Word Watch: "Washington Read"

1 August 2004

One term that is is gaining some ground among those in government circles is the Washington read, the practice of standing in a bookstore and skimming the index of a new, tell-all book for references to yourself, instead of reading or buyrng the whole book.

Richard Armitage went so far as to admit to the 9/11 panel that he has given it “the Washington read"—i.e., he looked himself up in the index and then read “what was said about me.”
—“Womb It May Concern” by Sam Schechner, Slate.com, 26 March 2004

For power-readers, the “Washington read"—a perusal of the index and some corresponding text—has offered a shortcut some won’t admit to.
—“Making the List” by Ellen Gamerman, Baltimore Sun, 28 June 2004

Anyone who gave Clinton’s hefty book the Washington read (that is, a quick skim of the index pages) quickly discovered that Clinton made several mentions of Bossie.
—“You can’t teach an old attack dog new tricks,” by Eric Boehlert, Salon.com, 20 July 2004

Word of the Month: Olympic Games

1 August 2004

On the 13th of the month, the Olympic Games open in Athens Greece. It will be the 25th time the games have been held since the Olympics were revived in 1896. (Although it is the 28th modern Olympiad; three of the games were canceled during the two world wars.) In honor of the games and the athletes competing in them, our word of the month is Olympic Games, n.; originally games contested in honor of Zeus, held on the plain of Olympia in Greece every four to five years; the ancient games were first held ca.776 BC until they were abolished by Roman Emperor Theodosius in 394 AD; in modern use to denote the games established in 1896 by Baron de Coubertin.

What follows is an examination of words associated with the Olympics and Olympic sports.

agony, n.; anguish, pain; from the Greek agonia, meaning contest, struggle, ca.1386. The agon in ancient Greece were the spectators at games like the Olympics.

anchor, n.; from the Old English ancor, ultimately related to the Greek anc-, meaning bend or crook. The sense of the runner in the last leg of a relay race dates from 1934.

archery, n.; the skill and practice of using a bow and arrow, from the Old French archerie, before 1400. Archery was an Olympic medal sport from 1900 to 1920. It was reinstated in 1972.

athlete, n.; from the Latin athleta, ultimately from the Greek athletes, which in turn is from athlos, contest. In English use from 1528 to denote a participant in ancient games, from 1827 to denote modern participants in physical games and feats. The adjective athletic is from 1636. The noun athletics, denoting physical contests is from 1727. An obsolete form of the noun, athletic, is from 1605.

badminton, n.; a game similar to lawn tennis, played with shuttlecocks instead of balls, 1874; named after a town and estate in Gloucestershire, meaning the estate of a man named Baduhelm. An Olympic medal sport since 1992.

baseball, n.; a game popular in the United States where a batter hits a pitched ball and attempts to round a circuit of bases before being tagged with the ball by one of the nine defenders. The name of the game dates to 1744 and was used for various precursors of the modern game, the rules of which were codified in 1845. An Olympic medal sport since 1992.

basketball, n., game invented by James Naismith in 1892, where two teams of five compete to sink a ball into baskets hung ten feet high at either end of the court. Men’s basketball has been an Olympic sport since 1936, women’s since 1976.

bicycle, n. & v.; a two-wheeled vehicle powered by the rider, to ride a bicycle; adopted from French in 1868. The French word is a modern formation from the Latin bi-, two, and the Greek kuklos, wheel. The clipped form, cycling, has been in use since 1883. Cycling has been an Olympic sport since 1896.

box 1) n.; a blow from a fist; a Middle English word of unknown origin, ca.1385. Cognates in other Germanic languages are all borrowings from English. 2) v.; to hit with a fist; from the noun, 1519. 3) boxing, the sport of fighting with fists; 1711. Boxing has been an Olympic sport since 1904.

canoe, n. & v.; a small boat without a keel; 1555. From the Spanish canoa, ultimately from a native Haitian word. The verb meaning to paddle or propel a canoe is from 1842. Canoeing has been an Olympic sport since 1936.

Citius, Altius, Fortius, c.phr.; Latin phrase meaning faster, higher, stronger. The motto of the Olympic games since 1924.

decathlon, n.: an athletic contest of ten different track-and-field events; modern formulation from the Greek deca-, ten, and athlos, contest, 1912. The Olympic decathlon consists of the long jump, high jump, discus throw, shot put, javelin throw, 100 m race, 400 m race, 1,500 m race, 110 m hurdles, and the pole vault. The winner of the Olympic decathlon is dubbed “the world’s greatest athlete.”

discus, n.; a metal plate used in throwing competitions; from the Latin, ultimately from the Greek diskos.

dive, v.; to plunge into liquid; from two Old English verbs, dufan, meaning to duck or sink, and dyfan, to dip or submerge. Diving has been an Olympic sport since 1904.

dressage, n.; the discipline of training horses to perform precise movements; from the French, literally meaning training, 1936. Dressage has been an Olympic event since 1912.

