Monthly Archives: February 2009

I was reading a New York Times article about Obama’s budget when I saw this sentence: “Mr. Obama aims to move workers into the first category (of college graduates) by increasing federal financial aid and simplifying the myriad of aid programs.”

I thought, “A-ha! An error I can write about.” I thought that myriad is properly an adjective meaning “countless” and not a noun meaning “a great number,” and that it should be used this way: “simplifying the myriad aid programs.”

But when I went to start looking for supporting evidence, I discovered that this was another “rule that isn’t.”

Garner’s Modern English Usage says that while “myriad is more concise as an adjective … the mere fact that the adjective is handier than the noun doesn’t mean the latter is substandard. The noun (ca. 1555) has been with us more than 200 years longer than the adjective (ca. 1791), and the choice is a question of style, not correctness.”

Other reference books agree. Merriam Webster Online: “The noun myriad has appeared in the works of such writers as Milton (plural myriads) and Thoreau (a myriad of), and it continues to occur frequently in reputable English. There is no reason to avoid it.”

The American Heritage Dictonary:

In the 19th century (myriad) began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both usages in English are acceptable, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Myriad myriads of lives.” This poetic, adjectival use became so well entrenched generally that many people came to consider it as the only correct use. In fact, both uses in English are parallel with those of the original ancient Greek. The Greek word murias, from which myriad derives, could be used as either a noun or an adjective, but the noun murias was used in general prose and in mathematics while the adjective murias was used only in poetry.

The Greek word murias referred to above is ancient Greek for 10,000. According to the OED, it also had the non-literal meaning of “countless” in ancient Greek, but that was “poetic and rare.” Myriad came into English from the post-classical Latin myriades (plural) also meaning “multiples of ten thousand, a countless number.”

A Kurdish member of Turkey’s Parliament caused a stir by giving a speech in Kurdish at a session of Parliament. This is apparently both politically taboo and illegal. State television cut off the broadcast of the speech.

According to the story, “Kurdish is no longer banned as a language, but its public use at events like Tuesday’s speech, or at rallies, on fliers or in advertisements, is still illegal.”

I wonder if the powers-that-be in Turkey really think laws like this will suppress Kurdish nationalism, or if they are just trying to keep it out of the public eye.

Today’s Washington Post had a great headline on a great column about our members of Congress using Twitter during Obama’s speech last night:

A Tale of 140 Characters, Plus the Ones in Congress

A lot of times headlines that are puns or plays on words work only one way. (I’ve written my share of those). This one works both ways. (Messages on Twitter are limited to 140 characters.)

The whole story is funny too: “Lawmakers watched him with the dignity Americans have come to expect of their leaders: They whipped out their BlackBerrys and began sending text messages like high school kids bored in math class.”

More on President Obama. This time, in the New York Times, on his use of the personal pronoun “I” instead of “me” in phrases like “graciously invited Michelle and I.”

(Thanks to my friend Andres for showing me this.)

We’ve talked before about President Obama’s use of enormity to mean “really really big” instead of “great wickedness.” We’ve also talked about why some smart people think that’s really not a problem.

At first blush, it seems like he did something similar yesterday in a speech to the National Governors Association when talking about the stimulus package:

“I just want to make sure that we’re having an honest debate in presenting to the American people a fulsome accounting of what is going on in this program.”

Fulsome’s first definition in Webster’s New World is something that is “disgusting or offensive, especially because (it is) excessive or insincere.” Most other dictionaries I checked give something similar as a first definition.

But they also acknowledge that it is used to mean “full; ample; abundant.” (New World)  However, the dictionaries attach phrases like “usage objected to by some” (New World) and “usage problem” (American Heritage).

However, New World also hints at something more interesting. Before giving the disputed definition, it says “apparent revival of the original sense, obsolete since the 16th century.”

