Branch and Leaf's Troublesome Words

Abeyance

2009-03-02T03:34:00.000-08:00

Abeyance (from the Old French abeance meaning "gaping"), a state of expectancy in respect of property, titles or office, when the right to them is not vested in any one person, but awaits the appearance or determination of the true owner. In law, the term abeyance can only be applied to such future estates as have not yet vested or possibly may not vest. For example, an estate is granted to A for life, with remainder to the heir of B. During B's lifetime, the remainder is in abeyance, for until the death of A it is uncertain who his heir is. Similarly the freehold of a benefice, on the death of the incumbent, is said to be in abeyance until the next incumbent takes possession.

Word of the week: Ankylosis

2009-03-02T03:30:00.000-08:00

Ankylosis, or Anchylosis (from Greek ἀγκύλος, bent, crooked) is a stiffness of a joint, the result of injury or disease. The rigidity may be complete or partial and may be due to inflammation of the tendinous or muscular structures outside the joint or of the tissues of the joint itself. When the structures outside the joint are affected, the term "false" ankylosis has been used in contradistinction to "true" ankylosis, in which the disease is within the joint. When inflammation has caused the joint-ends of the bones to be fused together the ankylosis is termed osseous or complete. Excision of a completely ankylosed shoulder or elbow may restore free mobility and usefulness to the limb. "Ankylosis" is also used as an anatomical term, bones being said to ankylose (or anchylose) when, from being originally distinct, they coalesce, or become so joined together that no motion can take place between them.

Holistic

2009-02-13T02:15:00.000-08:00

From Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary:

holistic:

ho·lis·tic, \hō-ˈlis-tik\, adjective

1 : of or relating to holism

2 : relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts

While holistic is by no means uncommon, I wondered the other day "Why does a term referring to wholes seems more like it is referring to holes?"

The answer begins to be found in the first definition. Holism and holistic were introduced into the lexicon by General J.C. Smuts in 1926. Holism regards "the theory...[of] nature as consisting of wholes." (Online Etym. Dict.) Gen. Smuts took the term from the Greek holos (ah, the answer) meaning "whole".

Of course this begs for a complementary question: "Where does hole come from?" For this homophone, we can thank the Germanic roots of English (as opposed to the Romantic roots of our term of inquiry). Hole can be traced back to the Gothic term us-hulon meaning "to hollow out", which later manifest in German as hohl meaning "hollow".

Asyndeton

2009-02-12T20:51:00.000-08:00

"Asyndeton (from the Greek: ἀσύνδετον, 'unconnected') is a stylistic scheme in which conjunctions are deliberately omitted from a series of related clauses. Examples are veni, vidi, vici and its English translation "I came, I saw, I conquered." Its use can have the effect of speeding up the rhythm of a passage and making a single idea more memorable. More generally, in grammar, an asyndetic coordination is a type of coordination in which no coordinating conjunction is present between the conjuncts."

[wikipedia]

Employing Quotation Marks

2009-02-05T08:29:00.000-08:00

As there was no New York Times available by the time I got to the library this morning, I picked up a copy of the USA Today to read with my coffee and bagel. Because I love me a non-story, I flipped to read about Facebook in the Life (Purple) section. The headline reads:

Facebook friends share "25 Things"

As a fan of scare quotes and poorly employed punctuation, I felt it would be interesting to run through permutations of how the quotation marks' placement can change the whole meaning of the headline. I've change the single quotation marks to double to better illustrate the way I read the story.

"Facebook" friends share 25 Things - What is this "Facebook" you speak of?
Facebook "friends" share 25 Things - People that could hardly be considered friends
Facebook friends "share" 25 Things - It's effortless to tag people on Facebook
Facebook friends share "25" Things - We can't contain ourselves to this limit because we're narcissistic humans
Facebook friends share 25 "Things" - Quite literally trite and meaningless information

So, to my "Facebook" "friends", don't be "surprised" when I don't "tag" you or "read" about your "things".

Comic Grammer and Tradition

2009-02-04T14:14:00.000-08:00

{Mental Floss link (excerpt)}

{Blambot link (unabridged)}

Courtesy of Will Think for Food.

