What's in a name? A traitor perhaps...

The English language has developed many words and phrases to describe those who betray their clan. There are turncoats, defectors and collaborators. There are back-stabbers, sellouts and two-timers. From the animal kingdom, we’ve got weasels, rats, snakes and wolves in sheep’s clothing. Perhaps the most interesting category of characterizing the double-dealing, fifth-column renegade is the eponym.

At the top of that list is “quisling,” coined in recognition of Norwegian army officer, Vidkun Quisling, who collaborated with Nazi Germany and helped facilitate its 1940 invasion of Norway. He ruled as a puppet leader while promoting fascist policies and assisting the Gestapo in suppressing resistance. Naturally, Quisling was despised by Norwegians. After Germany’s defeat, he was arrested, tried, and executed by firing squad.

Another eponymous double-dealer was Judas Iscariot, whose betrayal of Christ caused his given name to become synonymous with traitor. The words Judas and quisling differ a bit in that quisling is more fully lexicalized, to the point where dropping the capital letter from Vidkun Quisling’s surname is the common usage. Even when using Judas as an epithet for untrustworthiness, the capital J is retained. 

Another eponymous expression for the betrayer is Cataline, which is the family name of Roman Senator Lucius Sergius Catilina, whose attempted overthrow of Cicero in 63 BCE was revealed by Cicero in front of the senate. Catilina fled rather than face trial and was finally killed in battle against the Republic. 

My former home state of Vermont was a longtime host to Benedict Arnold, who secretly negotiated with the British in 1779–1780, planning to surrender West Point for money and a commission. He died in England after serving with the British Army, his name permanently cemented in American memory as a symbol of treachery.

Brutus qualifies as well. One wonders which of the current crop of American traitors will find their way into the dictionary.

                                    Norwegian police photographs of Vidkun Quisling

Etymology and usage of the word, "nerd."

There is some question as to the origin of the word “nerd” as meaning "studious and socially inept," but it is generally accepted that the first instance of its usage was in the 1950 Dr. Seuss book, “If I Ran the Zoo," albeit with another meaning.

A “nerd” in “If I Ran the Zoo" is an imaginary animal that the book’s young narrator feels is a conspicuous hole in the zoo’s inventory (see illustration). Gerald McGrew is the boy’s name, and he has a very clear picture of what belongs in the zoo of his deepest imaginings, and it includes a “nerd.”

“And then, just to show them, I’ll sail to Ka-Troo
And bring back an It-Kutch, a Preep, and a Proo,
A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too!”

The nerd illustrated by Seuss is no nerd by today’s standards.  He more has the aspect of a gray-bearded uncle to the Grinch, primed and ready to resent his upcoming captivity. There are competing theories as to how “nerd” emerged in its current usage. My favorite is that it derives from “knurd,” a fraternity inversion of the word “drunk” that refers to someone who never parties. I doubt it though. 

It didn’t take long after the Seuss coining for "nerd" to be swept into its current meaning. In 1951, an article in Newsweek on the slang of the day reported, “…someone who once would be called a drip or a square is now, regrettably, a nerd…” Why regrettably, I’m not sure. One presumes the writer to be some kind of a nerd.

By the 1970s, “nerd” was the go-to insult for socially awkward intellectuals, an epithet I’d surely have suffered had I been better at math. At this point, nerds across America have essentially done the same thing that African Americans have done with the other N-word, which is to embrace it as a badge of pride, and now that nerds own pretty much everything, they’re using this opportunity to give all of us a weggie. 

 

 

Which is correct? “Holland” or “the Netherlands”? And why are its people Dutch?

To answer the first question, neither. The country is properly called “The Kingdom of the Netherlands.” In much the same the way “The United States of America” is commonly shortened to “America,” “The Kingdom of the Netherlands” is commonly shortened to “the Netherlands.” 

So what in the wooden-shoe hell is up with “Holland”? 

The Netherlands consists of twelve provinces. “Holland” refers to just two of them—North Holland and South Holland, which between them contain the Netherlands’ three largest cities: Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. Amsterdam being the seat of government and a decades-long haven for legally tolerated weed-smoking and prostitution, Rotterdam being Europe’s largest port and the general location of its famous dikes system, and The Hague being the last stop for war criminals including Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karadžić and Charles Taylor, it’s no wonder that these are the Netherlands’ two best-known provinces. 

