The Vocabulary Reclamation Project

Words that Roll Trippingly Off the Tongue

2008-03-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

From AllEyesOnJenny comes this unabashed word-love:

Once I did a list of the grossest words to say, now I’m countering that with fun words to say:

Onomatopoeia
Cacology
Nuance
Undulate
Symposium
Loquacious
Facetious
Phlebotomist
Superfluous
Trabajabamos** (Yeah I know it’s Spanish, but it still applies.)
Nefarious
Abominable
Discombobulate
Disingenuous
Lackadaisical
Archipelago
Guacamole … closely followed by …
Avocado
Oblivion
Usurp
Plethora
Shank

Lindsay and I discussed this carefully, and we would add:

Perspicacious
Discombobulate
Zinfandel
Whimsy
Scuttlebutt
Smack

Aidan contributed:

Marshmanannow (similar to a "Marshmallow," but with more complex flavors)
Vanderhorst

Asher added:

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

He's such a Spoon fan. However, we voted to take exception to "Trabajabamos." Very questionable... True, it is a lot of fun to say, but it has no English usage, and the Wikipedia entry is absolutely no help. Out!! ;)

What words would you add?

HT: 22 Words
X-posted on BitterSweetLife.

I Call it Power Vocab

2008-01-19T17:10:00.001-08:00

Our 1.8-year-old Aidan doesn't like chicken, but he does like food. So tonight, when the boys were home alone, we had "yummy food" for dinner. And chicken. At the same time.

Yet more proof of what preachers, politicians, and we at the VRP already know.

[Note: I'd like to post here more often, but with a couple small kids and being in school...you know. I'll do what I can, but if anyone would like to volunteer as a contributor, let me know.]

You Don't Understand Because You Haven't Tried Hard Enough

2007-10-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

I interrupt regularly scheduled non-programming to bring you this vocab issue from one of the the circles I typically frequent: The question of insider jargon.

Sometimes, practitioners (the "purists") will argue that if you want to understand a field of study or academic discipline, the onus is on you to learn the involved, technical language so you can understand the conversation. Sounds good in theory, but is rarely realistic for anyone who is not a librarian or is not enrolled in grad school.

Then there are the "popularizers" (Briane Greene, John Horgan, C.S. Lewis) who are often frowned upon by their very learned colleagues. Their sin? Taking the precious codified knowledge of their professions (Physics, Science, Theology, respectively) and dumming it down so average people can understand it!

And now, an illustrative example of "pure" jargon from the field of contemporary theology, or "emerging church."

"Doesn't all of this suggest that Paul's rhetoric reflects an inherently totalizing regime of truth designed to wipe out alterity, delegitimate difference and allow only for the univocal discourse of orthodoxy?

...unmask the power grab ... deconstruct the normativity of the author's voice and give back legitimate voice to that which has been silenced and marginalized.

What such 'reading against the grain' of the text actually accomplishes is a new kind of violence with a new opponent who is deemed to have deviated from another assumed normative stance..." - taken from Colossians Remixed, reviewed here

What does one make of this? I study theology. In school. And it would still take me considerable downtime plus a dictionary to glean anything helpful from this writing. Given the density of much expert verbiage, who does one turn to? At what point does specific, technical language become overreaching and begin to obscure meaning instead of revealing? Should popularizers be hated, tolerated, or applauded?

I'm leaning toward the last.

"Re-purposing" Back-to-School

2007-08-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

Laundry detergent bottles, "repurposed" by Julian Lwin. Via Cool Hunting.

We're moved into the new apartment enough so that we have internet access but not enough that we can, say, get dressed over here. We have our priorities, after all. So, this brief status report.

