Petra’s greatest asset – and also its worst asset – is its world-famous entrance.

If you have ever watched the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you will remember the spectacular approach to the mysterious city carved in stone where Indy finds the Holy Grail.

The entrance [...]]]> I read the following comment on a travel site:

Petra’s greatest asset – and also its worst asset – is its world-famous entrance.

If you have ever watched the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you will remember the spectacular approach to the mysterious city carved in stone where Indy finds the Holy Grail.

The entrance to the ancient city of Petra in Jordan is the Siq, a narrow sandstone gorge nearly a mile long.

Not a movie set, the location shown in the movie and referred to in the quotation above is Petra, an ancient site in Jordan. The approach to the city is by way of a narrow sandstone gorge called the Siq.

The word asset, like the word liability has a specific legal meaning related to financial obligations. For example, a company is liable or responsible for all debts incurred as part of doing business. The debts are liabilities. Assets are things a company or an individual owns outright. If your car is paid for, it’s an asset. If you owe money on it, the remaining debt is a liability.

Both words have figurative meanings. An asset is an advantage. A liability is a disadvantage.

Because in the figurative sense assets are good things, to talk about Petra’s “worst asset” is to talk nonsense.

Better use of English to say:
Petra’s greatest asset – and its worst liability – is its world-famous entrance.

One way to differentiate one kind of stick from another is to add a qualifier:

walking stick hockey stick incense stick devil [...]]]> A politician’s recent use of cudgel for where the context called for baton got me thinking about other synonyms that exist for stick: A short piece of wood, esp. a piece cut and shaped for a special purpose.

One way to differentiate one kind of stick from another is to add a qualifier:

walking stick
hockey stick
incense stick
devil stick (used in juggling)

Another is to choose a synonym that carries the most appropriate connotation.

connotation: That which is implied in a word in addition to its essential or primary meaning.

Each of the following synonyms for stick carries specific connotations:

club
cudgel
bludgeon
shillelagh
truncheon
baton
cane
switch
rod

The first five suggest violence. We picture cavemen carrying clubs used for clubbing cavewomen into submission. Likewise the words cudgel and bludgeon can be used as either nouns or verbs to describe a brutal beating.

Bludgeon is often seen in reports of vicious murders committed with a blunt instrument. The victim is said to have been bludgeoned to death.

Writers often use cudgel metaphorically:

…too often, the Constitution is wielded as a political cudgel, even if…the cudgelers fail to grasp the document’s finer points.

His action places the possibility of new drilling squarely in the public debate and gives him a political cudgel.

We all know people for whom literature is an intellectual cudgel, a way to bludgeon others with how erudite they are.

In short, far from being another cudgel-wielding pundit, Moyers may be television’s only moralist.

Shillelagh is the term for a type of Irish walking stick made of blackthorn. It occurs in an old Bing Crosby song called “An Irish Lullaby”:

With me shillelagh under me arm
And a twinkle in me eye
I’ll be off to Tipperary in the morning.

A shillelagh can be also be used as a weapon, but somehow it doesn’t sound as vicious as cudgel or bludgeon.

Both truncheon and baton can refer to a policeman’s billy club. I prefer truncheon for this use since it sounds as if a truncheon would hurt more than a baton, and because baton has other connotations:

baton, musical connotations: a little stick used to conduct an orchestra, and a longer, heavier type of baton used by a drum major to lead a marching band.

baton, symbolic connotations: a staff or other type of stick carried as a symbol of office, such as a field marshal’s baton.

The baton that was carried by Field Marshal Montgomery as a symbol of his rank.

 

Cane is the usual word in the U.S. for a walking stick. In England it can mean the stick a schoolmaster uses (or used to use) to punish students who don’t learn their lessons. That type of punishment is called caning. Another form of disciplining children is to strike them with a switch or a rod.

The expression “to spare the rod and spoil the child” derives from the Biblical injunction for parents to discipline their children:

Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. (Proverbs 23:13, New International Version)

A rod is straighter and stiffer than a switch, which is a thin, pliable branch cut from a bush and used to strike a child’s hands or bare legs in punishment for some infraction.

The best writers give careful thought to connotation before grabbing the first word that comes to mind.

Related post: Synonyms can be revealing

Before electronic archiving, roughly the mid-1990s, there was the morgue. Blessed be our morgue, because in it, dug up by our chief librarian Rosie Dixon, were news stories of the end of the career of the football coach in these parts who was, in his day, [...]]]> I read this in an editorial by a newspaper editor:

Before electronic archiving, roughly the mid-1990s, there was the morgue. Blessed be our morgue, because in it, dug up by our chief librarian Rosie Dixon, were news stories of the end of the career of the football coach in these parts who was, in his day, even more famous than Bobby Petrino. Famous in a good way.

