Area Rug?

An area rug, I guess, is a rug that covers an area. As opposed to...?

How Many Words in the English Language?

It's a simple question, but pretty much impossible to answer. The problem lies in determining what constitutes a word. Take almost any verb--call for example. Are the various forms of the word separate words (calls, called, calling, etc.)? And is the noun form of call a word distinct from the verb? What about the 33 separate definitions listed for the verb form by Dictionary.com, and the 31 definitions of the noun form? Is call one word or 64? And then there are idiomatic expressions using call, like call for, call out, or call in. These have unique definitions as compound expressions. Do they count as words in combination, or only as separate words?

What about technical or scientific terms? Do we count the hundreds of thousands of chemical and medical terms that are unused in common parlance?

What makes a word English? English speakers and writers use lots of words from other languages. Do we count burrito, bourgeois, habeas corpus, wanderlust, karate? Then there's the debate of slang and jargon. How long must a term be in popular use before it is considered a "real" word?

What about proper names? Should Edward, Lincoln, Chicago be considered words? What about foreign places and names? Should or shouldn't Bangladesh, Argentina, and Moscow be considered English words?

With these significant complexities taken into consideration, sources will put the number of English words at anywhere from a quarter million to two million. Take your pick.

A Whole Nuther Thing

What's up with that? I often hear people using the expression "a whole nuther." A local football coach was quoted in the paper using it. No dictionary I know includes nuther. I don't believe anyone who uses the expression would even argue that nuther is a word.

I did a little web research and found some interesting discussion of this odd construction. One these two theories seems to explain it:

1) The modifier whole is inserted in the word another. This is a linguistic phenomenon called infixation, which most commonly occurs in expletives. Mild examples would be "abso-bloomin-lutely," or "guaran-darn-tee."

2) The other theory is that people confuse another with a nother, and are simply applying the adjective whole to the second word. This sounds odd, but it's a linguistic occurrence called reanalysis. It's how we now have the word apron. It derived from the french word naperon. People misconstrued "a naperon" as "an aperon."

I find the first explanation easier to buy, but it was interesting to learn that it's a matter of some debate.

The question remains, of course, whether "a whole other thing" or "another whole thing" are adequate replacements for "a whole nuther thing."

Tom Swifties

A Tom Swifty is a quip where an adverb attached to a dialogue tag carries both a literal and a "punny" meaning. They are also easier to demonstrate than explain. Here's an example:

"The pencil needs sharpening," Tom said bluntly.

As you have already experienced, the most common response to a Tom Swifty is a groan, although I admit several have made me chuckle.

As to the origin of the term, Tom Swift was the young adventure hero of a series of early twentieth century novels by Edward L. Stratemeyer (who published under the pseudonym Victor Appleton). Mr. Stratemeyer loved to qualify all of Tom's dialogue with adverbs: "...Tom said knowingly," "...Tom replied eagerly," "...Tom cried desperately," etc.

Thus a Tom Swifty involves a playful pun on the dialogue tag. Here's a short sampling.

"This pencil needs sharpening," Tom said bluntly.
"The salad has too much vinegar," Tom said acidly.
"Give me a haircut," Tom said barbarously.
"The doctor removed my left ventricle," Tom said half-heartedly.
"I'll use a darker font," Tom said boldly.
"I presented my case to the judge," Tom said briefly.
"I've dropped the toothpaste," Tom said, crestfallen.
"Congratulations on your graduation!" Tom said diplomatically.
"I am a schizophrenic," said Tom, being frank.
"For what we are about to receive, may God make us truly grateful," Tom said gracefully.
"I've gained twenty pounds," Tom said heavily.
"I learned the somersault years ago," Tom said flippantly.
"I work out every seven days," Tom said weakly.
"Nay!" said Tom hoarsely.
"Waiter! My salad needs more cheese!" Tom said gratingly.