But here is an attempt at some substance:

Also keeping me from posting lately are the meetings faculty have been attending as preparation for the fall semester. At one of those meetings, we heard a representative from the education branch of the Herman Miller company talk about spatial arrangements in educational environments and how those arrangements can actually give shape to the learning dynamic that takes place between/among students and teachers. The timing of the presentation was unfortunate for all concerned: it was the last one before our lunch, and we already were running late; and, given that the buildings we'd be applying these considerations to have yet to be built (we're in the midst of a fundraising campaign for the college)--or, in some cases, even designed--it all seemed a bit intangible to those in the room (approximately all of us) worried about next week. Finally, let's just say it was pretty easy to infer from the nifty writing pads and pens given to us that if the Herman Miller company didn't already have a contract with the college, it wanted to have it.

At any rate, it was during that presentation that the representative used the word "re-purposing" to describe the process of transforming a space. The word was new to me and my colleagues; as I wrote it down, I observed one of my colleagues writing down the exact same word. But my Google search for images for this post this morning implied to me that, as usual, I'm out of the trendy-neologisms loop.

Anyway. The point, you're asking. Here it is, for what it's worth: That the word, like many neologisms when you first hear them, sounds invented "just because" and not because they describe some something that heretofore had gone unsignified. Whatever work they do is a sort of shorthand, a quicker way of saying something that we've always been able to say, a sort of microwavable language (which I've mused about indirectly before). My colleague and I giggled at its artificiality when we first heard it: "She talks funny," is what we were thinking. But this morning, as I found myself thinking about my desire to rearrange my classroom from its eminently practical, Gradgrind rows into an inverted "U" and to revamp some writing assignments in order, I hope, to lead my students' writing into more unfamiliar intellectual realms, I realized that, yes, I too was "re-purposing." It sounded weird, maybe even too lofty, to use such a value-laden word as "purpose" when describing what is in its essence remodeling. When applied to Education, though, it speaks directly to what, I would hope, changing things around should address. Something more than just freshening things up a bit.

(Cross-posted at Blog Meridian)

At What Price, Vocab?

2006-12-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

A Lesson in Lexical Conviction
from Madeleine L'Engle

Coming off a knock-down, drag-out battle with my final exams, I picked up Walking On Water, Reflections on Faith & Art by Madeleine L'Engle. It's a kind of therapy. This is from page 36:

We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually. Yet another reason why [A Wrinkle in Time] was so often rejected is that there are many words in it which would never be found on a controlled vocabulary list for the age-group of the ten-to-fourteen-year-old. Tesseract, for instance. It's a real word, and one essential for the story.

Of course, the saga turned out well for L'Engle, who saw Wrinkle not only get published, but go on to become a Newbery Medal winner and win an enduring place in American children's (and adult) literature. But going in, she couldn't have known that success waited on the far side of a non-compromise. This is what you call strength of lexical conviction.

Would any of you adopt this strategy if you had multiple publishing houses pleading with you to make your writing "communicate better to a wider audience?" The latter half of that sentence doesn't apply to me at this point in my career, but this is something I'm turning over. The question should also be viewed with the help of G.K. Chesterton's counter-perspective:

Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable… The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word “damn” than in the word “degeneration.

So then, put yourself in the shoes of an aspiring author. Then ask, Is "tesseract" worth it? I await your opinions.

Cross-posted on BitterSweetLife.

The VRP is an SOB

2006-12-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

And That's Good News

Liz at Successful Blog, recently recognized as one of the Top Ten Blogs for Writers, has made it official: The Vocabulary Reclamation Project is an SOB, and all who are associated with it share in the infamy. Care to elaborate, Liz?

The SOB for Successful and Outstanding Blogger was my own– a bit of mischief to underscore our sense of irreverence and openness in discussions. It’s become quite a symbol of what the blog stands for. Every now and then a fun post goes up titled “Liz called me an SOB,” those are my favorite.

Consider the post title a hat tip, Liz. I couldn't pass up the complimentary acronyms. Thanks for the nod, and keep up the good work.

Reclaiming "Joy"

2006-12-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

At Successful Blog, Liz has a convincingly-illustrated post up about nothing other than vocabulary reclamation (more or less).

