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This week: Favorite online reading. If the subjunctive mood were to disappear from English, would anybody care? And just in time for this romantic weekend, a caller discovers the meaning of…lurve. That's L-U-R-V-E.
This episode first aired February 14, 2009. Listen here:
[audio:http://feeds.waywordradio.org/~r/awwwpodcast/~5/i-9NdgWG9Ow/090216-AWWW-l-u-r-v-e-love.mp3%5D
Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).
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Martha and Grant share a couple of favorite online sources for reading about language: Michael Quinion's World Wide Words newsletter and Arnold Zwicky's blog. Be sure to check out Zwicky's post, "Dialect dangerous to cats" for a look at The Lion Cut.
If you're a Texan, you may be familiar with the phrases raise the window down and help your plate. If not, you'll find translations here.
What's lurve got to do with it? A caller is puzzled by a greeting card with the phrase crazy cosmic lurve god. Linguistics fans will fan themselves as Grant explains the roots of this expression with linguistic terms like the intrusive R and epenthesis.
Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a puzzle called Weight Loss Program. The object is to guess a pair of words from his clues. Remove a unit of weight from the first word in the pair, and you'll get the second word. Example: "A Palm Beach County resort town whose name is Spanish for "mouth of the rat," and "A timely benefit or blessing." The answer weighs in at 2,000 pounds.
If the subjunctive mood were to disappear from English, would our language be the poorer for it? The hosts have strongly different opinions about it.
Ever notice when people start to answer to a question with the words, "Yeah, no…"? Linguists have been studying this seemingly contradictory phrase for years. It may look like oxymoron, but it's not.
Ennead, anyone? If you need a word for "a group of nine things," that one will do the trick.
In this week's installment of Slang This!, a member of the National Puzzlers League tries to separate the real slang terms from the fake ones. Try this one: If you have chutzpah, might you also be said to have the stitches to get things done, or have the brass to get things done? Here's another: Which of the following is a slang term for "daybreak"? Rancid butter's melt? Or sparrow's fart?
The cleverly named "Buy n Large" corporation in the movie Wall-E has a caller wondering why we say use the phrase by and large to mean "generally speaking." It has its origins on the high seas.
Does the word swarthy mean "hairy"? A man has a running dispute with his wife the English teacher, who insists it does. Is she right?
Cleave, dust, and screen are all words that can mean the opposite of themselves. You can cleave to a belief, meaning to "adhere closely," but you can also separate things by cleaving them. Words that mean the opposite of themselves go by many different names, including contranyms, contronyms, auto-antonyms, and Janus words. Lists here, here, and here.
Martha talks about enantiodromia, which is "the process by which something becomes its opposite," particularly when an individual or community adopts beliefs antithetical to beliefs they held earlier.
Cleave, dust, and screen are all words that can mean the opposite of themselves. You can cleave to a belief, meaning to “adhere closely,†but you can also separate things by cleaving them. Words that mean the opposite of themselves go by many different names, including contranyms, contronyms, auto-antonyms, and Janus words.
I can't think of any others
I know we give things up when we make concessions,
but we get confections at the concession stand.
I can agree with someone when I concur,
but I can dominate when I conquer.
By Jove, Bill, I believe you’re right! I’ll see if I can find a clip of the moment.
On edit: Here’s the moment in the movie Annie Hall, which was released in 1977.
QuickTime: https://waywordradio.org/An.....f-love.mov
MP4: https://waywordradio.org/Annie-Hall-lurve-luff-love.mp4
Your blog hint that "the answer weighs in at 2,000 pounds" for the example of Greg Pliska's game this week sent me down entirely the wrong path. Knowing that the answer was supposed to mean "a timely benefit or blessing", I tried to remove "ton" from "Boca Raton" and ended up with "bocara".
Never heard the word before, but I figured it must be a variant or cognate of "barucha".
I don't have a strong opinion about the life or death of the subjunctive mood in English.
HOWEVER, you folks, particularly Grant, did get a huge guffaw out of me with your discussion this week.
You see, hard on the heels of Grant's firm stance -- people who insist on using the subjunctive are putting it on life support -- I heard him say, "I see what's happening here... If this were a hundred fifty years ago, and the cotton gin were invented, you'd say, 'No thank you.' "
Gee, Grant, was that twice in one sentence? Hard habit to kick, eh. Not that I quarrel with your word choice, but if you were looking for a chance to drive your point home, you missed it this time!
Affectionately,
Jenny
P.S.
And, by the way, I do have a strong opinion about your show.
It's the cat's meow.
(Or, as we say in my family, it's the lobster's thermodore.)
"swarthy" sounded like a word Rudyard Kipling would use
I found a case
So shall you mazed amid old memories stand,
So shall you toil, and shall accomplish nought,
And ever in your ears a phantom Band
Shall blare away the staid official thought.
Wherefore -- and ere this awful curse he spoken,
Cast out your swarthy sacrilegious train,
And give -- ere dancing cease and hearts be broken --
Give us our ravished ball-room back again!