Because of their overwhelming prominence, foreigners in the 17^th century began calling the whole country “Holland.” Much to the annoyance of the other ten provinces, it stuck—so much so that the government ran a campaign in 2020 to phase out “Holland” in its international branding. The effort failed. 

And what in the tulip-growing hell is up with “Dutch”?  

Firstly, the Dutch don’t refer to themselves as such. It is strictly an English language artifact that managed to stick. Natives call themselves “Nederlanders.” 

“Dutch” comes from the same root as “Deutsch,” which traces back to the Old High German word “diutisc,” meaning “of the people.” In the early Middle Ages, this distinguished everyday Germanic languages from Latin, which was used primarily by scholars and the Church. 

Before the 1600s, “Dutch” could refer to people from what is now Germany as well as what is now the Netherlands and Belgium. “High Dutch” meant German speakers in the mountains and “Low Dutch” meant those in the flatlands, including the Netherlands. As England’s contact with seafaring traders from the Low Countries increased, “Dutch” came to refer specifically to people of the Netherlands while “German” became the standard word for people from Germany.

With many people’s Netherlands familiarity beginning and ending at the Sherwin-Williams paint can, I hope this has cleared up a few things. 

 

What are you, some kind of clown?

If so, what kind? There are three basic types—whiteface, auguste and character. 

A recognizable contemporary whiteface clown might be “Puddles,” a tall, imposing clown who sings power ballads in an extraordinary baritone and does some physical comedy and mimed tragicomic drama. Puddles’ outfit—a loose, flowing tunic with big buttons and ruffled collar—recalls the Pierrot costume from the Italian commedia dell’arte traditions of the 16^th and 17^th century, widely accepted as the progenitor of modern clowning. His face is painted white with bold eyebrows, teardrops and red mouth accents—classic whiteface. 

Bozo the Clown is a readily recognizable auguste from my generation. An auguste often has flesh-tone skin with exaggerated features (big red nose, painted mouth and bushy blue eyebrows in Bozo’s case) rather than full whiteface. The auguste's clown suit augers more toward the playful than the elegant, and the mannerisms tend to be silly and bumbling, geared toward children’s humor rather than, for instance, the pathos of Puddles’ Pity Party.

Thirdly, we have the character clown. Character clowns are commonly recognizable archetypes like policemen, doctors, chefs or hobos. One of the best-known character clowns is Emmet Kelly, the sad and downtrodden “everyman.” He has shabby clothes, oversized shoes, a floppy hat and a painted-on, downturned mouth. There’s also a happy version of Kelly’s hobo/tramp character, most famously manifest in Red Skelton’s Freddy the Freeloader.

There are other clown types, of course, but most are derived in some way from these three basic categories. There is always of course, the “elected official” clown, an often malevolent actor for whom we have no one to blame but ourselves. 

Gerrymandering—a great word is born...

The word “gerrymander” has been in the news and as a result, its etymology has enjoyed some recent publicity. Here it is again. “Gerrymandering,” the process of redistricting a region for electoral purposes, is a portmanteau of early-19th-century Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry’s last name and the word “salamander,” whose sinuous form resembled the convoluted voting map for the state’s 1812 state senate elections. 

Gerry's starkly partisan redistricting plan was not merely proposed, it was enacted, and not merely enacted, it was successful. Democratic-Republicans won 29 out of 40 seats in Massachusetts’ state senate elections that year despite the Federalists receiving more overall votes across the state. While Gerry himself did not design the map (and reportedly disapproved of it), by signing it into law he would give birth to a pejorative that would become better known to history than he would. Gerry would lose the next gubernatorial election largely due to the injury his reputation sustained over the issue, but his political career ended at very near the top of the United States’ political process when he died in office as James Madison’s vice president.