Joy might be the word I miss the most. At one time joy filled a heart. I think about joy. I wish for joy, and I wish joy for my friends, and yet when I write the word, it seems shallow, not conveying how deeply I wish for them. Joy is exponentially greater than the happiness we all seek, but the word has been made flat like old soda. Now it calls up thoughts of Seasons Greetings and green box bottoms with clear covers in drug stores every November. It’s laced with cranky people standing in lines at cash registers. How can I wish true joy when it conjures up images of chaos and too much to do?

Well worth a read.

The Vocabula Review

2006-12-07T16:06:00.000-08:00

As a Joseph Epstein fan, I lifted this short piece instantly when I found it on Between Two Worlds. What a great name for a journal! (Thanks, Justin Taylor, for the intro.)

::

Joseph Epstein writes about The Vocabula Review , an online monthly journal by Robert Hartwell Fiske, whose purpose is to battle "nonstandard, careless English" and to embrace "clear, expressive English."

The Vocabula Review, in fact, has two mottoes: "A society is generally as lax as its language" and "Well spoken is half sung." Mr. Fiske believes that honest language is elegant language. His online magazine is neither a forum for prescriptivism nor for his prejudices, but deals extensively with the endless oddities and richness of language.

Mr. Fiske's own characteristic tone is perhaps best caught in his Dimwit's Dictionary. In that 400-page work a vast body of words and phrases are shown up for the linguistic ciphers they are. He has established a number of categories for "Expressions That Dull Our Reason and Dim Our Insight." These included grammatical gimmicks, which are expressions (such as "whatever," "you had to be there") that are used by people who have lost their powers of description; ineffectual phrases ("the fact remains," "the thing about it is," "it is important to realize") used by people to delay coming to the point or for simple bewilderment; infantile phrases ("humongous," "gazillions," "everything's relative"), which show evidence of unformed reasoning; moribund metaphors ("window of opportunity") and insipid similes ("cool as a cucumber"); suspect superlatives ("an amazing person," "the best and the brightest"), which are just what the category suggests; torpid terms ("prioritize," "proactive," "significant other"), which are vapid and dreary; not to mention plebeian sentiments, overworked words, popular prescriptions, quack equations, and wretched redundancies.

Read the whole thing.

Review: Mixtionary Targets Language-Loving Consumers

2006-10-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

Vocabulary Humor Marred by Typos

When the VRP reeled in its first free book, I got excited. The publishers of Mixtionary: Mixed-up modern words for the mixed-up modern world sent me a complimentary copy for review, and when I got the little book in the mail, I was favorably impressed. Nicely produced, the Mixtionary's cover is colorful and the pages are glossy and thoroughly illustrated by comic artist Shawn McManus.

Next step: I started exploring the book's concept: fuse various words together to produce light-hearted new nouns and adjectives. This process is formally called "portmanteua" - the combination of sounds and meanings from two or more words to create a new one - and as an applied science, it's given us cultural gems like Brangelina and TomKat. (Insert sarcasm accordingly.) For what it's worth, Mixtionary is similar in tone to the publications where you'd expect such appellations to appear.

Galsheimers
Gals + alzheimers
Sin of sins! The phenomenon of a totally blank brain and forgetting the name of a girl you have had sex with.

However, I did find some amusing creations.

Bidiot
idiots + bid
People who pay far too much for junk sold on Ebay

Shoeism
shoe + ism
The very involved and complex devotion to fine footwear - which could segue into a new religion, as there certainly are enough devotees.

You get the idea. Unfortunately, Mixtionary was rife with typos - mostly omitted words - which struck me as very ironic, since the book's target audience will be language-loving types who will almost certainly notice the glaring lack of editorial control. Recommendation to Mia Christou, Scott Lobdell, and John Nee, the authors of Mixtionary: Edit the next edition carefully, and target a more discerning audience.

