Reading the new paywalled New York Times today, I saw an article, pictured above, about violence in the Ivory Coast. That word, intercommunal, leapt out at me. Wha? Huh? The dictionary just says the predicable–”that which exists between communities.” Well, yeah. Duh. But what is it really? My guess is that this is the...
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Don’t read this article. You think it’s going to be about Candwich, the “sandwich in a can” that has been ripping up the Internet tubes with memes-of-fire? More so, it’s an exploration of the dark side of language and how a certain word has lobotomized all of us consumers: Product. Candwich is a sandwich...
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I have long been suspicious of the word Realtor, Realtor®, REALTOR®, or whatever it is. It began years ago when I noticed that the National Association of Realtors stressed that they were called the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® and that their members were obviously called…REALTORS® That’s right. All caps and with the registered trademark...
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Recently, I read an Associated Press assessment of how the American suburbs are no longer “your father’s suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s” and have become educated communities with vibrant arts scenes, and where Brazilian grocers and Vietnamese nail salons reside joyfully next to one another. Civic leaders in the city of Shawnee and...
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My riff on the word “vibrant” comes from my Shit I’m Always Trying to Figure Out article, but now I feel that it needs its own place. My question is this: Why is the word “vibrant” a term loaded with political implications that is often used when the writer really wants to say “squalid”?...
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My son Lucas, when he was 2 1/2 years old, began speaking like an actor in a Merchant Ivory movie. “Merchant Ivory” refers to a film production company established in 1963 which filmed covers of high-falutin’ texts from Henry James, E.M. Forster, and others. Interestingly enough, James Ivory was born in the decidedly un-high-falutin’...
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Is the phrase “the year 2000″ or, more widely, “the year 20XX,” lost to history forever? I believe it is–except preserved in old movies and TV shows. Before 2000 rolled around, people almost always referred to this future event as “the year two-thousand.” I remember wondering, pre-2000, if people would continue that usage. They...
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I love antiquated words. Some of the best stories about the origins of words come from a book called I Love It When You Talk Retro, by Ralph Keyes. The word “widget” comes from a 1924 play called Beggar on Horseback, by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly. “Taken aback” is a sailing term...
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So, a Portland, OR masseuse claims that in 2006, Vice-President Al Gore, groped and man-handled her in a hotel room. Yeah, whatever; fine and dandy. The most interesting aspect, to me and apparently also to Alexandra Petri of The Washington Post, is the almost-literary quality of this case–if your literature runs toward cheap and...
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This is more about words than it is about nuclear war. But it’s trivia that has been lodged in my brain for years. Herman Kahn Herman Kahn was a well-known military strategist who published On Thermonuclear War in 1960. Kahn, considered a major spear-rattler in the Cold War, was parodied by Walter Matteau in...
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