Jumbling, tumbling

Between this blog and other active online haunts, I’ve been spreading my internet self a bit thin. But I’m a glutton for punishment, so I’ve started a Tumblr blog, provisionally titled Books & bits asthore.* So far it’s an erratic series of book excerpts, poems, and images from films.

Sentence first has been nominated in Macmillan Dictionary’s inaugural Love English Awards. You can vote for it, or for another language blog, on this page until 31 January. My expectations are non-existent, but I’m honoured to be in such great company, and I found a few new websites to explore. (Disclosure: I write for Macmillan Dictionary Blog.)

It’s a mild and sunny December day in the west of Ireland — Pseudocember, I’ve been calling it — and this is likely to be my last post before 2012. Thank you for your visits, comments, and innumerable kindnesses all year, and have a happy and peaceful Christmas.

moss on a wall in county Galway this morning

* I wrote about the Irish English word asthore here.

Plus another thing

I joined Google+ recently, and after a few private posts to suss it out, I’ve been posting everything publicly. The service hasn’t exactly taken off yet – a lot of people I initially followed have dormant accounts – but I see plenty of potential there, and some people are making excellent and busy use of it.

So far I’ve been using Google+ to share (and find) links, commentary, bits from books, poetry, photos and miscellany. Some of this overlaps with my Twitter account, but Google+ enables longer quotes and thoughts. It’s also another way to chat to people online. (Just as well I’m not on Facebook.)

I don’t expect it to affect my blogging time, which is constrained anyway by the demands of freelancing, among other commitments. But if I go a while without blogging, you’ll have one more place to find me. For convenience, there’s a new link in the “Elsewhere” box at the top right of this blog.

Feel free to visit, follow, offer tips, point and laugh, or disregard.

The green stuff

If you’re a regular visitor, you might know that I’ve been writing weekly posts at Macmillan Dictionary Blog. June was Green English month – that is, the language of the environment and all things eco-friendly – so a few of my recent posts focused on this.

First up, “It will all come out in the greenwash” looks at some of the jargon that has emerged from the green movement, such as greentailing, greenwashing, and eco-bling:

Some companies are unscrupulous about jumping on the green bandwagon in an effort to boost their profits. This has given rise to the term greenwash – formed by analogy with whitewash. Just as whitewash indicates greater concern with appearance than with what lies beneath, and indicates attempts to cover up incriminatory facts, so greenwash refers to superficial activities intended to show concern about the environment and distract from damage being done.

As Kerry Maxwell points out in her BuzzWord article, greenwash has been around since the early 1990s, and its use has spread from advertising contexts to political and personal ones. [more]

In “Have I seen you be -vore?”, I examine the -vore suffix, which comes from French -vore, from Latin -vorous, from vorare (devour, swallow quickly) and with which we’re familiar from words such as herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore. This pattern is greatly extended in scientific terminology, where we see

words like insectivore, piscivore, nectarivore, frugivore (fruit-eater), detritivore, and granivore (eats seeds, not grandmothers), and their adjectival forms: insectivorous, etc.

In these cases, -vore signals the act of eating, and what precedes it indicates what is eaten. But more recent coinages work differently, signalling a shift (or lapse) in how the suffix is used. One of these is locavore, sometimes localvore. Although superficially it has the same form as the traditional -vore words, it does not work quite the same way: it has nothing to do with eating locals. [more]

“Out of the red with the green stuff” takes a different approach to green English by noting the colour’s association with money. Green is where the language of the environment and the language of business overlap, and now it seems

the “green economy” is spreading to unexpected quarters: a recent article in Time magazine reports that Sicily’s mafia want in on the act.

The article discusses clean energy and dirty money, phrases that draw on particular metaphors I’ve written about before. Its title mentions the mafia’s “hunger for power”, a metaphor that refers in this instance to renewable energy but is apt in other ways. For one thing, when we talk about money, we often talk metaphorically about food, as Diane Nicholls’s article shows. Also, Italy is where the Slow Food movement, which promotes green living, is said to have begun. [more]

Finally, in “Cut me some slacktivism” I write about different kinds of modern activism, how online life has affected it, and some of the words used to describe different types of involvement. Among these are astroturfing, clicktivism, hacktivism and slacktivism, the last of which

was formed by blending slacker with activism. Whereas activism is all about active engagement, slacktivists prefer to limit their involvement to the bare minimum. . . .