I suspect that the consumeristic, string-dating, media-obsessed audience that Mixtionary is apparently catering to will probably be in a movie theater or online dating site, not reading little books on vocab. However, you can visit the Official Site of Mixtionary, and offer your own suggestions for "new" words. Submit something to do with the obsessive love of books, I dare you! Mixtionary also has its own MySpace page.

Banality of "Cool" Repetition

2006-09-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

I have been neglecting this blog and I know it. But it’s been a kind of passive neglect. I have not been beating this blog like a red-headed step child. (I know that’s a tired simile, but I am unrepentant. I am just happy to be posting.) I have not even been beating this blog like a fat kid caught stealing lunches.

Rather than bore you with the air-tight reasons for my absence, I’d like to launch a topic that’s been bothering me. I guess you could call it the banality of repetition.

I’ve gone on the record here decrying the systemic abuse of words like “nice”—words that are used with such knee-jerk frequency as to lose any specified meaning. This isn’t mere hypothesis. This is fact. So why do I find myself saying “nice” in a variety of settings?

“Nice work.”
“Nice shot.”
“Nice comeback.”
“Nice.”

I know why I do it. But the rationale doesn’t make me feel any better. At every turn these days, we’re confronted with situations and explanations that require a mild superlative in response. Such adjectives are called for with such frequency that the very consistency of their use reduces them to piles of grey, tasteless hash, linguistically.

That’s why I say “Nice” instead of “Superlative” or “Beatific.”

I figure I may as well sacrifice a word that has already been denuded of profundity, rather than lead a really costly heifer to the alter of common usage.

What do all you nice wordsters make of this problem?

Loss of Metaphor: "Spirituality"

2006-06-16T20:07:00.000-07:00

This week I began to make my way through Eugene Peterson's book on "spiritual theology," Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, and was impressed, as I have been before, by Peterson's scholarly acumen. Not only is he conversant in theology, but Peterson's survey of "spirituality" begins at a level that few people even address: our language. (Of course, since I'm posting this piece here, that revelation probably doesn't come as much of a surprise.)

Here's a paragraph from Peterson:

Having lost the metaphorical origin of “spirit” we operate, in our daily conversations (in the English language at least), with a serious vocabulary deficit. Imagine how our perceptions would change if we eliminated the word “spirit” from our language and used only “wind” and “breath.” Spirit was not “spiritual” for our ancestors; it was sensual. It was the invisible that had visible effects. In was invisible but it was not immaterial. Air has as much materiality to it as a granite mountain: it can be felt, heard, and measured...

I like this point a great deal, and I think it corresponds with an issue that need not be relegated only to spiritual matters: the erosion of concrete, evocative metaphors. As has been mentioned here before, the effects of words like "interfacing" and "plugging in," the stock metaphors of a technological age, tend to replace older and warmer patterns of parallelism.

I sometimes wonder if the current trends in metaphor are not merely new but thinner, colder, less concrete? The result of too many days spent in sickly florescent lighting?

Peterson presents a test case, in that a “rushing, mighty wind” of Christ’s Spirit is reduced today to wan, ambiguous “spirituality.” I suspect an across-the-board erosion of metaphoric power.

Thoughts?

Just What Did You Mean?

2006-05-20T10:48:00.000-07:00

Over at National Review Online, there's an article up by a seasoned old word-advocate who would definitely endorse the VRP if he was aware that it existed. The piece, which deals with the immense connotations that "a single word" can take on in the right setting (in this case, legal), is a great read. Here's an excerpt to get you started:

Some years ago I was a defendant in a lawsuit brought by a creepy fascistic outfit (they are now out of business), and the question before the jury was whether I and the magazine I edited were racist. The attorney had one weapon to use in making his point, namely that we had published an editorial about Adam Clayton Powell Jr. when he made a terminally wrong move in his defense against federal prosecutors. The editorial we published was titled, "The Jig Is Up for Adam Clayton Powell Jr.?" On the witness stand I argued that the word "jig" could be used other than as animadversion. The feverish lawyer grabbed a book from his table and slammed it down on the arm of my chair. "Have you ever heard of a dictionary?" he asked scornfully, as if he had put the smoking gun in my lap. I examined the American Heritage College Dictionary and said yes, I was familiar with it. "In fact," I was able to say, opening the book, "I wrote the introduction to this edition." That was the high moment of my forensic life. And, of course, the dictionary establishes that the word “jig” can be used harmlessly.