épée, n.; a sword designed for thrusting; in competition, the same length as a foil, but heavier and stiffer. From the French word for sword, 1889.

equestrian, adj.; pertaining to horse riding; from the Latin eques meaning horseman, 17th century. Equestrian events have been competed at the Olympics since 1900.

eventing, n.; an equestrian competition that combines jumping and dressage; from one-, two-, or three-day event, 1965. Prior to 1952, Olympic competition in eventing was restricted to military officers.

fencing, n.; the art and discipline of swordmanship; a clipping of defence. The archaic noun fence dates to 1533 and the modern fencing is from 1581. The verb dates to 1598. Fencing has been an Olympic sport since 1896.

foil, n.; a light, flexible thrusting sword with a blunt point used for practice or competition; the word dates to 1594 and is of unknown origin. Possibly a reference to the blunted or “foiled” point or possibly from parrying or “foiling” an opponent’s thrust.

football, n.; a game where two teams attempt to kick a ball down a field to a goal at either end; from 1424. The modern game dates to 1863 when the English Football Association was created. Men’s football has been an Olympic sport since 1900, women’s since 1996.

Fosbury flop, n.; high-jumping technique in which the athlete attempts to clear the bar facing upwards, with back to the bar; after high-jumper Dick Fosbury who used the technique to win the gold medal in the 1968 Mexico City Games.

gymnasium, n.; a place to practice athletics; from the Latin and ultimately the Greek meaning literally to train while naked, 1598.

gymnastic, adj. & n.; from the Greek meaning skilled in athletics, this was the original English sense from 1574. The modern sense of gymnastics, meaning a set of exercises requiring strength and coordination, is from 1652. An Olympic sport since 1896.

handball, n.; a game between two teams of seven who throw, catch, and dribble a ball toward goals at either end the court. Men’s handball as been an Olympic sport since 1936; women’s since 1976.

heat, n.; originally a warm-up or practice race, now a race to qualify athletes for further competition; from the idea of warming up or getting hot, 1577. 

heptathlon, n.; an event comprising seven different athletic events; a modern formulation from the Greek hept-, seven, and athlos, contest, 1977. The constituent events in the Olympics are 100 m hurdles, long jump, high jump, 200 m race, shot put, javelin throw, and 800 m race. The Olympic heptathlon is a women’s event, the counterpart of the men’s decathlon. The heptathlon has been competed since 1984.

hippodrome, n.; a track for horses or chariot races; from the Greek hippo, horse, + dromus, race. In English use to refer to ancient race tracks since 1549.

hockey, n.; a game where two teams use sticks or clubs, curved at one end, to drive the ball toward goals at either end of the field; called field hockey in North America to distinguish it from ice hockey. Possibly from the Old French hoquet, meaning a shepherd’s crook, but early citations are lacking. Modern use of the word hockey dates to 1838. There is an isolated appearance of the word in the 16th C. Hockey has been an Olympic sport since 1908

hurdle, n.; a barrier across a racecourse that a runner must leap over, in plural form a footrace of this type; from the Old English hyrdel, a portable frame used for temporary fencing, in athletic usage since 1833

javelin, n., a light spear thrown by hand, now used primarily in athletic competition; from the French javeline, in English use from 1513.

judo, n.; martial art developed by Jigoro Kano in the 1880s; from the Japanese name for the sport, which in turn is derived from Chinese, jou, gentleness, and tao, way. Judo has been an Olympic sport since 1964.

jump the gun, c.phr.; to begin a race before the starter’s pistol is fired, metaphorically to begin any venture before one is supposed to; the phrase beat the gun/pistol has been in use since 1905. The switch to jump dates to at least 1942 and is American in origin.

kayak, n.; a small, covered boat allowing one or two passengers and propelled by a double-bladed paddle; from the Inuit qajaq; in English use from 1757. Kayaking has been an Olympic sport since 1936; women’s kayaking has been competed since 1948.

lap, v. & n.; to travel a single circuit of a racecourse, a single circuit of a racecourse, to pass a competing runner; from the sense meaning to fold or coil, from 1923 in the athletic sense.

marathon, n.; a running race of 26 miles, 385 yards (41.195 km), metaphorically any lengthy endeavor; in English use since the first modern Olympics in 1896; after a town on the Greek coast, the site of an Athenian victory over the Persians in 490 BC. The name of the modern race comes from the legend that a messenger ran the 22 miles from Marathon to Athens to bring news of the victory, dying just after delivering the message. Sometimes the messenger is identified as Pheidippides, who Herodotus records as running the 150 miles from Athens to Sparta to secure aid before the battle.

Olympiad, n.; period of time between one ancient Olympic competition and the next; from the Greek; in English usage since at least 1387. In modern use to mean the modern Olympic competitions, 1896.

palaestra, n.; a wrestling practice arena, a gymnasium; from the Greek, in English use from 1412.

pentathlon, n.; an event comprising five athletic events; from the Greek penta-, five, + athlos, contest; the modern pentathlon event in the Olympics consists of pistol shooting, épée fencing, 200 m swim, equestrian show jumping, and a 3,000 m running race. Prior to the advent of the heptathlon in 1984, the pentathlon was also a women’s athletic event consisting of running, hurdles, long jump, high jump, and shot put.

ping pong, n.; table tennis; echoic from the sound of the ball striking the paddle, since 1900. Ping pong has been an Olympic event since 1988.

relay, n.; a type of running race between teams of athletes, usually four, each member running one leg of the race; this sense is in English use from 1898. In earlier use to mean a set of hounds and horses posted to continue a hunt for a deer when the first set is tired. From ca.1410, from the Old French relais.

