Having it Both Ways

English has as number of words, variously called contradictanyms, auto-antonyms, antagonyms, and Janus words, which can mean both one thing and its opposite.  For example, qualified can mean both “competent” and “limited”—as in “Although qualified for the job, he was only a qualified success.” (Janus was the Roman god of beginnings and endings, who looked in two directions.)

There are various reasons that such words occur—development of similar words from different roots (such as cleave, meaning “to adhere” from Old English clifian and "to separate" from Old English cleofan), change of meaning in a word over time (critical, meaning both "vital" and "censorious"), application of an existing word to a new meaning (screen, meaning "to hide from view" and also "to show [a film]"), and plain old ignorance (using literally to mean "virtually" instead of "actually").

However they come about, contradictanyms can make for confusion if you don’t read carefully.  Consider the following sentences;

            Bolt the door or the prisoner will bolt.

            His critical comments were critical to our success.

            Stars are out when the lights are out.

            There was an unfortunate oversight in her oversight of the work.

            He tried to move fast, but he was stuck fast.

            One man was left, but he left.

            If the lights goes off, the alarm goes off.

            I’m in a fix and have no fix for it.

            I’d like to rent your car.  Will you rent it?

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is something of a contradictanym himself; he thinks what he writes is poetry, but it’s actually the opposite, to wit:

            I shot an arrow into the air,

            It fell to earth I knew not where.

            A man rushed up and yelled at me:
            “You fool—you shot me in the knee!”

Spilling the Beans

Eat your green beans, our parents always told us. Also known as string beans or snap beans, and in England as runner beans, they can be beans of almost any variety together with their unripe pods. “String beans,” so-called because of the fibrous quality of the pods, were referred to as early as 1754, “snap beans” (from the sound made when they are broken in pieces for cooking) in 1770, “green beans” in 1842, and “runner beans” (high-climbing scarlet runners) not until 1882.  At least that’s what Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary would have us believe.

Stringless beans (and we’re all grateful for them) were developed in 1894 in Le Roy, New York, by Calvin Keeney, who is forever enshrined in posterity’s memory (well, someone’s memory) as “The Father of the Stringless Bean.”

The French term haricots verts (“green beans”) usually refers to a longer, thinner bean than the typical American kind. These beans provided the name for the rowdy Cajun musical genre known as zydeco.  One of the earliest numbers in that up-tempo, accordion-based style was called “Les haricots sont pas salés,” which means “The beans aren’t salty”—implying the singer was too poor to afford salt pork to cook with his beans.  Zydeco is a corruption of les haricots, as pronounced in Cajun French.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou knows what it is to have no salt for his beans.  It’s rough, as he tells us in these lines:

            The green beans have no grain of salt,

            The lox has not one caper,

            The whisky isn’t single-malt,

            The food has lost its sapor.

            The artichokes lack Hollandaise,

            The champagne has no bubbles,

            The steak’s bereft of Bordelaise,

            Such culinary troubles!

            The pâté de foie gras’s not fat,

            The truffles aren’t mature,

            The lobster tastes a lot like sprat—

            It’s awful being poor!

Word Imperfect

Ben Zimmer, who followed William Safire as author of On Language, a now defunct weekly column in The New York Times Magazine, reported the case of a young woman who received a text message from her father that said: “Your mom and I are going to divorce next month.”

When she called her father in alarm, he told her, “I wrote Disney, and the phone changed it to divorce.  We’re going to Disneyworld!”

The auto-correction feature that you find on most smartphones—and the officious Microsoft Word spell-check—can cause you to say some peculiar things if you’re not careful.  This phenomenon is known in the trade as the “Cupertino Effect” as a result of an error made frequently by the first Word spell-check in 1997.  It refused to recognize the word cooperation unless it was hyphenated as co-operation.  It substituted Cupertino instead—no small irony, since Cupertino, California, is the headquarters of Microsoft’s arch-rival, Apple.

