Language Log

Doug Henschen, "SAS DataFlux Unit Bows Unified Data Management Platform", Intelligent Enterprise, 2/23/2010.

Inspection of the article reveals that bow is a transitive verb meaning "cause to take a bow (of metaphorical introduction)", i.e. "introduce".

JS writes:

I don't think I used the word "sketchy" till I came to college in Virginia, but now I use it with such frequency (especially whenever a party, a city or nightlife is involved) that I am surprised that the meaning I use most for it is not included in most dictionaries. Is there a way to track the evolution of the word? How recent is it, and what its geographical distribution?

My preliminary experiments with dictionary searching suggest that English has absolutely no words with roots of forms like *bobbib, *papoop, *tettit, *doded, *keckick, *gaggig, *mimmom, *naneen, *faffiff, *sussis, etc. These are simple CVCVC shapes that do not seem to contain any un-English sequence. They aren't hard to say. In fact there is an example of a verb with the shape dVd that has a regular preterite tense: deed has the preterite deeded (as in The farmer deeded back his farm to the bank [WSJ w7_016]). But the pronounceability of deeded only makes the puzzle more acute: why are there no roots with the phonological form C_iVC_iVC_i (where C_i is some specific consononant sounds and the V positions are filled with vowel sounds). Why? Or is the generalization perhaps wrong? Have I missed some words of the shape in question?

The linguistic point that is so interesting about the PartiallyClips cartoon strip that Mark just pointed you to is that the "suffixes" involved are not all suffixes. The endings of the words are -like, -esque, -ward, -proof, -(a)thon, -riffic, -master, -go-round, -ism, -kabob, -(o)phile, -(i)licious, and -gasm. Of these, I think I'd say (it is a theoretical judgment) that only -like, -esque, -ward, and -ism should be called suffixes.

Working on a paper today, my partner Barbara found that Microsoft Word objected to her use of the word relativizing as nonexistent or misspelled, and suggested firmly that she should change it to the most plausible nearly similar word: gelatinizing. But she is wise to the extraordinarily bad advice Word gives on spelling and grammar, and firmly resisted what could have been one of the worst cupertinos in the history of philosophy.

Jens Fiederer writes with a link to this blog posting, about North Korean ideologies as described in B.R. Myers's How North Koreans See Themselves — and Why it Matters. The blogger adds:

I also recommend the new book Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick.  Excerpt:

North Koreans have multiple words for prison in much the same way that the Inuit do for snow.

It's still January, but I've already got a nomination for the 2010 WOTY competition: spokespirate:

Saying the US and Europe “have no moral authority” to control the aid going to Haiti, Somali pirates say they plan to donate booty from their hijackings to the relief effort. The pirates have taken in more than $150 million in the past 2 years, by one estimate, and now aim to redistribute some while thumbing their noses at the Western powers. “They are the ones pirating mankind for many years,” a spokespirate tells Agencia Matriz del Sur.

Regular LL readers know that we're not naive about the relationship between "news" and truth, especially when it comes to science reporting or the accuracy and context of MSM quotations and even video clips. In fact, we could fairly be accused of excessive cynicism. But this is breathtaking: "Science Reporting Gone Wild", Neuroworld, 1/18/2010; "The British media's 'Blonde Moment'", Neuroskeptic 1/28/2010.

Either Aaron Sell, a psychologist at UCSB, is lying about what he said to John Harlow, the West Coast Bureau Chief for the Sunday Times, or John Harlow seriously needs to be fired.

From reader JHG:

Is it just my perception, or is the phrase "on-point" in the midst of a meteoric rise in usage and a de facto expansion in meaning?  I have heard it used repeatedly as a general term of approval or commendation rather than to mean only "germane." We may not have the next "cool" on our hands, but I think there's a trend here. Any way to validate one listener's perceptions with some research?

The winner of the 2009 Dutch Word of the Year, as selected in an online poll conducted by the Van Dale dictionary group and Pers newspaper, was ontvrienden, a social networking verb equivalent to English unfriend or defriend. NRC Handelsblad recently reported that ontvrienden can be found in the Dutch historical dictionary Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal with citations back to 1626:

The entry quotes references dating from 1626 and 1658. One is a reference to the infamous courtesan of Lais, a woman so beautiful — and sexually available — that she drew pupils away from a famous philosopher, "defriending" him in the old-fashioned sense of the word. "Today you can defriend someone. In the past, you were defriended," said Wouter van Wingerden, a linguistic consultant with the Society for the Dutch Language.

The other reference is found in Psalm 88:8, translated in the King James Bible as "Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me." The Dutch version quoted in the Woordenboek might be close to 400 years old but it is definitely more concise. It reads 'Mijn vrienden hebt ghy my ont-vrindt,' which translates to "My friends thou hast defriended."

The word fell into disuse after the 17th century, perhaps because the Netherlands had few friends left. By 1672, the young Dutch republic found itself at war with France, England, and the dioceses of Cologne and Munster.

Similarly, unfriend, the New Oxford American Dictionary Word of 2009, is dated by the OED back to 1659. For further thoughts on the revival of unfriend and ontvrienden, see my latest Word Routes column on the Visual Thesaurus, "'Sleeping Beauties' in English and Dutch."

"Egbert's, a custom car shop at this location since 1992, specializes in restoring and building unique cars to disconcerting customers", says the website for Egbert's, a company that designs and restores hotrods and collectible cars for street use. I am quite sure that by "to" they meant "for". And although perhaps some of the tattooed customers who bring in muscle cars to have skull motifs or gang insignia incorporated into the paintwork may be a bit disconcerting, surely they must have meant that they restore and build cars for discerning customers.

The results are in: the American Dialect Society has selected tweet as the Word of the Year for 2009, and google (the verb) as Word of the Decade for 2000-09. I've got a full report on the proceedings over on my Word Routes column for the Visual Thesaurus. An excerpt:

Reactions to the vote are already coming in. On the American Dialect Society mailing list, John Baker pointed out that both tweet and google are proprietary names. Google is obviously a trademark of the powers-that-be at the Googleplex (who are no doubt unhappy about the dilution of the brand name by having it treated as a generic verb). But tweet is also a service mark owned by Twitter, filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on April 16, 2009 and pending registration.

Read the rest here.

"Just because you collect them doesn't make them collectibles," says a wife to a dopey-looking husband in the cartoon that Bob Ladd peeled off his New Yorker calendar last December 23. And she's right. There's a difference in meaning between the -ible suffix, which attaches mainly to roots with a Latin origin, and the word possible: what is possible for you to X may not meet the standard for being Xible. As so often, the cartoonist (Barbara Smaller in this case) draws on not just a familiarity with life and relationships but also a pretty good implicit analytical knowledge of semantics and derivational morphology.