Any guesses as to who this vocab-master is? (Hint: he is not equally loved by all political parties...) Nevertheless, you'll want to read the whole (brief) article: Just What Did You Mean?

Words, Words, Words

2006-05-14T20:14:00.000-07:00

I usually blog at Semicolon, but I thought I'd write an occasional post here about words and my love of them. Start with a meme; go out with a bang. The initiator of this erudite blog very kindly allowed me to post here, so I borrowed (and edited) this word meme from Stefanie at So Many Books. To be on the safe side.

Words that always look misspelled to me:
obscene, obsession, skiing, Qatar, judgment, acquiesce, grieve, posttest

Words I enjoy saying:
misanthropic, anthropomorphic, surreptitious, melancholy, parmesan, lackadaisical

Words I enjoy hearing:
thank you, I love you, yes m'am.

Abbreviations I dislike:
lbs. (lubs?), ms. (miz?).

Proper nouns I enjoy:
Dime Box, Texas
Bilbo Baggins
Lake Wobegon
General Shalishkavili
Ramona Quimby

Words I associate with happiness:
children, chocolate, celebration, flowers, autumn

Words I always misspell:
obcession, judgement, innoculate, preemptory.

Words I enjoy spelling correctly, every time:
miscellaneous, embarrass, Philippians, Deuteronomy, congratulations

Words that, though I love their meaning, I'm too embarrassed to say out loud:
Any big long words that I'm afraid people will think pretentious.

Words I can never remember the meaning of no matter how many times I look them up:
biennial, mauve, cerulean.

Words that sound like what they mean:
lugubrious, grotesque, bilious, loathe, wheeze, brusque

Words that sound like something other than what they mean:
pulchritude, corporeal, minuend, benignant, cryogenics

I'll try to do something a little more original next time, but at least all you logophiliacs can get an introduction to some of my favorite words. Join in if you'd like.

The Author Speaks

2006-04-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

In response to some queries as to where this blog has gone, I thought I'd post a quick update. The interim since my last post here has been an eventful one. In the last couple months I've:

Received an endorsement request from an educational group that blends "power" vocabulary with hip-hop music. "Flocabulary," I think they call it.
Read On Stories, a compilation of C.S. Lewis essays, including a very appropriate one for the VRP crowd: "The Death of Words."
Added an RSS comments feed to this site, which I need to make accessible.
Made the acquaintance of my first child, Aidan, who surprised me and my wife by arriving a month early.

Clearly, I have material for some new posts. It's just a question of time. Ideally this blog would be updated every week, but with the current (new) demands on my time, I may have a hard time getting to it, as the last couple months have revealed.

With this in view, I'm once again inviting "guest" contributors. John B., the first to take the plunge, has made an excellent first impression. Perhaps you will too. :) If you're interested, shoot me a note.

Otherwise, I hope to get to some of my prospective post topics soon.

A rose (of Mohammed) by any other name . . .

2006-02-17T06:12:00.000-08:00

Some of you have probably read this news: that Iranian pastry sellers, their display cases filled with danish pastries (which Iranians love to eat) but the streets in front of their stores (metaphorically speaking) filled with people outraged by many things Danish, have taken to calling these pastries "Rose of Mohammed" pastries. As the Yahoo! News article points out, this re-naming smacks of Congress' resolution to substitute the name "freedom fries" for "French fries" when the French didn't back the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. No matter that the pastries are baked in Tehran (or, for that matter, that the fries are fried in the Capital Hill cafeteria). Just now, something is rotten in the state of Denmark . . . can't you smell it whenever you read the word "danish"?

