Pare a Pair of Pears

I noticed a linguistic curiosity today. No, it doesn't have to do with pears or paring them; it has to do with pairs.

We speak of a pair of gloves, a pair of socks, a pair of shoes, even a pair of dice; and those are all clearly sets, or pairs, of two things.

But we also speak of a pair of pants, a pair of scissors, a pair of glasses—eyeglasses, that is. In these cases it's much less clear that we're dealing with two things. I do have a pair of kitchen scissors that separates into two parts--sometimes too readily—presumably for ease of cleaning. But these pairs are normally not two separable things. So why do we treat them, linguistically, as two? Maybe it is because they are sort of bifurcated. You could say that about a pair of pants, pretty clearly. And maybe scissors. But it might be stretching things a little bit to apply this theory of mine to glasses.

Well, people who study language (and I include myself here) come to recognize that you often can't apply "logic" to language. Any language is its own system, and it has very little regard for any external system such as what we call "logic."

Copyright © 2013

Wherefore Born to the Manor?

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

We all know that line. It's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene ii. Unfortunately, many a Juliet—aspiring, wannabe, or otherwise—has delivered it incorrectly. (The showbiz term for how a line is delivered is the "reading," and it includes intonation which in turn is bound up with the meaning: how the actor understands the line and how line will be grasped by the audience.)

The mistake has to do with the meaning of the word wherefore. Note that, as I have (correctly) reproduced the line above, there is no comma after thou. That should be a tipoff.

That is because, contrary to what many people believe, wherefore is not synonymous with where. Wherefore means 'why'. Think of the old phrase "the whys and wherefores." These are two pretty much synonymous words. (Legal usage is the model for giving two essentially synonymous words: it often was felt necessary to give both an Anglo-Saxon and an equivalent French word, in the days when in England both languages were in use, and we still find this in our legal documents.)

In the line from Romeo and Juliet, if you go on and read (or listen to) the rest of the soliloquy, it should be clear that Juliet is not wondering where Romeo is. The meaning is, Why do you have to be Romeo, and a Montague, when the Montague family are my family's enemies? (I would hope that many professional actresses and directors who have put on Romeo and Juliet realize this.)

Language changes. English has changed in the 400 years since Shakespeare, and many words, and meanings of words, have become obsolete. We continue to use words in what you might call ossified or frozen phrases: that is, a phrase may be current but it contains a word with a meaning that has become obsolete.

Some more examples: "Time and tide wait for no man." This does not mean the tide of the oceans, rising and falling. It means 'season', as in Yuletide, Whitsuntide, Easter tide.

What about the phrase, spic and span? Who knows the meanings of the component words? (As a partial gloss, at one time the phrase was more fully, spic and span new, with span being a form of the word we have in brand new.)

Yet another example, this one also from Shakespeare: The phrase is often quoted as "to the manor born"; but in fact, it's manner (Hamlet, Act I, scene iv, line 15). Hamlet is talking about the king's reveling (drinking), and says that he was born to the manner (custom) but does not do it.

So we may hear and even utter phrases that contain words with meanings that are now obsolete or otherwise obscure, and we—perhaps in a very human attempt to make sense out of the language we hear—misinterpret.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Funny Things We Do with (English) Words

There has been a tendency in English to drop the noun from a phrase consisting of a noun-plus adjective, and then the adjective becomes a noun.

Some examples: a transistor radio came to be called a transistor. (We don't hear that term anymore because any radio is going to be transistorized, or solid-state; plus, not many people carry radios in this age of the iPod.)

A microwave oven is now universally called a microwave, and we don't even think anything about it—although a microwave ought to be a kind of wave and not a kind of oven.

A pickup truck is a pickup. Laminate flooring becomes laminate—particularly if you're a flooring dealer. I've even heard Venetian blinds called venetians and I think I've seen real-estate listings in which the kitchens are described as having stainless steel and granite.

On the other hand, there's what seems to me a directly opposite trend, to add a word which is in some sense redundant. Examples: pita bread (pita is a kind of bread so you could just say pita); similarly challah bread. Garbanzo beans; bouillabaise stew; London broil steak. I have even heard salsa sauce, but that could only come from someone unaware that salsa is Spanish for 'sauce'. I have even seen, on a restaurant menu, "with au jus gravy"—never mind that au jus is French for 'with juice' (or gravy). So both with and gravy are redundant.

Not just foods: you hear panda bear and koala bear. Now, there's been argument among zoologists as to whether pandas really are or are not bears, but koalas are definitely not bears.

Here in Chicago, you often hear the word Chicagoland. Supposedly this word was coined to designate the Chicago area--the city and its suburbs. Yet I hear "the Chicagoland area," "Chicagoland and suburbs," and even "the greater Chicagoland area"!

I recently heard the US Attorney for Northern Illinois talk about a "sting" operation used to entrap suspected corrupt politicians, and he talked about "an undercover." Well, it's a strength of English that words can change their part of speech and thus an adjective becomes a noun.

