Monthly Archives: September 2008

The Editrix has turned Barack Obama and John McCain’s campaign speeches into Wordles, which is what I used to make the logo on the top of this blog. Awesome. Check it out here.

Slate has an interesting article about a rhetorical device that’s being used a lot this presidential campaign season, by pretty much all the major politicians:

Politicians eager to keep up with the latest fad need more than a flag pin this election season; the hottest accessory of the 2008 campaign is the reversible raincoat. That’s the nickname speechwriters have given to the rhetorical device in which words are repeated in transposed order, as with Churchill’s famous line: “Let us preach what we practice—let us practice what we preach.” The fancy Greek name for the trick is antimetabole, and it’s been cropping up in speeches by Democrats and Republicans alike.

The New York Times quotes Fox News’ Bill O’Relly as using two interesting words in the first segment of his interviews with Barack Obama:

He told Mr. Obama he had “bloviated” in parts of his convention speech, but congratulated him on his early opposition to the war, saying he had been “perspicacious.”

I’ve heard bloviate before, and mostly knew that it meant (according to the OED) “to talk at length, esp. using inflated or empty rhetoric; to speechify or ‘sound off’.”

Perspicacious was new to me though. The Times’ handy double-click-on-a-word-for-a-definition feature gives this from the American Heritage Dictionary: “Having or showing penetrating mental discernment; clear-sighted.” The OED gives a similar definition and this etymology:

Classical Latin perspicac-, perspicax having keen or penetrating sight, discerning; perspicere to see through, look closely into, discern, perceive (see PERSPECTIVE adj.)

Yesterday, I wrote about the word presently, concluding:

Maybe it’s just an unnecessary word, especially because it means different things to different people and is not always clear from the context.

My wife pointed out to me that was a) vaguely 1984ish and b) wrong.

It was vaguely 1984ish because in that book, the compilers of the Newspeak dictionary were carefully removing all synonyms — and antonyms for that matter — after choosing one word to represent an idea. So good, prime, swell, fantastic,  great, etc. become just good, or plusgood or doubleplusgood, depending on how good it was. And bad, terrible, awful, woeful, etc. become ungood, plusungood or doubleplusungood. My wife obviously wasn’t suggesting I had a Big Brother moment, just that what I said echoed that idea from the book.

Which leads us to b), that is, why I was wrong in declaring it was unnecessary. My wife said she likes presently both because it sounds formal and whimsical and because of its very ambiguity.

So presently could be being used for a certain effect (formality, whimsy). And that’s a very valid reason to have a word.

And the ambiguity could be useful, my wife said. Maybe you don’t really know that you’ll be able to comply with a request immediately, but want to convey that you are trying. (The king summons you, but you are in your boxers and don’t know where your good clothes are. “I’ll be there presently,” you say.)

The point here is not that one should equivocate when the king is calling, but that it’s silly to discard words, a trap I’ve fallen into before. I really do like that English has a wide range of words that have different shades of meaning for the same idea. I just also like making pronouncements.

Still, I think the word should be used carefully. In simple, plain writing like a newspaper article, it’s still probably better to say now or soon.

I’m reading The Ghost Brigades, a science-fiction book by John Scalzi (also proprietor of the always-entertaining Whatever blog). He keeps using the word presently to mean “soon.” I thought this was wrong, and I was going to blog about how it means “now” and how it just sounds wrong to be used the other way, with all sorts of references to back me up. Turns out I’m sort of wrong, but not completely.

Guess I’ll use all those references to explain.

We’ll start with Webster’s New World, which gives these definitions for the adjective:

“1. In a little while; soon 2. at present; now: a usage objected to by some 3. [Archaic] at once, instantly.”

Garner’s Modern American Usage explains the archaic bit and gives some advice:

“Presently contains an ambiguity. In the days of Shakespeare, it meant “immediately.” Soon its meaning evolved into “after a short time” (perhaps because people exaggerated about their promptitude). This sense is still current. Then, chiefly in American English, it took on the additional sense “at present, currently.” This use is poor, however, because it both causes the ambiguity and displaces a simpler word (“now” or, if more syllables are necessary, “at present” or “currently”).

The OED gives both definitions, as well as the archaic one, but has this to say about the use of it to mean “now”:

Apparently avoided in literary use between the 17th and 20th centuries, but in regular use in most English dialects and by Scottish writers; revived in the 20th century in the U.S., subsequently in Britain and elsewhere. Regarded by some usage writers, esp. after the mid 20th cent., as erroneous or ambiguous.

So apparently this “new” misuse is a meaning that has been around for a long time.

And here’s  John McIntyre’s thoughts on it:

My sense is that you are right in suspecting that the “sometime soon” sense is increasingly dated and is being supplanted by the “now” sense. (And yes, it is a windy and pompous substitution, of the sort one finds in office memos.)

For my own part, as a son of Appalachia, I prefer directly, pronounced as my grandmother, Clara Rhodes Early said it, something between d’rectly and dreckly. It is roughly equivalent of manana: “Yes, Kathleen, I’ll put the book down and rake those remaining leaves from last fall directly.”

I agree with Garner and McIntytre that it’s probably not a good word to use to mean “now” because actually using the word now is shorter and won’t cause any confusion. And come to think of it, “soon” is also shorter and won’t cause confusion. Maybe it’s just an unnecessary word, especially because it means different things to different people and is not always clear from the context.

UPDATE (10:53 a.m. Sept. 4): I’ve restated my position a bit here.

Merrill Perlman, the former copy chief at the New York Times and now proprietor of the Columbia Journalism Review’s Language Corner, writes about the word alright:

Many people don’t even realize that it’s disputed usage, and it’s not historically wrong: “Alright” started life in Middle English as one word and split soon after, though “all right” fell from use for quite some time.

Among the interesting things that Perlman points out:

Nowadays, in polite company “alright” appears most frequently in quotations. That’s a curious distinction, because no one spells what is being spoken, and “all right” and “alright” are pronounced the same, not like “going to” and “gonna,” another dialogue inhabitant.

Perlman writes that most modern style guides say not to use it. And some people can’t stand it, such as author John Scalzi. He  wrote on his Whatever blog in April:

“Alright” is an abomination against all things good and pure and those who use it are on the side of the demons.