Neologisms

I came across two new words today: the first, hyperintellectualism, I've not seen before and would hate to be accused of (has anyone else come across the term?); the second I coined, and it's something that frequently happens to me, much to my wife's chagrin -- namely lyric-jam. This is when fragments of a song's lyrics lodge in your mind and, typically, repeatedly come out of your mouth, for the joy or grief of those within earshot. For the last 36 hours, I've been pleasantly stuck on Bob Marley's, "This is my message to you: don't worry ... every little thing, it's gonna be all right."

I recently learnt that the Macquarie Dictionary nominates an annual Word of the Year; the winner for 2008 was toxic debt. Based on frequency of use, it's an understandable choice -- but an uninspiring one, I reckon. Two words I prefer are helicopter parenting, for its aptness, and flashpacker (a backpacker who travels in relative luxury), because it's fun.

* To be fair, as these Marley lyrics may show, mangled-lyric-jam is the particular beast that usually gets me.

Grumpy Grammarians

A few days ago, I looked up the word of in Fowler's Modern English Usage (2nd rev'd edn). Here's what greeted me:

This preposition shares with another word of the same length, AS, the evil glory of being accessary to more crimes against grammar than any other. But, in contrast with the syntax of as, which is so difficult that blunders are very excusable, that of of is so simple that only gross carelessness can lead anyone astray with it. Nevertheless, straying is perpetual, and the impression of amateurishness produced on an educated reader of newspapers is discreditable to the English Press (p. 409).

An intro. such as this made me hesitant to read on: what sort of amateurish dunderhead, or worse, grammar-criminal would I be shown to be? Nevertheless, plow on I did. Following his curmudgeonly introduction, Fowler lists and gives examples of seven common 'of-blunders':

... (1) Wrong patchings; (2) Patching the unpatchable; (3) Side-slip; (4) Irresolution; (5) Needless repetition; (6) Misleading ommission; (7) Some freaks of idiom. [If you'd like to see these explained or exemplified, let me know.]

The irony of my time in pages 409-10 of Fowler was that, erudite and scathing as his comments were, they didn't help me solve my of-problem. The solution came as, stretched out on my back on the lounge room floor, I picked over the problem with my wife.

The moral?

Common sense applied to a specific usage problem counts for as much as a headful of general grammatical principles. Just don't tell the likes of Fowler I said it!

Words, words, words

Confession: After reading the following comment by TroyG, "Activate the outdoor egress, get out and eviscerate the proletariat!", I had to look two of the words up in the dictionary. Speaking of words, tonight I stumbled across the following in an old dictionary: fabaceous. There's a word I like the sound of.

Without consulting dictionary.com or the nearest Oxford or Macquarie, is anyone up for a guess (perhaps a Boulderdash-style creative 'guess') at what it means?

Trivia: The same old pocket dictionary that contains fabaceous has a smudged read-pen inscription on the inside cover, dated 1928. Written in similar red-ink on the opposite recto page is: "I given off this book to Leila, 1944." Lucky Leila.

Wittgenstein's Talking Lion

If a lion could talk, we could not understand it.

The above quote has been rattling around in my brain for the last month or so. I'm interested in how language works, but, alas, can't claim any formal training or deep understanding in fields such as linguistics, the philosophy of language, semantics and the like. This being the case, I thought it safer to use someone else's brief explanation:

... the aphorism can be read as a condensation of Wittgenstein's thoughts on how 'forms of life', the shared social and cultural context, determine meaning and allow (or disallow) communication between speaking subjects (Michael Brennan, "Colloquy with a cat", ABR, April 2008).

So: when, where, how and with whom we live shapes how effective our communication with them and others is. Make sense?

I'd welcome comments, corrections or book / article suggestions in these areas of thought; I feel as though I'm a floaties-wearing toddler in rather deep waters. Any would-be swimming instructors out there?

... things I've recently read or thought

An oxymoron:
blogworthy.

A sign on a classroom wall:
An empty room doesn't need light.

Ludwig Wittgenstein on language:
'If a lion could talk, we could not understand it.'
For an explanation, watch this space.

Front-cover teaser for an article:

'What we need the assistance of the historian to understand
is why Departments of English ...
were ever called on to act as an
accrediting agency for entry into the middle class.'

J. M. Coetzee, Australian Book Review, May 2008.

IT-nglish

I'll take anyone out for a coffee if they can explain to me what the following means (it was an invite to a conference)*:

Deliver in a dynamic world through end-to-end virtualisation
Virtualisation is recognised as the most transformative IT technology of the next decade.
To truly impact the business, server virtualisation is not enough. – IT needs the power of virtualisation from the datacentre for servers and applications all the way to the desktop.
An end-to-end application delivery solution where IT can control applications, desktops and the server infrastructure that supports them from the datacentre.

* NB I have to understand your explanation.

NERBS

"Nerb" is a neat term used to describe nouns that are made to do the work of verbs.

Google, as in "to google something", is a nerb that is heard all the time. Blogging is another nerb that describes something done in cyberspace, i.e. "entering a post on one's weblog". (Does it also cover reading other people's blogs?)

Recently I came across some nerbs that I think should be expunged from the language.

At a conference for teachers a friend was told of the importance of truthing students. Presumably this meant telling the truth to them. Or did it mean encouraging them to be honest – to other people and in their work?

Last week I was asked: "Do you powerpoint?" I pictured myself prancing around thrusting my finger into people's chests and bellowing important and convincing things at them. "Yes, I can and do use PowerPoint," was my correct yet much more mundane response.

A nerb for wet winter days

Speaking of pointy things, this afternoon I was out walking with my large metallic-grey coloured umbrella. As the rain began falling, I was extremely thankful for its shelter. I was not so thankful for the many people walking towards me beneath their large umbrellas – I'd forgotten how awkward the meeting of large umbrellas on narrow footpaths can be.

Being tallish, my usual tactic is to raise my umbrella high to try to pass over the umbrellas of oncomers. This can be a dangerous approach if a low-hanging tree is overhead. Today I tried 'the raise' a couple of times.

After narrowly missing a tree – well, okay, I hit it, but it didn't completely drench me – I decided to try the tilt. This involved sneaking an advance peek at oncomers and trying to guess their and their umbrellas' courses, and then tilting my umbrella into the vacant airspace. This may sound easy, but try it when two or three oversized-umbrella-wielding suits are striding towards you.

It was two steely-eyed corporate types who zeroed in on me today. Using the tilt and some nimble footwork, I avoided them. However, being so intent on umbrella-work, I forgot about that important obstacle which must be avoided when you step off the footpath – cars! Three steps onto the road I realised this as a 4WD bore down upon me too fast for comfort. Umbrella still raised, I broke into a sprint and with much relief, heard the car woosh behind me.

Thinking back on all the raising and tilting necessary for me to keep dry and safe as I walked from the train station to my appointment, a nerb, especially suited to wet winter's days came to mind - umbrella-ing.