row, v.; to propel a boat via oars; from Old English, c.950. Rowing has been an Olympic sport since 1896.

sabre, n.; a curved, cutting sword; from the French, 1680. The French word is an unexplained alteration of the German sable; the origin of the German word is unknown. It is saber in American spelling.

sail, v.; to propel a boat using wind power; from the Old English siälan, ca.893. Sailing has been an Olympic sport since 1900.

shoot, v.; to move swiftly, to rush, to send forth, to throw or propel, esp. missile or bullets from a firearm; from the Old English scéotan, a common Germanic root. Shooting has been an Olympic event since 1896.

shuttlecock, n.; the object volleyed back and forth in badminton, consisting of a cork ball with a tail of feathers; from shuttle, meaning dart, + cock, in reference to the feathers; in use from 1522.

skeet, n.; a form of clay pigeon shooting in which pigeons are projected at a variety of angles along a semicircular range; the name was an American invention in 1926, modeled after the Old English scéotan, to shoot.

soccer, n.; a name for football, esp. in the United States; formed from Assoc., short for Association Football, a name that distinguished it from rugby; 1889.

softball, n., a game similar to baseball, but played with a larger ball which is pitched to the batter underhanded. The name dates to 1926, although the sport is somewhat older. Softball has been a women’s Olympic sport since 1996.

sprint, v. & n.; to run a short-distance at full speed, a race of this type; from the Old Norse spretta, in dialectical English until the 1860s when it became standard.

stadium, n.; an ancient unit of linear measure of 600 Greek or Roman feet, a race and racecourse of this length; in English use from 1398. By 1603, the sense had transferred to the place of competition

steeplechase, n.; a cross-country race with obstacles such as fences and water jumps; originally a horseracing term, 1793, later applied to footraces, 1864. From the phrase to hunt the steeple, a horseracing game where riders would race to the nearest church steeple, 1785.

swim, v.; to move through water; from Old English. Swimming has been an Olympic event since 1896.

table tennis, n.; a game of tennis played with paddles and a small ball on top of a table; 1887. Table tennis has been an Olympic event since 1988.

taekwondo, n.; a Korean martial art characterized by kicking and punching; from tae, kick, + kwon, fist, + do, art. In English use since 1967. An Olympic event since 2000.

tennis, n.; a racquet sport where players volley the ball back and forth over a net; in English use since c.1400 to denote an early form of the game now known as real tennis or court tennis. The modern game was originally known as lawn tennis, 1874, and clipped to simply tennis by 1878. The origin of the name is not certain, but is probably from the French tenez, meaning prepare to receive, a call made by the server. Tennis was competed at the Olympics from 1896 to 1924. The sport returned to the Olympics in 1988.

track, n.; a racecourse, 1836; US term for athletics; a clipping of track and field, 1934. From the older sense meaning a trail, 1470, from the Old French trac.

track and field, n.; athletics, track denotes running events and field the throwing and jumping events; 1905.

trap, n.; a device for projecting a clay pigeon into the air, 1812; clay pigeon shooting in general; from the sense of a device used to catch animals; Old English treppe.

volleyball, n.; a sport where teams volley a ball over a high net, 1896; from the French volée, simultaneous discharge of missiles, late-16th C. An Olympic sport since 1964.

weightlifting, n.; sport where the competitors lift ever increasing weights, 1896. An Olympic event since that year.

western roll, n.; high jumping technique where the athlete takes off with the leg nearest the bar and rolls towards the bar, clearing it horizontally and face down; 1964.

wrestle, v.; to strive to throw an opponent to the ground by grappling and holding; from Old English. Wrestling has been an Olympic sport since 1896.

Book Review: Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves

1 July 2004

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation:
“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

The idea that a book on proper punctuation would rocket to the top of the bestseller charts is ludicrous. But the cliché says that truth is stranger than fiction, and indeed, such a thing has happened. As I write this review, Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is number two on the New York Times bestseller list and has been on the list for ten weeks. It is number three on the Amazon.com sales list. Compounding the strangeness is that the book is British and has not been edited to reflect differences in American punctuation. The book has achieved similar commercial success in Britain.

Longtime readers who know of my descriptivist bent may be surprised to hear this, but I was rather eagerly looking forward to the American debut of this book. I have long held that punctuation, along with related rules about capitalization, spelling, and spacing, are the traffic signals of the written word. They serve to make reading easier and the writer’s meaning clearer. As such, standardization is highly prized. This book, however, does little to aid this goal.

Even more amazing is that this book is not a particularly good book on punctuation. It is not organized to be a useful guide or reference. Its jokes, of which there are many, are mildly amusing at best, often simply feeble, and always smarmy and smug. Truss provides no conceptual underpinning for the rules she promulgates, simply stating that these are the rules and that’s that. And she and her editors commit the sin of sins for a prescriptivist tome, it is filled with “errors” and violations of the very rules it advocates.

In defense of the first two criticisms, that it was not edited for the American market and that it does not provide clear rules for the punctuation it espouses, it should be noted that the book is not intended as a style guide. Rather it is a manifesto, a call to arms, as it were, for people to take up the cudgel and go to war for good punctuation.