The Boston Gazette published the cartoon (see illustration) that popularized the word, but the specific editorial writer who coined “Gerrymander” is not definitively known. It’s possible the original cartoonist—Elkanah Tisdale—created the conflation, but it’s more likely that it bubbled up organically within an editorial brainstorming session and was run unattributed (I like to think it was some kid from the mail room). I know, I know, it looks more like a dragon than a salamander, but perhaps in the estimation of the editorial board, “gerrydragon” lacked the implication of slipperiness inherent in “gerrymander.”

Why do you think they call it “dope”? Well, I’ll tell you…

The word “dope” derives from the Dutch word, “doop,” which means “sauce.” “Doop” is the noun form of the word, “doopen,” which means “to dip.” “Doop” was initially used in cooking contexts, but soon also came to refer to any thick, viscous fluid, such as paint, tar or beeswax. In 17^th century usage, “dope” owed more to dinner than it did to drugs. 

By the 1850s, “dope” came to reference medicinal preparations, including opium-based concoctions. Morphine and other narcotics fell under the “dope” umbrella at around this time, broadening its meaning to "a drug or narcotic substance."

By the early 1900s, “dope” became a slang term for any kind of illicit drug, but most often referenced heroin and marijuana, especially in jazz and beatnik circles. "Why do you think they call it dope?" emerged in the 1970s as an anti-drug message, playing on the double meaning of dope—both as a slang term for drugs and as an insult meaning a stupid person. 

The answer to the question, “Why do you think they call it ‘dope’?” is saucy indeed.

"Tits up" and the case of the purloined definition

To my understanding, the phrase “tits up” has always meant “deceased” for a living being and “not working at all” for an inanimate object such as a car. Makes sense. It was always logical to me as referring to a dead animal lying cartoon-style on its back.  

I've always loved the phrase and have researched its origins as credibly sourced in military parlance from the WWII era, specifically for upside-down airplanes. It quickly metastasized to the farm community (I found Bessie tits-up in a ditch), and not long after found a new home and even a new meaning on Broadway that I’d previously been unaware of.

 

It has come to my attention that “tits up” additionally means “with confidence,” the phrase often shouted as a pre-performance confidence-booster among showgirls. Makes sense. With boobs in bustiers that place them aloft for the 42^nd Street gawkers, those nervous moments before curtain were just aching for a battle cry and beginning in the 1950s or so, they got one. 

 

Usually, a preponderant acceptance among journalists, artists and the general population is required for a word or phrase to begin meaning something other than it previously has. That didn’t occur with “tits up.” It was simply appropriated by the Broadway performer community and used by them for their purposes irrespective of its broader accepted sense. Broadway said, “We like it, we’re taking it.” I admire that kind of linguistic bravado, especially when its usage is so on-the-money. 

 

“Tits up” refers to posture and attitude on the part of the performer but at the same time seems to lampoon and take back the commercialization of the performer’s sexuality. I like it for both those reasons. The phrase has found new popularity with this contextual usage in the TV series, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” which is how this meaning previously unknown to me bubbled into my consciousness. 

Perhaps the best advice and a true motto for living might incorporate both meanings: “Tits up until you’re tits up.”

British English usage of hospital and a mild envy

When an English person says someone is “in hospital,” it sounds odd to the American ear.  We prefer someone to be in “the” hospital. Which hospital though? Maybe you’re in a city with multiple hospitals. You wouldn’t say someone is “in a hospital” unless you didn’t know which one. Is it possible our former overlords have this one right? I think they do.

 

In British English usage, you’ve got the option of distinguishing between a physical place and that place’s common purpose. An English person would in fact say, “My brother is in the hospital fixing the MRI machine.” If the brother in question were sick, “My brother is in hospital” would suffice. As Americans, we lack the option to omit a superfluous word and I feel a little ripped off over it. 

 

That convention extends weirdly to “university” in British English and to “college” in American English. We do omit the definite article if we are going to “church,” “school” or “jail” for the purposes of inspiration, education or incarceration (but not if we’re there to fix the plumbing), so why not “hospital”?

The Harris/Walz candidacy and the apostrophe

With the Harris/Walz candidacy fully on the rails, I thought it prudent to review some apostrophe basics, as it has stuck a stick in the spokes of many communicators stymied by what seem to be equally bad choices. Should “Harris” have an apostrophe followed by an “s” or simply an apostrophe? An apostrophe after a “z” followed by an “s” feels weird but it seems right, right?  

