Talk Wordy to Me

Earlier this month, the New York Times had an article about the nightclub scene that is emerging in Baghdad despite the safety risks. I came across a word that I see a lot but didn’t know what it means in a paragraph about one nightclub owner, Antoine al-Hage:

One of the Iraqi partners in the club, Jumaa al-Musawi, seemed to appreciate Mr. Hage’s verve. The restaurant, he worried rightfully, was a hazardous adventure, but he said it was worth trying.

I checked verve out in the American Heritage Dictionary:

• 1. Energy and enthusiasm in the expression of ideas, especially in artistic performance or composition.
• 2. Vitality; liveliness.
• 3. Archaic. Aptitude; talent.

Hage certainly has enthusiasm and liveliness:

Antoine al-Hage, capitalism’s equivalent of a soldier of fortune, smiles at it all — the danger, the risk and, of course, the payoff of bringing nightlife to Iraq.

“Where there’s war,” he said, “there’s lots of money.”

The AHD etymology: “French, from Old French, meaning fanciful expression, probably from the Vulgar Latin verva, from Latin verba, plural of verbum, meaning word.”

I’ve been reading Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan, by Ronald H. Spector. The book was recommended to me as an excellent one-volume history of the Pacific campaign in World War II. I’ve read a lot about the war in Europe, but I wanted to expand my scope. Before I started reading memoirs and books about specific battles, I wanted a broad look at the war, and this has been excellent.

It has also provided plenty of fodder for Talk Wordy to Me. Expect to see a few references to the book in the next week or two.

Here’s a passage from early in the book, about a new ambassador sent from Japan to the United States in February 1941:

Admiral Nomura Kishisaburo was a moderate, favorably inclined toward the U.S. Early in March he and Secretary of State Hull began a series of desultory conversations which dragged on into summer. Neither man had anything really new to offer and some historians believe the talks may have done more harm than good by obscuring how far apart in policy the two countries actually were.

I didn’t know desultory, so I looked it up in my American Heritage Dictionary:

• 1. Having no set plan; haphazard or random.
• 2. Moving or jumping from one thing to another; disconnected: a desultory speech.

And the etymology: from the “Latin dēsultōrius, meaning leaping, from dēsultor, meaning a leaper, from dēsultus, the past participle of dēsilīre, meaning to leap down : from dē-, de- + salīre, meaning to jump.”

During last week’s World Cup group match between the United States and Algeria, one of the announcers was talking about a 1982 incident in which Germany and Austria colluded to keep Algeria out of the second round. He called it something like “One of the most odious moments in World Cup history.”

(Though I’ve been enjoying watching the World Cup with my wife, I don’t know anything about soccer history. A longish Guardian article recounts the incident. Here’s the key bit):

The 3-2 victory still meant Algeria would become the first African team to reach the second round unless the group’s final game, to be played the following day, ended in a one- or two-goal win for West Germany over Austria, in which case both the European teams would progress at Algeria’s expense. In the 10th minute of that match Horst Hrubesch put the Germans in front. Then … nothing happened. Realising the scoreline suited both of them, Germany and Austria effectively stopped playing. In the ensuing 80 minutes there were no shots, and barely any tackles, crosses or sprints. The game was no longer a contest, it was a conspiracy. The teams’ cynicism provoked universal scorn.

At the time, I tweeted: “Announcer uses the word “odious.” Talk Wordy to Me approves.”

Here’s the details on odious, from the American Heritage Dictionary, with a little added to the etymology from the OED on odiōsus.

• Definition: Arousing or meriting strong dislike, aversion, or intense displeasure.
• Etymology: Middle English, from the Old French odieus, from the Latin odiōsus, meaning exciting hatred, disagreeable, offensive, from odium, meaning hatred.

Sea lions on Pier 39 at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco

My wife and I went to San Francisco on vacation last month. One of the big attractions there is Fisherman’s Wharf. We got into a discussion about what exactly a wharf was, and that also tripped my etymology switch.

I said I thought a wharf was the area on the shore that the piers were attached to, she said she thought it was the actual piers. She was right, according to the OED:

• 1. A substantial structure of timber, stone, etc., built along the water’s edge, so that ships may lie alongside for loading and unloading. Often with prefixed nouns, as fish-wharf, gun-wharf.
• 2a. An embankment, mole, or dam. Obsolete.
• 2b. A terrace or raised platform. Obsolete.
• 2c. The bank of a river (Obsolete); also, a gravel or sandbank.
• 2d. A large raft. Obsolete, rare.
• 2e. A place raised or otherwise marked out on which stuff is deposited for subsequent removal to another place.

