Malapropism of the week
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Kevin Drum, "Federal judge uses very strange words to overturn LNG pause", jabberwocking 7/2/2024:
Early this year the Department of Energy paused approvals of new LNG terminals. Several states sued, saying the decision was arbitrary and was costing them a lot of money.
Yesterday a Trump-appointed judge in Louisiana (of course) issued a preliminary injunction against the pause and told DOE to start issuing approvals again. […]
I want to highlight a couple of passages from judge James Cain's opinion:
The Defendants’ choice to halt permits to export natural gas to foreign companies is quite complexing to this Court…. [It] is completely without reason or logic and is perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy.
Drum's lexicographic commentary:
What is this supposed to mean? It turns out that complexing actually is a word: It has to do with the process of binding two atoms to form a complex. However, a less-used definition is complicating. But neither makes sense. Perhaps his honor meant perplexing?
Then there's epiphany, which means a sudden inspiration or understanding. That also makes no sense. Perhaps he meant epitome?
Finally there's ideocracy. As it happens, this is actually a word too. It apparently refers to a society governed by a single overarching ideology. That seems unlikely, though. Perhaps he meant idiocracy?
As usual, there a three or four possible explanations for each of the errors:
- A regular malapropism, where the author's mental lexicon is wrong (relative to the current norms of the language);
- A Fay-Cutler malapropism, the "inadvertent substitution" of a similar-sounding word that the speaker knows is not correct;
- A "Cupertino" or auto-correct error, often triggered by a typing error that moves the letter sequence closer to a different word's region in the editing app's correction algorithm.
If a journalist were involved, they'd be a likely source for the error — that's not possible in this case, but maybe a clerk played a role?
[h/t Bob Shackleton]
Jonathan Smith said,
July 3, 2024 @ 7:36 am
If you don't mind a candidate PP attachment ambiguity of the day/week: RFK Jr. denies eating a dog while sidestepping sexual assault allegations in Vanity Fair article. Where the "correct" interpretation doesn't even quite make sense but OK…
Cervantes said,
July 3, 2024 @ 8:02 am
I think the likely explanation is that the judge is an idiot.
Philip Taylor said,
July 3, 2024 @ 8:32 am
I had hoped that "eating a dog" was an <Am.E> colloquialism for "eating a hot dog", but sadly I was mistaken.
Mark Liberman said,
July 3, 2024 @ 9:42 am
@Cervantes: "I think the likely explanation is that the judge is an idiot."
Evidence against that hypothesis is that there don't seem to be any other malapropisms in the 62-page-page opinion — at least I don't find any in a quick skim…
(Unless maybe the clerks wrote the body of the opinion and the judge added the conclusion?)
J.W. Brewer said,
July 3, 2024 @ 10:37 am
You can find opinions by other federal judges using "complexing" in that physical-chemistry sense, in patent-infringement cases where terms like "ion-complexing moiety" or "transition metal complexing agent" get bandied about.
I was a law clerk for a federal judge so many decades ago that I don't think the federal judiciary's primitive word-processing software even had a spellcheck function, much less an occasionally-counterproductive autocorrect function. So if there were any typos in opinions as issued they had been generated the old-fashioned way.
J.W. Brewer said,
July 3, 2024 @ 10:48 am
Per the google books ngram viewer "ideocracy" is more common than the newer "idiocracy," thus making an autocorrect error, or even a "suggestion" from spellcheck that the user than imprudently accepted, plausible. Indeed, the preview as I type this comment puts a squiggly red line (presumably trying to warn me against it?) under "idiocracy" but not under "ideocracy."
This appears to be the only federal opinion known to Westlaw that uses "ideocracy." There's at least one that uses "idiocracy," but it's in a quotation rather than the judge's own choice of word: "The next day, plaintiff left another voicemail for Goldberg saying that he was 'done with the idiocracy' and had run out of patience."