The Times has reported numerous howlers created by technology run amok.  “Sorry to hear about your feces” was intended to be “Sorry to hear about your fever.”  An invitation to “boardgame night” became an invitation to “bisexual night.”

Microsoft’s 2007 Office spell-checker (perhaps programmed by a Republican) didn’t contain Obama—and unfortunately recommended that it be changed in every case to Osama.  

Microsoft Word has insisted to me that The Great Gatsby should be The Great Gutsy, Aubrey Beardsley is really Aubrey Birdseye, John Van Druten is better known as John Van Duration, and Shakespeare intended to name his play Ethel rather than Othello.

You can probably figure out what was meant by these mistaken changes of what the texter intended:

            I’m exhausted from helping my dad clean his condom.

            I’m so thirsty—I had way too much sodomy last night.

            Why does our dorm smell like incest?

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has little patience with being told to change his spelling; he figures he can make enough mistakes himself without any help.

            A poet with verbal agility

            Penned odes filled with grace and nobility.

            Thanks to Microsoft’s failure,

            He extolled genitalia,

            When the word that he meant was gentility.   
                    

Hunting the Snark

The Snark Handbook: A Reference Guide to Verbal Sparring is a collection by Lawrence Dorfman of comments that embody the irascible, snappish, witty quality known as snark.  A few snarky examples:

            I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening.  But this  

            wasn’t it. (Groucho Marx)

            Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a 

            member of Congress.  But I repeat myself. (Mark 

            Twain)

            What do I think of Western civilization?  I think it 

            would be a very good idea. (Mahatma Gandhi)

            This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly.  It should

            be thrown with great force. (Dorothy Parker)

            Don’t be humble.  You’re not that great. (Golda Meir)

            Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his 

            shoes.  Then you’re a mile away from him and you 

            have his shoes. (Anonymous)

Well, you get the idea. Or, if you don’t, there’s no hope that you’ll ever learn to be snarky yourself. 

But where did we get the word snark?  It’s been around at least since 1866, when the Oxford English Dictionary cites its use as a verb (derived from Middle Low German snarken) meaning to “snore or snort.”  From that meaning, it was used by 1882 to mean to “find fault with or to nag.”

In 1876 Lewis Carroll wrote “The Hunting of the Snark,” a poem about a mythical creature that he named by combining snail and shark.  Jack London’s 1911 Cruise of the Snark is an account of a voyage across the south Pacific in a ketch called the Snark. These uses do not seem related to snark’s contemporary meaning.

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary suggests that snark, meaning “sarcastic, irreverent, or impertinent” dates from 1906 and comes from nark, meaning to “annoy,” a word derived from the Romany nak or “nose.”  In the Snark Handbook, Dorfman maintains the word is a telescoping of  “snide remark.” 

Wherever the word came from, it is a perfect description of the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who snarks (as follows):

            Of friends I have but very few,

            But I don’t think that is so terrible,

            Because (and this is entre nous)

            I find the ones I have unbearable.

With A Twist

The wildly popular movie The King’s Speech deals with the use of tongue-twisters in teaching England’s King George VI to conquer his stammer.  In the film his vocal coach prescribes this phrase:            

            “I have a sieve full of sifted thistles and a sieve full of  
             unsifted thistles, because I am a thistle sifter.”

           

Under what circumstances the King, having mastered this phrase, might be able to use it is not clear. Perhaps thistle-sifting is more pervasive in the British Isles than it is here.

It seems to me that we should concentrate on coming up with really useful tongue-twisters that we might able to slip into casual conversation at the corner bar or use the next time we’re making a speech to the PTA.  I mean such phrases as:

            Mirroring Marilyn Marlowe’s mercurial murmuring, 
            Muriel Marley merrily married Marlon Morley.

            The cheeky sheikh shocked sleek Chuck, shook slack 
            Chick, and sacked slick Shaq for schlepping schlocky 
            chickens.