Of course we (well, okay--I) chuckle a bit, knowing that such name changes are emotionally-driven attempts to make silk purses out of what have become, in the eyes of some, sows' ears. As Juliet knows, the thing named--in Saussure's language, the signified--does not change: the relationship between that thing and its name is an arbitrary one, determined by usage. "Downsize" may sound more pleasant in a news release than "lay off" does, but people are no less unemployed for all the euphemizing.

But such moments preform a useful reminder for us: We get reminded here--sometimes so blatantly that we laugh as a result--that language isn't neutral and valueless but, due to the very arbitrariness of the signifier-signified relationship, is a tripwire-laden jungle of implicit and explicit cultural judgments made, often, so long ago that we no longer recognize them or, in some cases, no longer think they matter when they are brought to our attention. This isn't a plea on behalf of politically-correct language--or against it, either. Our language--all language--is simply thus. What that fact should compel us to give some thought to is, when we go about naming and describing the things of the world, what we want our language for them to say about us as individuals and about us as a culture.

PD James Takes Aim at Verbal Pretenders

2006-02-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

When I read P.D. James’ exceptional murder mystery, A Taste for Death, I was pleasantly surprised by the heightened lingual awareness displayed in her writing. Previous James novels (I’ve been reading her Adam Dalgliesh series chronologically) were brilliant, but less self-conscious about language.

James betrays her love for verbal perfection at every turn, but in Taste, her delight in the well-chosen word emerged with unmistakable zest, Adam Dalgliesh being the prime linguaphile. As in this paragraph:

“He throws over his job, his career, possibly his family. Then, don’t ask me how or why, he discovers that it’s all a chimera.” Nichols repeated the word as if to reassure himself of the pronunciation. Dalgliesh wondered where he had come across it.

I found little to quibble over and lots to love with this approach (despite the fact that the word “excrescence” appears at least twice in every book James writes. I’ve always argued that if you’re going to have favorite $5-words, you had better be oblique about it; i.e., your readers shouldn’t be able to tell).

Probably the one point of debate is whether an author should overtly expose her characters to ridicule when they fail to do justice to an exceptional noun. Such censure, coming from Dalgliesh, a published poet and arguably a cultural snob, is highly entertaining, but could it deter aspiring word-lovers from experimentation? One has to wonder.

Just the same, James has risen to the status of honorary VRP activist. And in case you're wondering, chimera is pronounced "ky-meer-ah" or "kih-meer-ah," as near as I can reproduce it phonetically.

Sick as a Dog

2006-01-27T11:19:00.000-08:00

A Frivolous Phraseology Post

I'm home today, blowing my nose every five minutes, throat like a rain gutter, with a dull ache in my jaw that is either my wisdom teeth reallocating their living space or the result of my going head-to-head with an opposing player when I played rugby last Sunday.

I'm sitting back now, appreciating the diversity of that last sentence. It's confusing, it's awful, I hope you were able to get through it. But I'm too attached to it now to change it.

I've been wondering about the traditional phrase, 'sick as a dog.' I'm not sure I get it. Other phrases seem like they would be more appropriate to describe my condition. In fact, most of the dogs I have known were remarkably healthy.

Why not 'sick as an aquarium fish?' Or 'sick as a water turtle?' It seems like aquarium fish are not especially predisposed to life. They're just as likely to be floating upside down as right side up when you turn on the light in the morning. Water turtles are similar. They're ridiculously picky about what they eat, and seem very willing to become dormant and taciturn if you don't feed them just what they want.

If we expand the parameters outside the traditional pet' sector, why not 'sick as a seal?' They always seem to have wet, runny noses. Or (gross!) 'sick as a slug?' If facsimile is what we're after, it seems like honesty would bring us here.

