What you don't know makes you look dumb

I've been asked to write a new blog post, so I'll comment on something that just came to my attention--flagrant and widespread use of the phrase "in lieu of." A friend corrected a telemarketer's use of the phrase, and in turn a friend of hers unearthed a lively Yahoo! Answers debate on the meaning of it, in which nearly everyone was enthusiastically wrong. The person who first asked about the meaning of the phrase went to great lengths to inform everyone that she was a well-educated graduate from NYU, where apparently they encourage the use of Yahoo! Answers over the creaking apparatus of reference books.

"Lieu" is the French word for "place." "In lieu of" means "in place of," or "instead of." The most common (correct) usage of this phrase is in obituary notices, where people who would send flowers are asked to instead donate to a pet cause or charity of the deceased. "In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to the Animal Humane Society."

Somehow--in a development no doubt involving my favorite bugbears: middle management, political representatives of largely suburban districts, and high school principals--people have been led to believe that "in lieu of" means the same thing as "in light of," or "because of," as in "In lieu of recent events, we will be closing all the schools in Bloomington for the next two days." I came across a confident online assertion that whatever "lieu" might mean in French, "in our lexicon" it means "because of."

Wrong and wrong. For one thing a "lexicon" is a the vocabulary of a language, more specifically an alphabetical list of words, aka the dictionary. You'll never find a dictionary stating that "in lieu of" means "because of." Furthermore getting something wrong again and again, however persistently, will never make a wrong usage right, just more common. When using a foreign phrase, or even one with just one foreign word in it, it's best to look it up. Or, in lieu of using foreign phrases you don't know, use correct English ones you do know.

And to my friend--good on you for correcting the telemarketer, who was very likely reading from a script written by her better-paid, dumbass manager.

Next time: "Grizzly vs. Grisly: A Whole 'Nother Animal."

Words that are not the same, September 27

This is a big one, because I can see that people who used to know the difference between these two words have lost their grasp on it.

"Lose" and "loose."

To "lose" something is to come to be without it, to be deprived of it, or to fail to keep it; as in losing a job, losing a spouse, losing a wallet.

In the adjective form "loose" means unconfined or unattached, as in a loose dog, or a loose end. It's also the opposite of tight. My pants are loose, or at any rate they were earlier this summer. In the verb form "to loose" means to free from restraint, although it's a word not much used now. Mr. Burns from The Simpsons might order Wayland Smithers to "loose the hounds," instead of "release the hounds," although it's nowhere near as funny. (BTW, Google "Wayland Smith." You'll be amused.)

So, unless you mean that you are releasing your mind from restraint, you say "I am losing my mind," not "I am loosing my mind."

An easy way to remember it might be to keep in mind that you pronounce the two words differently when you speak them. "If I lose weight my clothes will be loose."

This lost/loose confusion has a meme-like quality, as I first saw it cropping up in the e-mails of otherwise well-informed folks about ten years ago, and now it's all over the damn internet.

It kinda makes me lose it.

Lemme Axe You Sumtin'.

A few years ago The Onion printed one of their sidebar headlines reading "Black community terrorized by 'ask' murderer." Yeah, it was funny, and in line with The Onion's "equal opportunity offensiveness" policies (although having read Animal Farm and observed American popular culture for 40 years I always suspect that some people are more equal than others), but the truth is, saying "axe" for "ask" is not a black thing, it's a regional thing. From Connecticut down to Baltimore, you will find people of every hue axing for directions, axing how their friends are doing, and concluding their remarks with "I axe you?" Some people on the Northeast Corridor ask, but most of them axe. I ask, but my yoga teacher, who is from North Jersey, is an unrepentant axer. The only group you will find who consistently ask and don't axe are first generation immigrants. They ask, and sometimes loftily "ahsk."

Is axing wrong? Technically yes. If you look up "axe" in the dictionary you will find "a cutting tool that consists of a heavy edged head fixed to a handle witht the edge parallel and that is used esp. for felling trees and chopping and splitting wood," not "to call on for an answer." But in another way it is no more than the invitation "Do you want to come with?" in Minnesota or ordering a "root beer coke" in Tennessee. To me regionalisms have their own immunity, and while the other language folks will sniff, I'm always willing to let a regionalism slide. It's not quite like slang, which has its own logic, beauties and even rules of usage, but in a country as big as the US, local idiosyncracies are unavoidable. And why avoid them? While I bristle at words used incorrectly and out of their context, I find regionalisms rather charming. And when my Jersey yoga teacher tells me that she's gonna axe me to lift up my butt a little in my down dog, I find it a comforting reminder of home.

Lemme Axe You Sumtin'.

Concerning "Concerning"

For my sin in having the local Fox station on I had to hear one of our state senators blatting on about some letter he objected to. It was hard for me to ignore because he saying "it is concerning," as in, "it's a problem." It is a problem--because "concerning" doesn't mean what he thinks it does. That a startling number of our elected officials are grinning imbeciles will scarcely come as a surprise to you, especially when you consider who's doing the voting. I don't claim that it's news. However like TV news anchors, school superintendents and PR directors of large corporations, they get a lot of air time. Regular people listen to them, and quite aside from the unreliable content of their message, it is delivered with as many errors as possible. Is there one obvious word that would sum up their meaning? They throw in a couple more and turn it into meaningless flap or they try to invent a new one, like "operationalize." Then they turn around and try to collapse "it is a matter of concern" into "concerning," doggedly pushing past perfectly acceptable words in their efforts. This is the definition of "concerning" from my favorite oracle--the dictionary: "relating to: regarding." Not "problematic." Not "a thing to be worried about." So when Soccer Mom gets a prating-fool-on-the-street interview with the local news about a homeless shelter moving into Minnetonka, she is shaking her head and shrilling "It is related to! It is very regarding." She's not just an overprivileged NIMBY with very little compassion; she's an illiterate, overprivileged NIMBY with very little compassion.