As to the British bent to the book, the publisher’s note states, “any attempt at a complete Americanization of this book would be akin to an effort to Americanize the Queen of England: futile and, this publisher feels, misguided.” That’s fair enough. But one can then hardly use this as a criticism for punctuation practices in America.

Okay, so one should not try and use it as a style guide or a reference. With no index, detailed table of contents, or appendix that lays out the rules according to Truss, you will get no help from this book in determining whether a particular punctuation is correct. But is it an effective manifesto?

My vote is no. This is not a manifesto, but rather a tantrum. Truss wants something from the language, but she cannot articulate what it is. So she just complains. Every good manifesto lists a bill of particulars, clearly stating exactly what the call to arms is all about. Take the Declaration of Independence, for example. Once one gets past the familiar opening paragraphs about self-evident truths and men being created equal, the bulk of the document consists of a long list of specific and clearly stated complaints, such as:

He [George III] has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

Jefferson leaves no doubt as to exactly why the colonists were rebelling back in 1776. By contrast, Truss rarely articulates what the rules of punctuation should be. She simply complains that people aren’t following them (whatever they are). And when she does state the rules, she violates them herself at various points in the book.

Truss also fails to explain exactly why good punctuation is so important. There is a need for this, but Eats, Shoots and Leaves does not meet it. Other than examples of benefits to clarity, like that of the title, she does not make a conceptual case. Let’s go back to the Declaration of Independence. In its opening paragraphs, Jefferson makes the general case:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Only then does he list the bill of particulars detailing how George III became destructive of the end of securing the unalienable rights of the American colonists. It is this conceptual argument, a theory of government that Jefferson distills into two paragraphs of glorious prose, for which people remember and value the Declaration. The list of particulars is largely forgotten and ignored, irrelevant to all but historians.

Truss attempts but fails to do this in the introduction, leaving us with a rambling mess of particulars that lack coherence or clarity. The closest she comes is a quote from a stylebook of an unnamed British newspaper defining punctuation as, “a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.” Unfortunately this definition is incomplete and Truss fails to develop it.

Instead of explaining how punctuation can assist reading and comprehension, Truss simply gives negative examples of how poor punctuation obscures meaning. While many of these examples, like the Panda joke represented by the book’s title, are amusing, they are hardly the stuff of revolutionary fervor.

Instead it is a call to rap people upside the head and tell them to use correct punctuation or they will appear as idiots—and points for the need for a style guide as opposed to a manifesto.

It also ignores a second, equally important function of punctuation: it serves to translate the tone and rhythm of speech into print. Most people think that writing is the primary mode of language, but that is not the case. Writing is usually nothing more than an attempt to imitate speech.

The lack of a conceptual underpinning to her rant leads to her rule about when to use a comma splice, “only do it if you’re famous” (p. 88). Instead of explaining how great writers have used the comma splice for effect, she simply adopts the posture that you can get away with violating the rules if you’re notable enough.

And evidently, Truss thinks she is notable enough herself to violate the very rules she promulgates. For example, Truss lists three acceptable uses for the semicolon, to link independent clauses without using a conjunction, to separate items in a list that contain commas, and to denote a pause that is longer than that created by a comma. (Actually, Truss gives conflicting explanations of what the third rule actually is. This is the explanation given in the section on semicolons, but in the chapter on commas Truss says that a semicolon should be used to join clauses that are linked by the conjunctions however and nevertheless.) Yet right there in the preface (to the American edition) she writes:

My hopes for Eats, Shoots & Leaves were bold but bathetic; chirpy but feet-on-the-ground; presumptuous yet significantly parenthetical.

Either she has made an error by omitting the commas before “but” and “yet,” or she should use commas for the items in the list, not semicolons.
In the very next sentence, she misuses quotation marks, using them for emphasis rather than quotation (italics would be a better choice):

My book was aimed at the tiny minority of British people “who love punctuation and don’t like to see it mucked about with”.

And then in the next sentence Truss violates more rules of quotation marks, failing to place a comma before the quotation and switching from British to American practice and placing the ending comma inside the marks. To cap it off, she uses a comma when she should be using a semicolon:

When my own mother suggested we print on the front of the book “For the select few,” I was hurt, I admit it; I bit my lip and blinked a tear.

All this and we’re only on the second page of the preface.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves is also filled with misquotations and misstatements. On page 143, Truss has Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady saying, “The Arabs learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.” The line actually reads, “Arabians,” not “Arabs.” That’s a minor nitpick, but sloppy research like this leads to more significant errors, such as when she writes:

British readers of The New Yorker who assume that this august publication is in constant ignorant error when it allows “1980’s” evidently have no experience with how that famously punctilious periodical operates editorially.

Evidently Truss has no experience in this regard either. The New Yorker style is to spell out the names of decades, “the nineteen-eighties.”

After all this, we return to the conundrum presented at the beginning. Why is it that a book on punctuation, especially one that is not very good, is so wildly popular on both sides of the Atlantic? The answer is that smug superiority sells. Write a book disdaining how the unwashed masses do things; include quotes from Fielding, Woolf, and Shaw; tell an amusing anecdote or two about James Thurber and Harold Ross and you have a bestseller. The key to understanding the success of Eats, Shoots & Leaves (and any other prescriptivist book for that matter) is that it feeds the egos of those with literary pretensions. But this kind of prescriptivism displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what language is.