Anyway. Now that I've complained for a little while, I'm going to continue beating up Bertrand Russell's essay, "A Free Man's Worship." In the universe Russell describes, his title itself is a non sequitur. I know you're not supposed to pick on dead people, but I have to do it for class. And I'm sick - sick as a dog. Therefore, 'sicking' myself on Russell should be completely permissible.

When a sick guy meets a dead guy, the sick guy wins.

Chill: On the verbalizing of (some) nouns

2005-12-22T07:13:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, the esteemed (and Jayhawks-basketball-addicted, poor soul) Ariel asked if other VRPers would consider posting here. In a moment of weakness, I volunteered to do so, and Ariel graciously and perhaps unwisely took me up on my offer. I hope that this, my maiden post, won't cause him--or, for that matter, you good people--too much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

First, a little about me: I am the person responsible for Blog Meridian; I also happen to teach English, literature, and Humanities at a community college in Wichita. You should also know that I don't think of myself as being terribly Old School when it comes to things like split infinitives ("to boldly go" just sounds better rhythmically, even if, as my college prof once put it, the purity of the infinitive is violated) or using "I" in essays (essays are opinion, aren't they? Sometimes the first-person singular is perfectly appropriate in such writing) or ending sentences with prepositions. Spelling and apostrophes DO matter to me and, the usual reasons offered notwithstanding, I can't for the life of me figure out why we collectively have become so sloppy with such things. I also confess that I kinda cringe (still) whenever I read a sentence like "Everyone must do their work" but also recognize that the "generic 'he'" rightly belongs to the past.

But there IS something up with which I will not put. Some nouns have no business being used as verbs.

To be sure, English has a long, rich tradition of doing just that. Prior to beginning this post today, I did some actual research in the OED with the word "room," one of our very oldest words. What I wanted to know was, at what point did "room" come into use as a verb in the sense of "to occupy rooms as a lodger; to share a room or rooms with another." My suspicion was that that usage appeared fairly recently, and I was somewhat surprised to see that it in fact first appeared in 1828. But I was even more surprised to learn that "room" has been used as a verb to mean various things (usually, some variation of the idea of "to clear out" or "to make room") for as long as English itself has existed in written form. The only point is that this phenomenon of verbalizing nouns is and has always been intrinsic to English itself due, no doubt, to its lack of inflection, and there's no reason to get upset with that . . . in the abstract.

But: "interface" as a verb?? When referring to talking to/with people??? As in: "He and I needed to work out the details, but we just couldn't interface today"?? Or what about "office" as a verb (which, to my amazement, I learned today was in use in just that way around the turn of the century but disappeared (at least in print) until just recently)?? I know you may be thinking, "He's okay with 'room' as a verb, but not with 'office'?" Well, yes: "room" as a verb has a cozy, warm sound to it. But just as "interface" sounds, to my ears, like it strolls a little too closely in meaning to "intercourse" (which, of course, can also mean "talk") yet sounds way too machine-like to be anywhere nearly as appealing an activity as intercourse, no matter its meaning, "office" as a verb just sounds too cubicle-y, too steel-desk-y and Hon-five-drawer-file-cabinet-y, to suggest anything other than a strictly professional, strictly officious relationship between human beings.

Sometimes, I'm delighted with a new verbalizing. About a month ago, I was visiting a message board devoted to discussing Mark Z. Danielewski's novel, House of Leaves, and someone, in reference to, I think, someone else's new video game, posted, "I've been wanting to geek about this for the longest time." To my mind, using "geek" as a verb has the effect of humanizing tekkie-talk and those who engage in it. It reminds someone like me, someone basically ambivalent about technology (he says as he types on a computer for the sole purpose of sharing what little he knows with people he will, most likely, never, ever meet), that many of my fellow human beings are not just deeply moved by technology, it allows them to express something of what makes them human, individuals.