            The plural of isthmus—is it isthmuses or isthmi?

And while we’re at it, we ought to learn a few foreign tongue-twisters that would put us in good stead when we’re overseas. Next time you’re in Paris, stop the nearest gendarme and confide in him:

            Didon dîna, dit-on, d’un dos du dodu dindon, don d'un 
            don du Dordogne, à qui Didon a dit: Donne, donc, 
            don, du dos d'un dindon.

What you will have told him (I think) is “Dido dined, they say, on the back of a fat turkey, the gift of a Spanish grandee from the Dordogne River region, to whom Dido said: ‘Give me, then, sir, a turkey’s back.’”  That should make your Parisian sojourn one to remember.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has a twisted tongue, caused by trying to uncap beer bottles without the use of an opener.  It does not stop his nattering:

            She sells seashells

            By the Seychelles seashore.

            The seashells she sells

            She sells by the score.

            He sells seashells,

            Seychelles seashells galore,

            She’ll say he sells

            His shells in a store.

                        

            Sure, she sells shells,

            And she will sell more

            Than all the shells he sells

            In the Seychelles seashell store.

What’s Buzzin’, Cousin?

Confusion abounds over the difference between a “second cousin” and a cousin “twice-removed.”  If you don’t believe me, just ask the next cousin you come across. I’m here to resolve that problem for all time. 

Since about the thirteenth century, second has been used to indicate “next in line,” and around about 1660, it was applied to cousins, to indicate the relationship between the offspring of first cousins. Your first cousin, of course, is the offspring of your parent’s brother or sister. In other words, your mother’s sister’s daughter Griselda is your first cousin. Griselda’s son, the mischievous Herkimer, and your daughter, the adorable little Marzipan, are second cousins.

You and Herkimer are first cousins once-removed. The adjective removed has been used since 1548 to mean “a generation younger or older.” So when Herkimer and his future wife, the shrewish Anaconda, give birth to little Pococurante, that child (of indeterminate gender) will be your first cousin twice-removed.

While we’re at it, the word cousin also has an interesting history.  It’s from the Latin consobrinus, which means “mother’s sister’s daughter” (such as Griselda is to you)—but it later had the meaning of either parent’s sibling’s child of either gender.  Some languages still retain different words for each of the eight possible “cousin” relationships—mother’s brother’s son, father’s sister’s daughter, etc., etc., etc.

In a broader sense cousin is often used to mean any relation beyond one’s immediate family.  Since the early fifteenth century, cousin was a Cornish term of address for anyone related to you either by blood or friendship.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has few cousins, and they tend to avoid each other whenever possible, for reasons that are clear in this verse:

            My cousin is an awful boor--

            He’s churlish and uncouth.

            His presence no one can endure,

            And that’s the gospel truth.

           

            His conduct must be disapproved,

            This rude and loutish cad,           

            Until he’s gone—then, once removed,

            This cousin’s not so bad.

Yes, We Have No Canolas

Nutritionists are always telling us to use either olive oil or canola oil to be healthy.  And olives themselves, they say, are also good for you.  But why is it we are never urged to eat some nice fresh canolas?  

To my surprise, I recently discovered there’s no such thing as a canola!  The oil that goes by that name is made from rapeseed.  Rape, pardon the expression, is an herb in the mustard family, and its name comes from the Latin rapum, which means “turnip.” 

So where does “canola” enter the picture?  The rapeseed from which the oil is pressed was bred in Canada during the 1970s.  It was regarded as a particularly beneficial oil for human consumption because it was low in something unpleasant called erucic acid.  Hence the name “canola” was coined from “CANadian Oil- Low Acid.”  The term has been in use since 1979.

Low acid is not a trait of the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who concocts verses that are wildly acerbic when they are not incomprehensible, like the following. 

           

            Savonarola

            And Emile Zola

            One day chanced to meet.

