A golden shoe, a golden ball, and some not so golden pens

Whether the World Cup is “a mass quadrennial migration” ("Around South Africa, the Good, the Bad and Biltong" NYT 7/4) or rather a quadrennial mass migration, there is no doubt that the last four weeks were pretty intense. A true soccer fan may very well have forgotten all about time and become lost in tenses.
When after the semifinal the NYT considered Germany “A Global Force” (7/4), its sports writer tried to step into a pair of Argentinean cleats and imagine how “Messi will awake in the night and see those Germans closing in. More than anyone, he will see Schweinsteiger muscling in. And when even Messi became demoralized by the German strength, Schweinsteiger had a tick or two of his own.” Although the Argentinean as well as the German team had to discover how quickly visions of a golden future turn into miscalculations of the past, even in soccer-land the past happens long before the future begins. According to conventional logic then, Messi will awake at night because Schweinsteiger played on when Messi already was demoralized.
Between the past and the future lies the present as a transition between these two time periods. Transitions ensure that the change from one condition to another doesn’t occur abruptly. Whatever memorable experiences may be connected with the cup at the Cape, not “the abrupt transitions have been most indelible” but rather the abrupt changes between “watching a herd of 30 or more elephants in the sunshine a few hours before watching Luis Suárez score twice for Uruguay in the rain; watching youngsters play in the surf in the morning in Durban, then dodging hailstones in a winter jacket in Cape Town that night” (Reporter's Notebook, NYT 7/3).
Definitely indelible would be if indeed “Joachim Löw ...wore a periwinkle sweater to Maradona’s creased and shiny suit” ("Germany Routs Argentina" NYT 7/4). The two coaches may have exchanged some friendly - or not so friendly - glances; that they swapped clothes is, however, improbable.
Some commentators had trouble distinguishing Spain (singular) and the Spaniards (plural). UEFA.com claims that “Victorious Spain receive rapturous reception,” BBC reports that “Spain return to rapturous welcome,” and Reuters adds that “Spaniards turns out to welcome home heroes.” Back home, the Spanish team probably doesn't care about subject/verb agreements. The only thing that counts for the players is that their “hard-working team ethic enabled Spain to lift the FIFA World Cup ” (UEFA.com). They obviously lifted the golden cup onto a bus since Reuters declares that the fans came to “see Spain's World Cup heroes pass by with the trophy on an open-topped bus” (Reuters). While the Spaniards may have watched their heros with the trophy passing by on a bus, how this bus can be open and topped at the same time remains a riddle.
Another riddle is how Paul the Octopus could have foreseen all this, but his “antics have been ... adding yet another light-hearted and quirky twist to the great celebration of humanity that is the World Cup in South Africa” (Huffington Post 7/8). What a rapturous welcome for the cephalopod species into the species of homo sapiens.

A regular venti with room, please

Ruth Walker muses about the "real regular" and the "new normal" and how the word regular, which “means, fundamentally, following a rule,” has changed to “the deli-counter equivalent of … ‘default setting.’" According to Walker, “normal is another word to describe a 'default setting,' although it has just a whiff of the clinical about it (‘Is that really normal?’).” She goes on to explain the origin of the word regular as “rooted in the carpenter's rule” and normal derived from norma, "the Latin word for a carpenter's square.”
Regular and normal, both denoting that something is done according to a rule or a norm, seem rather exchangeable then. However, there is also the term "normal school," which originated from the French école normale, a model school with model classrooms in which student teachers could learn teaching practices. This idea of normal as a model rather than simply a rule corresponds with The Online Etymological Dictionary's suggestion that normal may be related to the Greek word gnomon, meaning one who knows.
Nothing clinical about that. Instead, it gives something normal quite an advantage over something regular. Every knucklehead can follow a rule and do a regular job. Doing a normal or model job, on the other hand, requires knowledge of how it’s done best. Maybe that’s why any barista at Starbucks emits a draught of boredom whenever I order a regular coffee instead of one of their normal “handcrafted beverages.”

