Tag Archives: wordplay

John Steinbeck Sums Up Being a Writer

January 16, 2018 By in Culture Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

In lieu of Tuesday’s traditional Word Play post, here are a few John Steinbeck quotes on the agony and ecstasy of being a writer. Mostly agony.

These quotes come from his 1953 essay “My Short Novels,” which originally appeared in the Literary Guild Review’s periodical, Wings, and which was reprinted in America and Americans, a collection put out by Penguin Classics.

The first note regards the writers’ complicated relationship with their work, how passion fades once the piece is done and gone:

“It is true that while a work is in progress, the writer and his book are one. When a book is finished, it is a kind of death, a matter of pain and sorrow to the writer. Then he [or she] starts a new book and a new life… The writer, like a fickle lover, forgets his old love. It is no longer his own: the intimacy and surprise are gone.”

And of these stories, “thrust out into an unfriendly world to make their way”? “They have experiences, too — they grow and change or wane and die, just as everyone does. They make friends or enemies, and sometimes they waste away from neglect.” 😦

Finally, after recounting how his first three novels failed to sell out, and how the $90 he earned from The Red Pony seemed like “more money than I thought the world contained” and encouraged him to continue, Steinbeck notes, astutely:

“It takes only the tiniest pinch of encouragement to keep a writer going, and if he gets none, he sometimes learns to feed even on the acid of failure.” It’s true. We writers are kind of like those sea creatures that feed off of noxious gases spewing from oceanic anuses, only less cute.

 

Camel’s ‘War on Christmas,’ 1937

December 19, 2017 By in Culture, News Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

 

One of the more unnecessary fronts in the culture wars is the debate over “Happy Holidays” v. “Merry Christmas.” Liberals generally prefer the former because it’s inclusive, conservatives generally the latter because it reinforces their notion that the U.S. should be a Christian nation. It’s an absurd debate, and one that exists thanks to a surprising source: Camel cigarettes.

The company introduced the Christmas-themed “happy holidays” into American vernacular via an advertisement way back in 1937. Prior to that the word “holiday” was used solely overseas, initially in religious contexts but eventually in more secular utterances, as in “vacation.” Thanks to the power of tobacco marketing, “holiday” was henceforth synonymous with “Christmas.” It’s funny, though: holiday is essentially “holy day,” so doesn’t this fit well with the pro-Merry Christmas camps’ perspective? Again, it’s an absurd debate…

Anyway, that’s just an FYI that may come in handy one day, holy or otherwise.

For more potentially useful wordplay, click HERE.

The Rewriting of Reality Begins with the Words

December 18, 2017 By in News Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

The CDC isn’t the only government agency recently given a list of naughty words. The Washington Post reports that two other Health and Human Services were given a litany of lexemes the Trump Administration wants erased from their vocabulary, including “diversity,” “entitlement” and “vulnerable,” three of the words the CDC was also ordered never to utter.

Elsewhere in the Trump government’s vernacular, insurance “marketplaces” are supposed to be called “exchanges,” a term that evokes ideas socialist-esque bartering, and the Affordable Care Act is supposed to be referred to as “Obamacare.”

Even the president’s supporters admit that Donald Trump  likes to create and perpetuate his own version of the truth, but this institutional censoring of language to augment reality is perhaps the most chilling effort yet.

‘Hypocrisy’ is Acting Badly

December 12, 2017 By in Culture, News Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Now that we’re nearly one year into the Trump presidency, you’ve probably seen a few hundred Tweets, Facebooks, Instagrams, Snapchats, or Whatchamacallits noting how hypocritical it is for Donald Trump to decry “fake news.” After all, this is the man who concocts self-aggrandizing Time magazine covers, the charlatan who claimed for years that Barack Obama was from Kenya, and the ego-maniac who decries chimerical voter fraud to justify losing the popular vote.

But what is hypocrisy? Of course most of us know it roughly means “doing or saying some thing you criticize others for doing or saying,” but the true definition is, as always, more nuanced.

“Hypocrisy” as we know it comes from the Latin word of the same spelling, meaning “an imitation of a person’s speech and gestures” and derived from from the ancient Greek word “hypokrisis,” “acting on stage.” You see, hypocrisy was originally a drama term, one initially and specifically relegated to the stage, but which eventually evolved to the more general, pedestrian “pretense.”