            Said Emile Zola:

            “Savonarola,

            What would you like to eat?”

            “Some Coca-Cola

            From Pensacola,”

            Savonarola said.

            “And Gorgonzola,

            Fried in canola,

            Then I will be well fed.”

            “We’ve no canola,”

            Said Emile Zola.

            “It’s something you can’t get.

            Like the Victrola,

            And the Crayola,

            It’s not invented yet.”

                       

Dandy Danglers

Quick—what do hoop earrings, carrots, bungee jumpers, the late Michael Jackson’s baby, and participles have in common?  Why, they’re all things that may dangle.  Today we’re going to concentrate on participles and other modifiers that dangle. 

The dictionary says dangle  means to “hang loosely, without being firmly attached,” and a dangling modifier is a word or phrase in a sentence that is not clearly attached to the word that it modifies. The most famous occurrence is that of a present participle, whose subject is separated from it or unstated: “Watching television, time flew by quickly.” It was not the time that was watching television, but the people (unstated) who were helping time fly.  You might say, “Watching television, we passed the time quickly” or “As we watched television, time flew by quickly.”  In either event, they were probably not watching the same TV shows I see, which move very slowly.

Many other modifiers—past participles, adjectival and adverbial phrases, objective clauses—may dangle, as the following examples, drawn from actual items in print, will demonstrate:   

           

            Yoko Ono will discuss husband John Lennon's murder 
            during an interview with Anderson Cooper.

            Tonight at 8:00 Terry Waite discusses five years in a 
            Beirut prison cell with Barbara Walters.

            Although irregular, I will consider your request.

           The convicted killer was given life in prison with the 
            possibility of parole after four hours of deliberation.

            Tickets will go on sale for the Yankees-Red Sox game
            at 6:00 p.m. in the box office.

             
            Bill Smith photographed bears scooping up salmon 
            using a Nikon camera.            

            
            Researchers will study women who became pregnant 
            after the age of 40 with the help of a National Science 
            Foundation grant.            

            
            He ran after a cat in his pajamas.

           

            We sat under the ancient trees that had survived for  
            centuries drinking beer.
          

            Hidden in a small kitchen drawer, Mrs. Johnson   
            safeguarded her neighbor's house key.

            Police submitted a report on the sale of $1 million in 
            heroin to the district attorney.

            
            The law is aimed at punishing hunters who illegally 
            shoot deer and the merchants who sold them the 
            guns.

          

            We saw many bears driving through Yellowstone Park.

            Jogging in the park, a tree branch fell on Mary.

            He almost kicked the ball 60 yards to score a field 
            goal.

            She would only play bridge with Harvard graduates.

            Actors who argue with directors frequently are 
            replaced.

            Prisoners who smile often are paroled.

            Totally smashed, Ed viewed his car with alarm.

            Ignoring all strictures against allowing his participles to dangle, the Bard of Buffalo Bayou came up with this bit of grammatical horror resting in his hammock:

            Strolling with my sweetheart at the zoo,

            Making goo-goo eyes,

            A lion came into my view,

            Taken by surprise.

           

            With vicious teeth and claws and fearsome roar,

            Preparing to attack,

            I faced him like a matador,

            Advancing, he fell back.

           

            “My hero!” cried my sweetheart, smiling wide—

            And then I thought I’d strangle.           

            “I meant that kingly lion,” she cried,

            “Not you—your modifiers dangle.”

Incontestably Indigestible

The formation of an adjective indicating capability or fitness is normally formed nowadays by adding the suffix –able to a verb. For example, you may find “American Idol” watchable, Lady Gaga listenable, and Gummy Bears desirable. To each his own.

But, for reasons we need not go into because no one really knows them, some adjectives were formed historically by adding –ible instead of -able. Thus, I find “American Idol” incomprehensible, Lady Gaga unintelligible, and Gummi Bears inedible.