Ubiquitous tautology

"In one of the more unforgettable moments [Could there be anything less unforgettable?], a … fresh language for the 21st-century dress popped up [Oh, those eloquent dresses!] and defined what being a woman is or can be: an android, a sex kitten, a dynamo, a robot, a flower of pleasure, an angel in the morning, a warrior, a nun, a Lolita, a Bond girl, a multi-ethnic poppy, a surrealist Puritan Mexican-American, a gay-retro variant of a French coquette.” As if this weren’t close enough to a linguistic atlas, the list (NYT 3/14/10) ends with “a butched-up Emma Peel,” which is – for anybody who remembers The Avengers – sort of a tautology - but still nothing compared to the “need to work out a common consensus” (NYT 5/9/10).
Saying the same thing twice is not exactly sparkling, but how about saying the same twelve times on the back of a roughly 5x8 Annie's Grahams box?

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Globally speaking

According to Jason DeParle, we can “pick any headline in the news, and between the lines, there is a chapter in the story of global migration.” This rather awkward sentence raises two questions: How can I find something “between the lines” of a “headline”? And what “chapter” am I supposed to find “in the story of global migration”? Of course, it is obvious that I am alerted to the fact that I could pick any news story and discover that it is somehow connected to global migration. Alas, it is the writer’s – often torturous – job to make a clear statement not the reader’s to sort it out.
Still, I took the author’s advice and two days later looked at some headlines. This is what I found: Efforts on Bicycling Also Attract Thieves and Effort Uses Dogs’ DNA to Track Their Abuser.

Dear New York Times,
there are no efforts on anything, and efforts don’t use anything either. Besides, although there may be efforts to promote bicycling that also attract thieves, and dogs’ DNA may be used in an effort to track their abusers, neither story included a line connecting it to global migration – unless some of the stolen bikes made it across the border.

Misspoken again

The present perfect (he has spoken) is used either to indicate that something which occurred at an unstated moment in the past is in some way related to the present or to express that something began in the past but still continues at the moment and, most likely, into the future. Thus, when Connecticut attorney general and Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal says, "I may have misspoken, I did misspeak on a few occasions...I regret that I misspoke," he is sending a rather ambiguous message. Although he admits that he “did misspeak,” indicating that this is an issue of the past, he also says that he “may have misspoken.” Does he simply concede that his having misspoken contributes to his present troubles, or can we infer that his misspeaking, although it began in the past, continues at present and will go on in the future?

The vuvuzela makes quite some noise

What is a symbol, and what is meaning? A symbol represents an idea, and the meaning of something is the idea which this something represents. Thus, if the vuvuzela is “a symbol for cultural meaning,” then it is the representation of the cultural idea that it represents. Alas, there is not much to be gained from such a circular argument. Anyway, the vuvuzela’s meaning is still in the making and “will ultimately be shaped by the surprisingly heated disagreement” between those who claim that it signifies South African soccer fandom and those who belong to the “vuluzela-as-annoying crowd.” Exactly because the latter’s aversion to the instrument “has galvanized everybody," the blasting plastic horn has become “a cultural object,” “a South African commodity” and a “cultural signifier.” Clear as mud, but what this horn supposedly signifies remains, unfortunately, pretty evanescent. Maybe, it is nothing more or less than a noisemaker, and such flatulent “philosophical” discourse is just as “slightly silly" as its object.

Kosher or not, that is the question

Something is not quite kosher, if “Uncle Sam [is] munching on a Hebrew National beef hot dog as a heavenly voice assures him it is free of the additives and byproducts present in lesser processed meats” ("Red, White and Kosher"). After all, the higher authority knows – among everything else – that Hebrew National franks are “made with the finest ingredients and contain no artificial flavors, no artificial colors, no by-products, and no fillers” (HN). They are kosher, or “fit to eat,” because they don’t contain all the artificial stuff “present in processed meats of lesser quality.” That's what makes all the difference between kosher and not so kosher. Still, only franks made of meat even less processed would perhaps be accepted by orthodox authorities - obviously the highest authorities - and earn the label glatt kosher.