Given the ease of manipulating online information, underhanded tactics are inevitable. One technique that has attracted a lot of attention is astroturfing. This extends a familiar metaphor: since AstroTurf is fake grass, astroturfing is a fake grass roots campaign. It’s a deceptive form of advocacy that appears as a groundswell of passionate opinion, but is often secretly financed by corporations or other well-organised groups with a vested interest in swaying political policy or the public mood. [more]

You can click here to read previous round-ups of my posts for Macmillan Dictionary Blog, or here to go directly to the archive. (The second link is also in the “Elsewhere” box in the top right-hand corner of this blog.)

Comments, whether here or there, are always welcome.

Weasel words and skunked words

Time for a recap of my recent writing at Macmillan Dictionary Blog. Near the end of April, I took a look at “skunked” words. This is a term I came across first in Bryan Garner’s Dictionary of Modern American Usage; it refers to words whose meaning or usage is so disputed that using them is likely to bother or distract readers. Among these words are enormity, fulsome, and “Hopefully disinterested”:

Words are slippery. Their meanings can mutate and multiply, differing according to where and how they are used. The word defence, for instance, will suggest different things to a sportsperson, a psychologist, a lawyer, a doctor, and a military strategist. Our relationship with a given word depends on our history with it and what it connotes for us. Yet for the most part we can communicate straightforwardly with others, since context supplies information that reduces the chances of misunderstanding. Now and then, however, the signal turns to noise. [more]

May was Macmillan Dictionary’s month of business English, so a few of my articles fall under this category. My particular focus is on business jargon; like any other kind of jargon, it is inevitable and not inherently objectionable. However, it can also degenerate into near-meaningless gobbledegook (a phenomenon I’ve written about on this blog before). “The business of gobbledegook” is a short assessment of this kind of language and the problems it can generate:

When we communicate in a business environment, obscure jargon is an occupational hazard. Given how specialised are many industries and work environments, it’s natural that people will use a certain amount of terminology that won’t always make much sense to outsiders. The trouble is when this language is used in inappropriate contexts, or when it becomes so vague and jumbled as to be impenetrable even to its target audience. [more]

That article includes a few lines of parody-gobbledegook; next came a full article of it, “Critical learnings, going forward”, which I’ve already introduced here. A competition was held to translate the text into more meaningful English, and the submissions were a delight to read.

My follow-up post, “Weaselly recognised”, continues the theme by examining how weasel words, jargon and periphrasis are sometimes used to euphemise awkward facts. It explains why this is not helpful, and stresses some of the benefits of plain language:

Plain English is a frank and straightforward style that does not lend itself readily to expressing longwinded nonsense and hiding unpleasant facts. It is well suited to conveying meaning clearly and without guile, thereby showing a measure of respect for people’s intelligence, feelings, and capacity for dealing with difficult truths and situations – not “challengeful reality-based outcomes, going forward”. Our brains do a lot of hard work decoding language into sense; in business, it doesn’t pay to multiply this workload. [more]

Tucked in among these posts is one about the word friend and how online life has influenced its meanings. “Your flexible ‘friend’” describes how the word

straddles the digital and physical environments in a way that reflects its great flexibility and complex usage. Over the last few years its use online, particularly in social networks, has popularised the transitive verb friend . . . along with derived forms like defriend . . . and unfriend. . . . We all adapt to this shifting terrain in different ways, redefining friend and recategorising friendships to suit our habits, purposes, and feelings. And although our online activities have brought new dimensions to the word friend, the disputes and discussions about what it means are just a new phase – and perhaps an amplification – of age-old debates. [more]

This article was also published on Ragan.com under the title “The many meanings of ‘friend’”.

You’ll find all my articles for Macmillan Dictionary Blog on this page.

Critical learnings: a competition

There’s a competition that might interest you on Macmillan Dictionary Blog today. I’ve written a parody of corporate communication laced with buzzwords, management jargon, ridiculous metaphors and assorted gobbledegook. Here’s an excerpt:

Parties affected downstream are encouraged to utilise their forward thinking hats and realign their tool belts to the non-ongoing contract situation within a short timeframe totality. We anticipate dynamic new overarching metrics of holistic staff wellbeingness at the end of the day. Surfing where the waves are should galvanise a global blue-sky modality that will roll out and trickle down the Monday mood mountain into the value valley.

The challenge (and the fun) for readers is to translate the post into a more comprehensible form of business English. You can do it in a few sentences, or – if your productivity drivers are optimised – in more satisfying detail. Push the editors’ imagination buttons, and you could win a Macmillan dictionary of your choice.