The Wall Street Journal’s treatment of the bugaboo is “Harris’s and Walz’s,” but the Associated Press at last check has been printing it as “Harris’ and Walz’s.” The New York Times, which generally subscribes to AP, has been using the WSJ model.

 

There is much crankiness in the editorial community for the AP to move fully to the WSJ model. In AP style, the possessive form of “Paris” is “Paris’s” and the possessive form of “King Charles” is “King Charles’s.” The AP must fully adopt the possessive of “Harris” as “Harris’s” or it will have a shambles on its hands. 

 

The important thing is not to fear the Harris/Walz candidacy’s possessive usage. You must, however, do something. You can’t just leave it like it is with an intended possessive sense and slink away thinking everything’s fine. If you write, “Harris and Walz candidacy promises to be…” you are assaulting your readers. 

Here are your options and my opinions on them:

 

Harris’s and Walz’s: My favorite. A little bulky, but worth it.
Harris’ and Walz’s: Perfectly fine, though a little precious.
Harris’ and Walz’: Writer is a chaos agent and must be stopped.
Harris and Walz: Unclear and reflective of sloth. 

 

Devising mnemonic devices

Mnemonic devices are useful for preventing finger-in-the-air proclamations at cocktail parties that are dead wrong. One classic example is differentiating word origins and the insect kingdom with clarity between etymology and entomology. You don’t want to be schmoozing it up at a garden party with Thurston Howell the Fifth—millions at stake—and blather on about the Japanese entomology of “tycoon.” Your sycophancy will have been all for naught. The easy solution for avoiding the etymology/entomology trap is to associate "entomology" with ants. 

The mnemonic I like for remembering that “mnemonic” begins with a silent “M” is by associating the word with that modern master of morphology, Eminem. Do you have any favorite mnemonics?

Bird versus fowl

With Thanksgiving approaching, the time has come to distinguish between birds and fowl. Your fine feathered friends outside the window are birds, whereas the 40-pound behemoth you and yours are planning to devour is fowl. Note that it’s not “a fowl,” as the word “fowl” is a non-count plural noun that refers to a class of bird kept or hunted for its meat or eggs. All fowl are birds, but not all birds are fowl. The wild varieties include landfowl (like pheasants and quail) and waterfowl (like ducks and geese). Roosters and hens are landfowl, but with the distinction of being raised, which also makes them domestic or barnyard fowl. What makes a bird? You need five things: lungs, legs, wings, warm blood and eggs. Bats’ egglessness renders them winged mammals, and egg-laying reptiles miss the classification by being cold-blooded (though most lizards prefer ectothermic as being both more descriptive and less prone to stigma). Your wings don’t have to fly and your legs don’t have to be able to do a Texas two-step either, but if you want to claim to be a bird, you need to hit this list five for five. If in addition to all of this you are a candidate to be eaten, you are fowl. 

Eponyms, Malthus and coyotes

An eponym is a word whose source and meaning refers to a person. The person can be historical or fictional, living or dead. Perhaps the most famous eponym is pasteurize, which refers to Louis Pasteur, who pioneered the process of heating milk to a point where harmful microbes are killed without affecting the milk's taste or nutritional value. Other such words include sadistic, platonic and gerrymander. Braggadocio is a fine eponym that references a fictional character, Edmund Spencer's empty, boasting narcissist finding new life in modern English. America is itself an eponym. 

Recently returned to Southern California after a wonderful summer and early fall in Maine, I was serenaded last night by a pack of coyotes, and the word “malthusian” came to mind, as that is a feature of the Los Angeles coyote population. "Malthusian" references English economist and pessimist, Thomas Robert Malthus, who espoused the notion that populations grow to the limit of the sustenance systems that support them, and that human population reductions only occur in the inevitable event of famine, war and disease. Malthus was a lot of fun at parties. The malthusian attribute is most certainly true of the coyote population in the Los Angeles suburbs, whose supply of jackrabbits and Jack Russells are the sole determinant for its density. 