Something doesn't seem right

2009-02-02T12:36:00.001-08:00

In writing a project paper, I needed a more specific word for "all-seeing". Here is a thesaurus entry from "FreeThesaurus.net". I was blown away by the fact it (1) lacked of a decent synonym (omnipresent did fit the proper denotation or connotation), (2) was so distinctly skewed to a particular religious view, and (3) hardly answered my query.

Here is the list of proposed synonyms:

all-knowing, all-powerful, all-wise, almighty, boundless, changeless, creating, creative, eternal, eternally the same, everlasting, glorious, good, hallowed, highest, holy, immortal, immutable, infinite, just, limitless, loving, luminous, majestic, making, merciful, numinous, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, one, permanent, perpetual, radiant, sacred, shaping, sovereign, supreme, timeless, ubiquitous, unbounded, unchanging, undefined, unlimited

Two timer

2009-01-30T05:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I heard the misuse of the word "duplicity". While hilarious for its implication--that is, the number of widgets on facebook defrauds the user--it was, after all, cringe-inspiring. The intended word redundancy, and, other than the sonic parody of the word "double", duplicity did not communicate this idea.

However it seemed odd a word such as duplicity (i.e. a word containing a form of "duple-") would have nothing in common with the root of double. An online etymology dictionary confirms this suspicion. Duplicity can be traced to Middle French duplicite, a derivative of the Late Latin duplicitatem (nom. duplicitas), meaning "doubleness". Notably, the Medieval Latin root, duplex (gen. duplicis), equates to "ambiguity". Hence, the root is grounded in the concept of double-speak and being two-faced.

While still a misuse, exchanging fraudulence for redundancy is not that far off.

Word of the week: Jabot

2009-01-30T02:43:00.000-08:00

jabot-\zha-ˈbō, ˈja-ˌbō\ , noun

1: a fall of lace or cloth attached to the front of a neckband and worn especially by men in the 18th century

2: a pleated frill of cloth or lace attached down the center front of a woman's blouse or dress

140 or bust: medium making

2009-01-23T03:07:00.001-08:00

This is a fact: media beget media. In an all-too-simplistic teleology, glyphs led to simple text which led to long-form writing which led to print and so on and so forth. As top-level abstract constructions become more ingrained, and so transparent, we begin to lower their status and treat them as transmission layers. (For anyone studying at Georgia Tech, this is the first few lectures of 6313; that is, here I'm a transmission layer.) This process of deprecating representation layers to transmission (and further inscription) layers allows for new forms of manifest expression.

Here I propose a challenge: Twitter poetry.

For the next few weeks, I would like us to explore the possibilities of the limited format of Twitter (140-characters, including spaces and punctuation; no page formatting) as tantamount to constraints of, say, a sonnet. Let Twitter not be the layer of representation, but that of transmission. Use its form to shape certain constraints, while delving into what is medium specific.

As for the resulting poems, please post them in the comments (either in full or as links to the full text somewhere else, such as a Twitter page).

Tweet tweet.

The impossiblity of dark blond

2009-01-22T04:54:00.000-08:00

The word blond (also spelled blonde) grew from two possible origins: Medieval Latin's blundus or Vulgar Latin's flavus--both of which mean "yellow". Though the associated hair color could be described as yellow, blond entered into language as a replacement of fæger-- formally meaning "beautiful, good-looking, attractive", but practically overriding (and solidifying) blond meaning "fair".

The possible roots would indicate that blond is a color, and so would current usages. This is not untrue--it is just skewed. In replacing "fair", blond became an conceptual adjective describing the amount of pigment rather than the color of that pigment. (Another good example of conceptually-skewed adjective is robust, truly a better as a descriptor of coffee's flavor than information's breadth.) The link between concept and physicality has led to a conflation of the idea captured by blond.

A troubling use (at least, a troubling use for me) of this shifted meaning is dark blond, literally meaning "dark light-toned" as opposed to the intended "yellow-brown". This oxymoron is hidden behind years of misuse.

Technology Terminology

2009-01-21T18:49:00.001-08:00

If you're a user of Gmail, I invite you to visit the 'Trash' folder of your account and view the origin of this screenshot. I'm willing to bet that most people don't see their Trash on a regular basis, as one of the selling points (or giving-away-free points) of Gmail is the mass storage space that supports the 'Archive' feature which lets people move their messages out of their Inbox without worrying about where it needs to be filed.