Strange effects of the recession

Creativity is key, and Mr. Rosenberg, owner of a clothing store, proves it. He switched his line from women’s to kids’ clothes because parents may cut back on their own wants but not on their children’s. He has diversified and “even [does] clothes for prenatals now.” This seems hard to imagine since prenatal means “occurring or existing before birth” and refers to “the growth and development of a single-celled zygote formed by the combination of a sperm and an egg into a baby” (Medical Dictionary). However, as the article claims, “parents want their kids to be insulated from the recession,” and this evidently begins even before the child is born.
Yet, parents don’t stop at the outfit for their unborn. While they may spend less on Christmas, “back-to-school didn’t decline as much as other holidays,” according to the National Retail Federation. Has the recession deprived us of so many pleasures that we now consider the beginning of the new school year a holiday?
An important segment of back-to-school sales are clothes, and Mr. Rosenberg observed that in his store “Girls’ dresses have been explosive – 6 months to 8 years.” Well, this looks a lot like commercial litigations coming Mr. Rosenberg's way.

Divine intervention

The CBS series “Undercover Boss” rests on the “machina-manning deus” fantasy, wrote Alessandra Stanley in the NYT (4/11). According to her, this idea of gods or rulers mingling with regular (or small!) people to find out “how the other half live by living among them” is as old as humankind and a routine in mythology, literature and film.
The “machina-manning deus,” literally a god operating a machine, is an interesting pun on “deus ex machina,” an also well-worn device used by authors to solve an inextricable problem by a sudden and improbable intervention of a new character or object. Aristotle criticized the use of a deus-ex-machina, because a writer “ought always to seek what is either necessary or probable, so that it is either necessary or probable that a person of such-and-such a sort say or do things of the same sort, and it is either necessary or probable that this [incident] happen after that one.”
Thus, Stanley’s critique of “the way each episode ends with a pageant [sic] of seigniorial largesse — a $1,000 gift certificate, a family vacation — instead of a commitment to fair wages and safe working conditions” is not quite in synch with her terminology. The undercover boss is definitely not a deus-ex-machina, who solves a problem in unexpected ways, but rather a character much to Aristotle’s liking. After all, such “small acts of benevolence” (Stanley) are exactly the most probable things for the average boss to say or do.

A dubious case

NPR today reported on the Russian Spy Saga, pointing out that some experts are “dubious” about the evidence provided by the FBI. The anchorperson then transitioned to several interviews, wondering what those “dubious experts” think about the case. Dubious, when preceding a noun, means “probably not good, not honest, not true.” Thus the facts presented may indeed be dubious, but the experts who are dubious about them, i.e. not sure whether the facts are solid and trustworthy, are doubtful. If they were dubious experts, NPR would most likely not venture to interview them.

Cape Horn

What the Urban Dictionary defines as “a mind-numbing torture device made of cheap, brightly colored plastic,” has been the focus of harsh criticism. BBC and ESPN fear that it may drown out their commentators’ voices – which not necessarily must be a disadvantage. The advantages of a cheap device able to drown out others’ voices, on the other hand, are tremendous. YouTube, for example, “has added a button - in the form of a soccer ball - on its latest video player, allowing the sound of the [instrument] to play alongside any video being watched. The results can be hilarious; try watching a speech by any major politician drowned out by the relentless blasting of the plastic trumpet“ (Peace FM).
Soccer coaches blame it for degrading the performance of their team, suggesting that the French team did not refuse to listen to their coach; they simply were not able to hear him.
However, renowned ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey finds the instrument frustrating and fascinating at the same time. Although he regrets the fact that each one has the same pitch, B flat, he believes that varying its length could create different pitches and enable the user to blow in rhythmic patterns. (Remember the alphorn?) Tracey's theory has so far fallen on deaf ears, but he really shouldn’t be surprised since even the instrument’s self-anointed inventor Saddam Maake concedes that "It's bad for the ears" (Washington Post).
But what the heck is a vuvuzela? Well, a plastic trumpet used by soccer enthusiasts. Nobody knows the word’s origin for sure, but it might come from the Zulu word for 'making a loud noise'. Maybe the vuvuzela should be incorporated in the English vocabulary, functioning as a verb that describes the common act of giving a speech without really saying anything: The speaker has been vuvuzelaing for almost an hour.