 

Though both plentiful and reviled, coyotes are protected here–in large part for this reason. As satisfying as slaked bloodlust over the loss of poor little Pookins might be, an open season on coyotes would achieve little. Grief-stricken, below-the-line movie professionals  littering their front lawns with leg-hold traps and staggering through the streets of Woodland Hills with an air rifle has plenty of potential downside and no realistic upside because the practical result would be nil. The coyote population is malthusian, and even subsequent to an all-out rout would rebound to the degree the land could sustain them within a season or two. Malthusian.

Jeffrey Clark's error offers a learning opportunity for using noun/verb homophones

In a broadcast from the Center for Renewing America studios, former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division Jeffrey Clark expressed his objection to 50 Trump officials having received DOJ subpoenas. “All of this makes me angry,” Clark said. “It seems like they won’t stop. This is really causing a lot of upsetment in the country.”

The use of the non-word, “upsetment,” was intended to express the noun form of the verb, “to upset.” The word he was going for of course is very simply, “upset.” The verb/noun relationship of upset/upset is just one example of dozens that exist in the English language in which the noun/verb forms are homophones. In these cases, however, they are of course not homonyms because that would be maddening.

 

In the noun form, the accent is on the first syllable, whereas in the verb form, the accent is on the final syllable. Two-syllable examples include “survey,” “implant,” and “conscript.” For another example, the code enforcement agency will only permit you to build if you have a permit. 

 

One disclaimer here–you may find "upsetment" in Wiktionary or other highly permissive dictionaries. It has been coined before, but it hasn't caught on in journalistic, fiction or historical writing, nor has it been welcomed into the benchmark dictionaries.

Deadly, not stirred; history and etymology of the Molotov cocktail

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has invigorated a citizen response the world hasn’t seen in decades, which in turn has invigorated use of a homemade incendiary device preferred by improvised armies the world over, the Molotov cocktail. But who was Molotov, and why is this guerrilla gasoline grenade deployed in his honor? 

Molotov was an Old Bolshevik who became a great party loyalist to the Soviet Union. A favorite of Stalin and vice versa, Stalin appointed Molotov as his right-hand man, chair of the Council of People’s Commissars, in 1930. He held the post until 1941. 

 

At the outset of World War II, in what is called the First Soviet-Finnish War, the Soviet Union leveraged the chaos of the war as cover to invade Finland, but met unexpected resistance. The surprising weakness of the Soviet machine was noted by an ambitious German leader, who soon afterward launched an ill-fated offensive into Russia. 

 

Here’s where it gets a little convoluted. Soviet propagandists were claiming that visible bomber flights over these little Finnish villages were humanitarian food drops. The local populations began referring to this Soviet fantasy as “Molotov bread baskets.” As tanks and personnel began moving into these villages, they were met with homemade incendiaries they then called “Molotov cocktails,” very real beverages that were intended to complement these non-existent food deliveries from the Politburo. 

 

The idea didn’t originate there, though the name did. A bottle filled with gas and a lit rag is no stroke of genius and has been used as a sabotage for settling scores ever since combustible fuel. Notably though, they were used as a tool of desperation by poorly equipped soldiers in the Spanish Civil War fighting under Franco, and we all know how that ended. The Molotov cocktail. Crude but effective.

 

I guess the most important takeaway is that Molotov cocktails were designed for use on Molotov, not by Molotov. 

 

 

The 100th Grammar Dance article, and it's a doozy

This being my 100^th Grammar Dance article, I thought I’d make it a doozy–that is, I thought I might track down the origins of the word, “doozy.”  

I first heard it watching American cartoons in the 1960s. Just before Bugs Bunny’s antagonist falls off a cliff, into a mine or down an elevator shaft, Bugs would often offer the faux-kindly advice, “The first step’s a doozy!” As a child, I contextualized it to mean an extreme version of whatever category “the doozy” occupied, and accepted it on its face. 

The word’s archaic charm kept it in my unquestioned active vocabulary for decades, and I sometimes employed it when I wished to invoke a mood of waxed-mustache anachronism for an impressive person, place or thing. When I finally took it upon myself to find out about the word's history, I was a little disappointed. I imagined its source being its onomatopoeic resemblance to someone falling, Bugs Bunny-style, down a well or a conflation of "ooh" and "huzzah." Alas, no.