Merriam-Webster Online explains this further, and also breaks with the other dictionaries by giving the abundant sense its first definition:

1 a. characterized by abundance : copious

1 b. generous in amount, extent, or spirit

1 c. being full and well developed

2. aesthetically, morally, or generally offensive

3. exceeding the bounds of good taste : overdone

4. excessively complimentary or flattering : effusive

usage. The senses shown above are the chief living senses of fulsome. Sense 2, which was a generalized term of disparagement in the late 17th century, is the least common of these. Fulsome became a point of dispute when sense 1, thought to be obsolete in the 19th century, began to be revived in the 20th. The dispute was exacerbated by the fact that the large dictionaries of the first half of the century missed the beginnings of the revival. Sense 1 has not only been revived but has spread in its application and continues to do so. The chief danger for the user of fulsome is ambiguity. Unless the context is made very clear, the reader or hearer cannot be sure whether such an expression as “fulsome praise” is meant in sense 1b or in sense 4.

Although I agree there is some danger in ambiguity when talking about “fulsome praise,” in the case of Obama’s speech, it was clear what he meant.

(Thanks to my mom for pointing pointing me at the speech.)

Twitter has been getting a lot of attention lately, and there’s been a flurry of people signing up. I’ve jumped on the bandwagon. Not sure how I want to use it, or if it will be useful, but I wanted to give it a go before I dismissed it. I imagine I will wander from topic to topic a lot more than I do on the blog. It’s been pretty banal so far. If you’re interested in following me, you can click the link over on the right or you can click here.

I’ve been slacking off, to varying degrees, since November. Today I’m rebooting. I’ve redesigned the site a bit, but more importantly, I’m going to try to get back to posting at least once every weekday, starting today. Let’s see how it goes.

There’s been a lot of talk about corporate outings, retreats and junkets recently, as financial companies are called to task for spending lavishly on gifts, trips and rewards for clients and employees while accepting federal bailout money. The New York Times has a story today about how they are being cut back.

I wanted to know where junket, which is a trip taken at someone else’s expense, comes from. Both Merriam-Webster Online and the American Heritage Dictionary give the first definition of junket as a dessert made of flavored milk and rennet. (Rennet is the lining of a cow’s stomach. Spew.)

The OED takes the word back one step further, giving the first definition of junket as “A basket (originally made of rushes); especially a basket in which fish are caught or carried.” Its second definition refers to the dessert, which was “originally made in a rush-basket or served on a rush-mat.” The meaning of a rush basket was in use as far back as 1382, according to the OED; its meaning of a dessert to 1460.

The OED’s fourth definition touches on the usage in the sense of a lavish trip: “A feast or banquet; a merrymaking accompanied with feasting; also in modern use (chiefly U.S.), a pleasure expedition or outing at which eating and drinking are prominent; a picnic-party.” The OED’s first quotation of junket to mean banquet in 1530. Its first quotation on the free trip usage was in the Detroit Free Press in 1886: “The term ‘junket’ in America is generally applied to a trip taken by an American official at the expense of the government.”

American Heritage’s third definition expands on the idea of the free trip, which makes sense if this is an Americanism: “A trip or tour, especially: a. One taken by an official at public expense. b. One taken by a person who is the guest of a business or agency seeking favor or patronage.” Merriam-Webster adds: “ a promotional trip made at another’s expense <a film’s press junket>.”

Unfortunately, the OED can’t explain much about how it got its different meanings. From the etymology: “Of somewhat obscure history, in respect both of forms and senses, but apparently adopted from Old Northern French jonket, jonquet or jonquette, meaning rush-basket, from jonc meaning rush.”

John McIntyre previews the approach of National Grammar Day over at You Don’t Say. He gives some sensible principles to keep in mind, including this one that I particularly liked:

• “Individual stylistic preferences are that and no more. You may agree with H.W. Fowler that it is sensible to use that, generally, to introduce a restrictive clause and which, generally, to introduce a nonrestrictive clause, but it is not a rule, or even an unquestioned convention. It is an individual stylistic preference, like a taste for inserting commas to replicate the pauses of spoken language. You may want to restrict who to refer to people, that to animals and inanimate objects; but that is merely your preference, not a practice that you can oblige someone else to follow.”