Gregor Purdy - Language

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This page contains numerous topics having to do with language (most often U.S. English).

Gregor's Word of the Week

Follow this link to see the current and historical entries from my Word of the Week emails.

Anachronisms

steam shovel - These are not driven by steam anymore. Even though there is a proper term (power shovel) for the modern version, I've still seen them refered to as steam shovels, including in children's books.

These aren't anachronisms yet, but they are getting close:

film / footage - As more and more video recording is done digitally, it will be less and less likely that the information is stored on film, or on any medium measured in feet.

Peeves

I could care less / I couldn't care less
The expression is intended to convey that you really don't care. But, if you could care less, then then you really do care.
a whole nother / another whole
assure / ensure / insure
Let me assure (remove doubt for) you that if you let BigCo Mutual insure (financially protect) you, we will ensure (make certain) that your claims are handled expeditiously.
supposably / supposedly
nukular / nuclear
podium / lecturn
A podium is something you stand on. A lecturn is something you stand behind. All too often people say "podium" when they mean "lecturn".
gender / sex
Words are of a particular gender. People are of a particular sex. Although I understand the avoidance of the word "sex" in an attempt to seem more polite, the recent overloading of the the meaning of "gender" to include "sex" was politically motivated. Here is what The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (Third Edition) has to say:
gender. Since the 14c. thh word has been primarily a grammatical term, applied to groups of nouns designated as masculine, feminine, or neuter. During all these centuries, however, as the OED shows, it has also been used as a term meaning 'the sex of a person' (e.g. Of the fair sex ... my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them--Lady M. W. Montagu, 1709). The OED (1899) labeled this sense 'Now only jocular'. Since the 1960s this secondary sense has come into much more frequent use, esp. among feminists, with the intention 'of emphasizing the social and cultural, as opposed to the biological, distinctions between the sexes' (OED 2). As a result the literature of the subject bristles with expressions such as gender gap, gender identity, gender language, gender model, gender role, and gender-specific; and fashionable courses at our universities abound in titles such as 'Literature and Gender in the English Restoration'.

Bad Names

dBase - Who wants to store their data in something that is going to debase it?
Windows CE - Shortened to WinCE the same way Windows NT is shortened to WinNT, it becomes "wince".

Questions

Why do we say "afterward" when its opposite is "beforehand"?
How can bookmaking be illegal, when bookkeeping isn't? [2000-10-25]

Fun Sayings

It's like polishing a sneaker. [1998-10-28 from Jeff Murphy via Danielle Ondrick]
half-fast [A phrase my mother used as a child, having misunderstood what she heard someone else say]
bass-ackwards [Something my Grandpa Purdy used to say]

Gregorisms

News = Negative Entertainment Without Substance. [2001-10-01]
A challenge identified is an excuse nullified. [1998-09-23]
How hard do you want to work to get the wrong answer? [1998-09-23]
It is worse to get the right answer for the wrong reason than to get the wrong answer. [1998-09-23]
Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin. [1998-09-23]
As a species, our capabilities are more advanced than our sensibilities. [1999-04-25]
Love without passion is habit. [1999-05-08]
An argument is based on plausibility; a proof is based on conditionality. [1999-03-31]
Thoughtfulness is never a small thing. [1998-11-03]
I am that which is not everything else. [1990]
Corrollary: There are two kinds of people: me and not me. [2001-03-20]
Learn it, live it, love it. [?]
(S)he has a mind like a steel trap: quick to shut and hard to open. [1998-10-20]
Why name a product dBase ("debase"), especially one for storing data? [1998]
It tickles my brain. [1997]
Your issues are showing. [Noted 2000-03-06, coined much earlier]
A tax attacks. [2000-03-08]
All data is noisy; its only a matter of degree. [2001-03-02]

