, I contend, is a word for our times. We should push it to the front in our conversations. Put it in headlines. Shout it from the rooftops. Mumpsimus!

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Pre-boarding

 

Traveling earlier this month to Millersville, PA to be with our daughter and son-in-law to help with their young twins, I encountered another instance of the airlines’ eye-rolling use of language. It’s the concept of pre-boarding—which I take to mean “boarding before we begin boarding.” But I don’t know how they can accomplish that. It’s the equivalent of “eating before you eat” or “sleeping before you sleep.” Supposedly it’s a policy of giving preferential treatment to passengers who bought first class tickets or are traveling with small children or need extra helping getting down the walk-way. But why not call it “preferential boarding”?

If we placed “pre-boarding” in a special category of “pointless” words, it wouldn’t be alone. Think of the road signs sometimes placed before construction. They say, “Be Prepared To Stop.” Well, duh… That’s one of the first things you have drummed into you when learning to drive: Know how to stop this chunk of metal that you’re navigating, subject to the terrifying realties of physics and the knowledge that at 60 mph you’re covering 88 feet per second. Of course you should be prepared to stop—at any time!

OK, I’m overreacting. What the road construction people are saying is, “Be even more ready than usual to stop because we’re just ahead.” Admittedly, that won’t easily fit on a sign.

Still, the wording bugs me, in the same way I get irritated by those instructions we get on some frozen food items: “Do not overheat.” Of course you shouldn’t heat it more than you should heat it.

Back to pre-boarding: What if all those eligible for pre-boarding constituted everyone on the flight, and there was nobody else left to board? Could they still have pre-boarding before no other boarding? I’ll ask and share what I learn.

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Moo!

 

Three brief reflections, based on word encounters in the past few days.

Moo!

Yesterday Sue and I were at Spokane’s Vanessa Behan crisis nursery, where we have long volunteered by playing with kids or holding crying infants. A cheerful 2-year-old sat on my lap as we read one of those books with pictures of animals. This girl, whose language skills and vocabulary are on the cusp of exploding, latched on to the noise a cow makes. So she and I just kept saying “Moo!” to each other. Her vocabulary will soon burgeon, but for now she has a thorough grasp on the noise a cow makes. Me too.

Kench

On Sunday a friend sent me a list of about twenty “words to revive,” terms that have faded from English usage. Here are three verbs that I’ll add to my collection:

·         Brabble—to argue loudly

·         Jargogle—to confuse things or mix them up, and

·         Kench—to laugh loudly…

I looked up these definitions and confirmed the first two. But Merriam-Webster knew nothing of “kench” and laughter; instead, it defines the word as a noun, “A bin or enclosure in which fish or skins are salted.” Actually, that was my first guess.

Dialing

Over the weekend I read about the way we use outdated concepts to talk about new technologies. It referred to words like dial or a phrase like hang up, concepts from the days of rotary phones that we keep using even though we’re neither dialing anything on our smart phones, nor hanging them up. Or we speak about tuning in to a radio program, when there’s no dial in sight. Likewise, when did you last see a carbon copy of anything? Yet we send emails with blind carbon copies (bcc). Or rewind a digital program….

Time to sign off.

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Truss Me On This

 

English has an endless capacity to keep expanding its already stupendous vocabulary. Sometimes current events or historical developments supply new words, often based on the names of people, such as boycott, diesel, and mesmerize.

English speakers will undoubtedly tap into the misfortune of the UK’s shortest serving prime minister, Liz Truss. Gone after 45 days, the shortest tenure of any British PM, Truss’s name is bound to enter our language.

It may show up as a short measure of time, like a moment or jiffy, as in:

“Are you coming, dear?”

“Yes, I’ll be there in a truss.”

            Or it may take on the character of rare words that have opposite meanings, like cleave (to split or to hold together). Hence truss, defined by Merriam-Webster as “to secure tightly.” But its new additional meaning will be, “truss: to fall apart, collapse.” Example: “His poor planning meant his business trussed within months.”
            Some may turn to distorting the word slightly, giving it the ironic usage of “Hey, just truss me on this.” Similarly, drawing from those team-building exercises you may have had to endure at summer camp, there’s a trust fall. By contrast, an invitation to a truss fall foretells unmitigated failure.

Then there’s Wiktionary’s definition of truss as a verb: “To tie up a bird before cooking it”—surely a fitting (albeit sexist) description of the doomed PM’s fate.

Who knows, just as many of the nursery rhymes we learned as children had historical roots, maybe our great-great-grandchildren’s repertoire will incorporate what we are living through now:

Hickory dickory dock.

Poor Liz ran out the clock.

The clock struck one

And she was gone.

Hickory dickory dock.

And your great-great-granddaughter will ask, “Daddy, who was Liz?” He will reply, “I don’t know. Let’s ask Alexa—it’ll take just a truss.”

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The Words of Others

 

I set out writing this blog by promising you three hundred words every two weeks. However, I didn’t say they would always be my own words. So today I’m sharing with you some quotations that have been especially meaningful to me.

 Many of you know that I’ve long had a love affair with the wisdom and wit I’ve encountered in others. As a result, I have published eight anthologies of quotations, on topics as diverse as travel and leadership, and the media and paradoxes. The most recent is a brief selection on grief, Grace for the Grieving: Words of Comfort in Times of Loss. (Available on Amazon.)

 Now, in alphabetical order by author, here we have:

 Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

                        – Philo Judaeus

 There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to an ordinary mortal…  It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors…  Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.

                        – C. S. Lewis

 I’m continually asking myself, “What is the best use of my time right now?”

                        – Alan Lakein

 Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions.

                        – Dag Hammarskjöld

 When we cannot do the good we would, we must be ready to do the good we can.

                        – Matthew Henry

 A wise man cares not for what he cannot have.

– George Herbert

 If not you, who? If not now, when?

– Rabbi Hillel

 Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work.

                        – Charles Kingsley

 Wisdom is merely knowing what to do next.

                        – Unknown

 At the end of my life, God will not ask me, “Why were you not Moses?”  God will ask instead, “Why were you not Zusya?”

                        – Rabbi Zusya

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Thanks Be To Spotters

 

I was out of town when a friend’s email alerted me to a church reader-board sign I might want to photograph. Fortunately, when I got back to Spokane it was still there. Naively, or boldly, it invited all those passing by to “Expose Yourself to Jesus.” Quite apart from the profound theological issues the sign raised, I immediately captured it on film (well, digitally).

I’ve since added it to my slide presentation of unusual signs, and “Expose Yourself to Jesus” got its first public viewing at a Rotary club lunch in Spokane last Thursday. I think the audience received it with a mix of amusement and disbelief: amusement at this message’s double entendre, disbelief that anyone could be that unaware of how passers by might interpret the message. Just as astonishing is the fact that it was left up for public viewing for at least two weeks. Maybe the church has subsequently changed it, perhaps after someone stopped by the church office and said, “Um… about your reader-board: have you considered the possibility….?”

This posting serves as a thank-you to friends like John, who steered me toward this gem. Other examples in my collection come from alert spotters aware of my delight in photographing unusual signs. Someone told me about another Spokane reader-board, which proclaimed: “Do It Yourself—We Can Help.” And a friend near Washington DC introduced me to “No Parking On Railroad Tracks Except When Train Is Coming.” Yes, you read that correctly; no, I won’t tell you the context.

Another example, spotted by one of my students, was at a small cemetery. It read, with charming brevity, “Cemetery: No Dumping.”

The moral of the story? Every communication, especially easily misunderstood signs, requires careful checking before you go public. Lest you, er…, expose yourself to my always-alert spotters.

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