And give us our daily apology

2010 may very well go down in history as the year of the apology. This week, we already had two: Congressman Barton's and General McChrystal's. Joe Barton really needed to apologize for his previous apologizing to BP in what can only be called a run-amok-sentence: "It is a tragedy in the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown -- in this case a $20 billion shakedown -- with the attorney general of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the American people, participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that's unprecedented in our nation's history, which has no legal standing, which I think sets a terrible precedent for our nation's future" (Huffington Post). Although he better had apologized for "anything I misconstrued this morning," he preferred to use the passive voice, implicating whomever for misconstruing his words: "If anything I have said this morning has been misconstrued to an opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction" (Politico). While Barton tried to wiggle his way out via the passive voice, McChrystal was "extending my sincerest apology for this profile" (McChrystal), i.e. for an article instead of for his own words. What both have in common is that they offend the audience's intelligence - which would be well worth another apology.

Augustness

August is vacation month, but Tony Hayward is vacationing early. He deserves watching his boat "Bob" participate in the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race since this is - pitiably! - his “first break since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20,” said Robert Wine, a BP spokesman. After all, he is just “spending a few hours with his family at a weekend. I'm sure that everyone would understand that.” Perhaps everybody would, but will everybody understand?
Wine, according to the Huffington Post(6/19), also said that Hayward will be returning to the United States, though it's unclear when. Will he return, or would he?
Could it be that it will be August before he is back at the Gulf Coast? He then could mingle with American vacationers there, maybe even with the presidential family. After all, "Americans can help by continuing to visit the communities and beaches of the Gulf Coast." With few exceptions, Obama said at a May 27 press conference, "all of the Gulf's beaches are open. They are safe and they are clean." Asked whether the Obamas themselves will – or would – vacation somewhere along the Gulf this summer, Press Secretary Gibbs admitted that he has “not been involved in their August plans” (McClatchy Newspapers via WSJ).
Since spoken statements do not indicate which word the speaker would capitalize, Gibbs could have referred here to Obama’s august plans (from Latin augustus, meaning venerable, marked by majestic dignity or grandeur and, according to the Online Etymological Dictionary, probably orginally "consecrated by the augurs, with favorable auguries"). Gibbs, whom the LATimes dubbed a “human pinata,” then would have taken Nicholas Kristof obviously too literally, who announced today that We need a monarch!

So what?

Anad Giridharadas looks at “a verbal tic that mimics ‘well,’ ‘um’ or ‘like’ and is exceptionally fitting for the digital age,” the word so. According to Giridharadas, “it is widely believed that the recent ascendancy of ‘so’ began in Silicon Valley [since] ‘so’ suggested a kind of thinking that appealed to problem-solving software types: conversation as a logical, unidirectional process — if this, then that.” Alas, it seems difficult to “Follow my logic,” since a word that is similar to well or um can hardly be described as meaning “if this, then that.”
Yet, so is indeed overused and in fact one of those words to be avoided in writing. It can be used instead of also but only before modal or auxiliary verbs (Average salaries rose, but so did the cost of living). It is appropriate as a conjunction in combination with that (I set two alarm clocks so that I wouldn’t oversleep) to indicate that something is done to make something else possible. In informal settings, so can indicate emphasis as well as take the place of therefore. For instance, one might find Crogs "so 20th century!" but be an enthusiastic "wearer of the FiveFingers almost-shoes [who] can cite practical reasons for sporting monkey-suggestive gear in settings others find inappropriate: you’re supposed to ease into the switch from elaborately engineered athletic shoes, so tooling about the mall in performance footwear makes total sense” ("Bare Necessity" NYTmagazine 5/30/10). However, if used instead of therefore to link two independent clauses that could stand alone, so must be preceded by a semicolon – just as does therefore. Therefore, the sentence should read: “...you’re supposed to ease into the switch from elaborately engineered athletic shoes; so tooling about the mall in performance footwear makes total sense.”
To illustrate the overuse of so, Anad Giridharadas quotes SoS Hillary R. Clinton, saying that “So it’s not only because we believe that universal values support human rights being recognized and respected, but we also think that it’s in the best interest for economic growth and political stability. So we believe that.” The second sentence indeed uses so as a synonym of therefore - or in the logical sense of “if this, then that” while in the first sentence so means also .