A slight variation excludes the adverb, and just makes a pun of the verb. It's still a Tom Swifty if Tom isn't doing the speaking, by the way:

"This must be the weight room," Tom worked out.
"My parents are Billy and Nanny," Tom kidded.
"She probably has her own jet," Tom leered.
"The sun is rising," Tom mourned.
"I told you not to ride that old horse," Tom nagged.
"I didn't take a single look!" Tom peeped.
"The exit is right here," Tom pointed out.
"I teach at the university," Tom professed.
"I couldn't believe I had won by 3,457 votes!" Tom recounted.
"Okay, you can borrow it again," Tom relented.
"I'm taking the ship back to the harbor," Tom reported.

Most of these come from http://www.fun-with-words.com/. Please share your originals--they are not hard to create.

More On The Terminal Preposition

In researching the last post, I found the following and had to share it. It comes from Mark Israel at http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxprepos.html.

***
The Guinness Book of (World) Records used to have a category for "most prepositions at end." The incumbent record was a sentence put into the mouth of a boy who didn't want to be read excerpts from a book about Australia as a bedtime story:

"What did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of about 'Down Under' up for?"

Mark Brader (all this is to the best of his recollection; he didn't save the letter, and doesn't have access to the British editions) wrote to Guinness, asking: "What did you say that the sentence with the most prepositions at the end was 'What did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of about "Down Under" up for?' for? The preceding sentence has one more." Norris McWhirter replied, promising to include this improvement in the next British edition, but actually it seems that Guinness, no doubt eventually realising that this could be done recursively, dropped the category.

The Preposition Myth

I'm not that old, but I was taught in my youth not to end a sentence with a preposition. I was supposed to replace a perfectly decent sentence like:

What are you driving at?

with:

At what are you driving?

I'm not sure how I would repair Who is Myrtle going out with? since With whom is Myrtle going out? still ends in a preposition (technically it's an adverbial particle, but it sure looks like a preposition to most folks).

So let's just make this clear: "Don't end sentences with prepositions" has always been a dubious rule, and in recent decades has been debunked by everybody who writes about such things. That includes Edward D. Johnson in The Handbook of Good English, Constance Hale in Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose, Patricia T. O'Conner in Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English and the undisputed world champion Guru of Grammar, H.W. Fowler, in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd Ed.

It seems the rule was created centuries ago by grammarians who tied English unnecessarily to Latin (where it's impossible to end sentences with prepositions). Since prepositions always have objects, they reasoned, the objects should always follow the preposition. But that just makes for some really ugly English.

My favorite quote on this is from Churchill. The story goes that while going over a proof of one of his books, he found a sentence clumsily reworked by an editor who didn't approve of a terminating preposition. In the margin Churchill wrote, "This is the sort of arrant nonsense up with which I will not put."

(This quote varies some. It's likely he wrote "bloody nonsense" and any other versions are simply euphemistic.)

What I find most interesting is how just about everybody ignores this rule in practice, yet almost everybody can quote it. How does a dumb rule that nobody follows survive at all for so long?

Baseball Idioms

It's playoff time in baseball, so let's list some of the ways baseball jargon has flavored and enriched American English. Here are a few examples of common idioms that come directly from baseball:

in the ballpark/ballpark figure: "I didn't predict the score exactly, but I was in the ballpark."
batting a thousand: "That's another sale! So far today I'm batting a thousand."
throw a curve ball: "I had the plan down until my boss threw me a curve ball."
cover all the bases: "Before you start the project, be sure to have all your bases covered."
get to first base: "I met with the client, but we didn't even get to first base."
go to bat for someone: "I would have been in big trouble if Ed wasn't willing to go to bat for me."
play hardball: "If we are going to stay competitive, we're going to have to play hardball with our competition."
knock it out of the park: "John's presentation was great; he really knocked it out of the park."
out of left field: "Boy, that comment was out of left field."
way off base: "His ideas for reforming education are way off base."
rain check: "I can't make our lunch. Can I have a rain check?"
right off the bat: "I made a good impression right off the bat."
screwball: "The guy with the clown shoes is a real screwball."
step up to the plate: "We are in big trouble until a real leader steps up to the plate."
three strikes: "He better not mess up again; he's already got two strikes against him."
touch base: "Call me next week so we can touch base."
whole new ball game: "I understand Algebra, but Trigonometry is a whole new ball game."

Thanks to Wikipedia for some of these.