If you can connect two objects, they are connectable, but if you wish to make a hobby of collecting those objects, they become collectible. Don’t ask why, that’s just the way it is.

The even more unfortunate fact is there’s no rule about which adjectives are spelled which way; it’s just something you have to memorize.  You may find this state of affairs indigestible, but it’s nonetheless incontestable.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is incorrigible, but no less blamable, in his savage outpourings:

                                    I.

            My income tax is truly terrible,

            And my distress is ineluctable,

            Each year when it becomes unbearable

            To find expenses non-deductible.

           

            By now that outcome should be guessable,

            But it is always unexpectable.

            Too bad my money’s inaccessible

            And my taxes uncollectible.

                                   

                                    II.

            My dear, I find you irresistible,

            To me, your love is indispensable,

            But why your telephone’s unlistable

            Is something that’s incomprehensible.

           

            My love’s so great it’s unassessable,

            And I hope that it’s permissible

            To say I find it inexpressible

            That you’re so huggable and kissable.

                                    III.

            My grades are just passable,

            That’s incontrovertible.

            That it makes me irascible

            Is strongly assertable.

           

            It’s just not acceptable           

            That things indiscernible

            Are quite imperceptible

            And largely unlearnable.

Sundae School

Few words in English are more difficult to pin down with precision than sundae—that concoction of ice cream, chocolate (or some other) syrup, and maybe a few chopped nuts, topped with whipped cream and a cherry.  Why is it called a sundae? 

H. L. Mencken in The American Language speculates without much conviction that the word originated in a sudden craze to enforce Blue Laws in some unknown southern state, making it illegal to sell an ice-cream soda on the Christian Sabbath. To get around this law, some enterprising druggist offered ice cream and syrup without the offensive soda, calling it an “Ice Cream Sunday.”  Presumably some people objected to the Sabbath day being included in the confection’s name, so he changed the spelling to sundae.

The Oxford English Dictionary’ s first citation of the word is in 1904.  In one newspaper it’s spelled sundi, but the word appeared as sundae in The Minneapolis Times in the same year.

According to Wikipedia, many U. S. cities claim to be the first to serve a sundae, maybe as early as 1881.  They include Ithaca, New York; Two Rivers Wisconsin; and both Evanston and Plainfield, Illinois.  All the claimants agree about the general reason for its invention—to evade laws against ice cream sodas.  Apparently soda water is the beverage of the Devil. 

The beverage of the Bard of Buffalo Bayou varies, depending on the circumstances, but when he has too much of it, as he often does, he is moved to spew out incomprehensible drivel like the following:

            I ate a Sundae on a Monday,

            And played a stirring March in May.

            I dined on Turkey in Burundi,

            And I was made a Knight one Day.

            Sinking Slowly in the Quicksand

            On the Square I saw a Ring.

            Names will never hurt, but sticks and

            Stones might cause a Fall in Spring.

Going to Pot

Everyone who has an opinion on the matter seems to agree that the word pot, meaning “marijuana,” has its origin in the Mexican-Spanish word potiguaya, an abbreviated form of potación de guaya (“drink of grief”), a wine or brandy in which marijuana buds have been steeped.  John Sutherland in his Curiosities of Literature tries vainly to make a case for pot’s origin in Lord Dunsany’s “The Hashish Man,” in which the smoking of hashish is described as partaking in the “pot of dreams.”

But what about the word marijuana?  Where does it come from?  It’s a lot harder to pin down.  Alan Piper has done a lengthy, scholarly piece—“The Mysterious Origins of the Word Marihuana”—which appeared in the Sino-Platonic Papers of July 2005.  Piper says the earliest appearance in an English publication of a similar word referring to a hallucinogenic plant (mariguan) was in 1894 in Scribner’s Magazine. Punch Magazine mentioned marijuma in 1905. Piper speculates that it might have originated in the Chinese words for “cannabis flower seeds”—ma-ren-hua—which were brought to Mexico by Chinese laborers as early as the seventeenth century.

