SamPratt.com

Quotable Feynman

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. … So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing–that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

 —RICHARD FEYNMAN [h/t Blue Montakhab]

Concerning ‘concerning’

In today’s newspapers and newscasts, journalists will often report something like: “Local officials say the recent increase in muggings is very concerning.”

But as this useful and concise site notes, they’re using the word incorrectly. “Concerning” is a preposition synonymous with “about,” not an adjective which means “upsetting”:

People commonly say of things that are a cause for concern that they are “concerning”: “My boyfriend’s affection for his pet rattlesnake is concerning.” This is not standard English. There are many better words that mean the same thing including “worrisome,” “troubling,” and “alarming.” 

The more a word is misused, the more people pick it up. (Go to any meeting of a local government body, and you’re almost certain to hear someone describe some worrisome trend as “concerning.”) So in another few years, grammarians who believe that language should be defined descriptively rather than prescriptively no doubt will argue that this incorrect usage should be added to our dictionaries, since that’s the way people have come to use it.

In Politics and the English Language, George Orwell famously (but not famously enough) argued not only that sloppy thinking causes sloppy expression, but also vice versa.

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

Listening to the news, reading the papers, and attending political meetings, one can only conclude that there’s a lot of confused thinking out there. And last week’s midterm elections only ratified that conclusion...

Things learned while Googling

Via an Online Slang Dictionary ...

ANTIQUE: Blowing wheat flour into the face of a sleeping drunk so as to make them look old or antiqued when they wake up. (Mentioned on Judge Judy, aired on 26 June 2006 on on KAKE TV of Wichita, Ks.)

Oxymoronic

Today’s New York Times quotes Rear Admiral Mary Landry as saying that British Petroleum “from Day 1, has attempted to be very responsive and be a very responsible spiller.”

Typo Phile #2

Here is a sampling of recent typos spotted by several regular readers of the local press,  since the publication of the first Typo Phile installment:

1. “a comprehensive economic sweet of incentives”
   [suite] Register-Star
   
2. “I’d defiantly do it again”
   [definitely] Register-Star
3. “Lantern, who’s president”
   [whose] Register-Star
4. “[the garden] should not look unkept”
   [unkempt] Register-Star
5. “I was sort of taken back by them” and
   “they’re quite taken back by the DASNY estimates”
   [taken aback] Register-Star

NOTE #1: For this installment, the names of the authors have been omitted to protect both the innocent and the less-than-innocent.

NOTE #2: Both of the misuses of “taken back” above came from statements by Hudson Mayor Richard Scalera; so arguably the reporter might have simply been reflecting the speaker’s mistake, rather than mishearing a correct usage. To be taken back is to reminisce; to be taken aback is to be astonished or appalled.

NOTE #3: Readers are welcome to submit items for future Typo Phile columns via email. Please note that I’m not so much interested in run-of-the-mill typographic slips-of-the-keyboard, which happen to all of us, but rather in actual misuses or abuses of the English language.

Snake in the grass

Literally. This morning, 10 am. I wonder what other figures of speech will jump to life today... (I'll be avoiding china shops.)

Typo Phile: Hudson Affectations

Allen Street, Hudson (NY). Photo: WILLIAM HELLERMAN

Dilution delusion

Gin and Tacos observes that putting the phrase “watered-down” in front of the word “legislation” has become superfluous.