February 2008

Here’s Language Log’s Geoffrey Pullum embracing adverbs and shunning their snooty detractors:

A beautiful Valentine’s Day to all our readers. For my philosopher partner I managed to find a card which had the words passionately, devotedly, fervently, completely, utterly, and absolutely on the front (with the first person singular pronoun as subject and adore you as the predicate). It seemed ideal. When a grammarian loves you, you should expect adverbs. Lots and lots of adverbs.Adverbs do have enemies; Stephen King has said (in his On Writing) that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs”, and his hostility to them follows in a long tradition. A long tradition of pontificating fools who should shut up and write rather than telling us how (nearly all of them unwittingly use adverbs in the very paragraphs in which they condemn them; on this, see chapter 2 of Ben Yagoda’s lovely little book If You Catch An Adjective, Kill It, published in 2006). There were adverbs, daffodils, morning tea, and breakfast in bed this morning. And a kiss, of course. When a grammarian kisses you, you stay kissed.

I admire Stephen King and can even understand (though not agree with) his distaste for adverbs, but I can never forgive him for his mean-spirited dig at Nicholson Baker, one of my favorite writers, who is twice the writer that Stephen—Pontificating Fool—King is.

February 14, 2008

The Freakonomics blog is running a contest to come up with a six-word slogan for, as Borat would say, the U.S. and A.

Here are a few submissions that stood out:

Still Using Fahrenheit, Feet, and Gallons.

Hubris: it’s not just for Greeks!

Intelligently designed to constantly evolve.

When in doubt, whip it out!

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Democracy.

IN UR KOUNTRY, STEALIN UR OILZ

Link

February 4, 2008

According to Schott’s 2008 Desk Almanac:

Retronyms are terms that has been created to clarify an exiting word rendered ambiguous by evolutions in technology or social practice.

I’m currently reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” which is a beautifully written and thoroughly researched lament about our evolution (or degeneration) from eaters of food to consumers of “food-like products.”

With that book in the forefront of my consciousness, the following retronyms, listed in the Feb. 1 entry of my Schott’s page-a-day calendar, took on a timely significance:

  • Organic food
  • Conventional oven
  • Free-range eggs
  • Fruit in season

These terms came into being with the advent of the industrial food supply. Before chemical fertizers and factory farms and free trade agreements and cheap oil, all food was organic, free range and/or seasonal.

And it was cooked in a conventional oven.

Now we must specify.

[UPDATE]

In the near future, we may have to add a modifier to ‘cheeseburger.’ As in, “This conventional cheeseburger is much better than the canned cheeseburger I had yesterday.”

February 1, 2008