If you delete a message from your Inbox it goes to the Trash. If you delete a message from the Trash... does it return to the Trash? Or is there a secondary Trash Can? We have grown accustom to the Empty verb that is associated with the Trash Can metaphor. Have you ever emptied only part of your kitchen refuse bin? If you're like me, sometimes you set aside garbage—like that over-sized pizza box that's too awkward to fit in your tiny trash can— so as to throw it away individually.

So how does Google approach the breakdown of the Trash Can metaphor in the case of singularly removing messages? 'Delete Forever.' Pictured above, this button allows users to select individual messages to remove from their mailbox Trash without deleting everything. Yet this seemingly innocuous button carries a significant amount of gravity. Computer users delete files, discard messages, and empty Recycle Bins without ever being faced with the kind of linguistic finality that is forever. I have found that this term causes me to reconsider that which comes so naturally. Let 'Delete Forever' exemplify the interface terminology we take for granted that shapes our technological interactions.

Haiku contest: disclaimers/warnings

2009-01-16T04:28:00.000-08:00

Branch and Leaf's first semi-periodic haiku contest begins today and extends to next Friday (Jan 23^rd) at 5 pm.

All haikus must, directly or indirectly, deal with the topic of "Disclaimers/Warnings".

Submissions should be posted as comments to this post and will be judged by popular vote in the subsequent week.

Participants may submit any number of haikus. (The more, the better!)

Call to arms

2009-01-14T04:56:00.000-08:00

Our haiku contest
needs a topic of focus.
Submit by Friday.

Inequities in Idiom: Hell or High Water

2009-01-13T17:33:00.000-08:00

The phrase "come hell or high water" is used to describe obstacles that will be overcome in order to reach a goal. 'Historians' date the saying back to the mid-19th century where it originated as "hell and high water."

I will make it to my 8AM class come hell or high water.

While I don't mean to slight those caught in their cars in Bethesda, MD as a water main broke ruptured on ironically named River Road, this level of high water does not seem to be equivalent to the obstacle that would be hell. Something on the level of the flooding of Hurricane Katrina is a living hell, but high water in general not so much. Perhaps it was a product of its time—when your whole town is built of wood a little high water can do a world of damage. I don't think we can appreciate that contextual equivalency today.

Though perhaps I am mistaken. I am assuming hell in this situation is referring to an actual space—the proper noun Hell. If we're thinking of hell as an adjective meaning "hellish things," the idiom may still stand. That brings up a whole other issue, however.

Colloquialism of the week: Scantless

2009-01-12T18:44:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Brooke Hatfield, a language humorist:

scantless, adj. (ˈskant-ˈles)

1. a particularly delicious foodstuff.
Laura Barrett’s salad dressing was just scantless.

Origin: I really think my mom made this word up.

Editor's note: According to Urban Dictionary, scantless means (through tongue-laze and aural-rounding) "scandalous."

Word of the week: Onanism

2009-01-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

Onanism^1,2, n. (ō'nə-nĭz'əm)

1. withdrawal in sexual intercourse before ejaculation

2. masturbation [after Onan: see Genesis 38:9]

1. Definition source: {http://www.thefreedictionary.com/onanism}.
2. I stumbled on this term while reading The computer game as fictional form.

Language Log is awesome and so are YOU

2009-01-07T13:18:00.000-08:00

My friend meg posted this on facebook, and it's the sort of slip I always find noteworthy:

Make due vs. Make Do- Language Log

As such a phrase is so commonly aural, the mistake is slight, but still significant, especially when Wired suggests : The Air Force can't make due on $144 billion a year. The service is telling Congress it needs nearly another $19 billion for fiscal year 2009 -- including about $1.7 billion worth of extra fighter jets.
(Emphasis mine)

It simply doesn't make sense. Just like all those folks who tell me we'll have to "play it by year" to arrive at an outcome... haven't considered the actual content of the expression.

I'm a bad word blogger. hai.

Word(s) of the week: Procrustean (and Procrustes)

2008-12-17T15:32:00.000-08:00

From Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary:

procrustean \prə-ˈkrəs-tē-ən, prō-\ adj. (usage note: often capitalized)
1: of, relating to, or typical of Procrustes
2: marked by arbitrary often ruthless disregard of individual differences or special circumstances

From Wikipedia:

Procrustes (Προκρούστης) "the stretcher" or "the one who hammers out", also known as Damastes (Δαμαστής) "subduer" and Polypaemon (Πολυπαίμων) "harming much", is a figure from Greek mythology.