This latter lexeme trickled through languages over the centuries, landing in French as the h-less word “ypocrisie,” and then seeping into Middle English around the year 1200 as “ipocrisie,” a term defined in clearly moralistic terms: “the sin of pretending virtue or goodness.” I’ll leave judgement of sin to more qualified entities, but that “pretending virtue” bit is pretty spot-on to what we’re seeing out of the Oval Office.

For more Fun with Words, click HERE.

Was ‘Pocahontas’ Even Her Name?

November 28, 2017 By in Culture, News Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Tuesdays are traditionally wordplay days over here, and my original intent was to do a short post on Dictionary.com’s word of the year, “complicit.” Then President Trump went and again referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” and, as he does, changed the game.

So, real quick, here’s something I learned today, while researching the real-life woman we call Pocahontas: Pocahontas wasn’t her real name. Not really, at least.

Like many Powhatan Indians, “P” was given a series of names throughout the course of her life: her birth name was Matoaka, meaning “bright stream between the hills;” she was later given the name Amonute, which doesn’t translate from Powhatan to English; and later in life, after marrying John Rolfe and converting to Christianity, she changed her name to Rebecca.

According to Jamestown Secretary William Strachey, Pocahontas was a childhood nickname given to her by her father; translated to “little wanton,” it captured her adventurous independence. But according to William Stith, a 19th century historian who devoted his life to studying the Virginia colony, Pocahontas was something of a codename to ward of white curses. From his 1865 The History of the First Settlement of Virginia:

“The Indians carefully concealed [her real name] from the English and changed it to Pocahontas, out of a superstitious fear, lest they, by the knowledge of her true name, should be enabled to do her some hurt.”

As someone who just completed a book all about American myths, I understand this could be apocryphal; and it’s just as possible the name Pocahontas was both a childhood nickname and a curse deterrent. But if Stith’s correct and “Pocahontas” was something of a shield against vexation, then there’s a certain irony to Trump and his supporters using the sham sobriquet to slur Elizabeth Warren. The Powhatan prophecy came true, only for a woman by another name.

(For more Fun with Words, click HERE.)

 

The Original Definition of “Harass” Is Most Apt

November 21, 2017 By in News Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

1. Harassment. We all know the word. Or, I hope we all know the word — just as I hope we all have a general sense of its meaning, something along the lines of Merriam-Webster’s definition of the verb “harass,” “to create an unpleasant or hostile situation…especially by uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical conduct.” But this common conception is in fact the second, newer interpretation of the word; it’s original definition is both more and less specific and altogether appropriate in today’s context.

Briefly used in the 1610s as “to lay waste,” mainstream usage of “harass” shifted in the 1620s, veering toward “to vex by repeated attacks,” a definition derived from the 16th century French verb harasser, or “to tire out.” Though the specific origin of the French harasser remains hazy, the Online Etymology Dictionary suggests it comes from a mélange of harer, an Old French term for “to provoke or set a dog on,” and the equally Old French harier, as in “to draw [out] or drag [on].” In this light, “harassment” is tenacious and corrosive, pernicious and erosive. Defined by MW as “exhaust or fatigue,” harassment in this light is by definition perpetual and ongoing, a fact to which many women can attest.

Though the term “sexual harassment” didn’t arise until the early 1970s, the pairing of those two words couldn’t be more fitting. Women since time immemorial have been cat called and harangued, pinched and poked, raped and molested, and generally treated like objects by predatory men.* They have been tormented by repeated, caustic incidents like those we’re reading about on the daily. Thankfully, we’re seeing a backlash against such virulent behavior. All the repetitive and successive intrusions meant to erode women’s wherewithal have prepared them for this watershed moment we’re experiencing today. Now it’s time for men like Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken, Roy Moore, Donald Trump, Louis C.K., Mark Halperin, Charlie Rose et al. to be vexed themselves.

(*I know it’s not only women who face harassment — Terry Crews and Tony Goldwyn have come forward with their own stories of being manhandled and verbally harassed, and half-a-dozen men have already accused Kevin Spacey of harassing and/or assaulting them — but women are harassed more often and openly than men.)