Politics

Sentences like "I think this is exactly the right position - as a legal matter, as a policy matter, and as a political matter" (Elena Kagan) tend to puzzle me. What is the difference between a policy matter and a political matter?
Both words derive from Greek polis, meaning city, state. However, while a policy is "a way of doing something that has been officially agreed on and chosen by a political party," or "a particular principle one believes in and influences the person's decision making," political means anything "relating to the government, politics, and public affairs." Thus, a policy matter is a party matter while a political matter is anything that affects government and the public.
An other difference between a policy and a political matter becomes apparent when the second meaning of political is applied, namely "relating to the ways that different people have power within a group." It is the huge difference between a guiding principle that members of a party share and their way to gain, sustain and use power. Interestingly - but not surprisingly - enough, political has a pejorative connotation, implying that being political means "taking sides in party politics" (Online Etymological Dictionary). In other words, it is a euphemism for partisan and has little to do with a guiding principle but a lot with power.

Watz dis?

The prefix dis- usually implies that something is the reverse of something else (e.g. disorganized) or is excluded/taken away (e.g. displaced) or taken apart (e.g. dismantled); it adds a negative connotation to the root words organize/place/ mantel (= frame). But what about discern, which means to understand something – even so it is not easy to grasp – after thoroughly thinking about it? To understand something difficult is certainly a good thing.
Taking something apart, does not necessarily mean to destroy it. Looking at information and picking (cernere) it apart (dis) helps better to understand the whole picture. Similarly, taking (capere) a piece apart (dis) and learning it turns one into a real disciple who is in control (disciplined) of a particular area of knowledge, a discipline.
But even dis- in its meaning of taking something away can convert a root word into something positive. A discount, "counting away" a percentage and thus reducing the price, is nothing anybody would object. And to discover (to take away the cover) and to disentangle (to remove tangles) something makes life more interesting and easier.
A bit more complicated are the words to dispose, to be disposed, and one’s disposition. To dispose of something is quite clear. We take it away from its original position. Yet, putting things into a different position can also mean to sort and organize them, and if our mind is organized, we are disposed to behave in a particular way. Alas, to have a particular disposition or temperament can be a negative as well as quite a positive thing.
Whichever it is, the influence of alcohol will bring it to the fore if the old saying "in vino veritas" is true. If wine doesn't do the trick, maybe brandy, distilled from wine, will. To distill something means to reduce it to drops (stilla) and to get its essence. And when we distill information from a variety of sources, we will - with any luck - be less discombobulated and closer to the truth.

offside

In an article titled “World Cup robberies: Six tips for a safe visit to South Africa,” the Christian Science Monitor on June 9, 2010 offered some tips for anybody travelling to South Africa to watch the FIFA World Cup. A colon introduces either a list, an explanation, or a principle. Since “Six tips for a safe visit to South Africa” is neither a list nor a principle, the tips provided must be the explanation of the robberies. Well, Sherlock Holmes would say, there is “no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation.”
The reason for the CSM to compile these tips was an “armed robbery of three foreign journalists sent to cover the World Cup on Tuesday night – near the Portuguese team's base camp in Magaliesburg, north of Johannesburg.” Every soccer fan would be rather disappointed to hear that the World Cup is a one-night event. Moreover, if the cup were played at the Portuguese team's base camp, wouldn’t this give the Portuguese an unfair home advantage? Modifiers should be placed as close as possible to the modified element and the sentence be about "Tuesday night'sarmed robbery near the Portuguese team's base camp in Magaliesburg, north of Johannesburg, whose victims were three foreign journalists sent to cover the World Cup."
The first tip, not to “advertise that you are a stranger in town,” makes complete sense since “Criminals look for those who may seem fearful or unfamiliar with an area, or who may not know to take certain precautions, such as putting your wallet in your front pocket, rather than in the back pocket.” The only problem is that the writer apparently took Joyce Carol Oates's advice too literally, namely that every sentence deserves a comma after six words. In fact, the sentence above should not contain a single one.
Tip No.3 suggests to always “Travel in groups. There are areas that are safer than others in South Africa, as in any major city of the world. But you can still pay visits to historic monuments in South Africa – many of which are in older, urban areas – if you travel in a group organized by a tour operator recommended by your hotel.” It’s an astute observation that some areas are safer than other, but who would have thought that historic monuments are in older urban areas.