So a pier is a wharf, though not all wharfs are piers.

Wharf comes from the “late Old English hwearf (compare to earlier poetical comparative merehwearf, meaning sea-shore), corresponding to Middle Low German warf, werf, meaning mole, dam, wharf, raised site protected from flooding (Late German warf), whence Early Frisian warf, werf, Dutch werf, meaning shipyard, German werf, meaning wharf, pier, werft, meaning dockyard.”

Well, this has been a lame month for Talk Wordy to Me. Sorry. I let myself get into a lazy funk after a big disappointment earlier in June, and I haven’t done much of anything all month. (Thus my two Words of Others this month were songs I’d been trying to draw inspiration from.)

Instead of wallowing in all that any more, I’m just going back to a favorite Japanese proverb (actually, the only Japanese proverb I know): Nana-Korobi, Ya-Oki, which means, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” (I don’t think that translation is quite literal, but it captures the meaning the best I have seen.)

Posts soon.

When former UCLA coach and basketball legend John Wooden died last week, one of our writers, C. Ray Hall, did a great story about him. Ray also used a word I’d never heard before:

Despite the tough times, Wooden had saved $909.05 by graduation day in 1932, according to “The Wizard of Westwood.” But the bank closed, as did so many others in the Depression, and he had to borrow $200 to marry his longtime sweetheart, Nellie Riley. The grubstake financed a one-day honeymoon — in Indianapolis.

Since I was at work, I looked up grubstake in Webster’s New World, which is our house dictionary. (It’s the dictionary at most papers, because it’s the one the Associated Press uses.) It defines grubstake as:

• 1. Money or supplies advanced to a prospector in return for a share in any findings.
• 2. Money advanced for any enterprise.

The OED says the word comes from U.S. miners, with the first quotation from 1863. It’s literally a stake in someone grubbing, that is, digging, which is grub’s definition as a verb:

• 1. To dig in the ground.
• 2. To work hard, especially at something menial or tedious; drudge.
• 3. To search about; rummage.

Grub comes from the “Middle English grubben, meaning to dig, probably from the Old English grybban (akin to the Old High German grubilōn, to bore into).”

In this week’s New York Times After Deadline post, which is the Times’ weekly “notes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style,” they examine the 50 most-searched-for words used in Times stories, based on its awesome double click on a word to get a definition feature.

The actual list is a PDF file. It’s pretty interesting, as is the commentary in After Deadline.

The list has stats on total searches and searches per use. The most-searched-for overall was  inchoate  (AHD: 1. In an initial or early stage; incipient. 2. Imperfectly formed or developed).  The most-searched-for term per use was Baldenfreude, which was a made-up word in a Maureen Dowd column.

I went through the list, and there are 24 that I could readily define. Not bad, I guess.

After Deadline concludes:

Even the most studious readers are likely to stumble over at least some of these words. I don’t suggest banning any of them — in some cases they may be the perfect choice, and we refuse to talk down to readers or dumb down our prose.

Still, we should remember that this is journalism, not philology. Our readers, smart as they are, are often in a hurry. They may be standing on the subway or skimming a story over breakfast. Let’s not make them work any harder than necessary.

Check it out. How does your vocabulary stack up?

I heard the song “Airplanes Pt. 2” by the rapper B.o.B. on the radio on my way into work last week. It opened with these lines, sung by Hayley Williams of the band Paramore:

Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars.

I could really use a wish right now, a wish right now, a wish right now.

I thought this was a really creative take on staring at the sky in the city. And a really sad image.

There are actually two versions of this song on the album, The Adventures of Bobby Ray. I liked Pt. 2 better than the first version. Pt. 2 is more about not squandering your talents and dreams than the first version. Pt. 2 has a really good verse with Eminem about that.

I listened to the rest of the album, but I wasn’t too impressed with it. But this song is great. You can listen to either of them at the first and fourth links from B.o.B.’s website above, and the whole album is available at the link on its title.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about misspellings in Google searches. Some of the most common:

• definitely, which is often spelled “definately,” “definetly” or “definatly”
• stilettos, which people spell “stilletos,” and “stillettos”
• mischievous, spelled “mischevious” and “mischievious”
• nauseous, which comes out “nautious,” “nauseas” and “nausious.”

(Hat tip to David Carr on Twitter for pointing this out.)