 

“Doozy” is probably the result of the gradual evolution of the word, “daisy,” which in the late 19^th century was a common metaphor for any exemplary thing. “Doozy” begins to emerge in the earliest part of the 20^th century as a comic replacement where “daisy” might have been used before. 

 

There is also a theory that the word derives from popular Italian actress Eleonora Duse, who lived at the turn of the century. Credible or not, this is the etymology I prefer to believe, as she was one of the great stage artists of her time and was known for tackling deeply challenging material.

There is also a theory that it derives from the Duesenberg automobile, whose legendary luxury is tempting to associate with “doozy,” but its usage predates the car company’s widest popularity, so that is unlikely.

 

Most signs point to the mundane transition of “daisy” into “doozy” over the course of the 19^th century’s departure and the arrival of the 20^th, likely at the hands of a series of grinning, bow-tied goobers seeing their first steamship or a nicely carved walking stick. 

That’s where most of the evidence lies, but as is the case with beliefs of such low stakes as these, strongly holding to them even in error bears little consequence. So, in furtherance of the arts and in furtherance of the feminine, I am throwing in all the way with the Eleonora Duse theory, as wrong as I surely am. 

Warren G Harding's coining of the word, "normalcy" is 100 years old this year

The word “normalcy” may seem perfectly normal, but it’s not. Its two chief oddities are that it is having its 100^th birthday this year and that it was created by an American president. 

Normality, which means the same thing as normalcy, has been around since the 16^th century. It was a term for a 90-degree angle in carpentry and carried the second meaning of the way we know it today, as the state of conforming to some generally agreed-upon set of expectations. “Normalcy” only comes into use with Warren G. Harding’s presidential campaign of 1922. 

 

There were some uses of “normalcy” in expressing a sense of the perpendicular in carpentry through the 19^th century, but the way it is known today only begins with Harding’s plea for a “Return to Normalcy” after World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic. The coining was successful, as it resides in all major dictionaries and relative to “normality” is the preferred usage for many Americans. According to a Google search hit count, however, “normality” outperforms “normalcy” ten to one.

 

My ear prefers “normalcy” to “normality” if I wish to imply something welcome. If it is a safe and warm place of manageable, predictable equilibrium, then “normalcy” it is. If I am characterizing a rigidly off-putting adherence to irrelevant social hierarchies, “normality” might be preferred. There’s a certain jeer to it that fits an invective a little better. 

 

As a prescriptivist, I’m supposed to hear “normalcy” as a bombastic neologism fit only for corrupt presidents (he did help free Eugene Debs, which cuts a lot of ice with me and bears mentioning), but in my opinion there’s better music to  “normalcy” than its more correct counterpart. Unless I went to throw a barb at some icon of conformism, like that corrupt philanderer, Warren G. Harding, I don’t normally use “normality.” As a general rule, both normalcy and normality are to be avoided as descriptions of individuals, mostly because no one is or was normal, Warren G. Harding included. He was a weirdo.

Homonyms, homographs, homophones, oh my!

While there is some disagreement about the distinction between homonyms and homophones, no bar fights have ever broken out over homographs, that is to say, words that are spelled alike but mean different things. 

Punch, for instance. Whether thrown or drunk, “punch” is spelled the same way. It is a homograph pair whose two meanings are pronounced the same. Some homographs sound different, as in describing the brevity of sixty seconds as a minute minute, but even with that second feature (usually one more than is needed to begin a dispute), few grammarians, however sad and lonely, raise an objection to the blanket statement that all word pairs with identical spelling and disparate senses qualify as homographs. 

 

Many homographs are also homophones, which are characterized by their sounding alike, as in the two versions of “punch” above. They are spelled alike and they sound alike, but they mean different things, so they fit the requirements of both categories. "Minute" and "minute" as described in the previous paragraph qualify as a homograph pairs but not as homophones. 

 

I made allusion to some grammar violence in the first paragraph, and homonyms is where you run into it. Many a lip has been bloodied by pinch-nosed prescriptivists who roar into conflict if nastily provoked over the win currently enjoyed by the modern preference of describing both homographs and homophones as homonyms. These hidebound grammar thugs point to the -nym suffix as meaning “name” and as such prefer it to refer only to word pairs that are spelled alike but differ in both pronunciation and meaning. 