Kickoff

NPR asked why “In the United States, the game played almost exclusively with hands is called football and the game played almost exclusively with feet is called soccer.” Dan Courtemanche, spokesman of the Major League Soccer, answered that “the word goes back to the late 1800s. As schools in England set up the modern rules for football that version was called Association Football. Somehow, the -ssocia part of the word turned into socca, which turned into soccer.”
A query in the Online Etymological Dictionary yields an interesting detail. The suffix –er “is used to make jocular or familiar formations from common or proper names (soccer being one),” which suggests that this “jocular suffix” was attached to the syllable soc of the word association. That the word soccer was indeed used in a jocular way indicates a quote from the Westminster Gazette (1/7/1894), referring to “the rival attractions of ‘rugger’ and ‘socker’”(OED) and using quotation marks around both words to signal irony.
“So would Major League Soccer ever join the rest of world and call the game what makes perfect sense? ‘Never say never,’ said Courtemanche” (NPR).

On a footnote: As with “the 'whisky/whiskey' conundrum,” where “consistency with the rest of the drinking world outweighs internal consistency,” international consistency here suggests a shift from one foot to the other, using the foot to kick instead of to measure.

oil spell

(source: Christian Science Monitor 7/8/10)

Dashing!

Just like socks, dashes can come in singles and in pairs. And just like a single sock, a single dash is rather confounding, it being the harbinger of something surprising, an abrupt turn, a sudden digression, a mental leap.

If you need a suit, go to Men’s Wearhouse. If you need a bespoke suit — well, first a definition of bespeaking.

Alan Feuer slightly digresses to explain an essential term before he plunges into his subject — $ 5,000 suits.

"It means a garment has been made to your specifications, that it’s been spoken about,” said Bruce Cameron Clark, an Englishman in exile who for 15 years has indulged such speech at his custom suit shop — Bruce Cameron Clark, Bespoke Clothier — on Lexington Avenue and 71st Street. “A bespoke suit was created only for you. It has your name on it.”

A phrase that provides more information, an accessory of sorts, is slipped in between a pair of dashes instead of commas here to enhance clarity since the phrase — or rather the shop's name — itself already contains a comma.

In Mr. Clark’s case, those names have been impressively eclectic over the years… Sitting lankly in an armchair near the window, Mr. Clark recalled, “Elton John got married in one of my shirts” — it was a short-sleeved job, with white wing collars and a vertical stripe — “when he still thought he was straight.”

The pair of dashes here suits perfectly to set off the description of Elton John’s bespoke shirt. Appositive phrases, however, should – well, be phrases, not clauses. Thus, the writer should have omitted the two words “it was.”

Of course, the world has changed, sartorially speaking, since Mr. Clark arrived in New York in 1995, fresh from Savile Row and an apprenticeship with the legendary tailor Tommy Nutter (claim to fame: three of four Beatles wore Nutter suits on the cover of “Abbey Road”) — which perhaps is why Mr. Clark’s shop still seems so traditionally English.

An aside, a thought kind of socked away, is also preceded by a single dash. That Mr. Clark’s shop is so British is not an essential part of the main subject but the author's afterthought.

It is a small, bright, second-story parlor with hardwood floors, a full-length mirror and sample garments — a thorn-proof hunting jacket, for example — hanging from the walls. There is a cabinet case of fabrics: English cottons, Madras plaids. You would not be surprised to glance up from your reading copy of “A History of Men’s Fashion” to find a banker in a homburg — and behind him, Mick Jagger — at the door.

The pairs of dashes around “a thorn-proof hunting jacket, for example” and “and behind him,[sic!] Mick Jagger” provide the sheathing for a description and a parenthetical element respectively. The dashes emphasize the insertions, make them stand out more than a pair of commas would do.

This casual — ” he stopped before saying “scourge.” But, of course, he didn’t have to.

Feuer’s last dash shrouds a missing word. Similarly, a dash can stand for omitted letters, for example to disguise names or profanities (maybe somebody thinks that Mr. C— is a b— snob?). Note that no space is left between the remaining letter and the dash.