Grammatical language is the greatest and most democratic of human institutions. It is what separates us from the other animals. It is not an invention of one person, but of us all. It belongs to all of us, but is answerable to none of us. It is wild, ever changing, and quite ungovernable. Ungovernable, but it can be mastered—not as a trainer masters a wild horse, but as a surfer masters a wave, using the force of it to propel the writer and the audience in an exhilarating rush.

Language is not mastered by adhering to strict rules. It is mastered by understanding which rules actually exist and why. Once this understanding is reached, one can apply, bend, and ignore the rules as appropriate to achieve great effect.

Hardcover; 240 pages; Gotham Books; April 2004; ISBN: 1592400876; $17.50.

Word of the Month: Liberty

1 July 2004

July hosts the anniversaries of two great 18th century political revolutions, the American and the French. Despite their occurrence in the late 18th century and commonality of political ideals and rhetoric, the two revolutions could hardly have been more different. One was the secession of a group of colonies led by wealthy merchants and landowners. The other was an uprising by the mob in the streets. One was relatively bloodless, the worst punishment inflicted on those that supported the old regime was usually forced exile and seizure of property. The usual punishment in the other was loss of one’s head.1 One resulted in a long-lasting and stable democratic government. The other resulted in rule by a megalomaniac intent on conquering all of Europe.

The 4th of July is Independence Day in the United States, the day in 1776 when the 2nd Continental Congress approved the draft Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson and broke its political ties with Britain. Ten days later, on the 14th, is the anniversary of the 1789 storming of the Bastille prison in Paris, the event that marks the beginning the of the French Revolution.

Because of this, our word of the month is liberty, n., freedom, esp. from the political dominion of others, c.1375, taken as a rallying cry of the revolutions of the 18th C. Some other terms associated with the American and French Revolutions are:

ancien régime, n., the former system of government, esp. the French monarchy before 1789, in English use from 1794.

articles of confederation, n., a written agreement that governs an alliance between persons or states, esp. used as the proper name for an early American constitution, in force from 1777-1789. In use since 1603.

Benedict Arnold, n., a traitor, also arnold, after an American revolutionary general who offered to surrender the fortress of West Point to the British for ₤20,000; the plot was foiled when his accomplice, a Major André, was captured. Arnold’s treachery was especially galling to the Americans because he had been one of their greatest heroes. He was personally responsible for the American victory at Saratoga—the turning point in the war, and was perhaps the only truly great military leader on the American side other than Washington. Arnold escaped to Britain; André was hanged. In metaphorical use since 1793.

bill of rights, n., a legally binding declaration of political privileges and immunities, esp. the English Bill of Rights, passed by Parliament in 1689 which limited the powers of the crown, or the first ten amendments to the US constitution, passed in 1789, which limited the powers of the federal government and guaranteed certain individual liberties. In contemporary use, the term is often used as a label for legislation that provides benefits to a group of citizens, e.g., the G.I. Bill of Rights passed by Congress in 1944 that provided educational and other benefits to soldiers returning from the war and the various proposed Patient’s Bills of Rights, that seek to govern the health insurance industry.

bourgeois, adj., 1) pertaining to the French middle classes, 1564; 2) pertaining to the middle class in general, often used disparagingly to denote conventional and unimaginative styles and tastes, 1764; in Marxist usage, capitalistic, 1850; n., 1) a French freeman living in a city or town, contrasting with the peasant class and nobility, now used to denote the mercantile or middle class of any country, from 1674; 2) in Marxist usage, an exploiter of the proletariat, from 1883; 3) a socially conventional person, 1930.

commune, n., a French administrative district that governs a municipality, 1792, esp. the Commune of Paris, which usurped the power of the municipal government in 1792 and played a leading role in the Reign of Terror until suppressed in 1794, also the name for a short-lived communist government established in Paris in 1871. Since 1818 the term has also been used to denote a community established on principles of shared resources and labor.

constitution, n., the system of principles and institutions by which a nation is governed, the supreme governing principles of law. Constitutions may be unwritten, as in Britain, or written documents, as in the United States. From 1735.

émigré, n., a French royalist who fled the country in the wake of the revolution, 1792; in contemporary use to denote any political exile, 1955.

federalist, n., one who advocated for a strong, central government in the wake of the American Revolution, a member of the Federalist Party, 1787. The Federalist Papers were a series of newspaper editorials that advocated ratification of the US Constitution, written anonymously by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay.

give me liberty or give me death, c.phr., motto of the American Revolution, first uttered by Patrick Henry on the floor of the Virginia House of Burgesses in March 1775.

guillotine, n. & v., a device, consisting of a blade suspended between two grooved posts, used to behead people, from the name of its inventor, Dr. Joseph Guillotin. In use from 1792 in French, 1793 in English. The verb, meaning to behead someone by a guillotine, has been in English use since 1794.

Hamiltonian, n. & adj., a follower of the political ideas articulated by Alexander Hamilton, the first US secretary of the treasury, who advocated for a strong central government, a national bank, and for government’s role in promoting commercial interests of the nation; pertaining to those ideas; in use as a noun since 1797, as an adjective since 1843. Cf. Jeffersonian.