–Frank Fellone, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 1, 2012.

The word for “famous in a bad way” is infamous.

Al Capone was an infamous gangster.
Hitler was an infamous dictator.

To describe people who are well-known for positive accomplishment we have  words like famous, celebrated, renowned, noted, famed, eminent, and illustrious.

To describe people who are well-known for negative actions, we have  words like infamous, notorious, and disreputable.

When miserably unhappy people shoot up a school or blow up a building in order to get attention, they achieve despicable notoriety, not fame.

“Famous” doesn’t apply to murderers or gangsters

It’s enough to say “we’re going to look realistically at where we are.”

Tonight on our local CBS affiliate, one of the news anchors committed the same pronoun fault in a promo for the Five O’clock News. He was urging viewers to stay tuned for an interview with [...]]]> Not many weeks ago, I published a piece about a change made in a journalist’s story by a grammar-challenged copy editor.

Tonight on our local CBS affiliate, one of the news anchors committed the same pronoun fault in a promo for the Five O’clock News. He was urging viewers to stay tuned for an interview with a university chancellor in which the subject would talk about “he and his wife’s relationship” with someone or other.

This anchor isn’t even from Arkansas. He was born and educated in the state of Illinois. Clearly, ignorance of correct English pronoun usage is not a regional problem, but extends to all 50 states.

The phrase “he and his wife’s relationship” is a grammatical impossibility. You wouldn’t say “he relationship,” so you can’t say “he and his wife’s relationship.” The word before the “and” qualifies “relationship.” The correct form is his and his wife’s relationship.

Related post: “Continued pronoun abuse in the media.”

I am glad to be a visitant of this staring weblog, regards for this rare info!

What “staring” is supposed to mean, I don’t know. Visitant, however, struck me funny because [...]]]> Comment spam often gives itself away by the unorthodox English in which it is phrased, as in this introductory sentence that provided me with a laugh:

I am glad to be a visitant of this staring weblog, regards for this rare info!

What “staring” is supposed to mean, I don’t know. Visitant, however, struck me funny because the meaning that leapt to mind was “ghost.” Spammers could be equated with evil spirits that haunt the web.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists four main definitions of visitant as a noun.

Definition 1: Three definitions are given under this entry. The first informs us that two hundred years or so ago, English speakers did use visitant with the meaning we now attach to visitor: “a person who pays a visit to another.”

The second gives the most common modern meaning: “a supernatural being that reveals itself to mortals.”

The third refers to people who make visits for charitable purposes, such as delivering food baskets at Thanksgiving.

Definition 2: a person motivated to visit a place temporarily because of something that is there. For example, a tourist, a  pilgrim, or a raider.

Definition 3: a thing, (not a person), which comes to a person temporarily, such as sadness, or the flu.

Definition 4: a migratory bird. For example, the swallows that are annual visitants to San Juan Capistrano in California.

Bottomline, if what you mean is “a person making a visit,” say visitor.

Btw: Can anyone tell me what comment spammers hope to gain by their disagreeable behavior?

For example, abstract nouns like bravery and humility are often rendered “braveness” and “humbleness.”

The other day I was reading [...]]]> One of the changes in English usage that I’ve become aware of in my lifetime is the tendency to use the suffix -ness to form abstract nouns, even when a distinctive form for the noun already exists.

For example, abstract nouns like bravery and humility are often rendered “braveness” and “humbleness.”

The other day I was reading an article on the Business Page about the trend away from large stores. The reporter quoted Leon Nicholas, senior vice president for Kantar Retail, a global research and consulting firm. According to Nicholas, aging baby boomers are cutting back on their shopping, while the younger generation has embraced online and mobile shopping. Says Nicholas,

“…put those together with the speed and easiness of online, you don’t need as much space as you did before.”

In this speaker’s usage, the abstract noun speed is still operating without a -ness, but ease has been transformed into “easiness.”

The -ness form of ease has been in the language since the 14th century, but according to the 425-million-word Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) database, in modern American usage, easiness as a noun is rare compared to ease:

easiness 34 examples
ease 6601 examples

Bottomline: If all you mean is the opposite of difficulty, go with ease: “the speed and ease of online shopping.”