He was a son of Poseidon and a bandit from Attica, with a stronghold in the hills outside Eleusis. There, he had an iron bed into which he invited every passerby to lie down. If the guest proved too tall, he would amputate the excess length; victims who were too short were stretched on the rack until they were long enough. Nobody ever fit in the bed because it was secretly adjustable: Procrustes would stretch or shrink it upon sizing his victims from afar. Procrustes continued his reign of terror until he was captured by Theseus, who "fitted" Procrustes to his own bed and cut off his head and feet (since Theseus was a stout fellow, the bed had been set on the short position). Killing Procrustes was the last adventure of Theseus on his journey from Troezen to Athens.

Excerpt from Semantic Antics by Sol Steinmetz

2008-12-17T11:55:00.000-08:00

A great gift for your favorite linguophile.

EXPLODE, EXPLOSION
When explode came into English, before 1552, it meant "to reject, discard," as in "But the court una voce exploded this reason..." (1609, Francis Bacon, Works). Similarly, the first evidence of explosion was found in 1656, in Thomas Blount's Glossographia, where he defines the word: "Explosion, a casting off or rejecting, a hissing a thing out."

By "hissing out" Blount was harking back to the Latin meaning of the word. In Latin, explōdere was a theatrical word meaning "to clap, hoot, or hiss (an actor, play, etc.) off stage," and explōsiōnem meant "the act of rejecting or driving away by hissing, hooting, etc."

The modern meaning of these words are first found in the 1700s. Explosion, meaning "the action of bursting or going off with a loud noise," appeared in 1744, followed by 1790 by explode "(of gas, gunpowder, etc.) to burst or go off with a loud noise." The figurative meaning of an outburst or outbreak followed in the early 1800s in such phrases as to explode with fury, an explosion of laughter. A more recent figurative meaning of explosion, "a sudden and rapid increase or development," came into use in 1953 with population explosion. A corresponding verb appeared in 1959 in the New York Times: "The population in the Bandung area has exploded from 167,000...to 1,200,000 this year."

Chomsky

2008-12-10T22:15:00.000-08:00

"The Ideas of Chomsky", a BBC Interview:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

as Hell

2008-12-07T18:00:00.000-08:00

One peeve of sticklers for precise language is the colloquial comparison "as Hell". The two-word juggernaut originated from the phrase "as hot as Hell". In this original form, the latter portion provides a liturgical allusion to a thermometric evaluation. Many current uses of "as Hell" stray rather far from this proper, albeit narrow, invocation.

The formal dilemma arises from the type of language object "as Hell" becomes from improper use. When used correctly (see above), "as Hell" closes out a simile. There is one important aspect of this structure. While the definition states that a simile is a comparison of "two unlike things", it fails to capture that these things are not completely unlike one another. As many philosophers and linguists have stated, it is not the meaning of the individual words, but the relation of those meanings, that makes a simile (and a metaphor, for that matter) an ingenious linguistic structure. Aristotle in the Poetics waxed about the worth of metaphors (here extrapolated in essence for its core thought on abstract comparisons) saying "a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars." And here is the single facet in which improper use of "as Hell" destroys, namely the similarity of those disparate elements.

To base this in a concrete example, consider the phrase "(as) cold as Hell". While structuralists (and Cratylus) may argue for this differently, this statement is untrue, meaningless, and, above all else, nonsensical in its raw form. This begs the (naive) questions, "What is meant by this phrase?" Clearly, "as Hell" is enkindled as a superlative or, at least, phrase of universal comparative degree. This shift of structure provides a (sigh) metaphor for more gross misuses of language and its structures on the whole.

The generalization of a simile disengenders the purpose of the simile. This is to say, by misappropriating "as Hell" people are far more likely to conceive of similes as structures for a wholly different purpose. Rather than comparing some inuitive, transcent trait (as in "as hot as Hell" providing the reference of the current heat to the ultimate heat, and, I presume, the desire not to end up there), the simile is seen as a (again, sigh) metaphorical structure for comparitive degree. Saying "as cold as Hell" means "very, very cold" in that "as hot as Hell" means "very, very hot".