Hessian, adj. & n., pertaining to the state of Hesse in Germany, 1677; a native of Hesse, esp. one of the mercenary soldiers from Hesse employed by the British during the American Revolution, 1729; a mercenary regardless of state of origin, 1877.

in harm’s way, c.phr., applied to military, esp. naval, actions, from a 1778 quote by John Paul Jones: “I wish to have no Connection with any Ship that does not Sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.”

Jacobin, n. & adj., a member of a French political society that advocated extremes of democracy and equality or sympathizers with their cause, 1790; by 1800 the term had generalized to mean any political reformer. From the nickname of the Dominican Order of the Roman Catholic clergy, c.1325; given because their first monastery in France was at the Church of St. Jacques in Littré. The political society met in a former Dominican monastery.

Jeffersonian, adj. & n., pertaining to the political doctrines of Thomas Jefferson, who advocated a minimalist and decentralized government and emphasis on individual rights and freedoms, 1799; a follower of the political ideas of Jefferson, 1803. Cf. Hamiltonian.

John Hancock, n., a signature, 1903, from John Hancock’s signature on the Declaration of Independence, which was unusually large and bold. Hancock, a prominent Boston merchant, was the president of the 2nd Continental Congress and the first to sign the Declaration.

liberté, egalité, fraternity, c.phr., motto of the French Revolution, meaning liberty, equality, brotherhood. In December 1790, Robespierre recommended that these words be emblazoned on the uniforms and flags of the National Guard; his proposal was rejected, but the phrase continued in informal use. The phrase was finally officially enshrined in the preamble to the constitution of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, c.phr., enshrined by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as the inalienable rights of humans, based on life, liberty, and property, advocated by John Locke as the basic rights of humans.

macaroni, n., a dandy or fop, from London’s Macaroni Club, an establishment known for serving foreign foods, hence the name, and for its stylish and well-dressed members, 1764. Now chiefly remembered because of a line in the song Yankee Doodle, popular during the American Revolution, “stuck a feather in his cap and called it Macaroni.”

Marseillaise, n., the French National Anthem, composed in 1792, the original French title was Chant de guerre pour l’armée du Rhin, but from the beginning the song was also called La Marche des Marseillois, after volunteer army units from Marseilles who adopted it as their anthem. It was being called l’hymne des Marseillais by 1795. The form la Marseillaise is not attested in French until 1832. In English, the name The Marseillaise Hymn was in use by 1794 and The Marsellois by 1815.

minuteman, n., 1) the member of an American militia unit during the Revolution who held themselves ready for immediate service, 1774; 2) more generally, a member of any militia group or political cause, esp. in the late 20th century a member of such a group that advocates military action against the US government, 1859; 3) name for a type of intercontinental ballistic missile, 1961.

patriot, n., from the French patriote, ultimately from the Latin patriota, fellow-countryman, and the Greek, patrios, of one’s father. One who sacrifices for the well-being of one’s nation, 1605.

republic, n., a state where supreme power lies with the people and their elected representatives, from either the French république or Latin respublica, 1604.

shot heard ‘round the world, c.phr., name given to the first shot fired at the Battle of Lexington that started the American Revolution, from an 1875 poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson commemorating the centennial of the event, “Here once the embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world.”

terrorism, n., the use of violence and fear to achieve political goals, originally applied to the period from March 1793 to July 1794 where the party in power in France engaged in indiscriminate bloodshed, the reign of terror, in English use from 1795.

Tory, n., an anglicized spelling of the Irish tóraidhe, or pursuer. 1) an Irish outlaw, 1646; 2) a supporter of James, Duke of York who was excluded from the Crown because he was Roman Catholic, so called because many of his supporters were Irish, 1679; 3) a political party that arose from James’ supporters, the forerunner of the modern Conservative party, 1689; 4) in US usage, one who remained loyal to the crown during the American Revolution, originally members of the Tory party, 1775.

(Notes)
1 Some 15,000 died in the American Revolution, mostly soldiers from disease or in battle. Over 40,000 died by the guillotine in Paris alone.

Book Review: John McWhorter's Doing Our Own Thing

1 June 2004

The supposed decline of the English language is often bemoaned by grammarians and prescriptivists. In these pages we have frequently taken to task those who seek to impose arbitrary and pointless grammatical and usage prescriptivism, but is there something more to these complaints. Once you move beyond split infinitives and the difference between peruse and read, the question of whether or not we are losing artful use of our language remains.

John McWhorter’s Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care seeks to answer the questions of whether or not American society has lost the artful use of language and what impact this will have on our lives. He succeeds brilliantly at the first question, but falls short in answering the second. McWhorter charts a sea change in American use of the language dating to the mid-1960s, when we lost formalism in our public discourse. He then seeks to explain why this loss is consequential; unfortunately he does not quite succeed in describing why we should, like, care.

First, be forewarned about what this book is not. If you are seeking a book that picks apart texts for grammatical “errors” or “sloppy” usage, this is not it. McWhorter does not go in for prescriptivism. He is a linguist by trade, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and knows better than that. He does not bemoan the change in language simply because it is change. Instead, he is concerned with aesthetics in how we use the English language.

McWhorter opens the book with an examination of the speech delivered at Gettysburg in 1863, not the famous one delivered by Lincoln, which was billed as mere remarks by the president, but rather the main oration of the day, a speech by Edward Everett, perhaps the foremost orator in mid-19th century America. Everett opened his long oration with:

Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghanies [sic] dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed;—grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and sympathy.