But there’s also a connection with the Middle Latin word maioriana, or “marjoram,” which was thrown on the fire and its smoke inhaled as an intoxicant in ancient Thrace.  And there’s a word—mariguanza—in Chilean Spanish that means a leap in a dance by a shaman casting a spell, which might be descriptive of the behavior of a cannabis user.  Further, there is speculation that the word derives from a conflation with the name Maria Juana—with an allusion to the Virgin Mary, to whom Mexican folklore attributes the mystical powers of certain herbs.

Other linguists cite the Brazilian Portuguese term maraguango, meaning “smoking, drinking, or snuffing any substance” that alters mental capacity.  There may also be a connection to the Arabic word murr, meaning bitter aromatic herb, as found in myrrh, which one of the Magi was toting.

In his conclusion, Piper is forced to admit the word marijuana may be a nineteenth-century folk term with no discernible etymology.

Under the misapprehension that pot was short for potato, the Bard of Buffalo Bayou became extremely ill smoking dried potato peelings, under the influence of which he composed these lines:

           

            Perhaps I might enjoy a joint,

            But all to no avail.

            For I would fail to get the point,

            And I would not inhale.

            ‘Cause if I puffed a tiny spliff

            Of wacky old tobacky,

            All it would take is just one sniff

            And I’d do something tacky.

Pea? Oui!

A pea sprout nearly two inches long was recently found growing in a man’s lung.  This may be carrying Candide’s admonition to “cultivate our garden” to extremes, but it does show how hardy the pea plant is.  According to most reports the pea in question was an English pea.

English peas were first called that in the seventeenth century in the southern United States, to distinguish them from the more common black-eyed peas (of which I hope you had your share on New Year’s Day, to bring a prosperous twelve months).  Known in England as simply “peas,” “garden peas,” and if very small, “petits pois,” or if still in the pod, “mange tout,” English peas were developed in several varieties in England in the sixteenth century and were brought to the colonies as early as 1620 by the Pilgrims.  The term “English pea” has been found as early as 1634.

Peas were originally a singular collective noun—pease—like spinach or cabbage, but the “s” sound on the end made people think it was a plural, and so the singular pea came about as a back-formation.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou is known for minding his peas and his cues, and offers this vegetable slumgullion for your delectation:

           

            I think that I shall never see

            A kumquat lovely as a pea.

            A pea that is so round and green,

            No finer pea has e’er been seen.

            A pea that makes me salivate           

            To watch it roll around my plate.

            It looks so juicy, firm, and plump,

            Not like potatoes, in a lump.

            A pea is perfect, has great class—

            Unlike a bean, won’t give you gas.

            My poems are read by fools like thee,

            But only I can eat this pea.

Mojo Lost, Mojo Regained

For a short period after the November elections, President Obama was beset with political problems—trying to get legislation through a sometimes hostile, lame-duck Congress, parrying attacks from the Tea Party right, and even having to fend off sharp criticism from some fellow Democrats. Pundits ascribed these troubles to the loss of his “mojo.”  The powers of persuasion, the irresistible charisma, the eloquent oratory that were so prominent in his campaign were failing him as President, said the analysts.

But with such successes as the passage of the tax-cut/stimulus package, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” approval by the Senate of the New START Treaty, enactment of the 9/11 compensation bill, and improved voter ratings, President Obama hit the comeback trail and seemed to have his mojo back.

So what is this thing called “mojo”?  Who has it? What’s it good for?  How do you get it?  Patience, and all will become clear.

I used to think “mojo” was some kind of compound word, constructed from “mocha” and “joe”—meaning a kind of coffee.   After that I got it mixed up with “Moho,” the nickname of the Mohorovičić Discontinuity, which is the boundary separating the earth’s crust from its mantle. Project Mohole was a failed attempt in the 1950s and 1960s to drill through the earth’s surface to reach the Moho.