(For more Fun with Words, click HERE.)

Collusion Is Not Innocuous

November 14, 2017 By in News Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As a follow-up to last week’s etymological dissection of “meddling,” and inspired by all the real news about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, I decided this week to take a closer look at another word frequently used in these stories, “collusion,” as in this Newsweek headline from this morning: “Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion Already Exists, Watergate Prosecutors Say.” Here’s what I found…

Used in its current form since the 14th century, the Old French “collusion” originates from the Latin collusionem, which comes from the verb colludere, an amalgamation of the prefix “com,” as in “with” or “together,” and ludere, which means “to play” and is the same root for ludicrous. Married into one term, “com” and “ludere” mean, loosely, “coming together to play.”

It almost seems innocuous, and even jocular. We of course know otherwise. As legendary English lexicographer Henry Watson Fowler noted, “The notion of fraud or underhandedness is essential to collusion.”

For more Fun with Words, click HERE.

“Symbolaton,” a Failed Neologism

November 9, 2017 By in Entertainment, News Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

My first book hit stores this week. Called  The Log Cabin: An Illustrated History, it traces American history via uses and cultural representations of our nation’s favorite hard wood, the titular log cabin. It’s a fun and informative little tome — and, most importantly, it’s filled with hundreds of awesome images.

Three years in the making, the projects’ impetus came in part from my own bafflement over how the log cabin became such a beloved symbol: What forces shaped our collective national consciousness to make us so blindly, unquestioningly adore what is essentially a stack of sticks? The answers are in the book. What’s not in the book? The word “symbolaton.”

An amalgamation of “symbol” and “automaton,” the term was meant to be a neologism meaning, roughly, “an automatic symbol,” i.e.: an object or totem that Americans worship without considering why or how — kind of like the national anthem or the pledge of the allegiance. [I guess my work has a theme, huh?]

Unfortunately, “symbolaton” doesn’t quite work because “automaton” means, literally “self-motion,” which gives the impression that the log cabin is moving by its own will, its own power. Though the structure indeed took on a life of its own over the years, and was certainly axiomatically perpetuated in America, the locution lacked the precision I sought. It’s close, but not cigar.

The term “symbolicon” was also thrown around in my noggin and then tossed out, largely because it doesn’t really mean anything, and so too was the phrase “zombie icon,” which comes closest to what I hoped to convey but which still didn’t make the cut. Oh well.

But even though there are no neologisms in The Log Cabin: An Illustrated History, it’s still an entertaining and — gasp! — educational read. Please check it out.

And for more Fun with Words, click HERE.

‘Meddling’ Once Meant ‘Screwing’

November 3, 2017 By in News Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“Russian meddling.” We hear the term a lot in stories about how Vladimir Putin and company interfered with the 2016 election that installed Donald Trump in the White House. But what is meddling?

Merriam-Webster defines it as “interest[ing] oneself in what is not one’s concern,” or, “to interfere without right or propriety,” but if we go back to the word’s first vernacular explosion, the early 1300s, it’s defined as “to mingle and blend,” from the 12th century Old French “mesler,” which itself evolved from the Latin word “miscere,” to mix. The present participle version we currently use, “action of blending,” didn’t arise until the 1520s.

But, fun fact — and, I think, fitting in this context — from the late 1300s until the 1700s, “meddling” was slang for “having sexual intercourse,” or, another way, “fucking.” As with the roots of “Trump,” this seems more appropriate for the Russia-related headlines, as in “Russia fucked with the election.”

For more Fun with Words, click HERE.

Donald Trump is the Definition of “Trump”

October 16, 2017 By in Entertainment, News Tags: , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

While we’re on the subject of the English language, let’s talk about “Trump.”

When used as a verb, U.S. president Donald Trump’s surname is most often interpreted as “to surpass” or “to beat,” a terminology familiar from card games. Such usage  was popularized in the 1580s, when Middle English reigned, and which traces its origins to around the 1520s, when “to trump” was first used as “to triumph.” But this is not the first “ to trump,” and while Donald Trump undoubtedly prefers this dominant definition, the first, which is worse, is far more fitting — and French!

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