The 19th century audience may have eaten this up, but it is unlikely that Everett would get any indulgence or sympathy if he were speaking like this today. Not only is the prose too purple and verbose for the modern ear, but Everett’s opening paragraph is almost a third as long as Lincoln’s entire address. He went on like this for two hours to an enraptured audience. The MTV generation would be snoring in five minutes.

McWhorter compares Everett’s address with a direct modern equivalent, the memorial service on the site of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2002. Both events were intended to commemorate the deaths of thousands of Americans, but the speeches given were so very different. In 2002 the main “speech” was a reading of the names of those whose lives were lost. This would have been as unthinkable in 1863 as Everett’s speech would be today. A 19th century audience would expect the speaker to explain the event and put it into historical and moral perspective. A modern audience expects that any such attempt by a speaker would be pompous and self-serving.

But it is not simply the purple prose of Everett that would be unacceptable in modern public discourse; it is formal speech itself that is eschewed in American society. A president like George W. Bush, who cannot even deliver a brief scripted statement without looking like a deer caught in the headlights, can get half the electorate to vote for him because, among other things, he talks like “plain folks.” And it is not simply politicians who talk like this. News broadcasters, actors, and preachers no longer use formal diction and usage in their speech either. Compare the dialogue delivered by Ray Milland to that by Robert De Niro.

That there has been such a change in the aesthetics of our language is undeniable. The questions are when did it occur and why?

People in the 19th century America did not normally talk with the high-flown verbiage of Everett’s speech. Their speech was much more like the dialogue in a novel by Mark Twain, not that radically different from the ordinary speech of today. What was different was that there was a place for formal language, like Everett’s, in America of years past.

McWhorter traces this change to the mid-1960s. Along with the loss of trust in government, big business, and other institutions of our society, the American people also lost trust in formal language. People began to disdain formal speech in favor of “just talking.” Informal speech carried an authenticity and honesty that formal language did not and these values were valued more highly than aesthetic quality of usage.

McWhorter provides an excellent example of this shift in two speeches given in the US Congress. The first was by Charles Eaton of New Jersey on 8 December 1941:

Mr. Speaker, yesterday against the roar of Japanese cannon in Hawaii our American people heard a trumpet call; a call to unity; a call to courage; a call to determination once and for all to wipe off of the earth this accursed monster of tyranny and slavery which is casting its black shadow over the hearts and homes of every land.

A speech on a similar topic was delivered by Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas in October 2002:

And if we don’t go at Iraq, that our effort in the war on terrorism dwindles down into an intelligence operation. We go at Iraq and it says to countries that support terrorists, there remain six in the world that are as our definition state sponsors of terrorism, we’re serious about you not supporting terrorism on your own soil.

Neither man would dream of delivering the other’s speech. If Brownback attempted flowery language like that used by Eaton he would be laughed at. An era where the phrase “axis of evil” raises suspicion, “accursed monster of tyranny and slavery” would never fly. Likewise, Eaton would never dream of delivering a speech like Brownback’s, filled with run-on sentences and fragments. Yet both men are successful politicians in their respective eras; both are considered good speakers by their contemporaries.

McWhorter identifies a transitional figure in this shift in Mario Savio, an activist in the Free Speech movement at Berkeley in the mid-60s. On 2 December 1964, Savio delivered a speech on the Berkeley campus that contained the following paragraph:

Well, I ask you to consider. If this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the Board of Directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something—the faculty are a bunch of employees, and we’re the raw materials, but we’re a bunch of raw materials that don’t mean to be . . . have any process upon us, don’t mean to be made into any product, don’t mean, don’t mean to end up being bought by some clients of the university, be they of government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone—we’re human beings.

Savio’s speeches are like this one, filled with colloquialisms and informal clauses, but retaining the elements of traditional rhetoric and narrative that modern speeches lack.

Savio did not, however, spring up ab initio. Traces of this shift in preferred style can be traced back many decades, certainly to the 1920s and even to the writing of 19th century authors like Mark Twain. But the sea change was in the 1960s, when the formal was abandoned altogether in favor of the informal and colloquial.

Political speech is not the only victim of this shift. McWhorter writes a chapter on the loss of poetry in American society. Except for a few, Americans do not read poetry any more. A familiar example used by McWhorter is a Bugs Bunny cartoon from 1941, Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt. The cartoon begins and ends with Bugs reciting Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, sandwiching the usual comic antics in which Hiawatha takes the place of Elmer Fudd as the hunter. To children watching the cartoon today, the recitation of the poem is odd. Why is Bugs reading a poem? But to the audiences of 1941 the parody was apt. Recitation of poems on the radio and in stage performances was common. Audiences would instantly get the joke of Mel Blanc’s New Yorkese voice of Bugs formally reciting a poem, “Sail a-lawng, liddle Hiawadda . . .”

Many claim that popular song lyrics are the poetry of today, but McWhorter correctly points out that Kurt Cobain is a terrible poet by any traditional standard and even the best of today’s lyricists, Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan, only occasionally write something that can stand alongside even a mediocre poet like Longfellow, much less Dickinson or Whitman. Similarly, the qualities that are appreciated by audiences in modern slam poetry competitions are quite different than those praised in traditional poets.