Search engine terms (1): Do ghosts make puddles?

One of the unforeseen delights of writing a blog is the steady stream of curious search terms by which people find it. Soon after I began browsing mine, I took to noting ones I liked. Before long, the list had grown to an unwieldy size, and I stopped adding to it for a while. I wish I hadn’t: every time I look, I find gems.

To manage the list better, I broke it down into loose categories. For example: literary (“e.l. doctorow semi-colon”), animals (“big hairy octopus”), statements (“batman there’s no closet in the gardens”), Ireland (“satan in ireland”), rude (“turkish fat sex”), strangely specific (“1920s train ticket to paris”), and so on.

This post is the first in a series. Here, for your entertainment and idle curiosity, are some of the questions people have asked that led them to Sentence first. I’ve added numbers, question marks, and answers & notes in brackets; misspellings have been retained. Feel free to answer any of the questions, or to ask your own.

1. do ghosts make puddles? [Yes.]

2. what can a spider’s wind do to you? [Very little.]

3. do harbor seals have vocal cords? [Yes, and they're well developed.]

4. why is grammar misunderstood? [Don’t get me started.]

5. what is the point of prescriptivism? [A. There is none. B. To save language from imminent doom. C. Something in between.]

6. is “metagrobolized” a real word? [Yes.]

7. is irregardless a word? [Yes.]

8. is sophistimacated a word? [Yes: a non-standard & jocular one.]

9. is sneaked a word? [Yes.]

10. what’s wrong with snuck? [Nothing.]

11. Is “freeest” a word? [Ask Lucy.]

12. how awesome is god? [It depends on what you mean by awesome. And god.]

13. are you a bromide? [Ask Belinda Blurb.]

14. why were lumberjacks virile men? [Ask H. G. Wells.]

15. what happened to the woodlands of ireland? [They were...pruned.]

16. is there a spelling of rear as rere? [Yes.]

17. what do chefs use as abbreviations or acronyms?

18. why can’t you mark books in red pen anymore? [Maybe because of the red pen effect.]

19. do irish people say metaphors in every sentence? [Almost.]

20. which sentence has no typo? [This one.]

21. is it noone or no one? [Probably no one; Noone is a name.]

22. what is to plamause someone? [It’s an Irish expression; I explain it here.]

23. why is my banana bread soggy? [You wouldn’t believe how often I'm asked this. Possibly too many bananas, or not enough time in the oven.]

24. call it bread or cake? [I don’t mind.]

25. how do they care for the wave rock? [I don’t know. The questioner meant this, I guess, but found concrete poetry.]

26. what happens when a candle is alight diagram? [Is that a trick question, or should seven of those words be hyphenated?]

27. what sentence can i use for eek! [Try one with ghost puddles.]

28. what does air do? [Sustains us.]

29. does a not only sentence have to have an also in it? [No.]

30. why do people hate bureaucracy?

31. what’s the difference between misinformation and disinformation? [Answered here.]

32. owning half a dog? [You’ll need half a dog warden.]

33. how old is my wheelbarrow? [I don’t know.]

34. what is om nom nom teen language?

35. is the word awesome used more by young people today? [I believe so.]

36. is it appropriate to use the ampersand symbol for formal writing? [Sometimes.]

37. what are regrettable necessities? [Hyphens, according to H. W. Fowler.]

38. what are the parts of affixation? [Answered here.]

39. how would a 12 year old use lexicography? [Enthusiastically?]

40. why does thunder roll so long? [Because the sky's the limit.]

41. anyone seen the large bird at spanish arch galway city? [Yes: it's a heron.]

42. how do i get into the second demention? [Moonwalk.]

Writing at Macmillan Dictionary Blog

A few months ago I mentioned writing about man-words for Macmillan Dictionary Blog; recently I’ve written some more there, about other things. My posts have appeared once a week, normally on Tuesday or Wednesday, and it’s time I brought them to the attention of Sentence first readers who haven’t read them and might be interested in doing so.

First I looked at the onomatopoeic word nom, often seen in om nom nom, then (for Valentine’s sake) I briefly explored the word together, chiefly its semantics and etymology. Last week I examined Google’s culturomics/n-grams, a remarkable project based on the Google Books corpus, and this week’s offering is a short survey of variations on vacation that celebrates our fondness for coining new words (like halfwaycation – can you guess what it means?).

The Macmillan Dictionary Blog has many authors who share a passionate interest in words and language; it is well worth a wander around. The archive of my posts is on this page. Comments here or there would be very welcome.