J.W. Brewer said,
July 3, 2024 @ 11:10 am
Finally, there is further internal evidence of lack of careful proofreading at the very beginning of the 62-page opinion, which is labeled a "MEMORANDUMG RULING," when the first word should have obviously been "MEMORANDUM." It is perhaps worth noting that the opinion was issued in connection with a motion for stay or preliminary injunction, that such motions are often time-sensitive (or at least claimed by one side to be time-sensitive!), and that the opinion came out only a week and a half after a June 20 hearing on the motion. One never knows how much drafting might have already been done before the hearing, but it's plausible to think that this opinion was produced notably more quickly than a typical federal district judge would produce an opinion of this length in an ordinary situation with no particular urgency, and publishing in haste obviously increases the chances of inadequate proofreading.
Andrew Usher said,
July 3, 2024 @ 8:41 pm
This judicial opinion, even ignoring from the malaprops, is not well written. I do not know if this is characteristic of this judge, but I'd imagine so. Though on safe ground legally (as Drum noted) this seems to just asking to be reversed on appeal (of course it's not a final decision anyway) – an expression like 'the epiphany of ideocracy', even with the correct words, is strange language from a judge, and 'idiocracy' isn't even what he meant because this decision wasn't stupid, just (arguably) wrong or unlawful.
The argument that it was written in haste seems not to explain why it is clearly longer than necessary, but I guess we know some people write at length because they don't have time to make it shorter (not me, certainly).
k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com
GH said,
July 4, 2024 @ 4:12 am
The other malapropisms argue against it, but on its own I would be more inclined to believe the judge really did mean "ideocracy" rather than "idiocracy," accusing the DOE of acting out of an ideological obsession with reducing fossil fuel dependency. That seems in line with the general drift of his argument.
Pedro said,
July 4, 2024 @ 7:23 am
complexing = perplexing
epiphany of ideocracy = epitome of idiocy
Andrew Usher said,
July 4, 2024 @ 7:39 am
Yes, I suppose that's what we'd have all believe except that 'ideocracy' is a rare word – I don't think I'd ever seen it – and it followed another goof. Interestingly the standard pronunciation of 'ideocracy' is given with a short I, making it identical to 'idiocracy', though it should be parallel to 'ideology', normally given a long one – perhaps that very rarity given uncertainly on how people do or should actually say it.
J.W. Brewer said,
July 4, 2024 @ 10:51 am
Just as a baseline of sorts, here's the first other recent opinion written by the same judge that I googled up: https://casetext.com/case/richard-v-freedom-mortg-corp It's a short opinion in a run-of-the-mill case (it does involve damage from a hurricane, but that's maybe more routine a generator of lawsuits in Louisiana than in certain other places), with no obvious malapropisms or glitches. Of course, perhaps the routine nature of the case meant that the judge wasn't tempted to reach for any sort of dramatic rhetorical effect and run the risk that his reach would exceed his grasp.
Dan Campbell said,
July 4, 2024 @ 10:16 pm
FROM AN AI PLATFORM REWRITE: The sentence "The Defendants’ choice to halt permits to export natural gas to foreign companies is quite complexing to this Court…. [It] is completely without reason or logic and is perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy." could benefit from a few improvements:
"Complexing" is not commonly used in this context. It might be better to use "puzzling" or "perplexing" to convey the idea that the Court finds the decision difficult to understand.
The phrase "perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy" could be considered ambiguous. It's not entirely clear what the writer is trying to convey. It might be helpful to provide more specific reasoning for why the decision is seen as the "epiphany of ideocracy."
The sentence structure could be refined for clarity and flow. Consider breaking it down into shorter, more digestible segments to improve readability.
Here's a revised version of the sentence to address these points: "The Defendants’ decision to halt permits for exporting natural gas to foreign companies is quite perplexing to this Court. It appears to be entirely devoid of reason or logic and may be construed as a manifestation of ideocracy."
This revised version aims to provide a clearer and more coherent expression of the Court's perspective on the Defendants' decision.