Interestingly, and perhaps unintentionally, the final episode of the television series Angel, which aired just a few weeks ago, illustrates this succinctly. In an earlier episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series that spun off Angel) we were introduced to Spike, a.k.a. William the Bloody, a vampire born in the 19th century who fancied himself a poet. Spike’s poetry was so awful that it earned him the sobriquet—bloody not because he killed a lot of people (although he did that too), but because his poetry was so bloody awful. One of his poems features the following lines:

My heart expands
‘tis grown a bulge in it
inspired by your beauty, effulgent.

In the episode of Angel, facing the apocalypse and how to spend his last day on earth, Spike goes to a slam poetry contest where he recites this poem to a cheering crowd. Poetry that was ridiculed in the 19th century is applauded in the 21st.

Doing Our Own Thing is well worth reading simply for this part of McWhorter’s analysis, the charting of the “degradation” of our language and the loss of the formal mode of speech from American discourse. The book, however, fails at delivering the second half of the promise it makes in its subtitle, And Why We Should, Like, Care.

McWhorter fails to make a case that this change really matters in anything other than an aesthetic sense. Certainly the loss of a particular style of expression or an appreciation of poetry is an aesthetic change, but aesthetic changes are simply changes in taste. There is no fundamental difference, for example, between Eaton’s 1941 speech and Brownback’s 2002 one. Both were successful in rallying support for a war.

McWhorter states that the loss of traditional tools of rhetoric has a political impact on society. The loss makes it more difficult for well-crafted policies to wend their way through the body politic. He does not provide evidence for this, however, and the historical record does not support this as a proposition.
Several times in the book, McWhorter extols the Russian appreciation of poetry. He makes the point that modern Russians can quote Pushkin while most Americans cannot recite a single poem from an American poet, that the TV show Seinfeld even made a joke of the character George being unable to name a single poet. Yet this appreciation of Pushkin among Russians did not prevent the rise of Stalin.

Germany of the early 20th century was the nation of Goethe. Yet, it was also the nation of Hitler. Command of rhetoric and appreciation of language and literature does not guarantee enlightened politics—in fact there is little evidence that it has any impact at all on the substance of politics. Rhetoric is simply a tool, to be used for good or ill.

At one point, McWhorter takes on modern textbooks and the poor quality of the language the present to students. He gives several examples from reading texts over the 20th century. The first is from the fourth McGuffey reader of the 1920s, a selection from Addison’s “Reflections in Westminster Abbey:”

When I am in serious humor, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey, where the gloominess of the place and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable.

This is a well-written piece, but it is probably not appropriate for a modern reading text. Phrases like “the use to which it is applied” are not the stuff of today’s language. By the early 1960s, this excerpt from Stories from the Arabian Nights was being used in texts:

I decided, after my first voyage, to spend the rest of my days at Bagdad [sic]. But it was not long before I tired of a lazy life, and I put to sea a second time, in the company of other merchants. We boarded a good ship and set sail. We traded from island to island, exchanging goods. One day we landed on an island covered with several kinds of fruit trees, but we could see neither man nor animal.

The simpler vocabulary here is less challenging to middle-school students, no words like “solemnity,” but the syntax is more in tune with the sensibilities of modern American usage of the language. By 1996, reading texts included such passages as this:

Tahcawin had packed the parfleche cases with clothing and food and strapped them to a travois made of two trailing poles with a skin net stretched between them. Another travois lay on the ground ready for the new tipi. Chano was very happy when Tasinagi suggested the three of them ride up to their favorite hills for the last time.

This is an extremely simplistic and unchallenging passage. Other than the Native-American names and a few words referring to things in a foreign culture, there is no challenge to be had reading this. Worse, it is just plain boring. McWhorter illustrates this by removing the “multicultural” references from the passage:

Justin had packed the leather cases with clothing and food and strapped them to the two trailing poles with a skin net stretched between them. Another set of poles with a net lay on the ground ready for the new teepee. Michelle was very happy when Jennifer suggested the three of them ride up to their favorite hills for the last time.

McWhorter is not on a rant against multiculturalism, quite the contrary. But he does make the point that multicultural references alone are not enough to make a passage worthy of inclusion in a reading text. A few difficult Native American names, which are not likely to be encountered ever again, are not helpful in teaching reading and writing. But the textbook is not bad because it uses informal language; it is bad because the informal passages it chooses are simplistic and dull. Take a passage from Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms:

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slipped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear… Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

There are no difficult words here. The style is rather simple, with the exception of the one, run-on sentence—which is consistent with the new style of written language becoming more informal, or more like spoken language. The passage does show, however, that interesting passages of literary value can be found in the modern style. Just because a passage is written in a modern, informal, style does not make it unworthy of inclusion in a reading text.

Most of McWhorter’s criticism of the new, informal style is like this. His protests are either unsupported or what he is bemoaning is not the changed aesthetic, but rather something else. The one argument he has is that the new, informal style is not aesthetically pleasing. That is a valid argument, but a subjective one and nothing more than an opinion.

Still, his basic historical analysis of the change in American speech is compelling and interesting. Any language lover will enjoy this book for that reason alone.

Hardcover, 279 pages, Gotham Books, October 2003, $26.00