The truth is “mojo” is a word of African and Creole descent that means “magical power.” The name was applied to a hoodoo amulet made of herbs and animal and mineral fragments wrapped in a red flannel cloth. It probably derives from the Fulani word moco’o (“medicine man”) and was first noted in American English usage in the 1920s.  In its broader usage, it means “self-confidence, sex appeal, dynamic personality.”

As it happens, there are lots of Mojos out there.   A Marvel Comics villain goes by that name, as do a video game, a British rock music magazine, a British black comedy by Jez Butterworth, a monkey helper on an episode of The Simpsons, and a Southwestern U. S. yogurt restaurant chain.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou lost his mojo some while ago, but he has never given up looking for it.  He thinks he may have accidentally left it in one of the shady establishments that he frequents while writing louche verses on the backs of napkins, to wit: 

            When I met V. P. Biden,

            I said to him, “You know, Joe,

            I think perhaps the Prez

            Has lost some of his mojo.”

            “His mojo’s fine,” said Biden,
            “Rest assured of that—

            Except when it is tried on

            A fellow Democrat.”

Post and Mail

This is the time of year when our mailboxes (I mean the real kind, not the electronic ones) are filled with all manner of material—catalogs, Christmas cards, ads for caviar and candy, and cunning come-ons for charitable contributions. In the United States, that mail is delivered by the United States Postal Service.  In Britain, the post is delivered by the Royal Mail. Ask an Englishman if the “mail” has come, and he will probably figure out what you mean, but it will sound odd to him, just as it would if you ask an American if the “post” has come.

The word post is derived from the Latin posta and French poste, and originally meant a “stand, or station.”  From the late sixteenth century the word applied to men on horseback (think Pony Express) stationed at appropriate intervals on a road (later called a post-road), whose duty it was to ride with packets containing the King’s dispatches.  Pals of the King soon persuaded him to let the riders carry their messages, too, and the modern postal system began.

Mail is a word from Old High German malha and Dutch maal, meaning a “bag, packet, or wallet.” By 1654 people were talking about a “mail of letters,” meaning a batch of letters packaged up to be delivered by post. By 1674 post and mail were used synonymously, to mean the letters (in a packet) carried by the post-riders. 

In the United States, by 1890, mail by itself was used to mean the batch of letters delivered to a specific person.

 

Both Post and Mail have become popular names for newspapers, since the earliest news was conveyed by means of letters carried by the post-riders.  You might think it a bit redundant that there is one newspaper, in Columbia City, Indiana, that calls itself The Post & Mail.

At the Bard of Buffalo Bayou’s home, the postman always rings twice.  That’s to rouse the Bard from the stupor in which he is sometimes found, while spinning gossamer verses like the following:

            Every time I get a letter,

            I wish that it were something better,

            Awarding me a Nobel Prize,

            A year’s supply of chocolate pies,

            Admission to the hall of heroes,

            Perhaps a check with lots of zeroes,           

            An invitation from a hottie

            To come and meet some literati,

            Or just a notice with the news

            I’ve won a Caribbean cruise.

           

            Instead—rejection slips from editors,

            Snarky claims from nasty creditors,

            Piles of bills I thought I’d paid,

            Appeals for cash I can’t evade;

            A magazine that I desired

            Says my subscription has expired;

            My bank insists I’m overdrawn,

            My broker says my nest egg’s gone.

            Mister Postman—I surrender,

            Take this junk, return to sender.

The Apostrophe: It’s Finding Its Place

Matthew Inman, who writes a blog under the sobriquet “The Oatmeal,” recently posted a most useful poster called “How to Use an Apostrophe.”  You can see it at http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe, or you can buy an 18”x24” copy to hang on  your living room wall for $11.95--but if you don’t want to bother with any of that, here’s a summary:

Don’t use an apostrophe to make a plural, except for letters of the alphabet and numbers. Do use an apostrophe followed by an “s” to indicate a possessive—unless it’s the possessive of a plural already ending in “s,” in which case the apostrophe follows the “s”—or unless it’s the possessive of a pronoun (like his, hers, ours, and its).  Do use an apostrophe to indicate contractions (omission of letters).

