I was just in a meeting, and I felt myself nodding off, and I thought “I’m pulling a Cheney.”
Probably, pulling a Cheney will someday mean shooting a friend in the face, but falling asleep in an important meeting is certainly a contender.
Archive for Fun with Language
Acupuncture Wall Chart
My acupuncturist has an acupuncture wall chart on his wall, labeled “Acupuncture Wall Chart.”
I don’t know why this tickles me so much, perhaps only because I lay on a table with needles sticking out of me with nothing to do but look at the acupuncture wall chart, which is labeled “Acupuncture Wall Chart.”
There are many potentially useful labels for an acupuncture wall chart besides “Acupuncture Wall Chart.” It could simply be labeled “Acupuncture” which is neither more nor less informative than “Acupuncture Wall Chart.” It could be labeled “The Human Body” or “The Acupuncture System” or something. But no. It is labeled “Acupuncture Wall Chart.”
On edit: Here he is: Acupuncture Wall Chart (He’s the guy on the right, the side view).
Vegetables are funny
From the fun with language department. I bought a cabbage. A curly leaf cabbage. I used a few slices in a soup. I sauteed some mixed veggies and added some cabbage. I was making martinis one night and decided it would be fun to add some sweet vermouth to the mixed veggies, and I added some cabbage to that.
This particular cabbage lasted for about 10 dishes. Tonight it was looking limp, so I decided it needed to be finished off. I did onions, garlic, cabbage and tomatoes in olive oil. I didn’t add the tomato until the very end so it was only cooked for about two minutes. I used sweet vermouth, salt and pepper. Delicious.
Over dinner I said, “I’m going to miss that head of cabbage.” Arthur cracked up.
Eligibility
I’ve seen a lot of headlines like this one in the past 24 hours:
Jury: Moussaoui is eligible for death
My co-worker, for whom English is a second language, pointed it out to me: Doesn’t “eligible” mean something good? he asked.
According to the dictionaries I checked, usually. You find the words “worthy” and “desirable” in there, and even though those words aren’t necessary to all uses of “eligible,” the connotation lingers.
But I can’t think of a substitute. There’s no opposite of “eligible.” Okay, wrong. There’s “ineligible.” But there’s no word meaning “qualified for a negative distinction or event,” which would be opposite eligible’s connotation of “qualified for a positive distinction or event.”
If a movie is excellent, you might say it’s Oscar-worthy. If it sucks, do you say it’s Raspberry-worthy? Isn’t “worthy” also implicitly positive?
Possibly the best paragraph I will read this week
From Ebert‘s review of Running Scared:
Speaking of movies that go over the top, “Running Scared” goes so far over the top, it circumnavigates the top and doubles back on itself; it’s the Mobius Strip of over-the-topness. I am in awe. It throws in everything but the kitchen sink. Then it throws in the kitchen sink, too, and the combo washer-dryer in the laundry room, while the hero and his wife are having sex on top of it.
Read the whole thing. It rocks.
More fun with language; cat-in-the-bag edition
My mother is sewing Arthur a new blanket. They picked out a fab faux fur fabric (5x fast) and a lining.
They came back from the fabric store and took their purchases out of the bags to show me. Mingo immediately got inside the big bag the faux fur had occupied. Which inspired Arthur to pick the occupied bag up. The bottom of the bag ripped open, and indeed, he let the cat out of the bag.
Now it was time to leave. Mom had to take the faux fur and lining home with her. I said:
“Get your grandma a new bag. You ripped the other one with the cat.”
Verbing in Yiddish
There’s a word in Yiddish, kvatch, which means junk or crap or stuff, something like that. It is used in my family in a specific way.
My great-grandmother used to refer to the inside of a roll as kvatch. She would remove the bready insides before making a sandwich. She was my mother’s favorite grandmother and something like her lifeline, and so her tradition was sustained with much affection.
This is actually a cool trick. If you have a nice round roll, like a Kaiser roll or an onion roll (my favorite), and you’re making a sandwich, the hollow area you make on top by removing the kvatch is a convenient place to put the cole slaw or lettuce so that it doesn’t flop out of the sides. Tuna stays within its bready confines. Pickle slices don’t shoot across the room.
Anyway. One time we’re all at Mom’s house, all adults. Meaning my kid brother, Dan, is also an adult and we’re visiting for whatever reason, and I’m making sandwiches for some of us including kid brother and Dan says “Could you kvatch the bread?”
Perfect.
There’s another Yiddish word, spotsir (or shpotsir or shpotsirn) which means stroll or walk. My old boss used to say “I’m going for a spotsir.” (It’s not a word I ever heard my mother say, although she knows it.) One day I said I was spotsing, which was a pretty good one as well.
So evil of me, to complain about Gumbel’s mangled English but applaud my mangled Yiddish. Consistency is not a hobgoblin that plagues me!
Verbing Weirds Language
I have just barely gotten used to Olympics sportscasters saying that so-and-so “medalled;” something I first heard from Bryant Gumbel in the late 1980s.
But this week, I heard a sportscaster say that an athlete hoped “to podium.”
The mind boggles.
Here’s another thing: Within days of Gumbel’s coinage, it seemed all of the NBC sports staff were using the same bizarre turn of the phrase. Was it an executive decision? Did NBC decide it took too long to say “won a medal” and so instruct its sportscasters to verbify? Or were the other sportscasters simply thrilled with Gumbel’s linguistic creativity and compelled to imitate him?
Perhaps we’ll never know.
Update: Hey look! The Language Log has a big fat post on this very coinage!
Smiley face in unusual place
Arthur drew a smiley face on Mingo.
May I remind the viewing audience that Arthur is going to be sixteen years old soon? Yes. Arthur, the young man, all 5’8″ of Arthur, drew a smiley face on a kitten.
Leading me to say: Don’t write on the cat.
Maybe not a sentence never heard before, but possibly a sentence never heard before by anyone over the age of four.
The Delight of Unusual Sentences
1. Gary and Arthur are on the floor, hooking up a gaming system to a TV that is behaving in a recalcitrant manner. Arthur has removed his hat.
Arthur: Don’t step on the hat!
I was actually not all that impressed by this one, but Arthur loved the image, presumably of someone walking across the tops of people’s heads.
2. Me: I found the missing meat.
Arthur: Where was it?
Me: Under the kale.
Arthur: The meat was under the kale?
“Kale” is a funny word.