The devaluing of such (formal) structures lends to the claim made earlier that this narrow shift indicates a broader one. As for this broader trend, it will be revisited at a later date.

Word of the week: Pareidolia

2008-12-07T17:03:00.000-08:00

From Wikipedia:

The term pareidolia (pronounced /pæraɪˈdoʊliə/) describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek para- —"beside", "with" or "alongside"- meaning, in this context, something faulty or wrong (as in paraphasia, disordered speech)—and eidolon—"image" (the diminutive of eidos—"image", "form", "shape"). Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.

For current and future contributors, this will be a weekly (or more frequent) feature. If you are interested in taking on this task, leave a comment below.

Digital

2008-12-04T09:41:00.000-08:00

From Derrida & Wittgenstein by Garver and Lee:

The other thing that impresses us about Monet's paintings is the distinctive way this exactness of representation is conveyed. Its medium is pictorial rather than verbal, but it is pictorial in a way that is not photographic. Photographs have a kind of digital exactness, which now lets them be transmitted by electronic means.

In a book that focuses on two philosophers, both of whom primarily focused on language as the key to metaphysical and existential understanding, one would assume the authors would take great care to understand their own diction. This usage of digital is precisely the reason why people oftentimes conflate the ideas of digital, electronic, interactive, computerized, procedural, amongst a myriad of other related terms.

Digital stems from the Latin digitalis, meaning "relating to a finger" (originating from digitus, meaning "finger or toe"). Its correct appropriation, it would be safe to say, stems from the initial phalangeal understanding in two ways. The main facets of something that is, in fact, digital are (1) it consists of discrete units (e.g. fingers for counting) and (2) it relates to the fingers or toes. Hence, modern computers are properly digital in that they deal with binary units at their core, as well as can be manipulated with the hand via a keyboard and mouse. This secondary portion of the definition becomes difficult as technology outstrips physical limitations. For that matter, the primary portion of the definition, i.e. discreteness, will be the focus (though the secondary aspect will be revisited).

Now that digital has been pared down--consisting of discrete units--let's look at the quotation's use of the word. Here, digital is meant to convey something that is autonomous, objective, precise, and accurate. While Daston and Galison would surely take issue here with the objective part (as I do), the latter two are the the real culprits of misuse. The authors use digital in a manner in which digital tools, such as computers or video cameras, are described.

Photographs, especially those that influenced Impressionism, were actually analog, as many photographs are today (save the increasing number of digital photographs which are aptly named due to their use of discrete units called pixels). Analog technologies rely on a continuous scale. To compare, a pencil is analog and an early Etch A Sketch is digital--a pencil has infinite degrees of freedom (in the physics sense) and an Etch A Sketch relies on a grid (though later models were much freer). As discrete units shrink in size and explode in number, the comparisons between analog and digital is uncanny. Photographs are transmitted not because they are digital, but because digital technology can translate analog things into a workable form (this is the gripe many have with mp3s as opposed to records). But I digress.

One would be quick to point out the use of the (filler?) phrase "kind of". Maybe a terse "That is no excuse for muddling language" would be appropriate. However, the use of "kind of" only emphasizes their mistaken definition, further confining their usage I explained before. "Kind of" provides a buffer, making their loose speech looser and square-pegging their definition.

The point is clear--digital does not mean precise, nor accurate, nor objective, nor autonomous. Digital means, in the context of our world, discretely operating at some level. Photographs, for that matter, were not only non-digital when Monet developed his form, but they are non-digital now. (I would make the claim that digital photography is a wholly different art form and resembles traditional photographic methods as much as film does.) More startling is a photograph's perceived precision, accuracy, objectivity, and autonomy are derivative of its methods of capturing light without use of the hand. The photochemical reaction is not manipulated, i.e. "to touch with one's hands", and, as a result, looked at as more pure (again, Daston and Galison). In this sense (part 2 of the definition), the photograph is also non-digital.

A more precise (authors, please read as "digital") word would surely be mechanical or chemi-mechanical (though this latter option is kind of correct).

A few pages earlier, translating Blaise Pascal, the authors write:

"True eloquence makes fun of eloquence, true morality makes fun of morality; that is, the morality of judgment makes fun of the morality of intellect, which is without rules."

Eloquence and intellect, surely; language, not as much.