>enantiodromia
That's great! I've been looking for a word to describe "becoming one's own oppressor" such as the way that someone might hypocritically seek revenge by exacting the identical circumstance upon someone else who had persecuted them originally (whereas revenge might simply be to cause harm in return one way or another [such as killing a rapist], rather than identically). Perhaps a slave who was whipped seizes an opportunity, in mutiny, to whip his slavemaster -- or perhaps a person who is offended by namecalling, opting to call the namecaller a name in response. Might this word be appropriate?
Becoming one's own oppressor might also be found in someone who loathes a particular mindset or thought process (such as particular individuals who despise the homosexual perspetive), that, in trying to understand the offending mindset, ends up instead promoting the freedom to think that way. There's turncoat as a noun, so perhaps I could verb it ^_^
Ron said:
Your blog hint that “the answer weighs in at 2,000 pounds” for the example of Greg Pliska’s game this week sent me down entirely the wrong path. Knowing that the answer was supposed to mean “a timely benefit or blessing”, I tried to remove “ton” from “Boca Raton” and ended up with “bocara”.
Never heard the word before, but I figured it must be a variant or cognate of “barucha”.
Whoa, Ron! Spanish, English, and Hebrew all rolled into one? Obviously you're one of those too-smart-for-your-own-good puzzlers! 🙂
>>>>>
You see, hard on the heels of Grant’s firm stance — people who insist on using the subjunctive are putting it on life support — I heard him say, “I see what’s happening here… If this were a hundred fifty years ago, and the cotton gin were invented, you’d say, ‘No thank you.’ “
Gee, Grant, was that twice in one sentence? Hard habit to kick, eh. Not that I quarrel with your word choice, but if you were looking for a chance to drive your point home, you missed it this time!
Jenny, I'm not sure, but I have a feeling Grant was funnin' with me there.
And thanks for the kind words about the show. I'm going to have to steal “the lobster's therimdorâ€!
ablestmage said:
>enantiodromia
That's great! I've been looking for a word to describe “becoming one's own oppressor” such as the way that someone might hypocritically seek revenge by exacting the identical circumstance upon someone else who had persecuted them originally (whereas revenge might simply be to cause harm in return one way or another [such as killing a rapist], rather than identically). Perhaps a slave who was whipped seizes an opportunity, in mutiny, to whip his slavemaster — or perhaps a person who is offended by namecalling, opting to call the namecaller a name in response. Might this word be appropriate?
Becoming one's own oppressor might also be found in someone who loathes a particular mindset or thought process (such as particular individuals who despise the homosexual perspetive), that, in trying to understand the offending mindset, ends up instead promoting the freedom to think that way. There's turncoat as a noun, so perhaps I could verb it ^_^
ablestmage, I know what you're talking about, and I feel as though I've heard a word for it, but I'm drawing a blank. Anyone? Anyone?
Charts said:
<Yeah, No –
I think that “yeah” is more an acknowledgement: sort of “I hear you”.
A friend of mine phones me, I answer with hello (and I’m the only one who might answer); He says, Yeah Hi, and then goes on to why he called.
You know, Charts, it's interesting: After we did that call, I had a chat with someone who teaches at a university, and he said he hears students saying, "Yeah-no" ALL the time, but in a way that's much more sarcastic than we described on the air. Sort of as if they're leading you on, making you think they agree with you, but then they change what they're saying at the last second, from affirmative to negative. Something more like "Yeaaaaaaaaah-NO!" As if you're an idiot for assuming that the answer was "Yeah" instead of "No." Sort of like when it was all the rage to add "NOT!" at the end of a sentence.
Anyone heard it this way?
Perhaps, the yeah is an acknowledgment that the listener has heard the statement
while “No†is the answer to that statement.
“notâ€s slip out of my intended thread posts
when speaking loosely,
one may need to tie a dropped not at the end.
I did not remember the German placement of the negative.
Ich erinnere mich nicht die an deutsche Platzierung des Negativs.
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt
looks like the not comes after the verb.
I plan to continue using the subjunctive.
I would like to encourage all of us word-lovers to consider our love of the richness of vocabulary, slang, obscure words, and regional expressions — even in the face of potential incomprehensibility. Most would acknowledge that, while we might be able to do without some of these, our language would be the poorer for their loss.
Extend the lexical love and take the same approach to the subtlety of grammar — in this case, infrequently used mood. Perhaps we can avoid the subjunctive and instead clarify our meaning with extra words. How sad to lose the choice.
On the matter of the subjunctive mood in English, I am both pro-life and pro-choice.
A couple of comments:
If you listen carefully to some of Celine Dion's earlier stuff, she says "lurve" just about every time. And now you'll never hear it as "love" again. 🙂
About the "lion" cut vs. "line" cut: The lion cut is, of course, for long-haired cats. I used to have a Himalayan with long, gorgeous, silky fur. Which clumped into painful mats if I just looked at him hard. Every few months I'd take him to the groomer and get him lion cut. He lurved it. The mats were gone, he was not a walking advertisement for anti-static laundry sheets, and he could actually feel me petting him. The first time he jumped into my lap after his first lion cut, I started petting him and he started to purr loudly and drool, it felt so good.
As for the cat looking unhappy, these are Persian or Persian-derived cats. Their faces are pushed in. They have, basically, three expressions: ticked off, curious, and bored. 🙂
Martha Barnette
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