When I read this line at the end of an article about Mark Twain’s Recollections of Joan of Arc, I wondered why, if the writer is “based out of Brooklyn” why Brooklyn should be mentioned at all.

On the other hand, if Mr. Crown lives in Brooklyn, [...]]]>

Daniel Crown is a freelance writer based out of Brooklyn.

When I read this line at the end of an article about Mark Twain’s Recollections of Joan of Arc, I wondered why, if the writer is “based out of Brooklyn” why Brooklyn should be mentioned at all.

On the other hand, if Mr. Crown lives in Brooklyn, why not say so?

The phrase “based out of” is one of those meaningless, “hip” inanities that one writer coins in a moment of inattention and is immediately snatched up by thoughtless writers who imagine they’ve discovered a fresh expression.

Writers and others may be based in a place, but it makes no sense to say they’re based out of a place.

very unique irregardless free gift two twins

In a news story I read this morning I found these examples of the tendency to add unnecessary words: good cooperation and can’t overemphasize enough.

The story was about the recent [...]]]> A practice that serves to weaken language is the desire in a speaker to add intensifiers to words that don’t need them.
For example:

very unique
irregardless
free gift
two twins

In a news story I read this morning I found these examples of the tendency to add unnecessary words: good cooperation and can’t overemphasize enough.

The story was about the recent shooting of Afghan civilians by a U.S. soldier. A legal expert “insisted that there had been good cooperation between U.S. and Afghan investigative teams…”

The word cooperation is by definition “good.” Cooperation is the working together towards the same end or purpose.
Different sides can be said to “cooperate well.” We can talk about “effective cooperation” or “excellent cooperation,” but as “bad cooperation” is not a possibility, it seems to me that neither is “good cooperation.” If two sides are not cooperating, then one can say that cooperation is lacking, or that the sides are failing to cooperate. Cooperation itself either exists or it doesn’t.

The other expression is from a statement by Army Brigadier General Lewis Boone, director of U. S. public affairs in Afghanistan:

I cannot over-emphasize enough how important it is…that the facts of the case…are safeguarded…

Here the adverb “enough” repeats the prefix “over.” Correct usage calls for either

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is…

or,

I cannot over-emphasize how important it is…

Tacking “enough” onto “over-emphasize” has the effect of weakening the power that should attach to “over-emphasize.”

Wal-Mart’s S. Africa deal OK’d instead of Wal-Mart’s S. African deal OK’d

Japan automakers back in game instead of Japanese automakers back in game

and Syria crisis continues instead of Syrian crisis continues.

Headline writers [...]]]> For some time now I’ve noticed newspaper headlines that use the name of a country where conventional usage calls for an adjective. For example:

Wal-Mart’s S. Africa deal OK’d instead of Wal-Mart’s S. African deal OK’d

Japan automakers back in game instead of Japanese automakers back in game

and Syria crisis continues instead of Syrian crisis continues.

Headline writers are notoriously cavalier in their use of English. Their unconventional usage chosen to save space often leads the way to acceptance of nonstandard usage by other writers.

Here’s a review of common country name/country adjective pairs.

National adjectives endings in -ian:

Belgium/Belgian
Bolivia/Bolivian
Ethiopia/Ethiopian
Iran/Iranian
Italy/Italian
Palestine/Palestinian
Russia/Russian
Somalia/Somalian
Syria/Syrian

National adjectives ending in -an:

Afghanistan/Afghan
Germany/German
Mexico/Mexican

National adjectives ending in -ish:

England/English
Ireland/Irish
Scotland/Scottish
Poland/Polish

National adjectives ending in -ese:

China/Chinese
Japan/Japanese
Lebanon/Lebanese

National adjectives ending in -i:
Azerbaijan/Azerbaijani
Iraq/Iraqi
Israel/Israeli

Some adjective endings are not easy to categorize:

France/French
Greece/Greek
Wales/Welsh

For the United States, one can use the initials US as an adjective, as in: US troops or US elections, or the word American, as in American society or American movies.

England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales all have adjectives derived from their country names, but when thought of collectively as the United Kingdom, the adjective British applies.

The adjective to use for Holland or the Netherlands is Dutch.

The adjective for Slovakia is Slovak, and for Thailand, Thai.

New Zealand serves both as the country’s name and as the adjective: New Zealand agriculture, New Zealand politics.

Only time will tell if the headline writers will succeed in blurring the distinctions. Meanwhile, careful writers will continue to observe the difference between country name and the national adjective that applies to it.