I have a theory, and a lament built into it. It's long been noted that English is especially well suited as a language for commerce, and I'm okay with that. That is so true, in fact, that it's been evident for some time that it is business and advertising that serve as the chief sources of change in mainstream usage. But if it is also true that a) commerce is dependent on efficiency, on "getting to the point" and the "bottom line" and b) according to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the language we use shapes how we think about and behave in the world, I can't help but see a growing "chilling" of our language. Compare "I share an office with Jim" to "I office with Jim." They SAY the same thing, but in the second what defines the relationship is the space and the work that takes place in it, and not the people; in the first, what defines the relationship is the sharing of the space. Human interaction, in other words, gets affirmed over (but not to the detriment of) the work each engages in.

Of course there is value in concision. But if what the pursuit of concision loses is a human element--that is, if modes of experssion become structured in such a way that, more and more, we are defined by the work we do and not anything we might have to say about that work or the people we work with--then we have to ask ourselves, as we should about machines themselves, if our ever-more-efficient language serves to remind us, however implicitly, that we are people and that we deal with people. If the answer to that is "No," then we should be suspicious of the "efficiency=improvement" equation.

UPDATE: In Martin's comment below, he notes that "room" as a verb sounds odd to him. That's because that usage is primarily an American one.

In Defense of Niceness?

2005-12-16T17:06:00.000-08:00

Last week when I was re-reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, I came across this:

‘Niceness’—wholesome, integrated personality—is an excellent thing. We must try by every medical, educational, economic, and political means in our power to produce a world where as many people as possible grow up ‘nice’; just as we must try to produce a world where al have plenty to eat.

For a few minutes, I could hardly believe my eyes. Lewis is one of my favorites. Obviously, Mere Christianity was written half a century ago, before “nice” gained the vapid, cover-all associations it has today. But still. I am partially a creature of my lingual environment.

I’m not sure I could have continued to love Lewis as much as I do if he hadn’t gone on to partially repudiate the initial nice paragraph:

A world of nice people, content in their niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world—and might be even more difficult to save.

Needless to say, I read that with a sigh of relief. The metaphysical thrust of Lewis’ writing had been effectively shoved into the backseat by the excessive niceness.

I’m choosing to believe that he did it on purpose, using niceness rather disgustingly to make a point. But this just goes to show, vocabulary can have profound effects on one’s relationships.

Fidelity in Names

2005-11-30T20:27:00.000-08:00

I haven’t been able to produce a VRP post in the last month or so, but I have successfully used the word “ubiquitous” several times in conversation. The beauty of the Project has not been blog-ally affirmed lately, but it has remained with me just the same.

The main cause of my eloquent silence has been my overly-intense semester, which has necessitated excessive essays and research. In my spare time, I find myself running to fiction (and basketball) for escape, rather than musing about how I could have improved the syntax of my latest paper.

I have, however, gained an even deeper appreciation for strong vocabulary, if that’s possible. When I was researching the early Christian apologist Tertullian, I came across this quotation:

All things will be in danger of being taken in a sense different from their own proper sense, and, whilst taken in that different sense, of losing their proper one, if they are called by a name which differs from their natural designation. Fidelity in names secures the safe appreciation of properties.

Tertullian’s writing arguably could have benefited from shorter sentences (I almost inserted a period), but his point is indubitably sharp-edged. Fidelity in names. And what is language, if not a system of names for everything? A web with myriads of threads, designed to catch and hold, momentarily, each element and act and feeling in the world? Contemplating vocabulary in terms of truthful naming is a bracing zephyr for a tired wordsmith.

On another front, I’ve been thinking about the attractiveness of having co-authors. I’m curious whether any of you would be interested in slapping up a post here at the VRP. If you think you have it in you (and having performed exhaustive background checks on the Project’s members, I know you do), please let me know. I’d welcome the company. It can get lonely here at the top of the lingual world, so speak up.

And in the meantime, pursue accuracy in your name-calling.