 

This notion would provide no distinction then from homograph. The thankfully prevailing view is for homonyms to be the umbrella under which both homographs and homophones reside. In the "all dogs are animals but not all animals are dogs" sort criteria, homonym as a parent category above homograph and homophone serves as a good organizing principle for these grammar terms.

Having cake, eating cake, a phrase's evolution and the Unabomber

Some of the most commonly known quotations are actually misquoted. Here are a few: “Play it again, Sam.” “We're going to need a bigger boat.” “Money is the root of all evil.” These examples’ initial utterance or penning can all be found and examined, and the error can be clearly noted. This makes them misquotes. 

 

Other adjacent categories to misquoting include misattribution and false quoting. The distinction between these two is the existence of a verifiable source. In a typical misattribution, a less-famous person’s bon mot is ascribed to a more-famous person. Voltaire did not write, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Voltaire’s biographer, Evelyn Beatrice Hall, coined the expression to describe his outlook on free speech. 

 

In false quoting, some screed or aphorism of unknown origin is falsely assigned to a known wit—George Carlin suffers this mightily. There is a long and dreadful essay that begins, “The paradox of our time in history…” You can find it in a click, and at a glance it is well below Carlin’s standards. False quoting is lampooned to perfection in the iconic Abraham Lincoln meme that reads, “Don't believe everything you read on the internet.”

 

A somewhat different story can be found in, “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.” It feels like misquoted Shakespeare, but it’s not. Its earliest usage appears in 16^th century letters, suggesting it was an idiomatic saying of the time. The expression is most commonly known in contemporary parlance as I have written it here, but that was not always the case. 

 

The current usage became prevalent after the 1930s, when it was commonly delivered as “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.” This logic works in that once eaten, the cake cannot be had. The modern style explains itself by saying once the eating begins, the having stops. Many of literary criticism graduate school’s leading lights have thrashed this one out, so I won’t get into it. What’s interesting is Ted Kaczynski’s involvement in this little usage melee. 

 

In his manifesto—and as a side note, anytime a piece of writing you’ve done is characterized as a manifesto, you’ve probably lost your audience—Ted Kaczynski wrote, “As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial society, well, you can't eat your cake and have it too.” It was a sufficiently arcane usage for an FBI linguist to take note and turn up the heat on all of the smartypants suspects. Kaczynski was on FBI radar already, and upon the deeper investigation inspired by this “eat/have” variant, investigators found a letter he had written to his mother where he employed the same usage. The FBI had their man. And they ate him too.

You don't "bring in" the New Year." You "ring in" the New Year.

This New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, you will probably hear the expression, "Bringing in the New Year." That is incorrect. It's "ringing." While the history of the phrase is not certain, it may be a reference to the bells of Trinity Church in New York, which began a midnight New Year's bell-ringing ceremony to celebrate its completion in 1698. Tennyson cements the proper usage to a certainty in his poem, "Ring Out, Wild Bells," a prayer for the ills of the year to be replaced with new hope. You'll hear "bringing in the New Year" in the coming days, and it should now clang in your head like cathedral bells.

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light:

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind

For those that here we see no more;

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Daylight saving time is neither plural nor possessive

Now that its departure is upon us, I thought it worth covering one of the most common grammar mistakes in all of chronology: daylight saving time. It is neither plural (daylight savings time) nor possessive (daylight saving’s time). Under the correct punctuation, the word “saving” appears as a gerund, modifying the word “daylight.” Think of it in its inverse and you’ll hardly be tempted into the errors. You’d never say “savings daylight” or “saving’s daylight.” 

The strict rule-follower will include a hyphen as “daylight” and “saving” combine to create a compound adjective that modifies the word “time.” But “daylight saving time” without the hyphen has ingrained itself into common use to the point where it has earned a bye on the hyphen rule for compound modifiers. 

 

However you choose to present or butcher the expression, in the name of perspective, one should always be mindful that daylight saving time has nighttime losing time as its unavoidable adjunct.