Words that are not the same, February 24

"Shoo-in" and "Shoe-in." I have seen the latter written as "He was a shoe-in for the job," or "She was a shoe-in for the award." He and she were most certainly not shoe-ins. They were "shoo-ins." Remember the old word "shoo," as in "Shoo, fly, don't bother me" as in "Git!" Shooing someone means urging them or hustling them in a certain direction. To say that someone is a shoo-in is to suggest that they are so eminently qualified for a job or honor that it is just a question of opening a door to that job or honor and pushing them through. Webster's (which is where everyone should go before bunging in a word they don't really know) defines a shoo-in as "one that is a certain and easy winner." That's a shoo-in. As far as I know there is no such thing as a "shoe-in," unless shoes rise up and occupy federal buildings to protest their thousands of years of uncompensated servitude to humans, with our soft, useless feet. What's most distressing to me is that this is a pretty good example of how fairly well (and clearly uselessly) educated people will speak and write words that they don't know the meaning of, let alone how to spell.

"Appraise" and "apprise."In the the weeks leading up to the layoffs at Caput University (including yours truly; now available for brunch, tea and dinner at your convenience and expense) we got a lot of e-mails from leadership (that cosy clubhouse of functional illiterates) in which the words "apprise" and "appraise" were used interchangeably. Some boob at the top got it wrong and then the rest followed, happy in the acquisition of a very businessy and official sounding word. All of this could have been avoided by sending a message along the lines of "If we know anything we'll be sure to tell you right away." It would still be a lie, but it would have been an unprentious lie without any mixups in it.

Let The Girl break it down for you. The e-mails that promised to quickly apprise us of following developments were correct (if not strictly true). To apprise someone of something is to acquaint them with the known facts. To "appraise" is to consider a situation or much more commonly a thing's value. Appraisal is what they do on Antiques Roadshow when you bring in a signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation (oddly enough penned on copier paper) or when you bring a working Gatling cannon to Pawn Stars. They tell you what it's worth. It's not usually used in reference to people, although I have been appraised by more than one sleazy dude by way of what is called an "elevator look."

Now that I am unemployed I will not be able to tap that rich seam of corporatese, word invention, and word repurposing that could all so easily be prevented by issuing every department a dictionary and an hour's training on how to use it; or as they say at Caput University, "deliver learnings" on how to "operationalize it." But no fear--I still watch the news, and newscasters are among the most prolific and dogged abusers of proper English. For now, á bientôt, mes amis.

Chag Sameach

Chag Sameach is what I say from the beginning of December until about New Year's Day. It's Yiddish for "Happy Holidays," and I say it in Yiddish partly to mystify people but also to avoid the firestorm of manufactured Christian indignation at my recognizing the fact that Christmas is not the only celebration going at this time of year and by extension acknowledging that we live in a diverse society in which freedom of religion and freedom to not be religious is allegedly protected by the Constitution.

Current gigs, in case you don't know, include Chanukah (which is older than the rest and ought, by rights, to have seniority), Kwanzaa (which I have sometimes derided as a made-up holiday, but then, all holidays were made up initially) and on some years, depending on the lunar calendar, Ramadan. Although I'm Christian myself, I know about these things because I don't think I have to be an ignorant clod to maintain my faith.

I feel like this has been said a million times already, but I think it's worth pointing out that what right-wing Christians are claiming as their most sacred holiday (Easter comes in a sloppy second, possibly because of the merciful decline of pogrom-inducing Passion Plays) is already a pretty good example of the syncretism and general mixing of influences that result from (oh horrors) a diverse society.

Take the date, December 25. There's no real evidence that the Baby Jesus was born that day--in fact theologians and Biblical scholars think it was probably in March. December 25 was chosen by the church for two reasons: to upstage the Roman tradition of Saturnalia, a week-long party that was a byword for debauchery and general carrying-on, and also to deflect attention from the cult of Mithras, whose sacred day was in December.

The Christmas tree was not invented by Jesus; although it was encouraged by a 7th century monk from Thuringia (also the home of a kind of bologna, I believe). He was trying to get people to stop revering the oak, sacred to the pagans, by hanging upside-down fir trees from the roof of the chapel. People went along with it, the way they often do under an oppressive regime, but they probably just imbued the fir tree with the same old pagan significance. It's called syncretism. Eventually decorated Christmas trees were brought to England by the German Georgian royals, particularly Queen Victoria (the English royal family isn't English! They changed their name to Windsor from Sax Coburg Gotha during WWI. Admit it--I just blew your mind.) The tree tradition was imported to the US in the 19th century, where they were initially used by merchants to lure people into stores. So if Christians want a purer, less commercial obervance of Christmas, they might begin by hanging undecorated fir trees upside-down from their ceilings.

The red and green colors that are supposed to represent the crown of thorns and blood of Jesus? Originally they represented the holly and its berries, which were sacred to Druids (pagans again). The holly bush, which keeps its leaves and produces bright red berries, were potent symbols of light and life in the dark of winter. Which is something that all the winter holidays have in common, whether people want to admit it or not. Light in dark. Hope in the coldest, deadest time of the year.

So chag sameach, whether you are lighting candles to commemmorate a miracle in the Temple during a time of strife and trouble, lighting candles to celebrate striving for communal virtues, lighting fawanees to brighten Ramadan, or switching on several ropes of Christmas tree lights. The freakin' reason for the season is lighting up the darkness, not ramming your already dominant faith down other people's throats.