That’s about it.  The big trap to avoid is the its vs. it’s dilemma. It’s is a contraction of “it is” and its is the possessive of it.  The reason for this confusion is that when printers started using apostrophes in the sixteenth century, they served three purposes: to indicate the omission of letters, to distinguish a possessive from a plural, and to form a plural of certain words (those ending in vowels and the consonants z, s, ch and sh). For centuries people were unclear about which meaning was intended, and very respectable writers often misused the apostrophe. Washington Irving reportedly used apostrophes to indicate possessives less than half the time, and George Bernard Shaw never used them at all for contractions.  

By the way, other grammar posters “The Oatmeal” has available include How to Use a Semi-Colon, When to Use i.e. in a Sentence, and Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has no posters available, but he will come to your home, often unbidden, and recite his gnomic work, such as the following:

            It kindles very little drama

            If someone finds a wayward comma;

            A colon and a semi-colon

            Don’t require the smarts of Solon;

            And there’s no problem with the myriad

            Misuses of the useful period.

           

            But there’s one punctuation mark

            That often leaves us in the dark,

            Wondering if it’s expressive

            Of contraction or possessive.

            And all too often the apostrophe

            Results in linguistic catostrophe.

On Average

Every day we read about  “average” interest rates, “average” gas prices, batting “averages,” “average” SAT scores, and the iconic Dow Jones Industrial “Average”—among dozens of other numerical indexes that purport to denote the general state of affairs in many aspects of life.  But what, exactly, is an “average”?

One of the more appealing dictionaries (its cover is bright red) tells us that an average is “a single value that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values.”  Ten bucks says you didn’t know it derives from an Arabic word used to describe a proportional allocation of costs arising from cargo damaged in shipping.  

If you read further, and at this point, you might as well, you will learn that there are three basic kinds of averages, and they do not necessarily produce the same result.  They are the arithmetic mean, the median, and the mode.  The mean is the quotient of the sum of a set of values, divided by the number of values in the set.  The median is the value at which there are an equal number of greater and lesser values.  And the mode is the single value with the largest number of instances in the set. (I knew I should have taken a math course in college.) 

For example, suppose you wanted to find the “average” hourly legal fee charged by attorneys in your town. (Don’t ask me why.) Let’s assume there are 11 lawyers; 5 charge $500 an hour, 1 charges $300, 4 charge $200, and 1 poor guy who barely passed the bar exam charges just $100 an hour and is lucky to get it when he does, which is seldom. What’s the average hourly legal fee? (I knew I should have become a lawyer.)

The mean would be the sum of the 11 lawyers’ fees ($3,700) divided by the 11 lawyers, or an average of $336.36 an hour (check the math if you don’t believe me).  The median, however, would be just $300, since there are an equal number of values below and above it.  Finally, if you preferred, you could say the average hourly rate is $500—since that is the mode, the value that is represented by the largest number of instances. 

Ergo, when someone quotes an “average” to you, be sure you know what is meant.

There is no way of knowing what is meant by the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, whose poems have defied the most assiduous explication de texte.

            The average man is not too smart--

            He’s ignorant of modern art,

            Klee, Kandinsky and de Kooning

            Send him into fits of groaning.

                       

            Grand opera he cannot abide,

            When Valkyries ride, he’ll hide.           

            Chamber music to him brings

            The sound of scraping on the strings.

            Modern novels are a bore,

            And poetry is even more.

            He won’t attend solo recitals

            Or watch a film that has subtitles.

            The average man’s a Philistine,

            His lack of learning is obscene,

            He shuns high culture when he can--

            Good grief! I am that average man!