Fun Words

automagical
BNC: Berkeley Nuclear Connector [From Denny Dahl, 2000-02-22].
bubbabyte: 2⁶⁴ bytes. From van der Linden, Just Java 2, Fourth Edition. Appendix: Powers of 2.
chawmp: 16 or 18 bits, on 8 bits-per-byte and 9 bits-per-byte architectures, respectively. Coined due to vagueness of ``word''. From Jargon File. See `wyde'.
corrigendum: An addendum containing error corrections.
gapiosis
gawble/gawbul: 32 bits or 48 bits. From Jargon File.
import-ance: Priority based on order of importing. XML Pocket Reference, page 66.
iota
makeology: Study of Makefile techniques. [From Denny Dahl 2000-06-01]
moby
tittle: The dot over an `i'.
quincunx: The pattern of five pips on one side of a six-sided die.
smackola
strict-ure: The use of Perl's use strict directive
wyde: Two bytes. Coined by Donald Knuth (c. 1999).

Coinages

I believe that I have coined these terms (at least in the senses listed here):

bachelorized: When a married man (especially with kids) is left home alone while his family goes on a trip.
const-ernation: Troubles caused by mixed use of the const facility/keyword in C and C++, especially across interface boundaries. Often necessitates casting away const-ness and foils auto-casting (like string conversion to const char *. Related: const-ernate, con(st)rain, con(st)rict, const-rue, const-ipate and constable (enforcer of const policy).
decursive search: A recursive search might be used to locate a node in a tree starting from its root node, a decursive search starts at any node and searches for a node by trying each ancestor node in turn. This type of search can be useful for searching for configuration files that allow settings in deeper files to override those further up the tree. [2000-03]
ETR: Acronym for Estimated Time of Revival (of a crashed computer). [1999-06-16]
gaseous: The name for the symbol `\'. See the entry for `liquidus' for more information.
hungryfull: Feeling the need to eat without the desire (possibly due to a sick stomach). [1997]
LCD: Little Crappy Display, in reference to the historically poor quality of Liquid Crystal Displays. c. 1998, the quality of the average LCD is actually good enough that the term doesn't carry quite the sting it used to.
lete: To link into a tree structure, as a filesystem entry for a file. In analogy with delete (de-lete), which the operation of unlinking. Following this logic, the traditional undelete should really by relete to avoid the double negative.
liquidus: The name for the symbol `|' (also known by the name `pipe', and others). In analogy with the name `solidus' for the symbol `/'. So, the string `/|\' is the sequence solidus-liquidus-gaseus :-).
lubward: After ``land lubber''. The direction away from the water. [1998-09]
PL/SQL: Oracle's Pretty Lousy SQL.
relete: See the entry for `lete' for information.
shelf crawl: A comprehensive browse of the contents of (at least an entire section of) a book store. [1998]
spendola: A fun synonym for "spendy".
SQL dread: The sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach as you set out to decipher a complex SQL statement, especially one created by a novice user or a program.
ybom: Inverse of moby. Since the unit 'moby' is physical memory / address space (which was more commonly greater than one in the past), the unit 'ybom' is address space / physical memory, and is more commonly greater than one now. A computer with a 4 GB (32 bit) address space and 512 MB of RAM installed would be a 0.125 moby box, or alternatively an 8 ybom box.

Fun Tyops

fasle = false
opps = oops
tyop = typo

Pseudohomophones

(difference | deference) of opinion [2001-03-11]
(duly | dually) impressed [2001-04-04]
(mystery | Mr. E.) [2001-04-04]
(baroque | broke) [2001-04-05]
(presence | presents ) of mind [2001-04-11]
(Triceratops | Try Sara Topps) [2001-04-17: This is from some book I read as a child - I don't know which book. One possiblity is a book from the 1970s called Sarah Topps]

Other Fun

The West Jester - Jokes for West Chester [2001-03-10]
The West Chess Tournament - Chess tournament in West Chester
I used to have a sign on my door when I was younger: "CAUTION: Incorrigible punster. Please do not incorrige."

$Date: 2005-12-04 21:14:52 -0800 (Sun, 04 Dec 2005) $