Language Corner
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November 16, 2009 04:41 PM
Foundering Flounders
When a fish is not a failure
Whenever the government announces the failure of another bank, a news outlet somewhere reports that the bank has “floundered.”
Well it did “flounder,” but once the government seized it, it stopped “floundering” and started “foundering.”
“Flounder” and ”founder” have very similar spellings and meanings, so it’s no wonder that so many people confuse them.
Historically, to “flounder” has...
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November 09, 2009 01:53 PM
Playing Tricks
The expression ‘tricked out’ isn’t new
A review of the new “Lego Rock Band” video game mentioned one cool feature: “You can also trick out your Rock Den and buy new costumes and instruments for band members.” A feature on a group that revitalizes old mopeds says that they “have figured out how to trick out their engines so they can cruise at up to 70...
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November 02, 2009 12:34 PM
Early Bird Special
On turning the clocks back
Unless you live in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, most of Arizona, or off the grid with sundials, you turned your clocks back an hour yesterday, in the annual return to standard time. (Nowadays, lots of clocks turn themselves back, so it’s actually less work than it used to be.)
The period that just ended is daylight saving time. Not daylight savings,...
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October 26, 2009 11:31 AM
Plethora Galore
When does ‘many’ become ‘too many’?
The English language has many words for “many”: “abundance,” “multitude,” “profusion,” “a lot,” and so forth. With such a “myriad” of choices,* it can be useful to maintain the nuances to indicate whether the large quantity is a good thing, a bad thing, or just a lot of things.
We’ve already discussed how “fulsome” really means “offensively excessive”...
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October 19, 2009 04:33 PM
Assurance Policy
The lives of ‘insure,’ ‘ensure,’ and ‘assure’
In Washington, legislators are trying to “assure” their constituents that they are working to “ensure” that any new health-care bill will “insure” them.
All three of these transitive verbs mean the same thing: To make certain of something. (Surely you knew that.)
But there are subtle differences as well, which have evolved over the years.
Let’s start with...
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October 12, 2009 01:21 PM
Walk It Off
A negative baseball term becomes positive
The World Series is fast approaching, and many of the teams in the playoffs are hoping for at least one “walkoff” victory. That’s where the home team takes the lead in the bottom of the ninth inning or later, and the game abruptly ends. It’s a good thing, because it means the team has triumphed over a tie or has...
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October 05, 2009 12:19 PM
Doctored Language
When medical jargon hurts
A sheriff said a suspect in the killing of a family may have some injuries, including “include cuts, lacerations, bruises, contusions, abrasions, and/or loss of hair."
When was the last time you fell off your skateboard and told your friends the next day that you were “covered in contusions”? Or you sliced a finger with the...
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September 28, 2009 02:30 PM
Bodies in Motion
How many objects are moving in a “collision”?
News stories frequently cover accidents where a car hits a bus, a train hits a car, a bicycle hits a pedestrian, and so forth. These are frequently called “collisions.”
In newspaper parlance, a “collision” occurs only when both objects are in motion. The Associated Press Stylebook says: “Two objects must be in motion before they can collide. A...
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September 21, 2009 05:42 PM
Lost Innocence
People plead “not guilty”
Back in the days before everyone had a computer, news stories would have to be retyped at least once before they could appear in print—a reporter would write the story on a typewriter or by hand, and it would make its way to a typesetter, who retyped it either into lines of hot metal or, in later years, into the...
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September 15, 2009 01:44 PM
Times Up
Is “three times more” the same as “three times as many”?
Most journalists didn’t become so because they’re good at math—even economic journalists. But, when dealing with numbers, you don’t have to be a savant to try to make things as clear as possible for readers, most of whom are also not good at math.
Take multipliers--not the straightforward ones, like doubled and tripled, but the fancier ones, like those using...
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September 09, 2009 12:52 PM
All Wet
When you read, you “pore,” not “pour”
The White House releases a bunch of sensitive documents on a Friday afternoon, and the investigative reporter resigns herself to spending the weekend examining them closely. Luckily, the forecast calls for torrential rain, so she’s not worried about missing anything outside.
But when she writes that she “spent the weekend pouring over the documents,” many will get the sense that...
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August 31, 2009 04:43 PM
Nerve Center
“Enervate” is not “energetic”
Context clues are wonderful things. With them, a writer can load an article with lots of unusual or unfamiliar words and not worry that a reader will misunderstand.
That’s good.
But if the context clues are unclear, a reader is going to stop and puzzle over the unfamiliar word.
That’s bad.
To start with, making the reader stop...
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August 24, 2009 03:16 PM
Double Entendre
When one word has opposite meanings
San Francisco commuters were relieved recently when a commuter rail strike was averted. But for some time, stories about the negotiations said that rail workers had vowed “to strike at midnight Sunday.”
To some readers, that meant that they would not be able to take the train to church on Sunday; to others, it meant that Monday’s work commute...
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August 17, 2009 05:18 PM
Off the Wrack
The difference between “rack” and “wrack” is a wreck
One news article said: “Compensation is coming under greater scrutiny since the world’s biggest financial companies wracked up almost $1.6 trillion of losses and write-downs.” Another, about a beloved pet going into surgery, said: “It was a nerve-wracking day of waiting for the phone to ring and my heart pounding every time it did.”
Wrong and wrong. But the...
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