Updates, May 26, 2012, June 22, 2012, June 29, 2012, July 29, 2012. More examples added.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Feminists (and PC-ers), Leave the Language Alone

It’s not that often, these days, that we hear the word feminism or feminist. We do, though, hear a lot of talk about political correctness; and I think that many feminist ideas are included nowadays in what we call political correctness.

At one time I had the misfortune to work for a woman who was a pretty strong feminist. She criticized me, one time, for referring to one of my community-college students as a "girl." "If she's over 16," this woman asserted, "she's a woman, and you shouldn't call her a girl."

Yet adult males are sometimes referred to as "boys": "the boys in the band"; "a night out with the boys."

Not only are the feminists wrong in this particular case, I think they are so bent on cultivating the idea that women are persecuted in our society that they try to make out that even the language is against them.

I can graciously accept saying "letter carrier" instead of mailman; or "fire fighter" instead of fireman. Yet I feel that an insight into our English language and its history shows that the assumption that underlies this linguistic policing is incorrect.

The feminist/PC assertion is that, every time you see –man as part of a word, there is the implicit assumption that the word denotes a male, or implies that the person to whom the word is attached is assumed to be male.

Let's look at the word woman. It descends from the Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) wifman. That is, wif (meaning 'woman' and giving us the modern word wife) + man, meaning 'person'. Thus woman means 'woman-person', or, if you will, 'female person'. And man, when not qualified, just means 'person'—that is, a human of either, or of unspecified, gender. So –man, as it exists in all our compound words, does not, as the feminists insist, mean that we are sexistly asserting that the person is or is assumed to be male.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

A Word Does Not Mean Just One Thing

Even if you've never given it much thought, you're probably aware that word can have multiple meanings. Occasionally, that's the cause of some misunderstandings, and such multiple meanings make much of our humor possible.

Here are some sentences that illustrate some of the meanings the word bar can have (and this is definitely not even the most striking example possible:

• We went into the bar.
• He walked up to the bar.
• A large number of gold bars are stored at Fort Knox.
• She might not have found a mate because she sets the bar too high.
• At one time, one's religion could have been a bar to membership in some clubs.
• She was admitted to the bar a few months ago.
• The lab experiment was conducted at a pressure of 0.8 bars.
• She spent 18 months behind bars.
  

And there are words with even more meanings than bar.

People who have learned only a certain amount of a foreign language—say, French—and then go to France, may be astonished to find that words are used differently from what they are used to. This can be a case of multiple meanings of the word, or sometimes the word being used with a slang sense.

This happened to me in France. I was riding a train, and one of the others in my compartment (all French people) asked me if I had gotten my bottle of water at the boite. Well, I knew boite only in the sense of 'box'. Turns out it also means a snack bar. (Typically, you don't learn slang terms in school.)

This phenomenon of polysemy, as it's called, gives the lie to anyone who thinks that interpretation a written text (such as the Bible or the law) is simple and straightforward. How many times do you hear, "It means what it says"? If only it were that simple.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

A Little (English) Linguistic Oddity

Why is it that the smallest unit of pants (or jeans, shorts, etc.) is called a "pair"? Maybe, you might say, it's because a pair of pants has two legs. It might be like "a pair of scissors" and "a pair of pliers"; they both have two leg-like parts.

But, we speak of a pair of men's briefs—which has no legs at all.

Having come from people who were involved in the garment trade, I think I recall that in that business they might speak of "a pant."

Otherwise, it's just one of many, many little anomalies of English; and I'm pretty sure other languages have theirs, too.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

The British Are Invading--Again!

It's generally recognized that British English and American English have significant differences--mainly in pronunciation and vocabulary. Winston Churchill famously called the U.S. and Britain "two countries separated by a common language."

Of course we live in an age of instantaneous global communication. The British have been viewing our movies for decades, and an enormous volume of such exchange should serve to "level" (in the jargon of linguists) the differences. And I think that the British now are acquainted with many terms which had been Americanisms.

However, the influence can work both ways. Americans have come to use a few terms that had been mainly British in their use.

First, fridge for refrigerator. This is now so common in America that we hear it and don't give it a thought but (trust me, I can remember!) there was a time when this was used only in Britain.

Another is to go missing. News broadcasts in America seem to be full of stories about a person or a pet who has "gone missing." Now, here's the interesting part: What did we say before we used that expression? I don't remember. It's funny how that works, once a term becomes well-established, we don't even remember how we got along without it.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Richard Stein

Some Linguistic Musings

First, a couple of words of which the original meanings have been forgotten through maybe several "rounds" of meaning change:

First, jock originally meant 'penis'. Then jock became short for jockstrap, and then it came to mean an athlete through a natural association with jockstrap.

Joystick also originally meant 'penis'. The next meaning was for the control stick of an airplane, and then it came to be used for the similar controllers for video games and so forth.

Scumbag originally meant 'condom'. You can get the "bag" part of it, so guess what the scum part denoted.

Now, maybe what is another subject and not related at all.

Some diseases that people used to talk about (and which presumably doctors used to diagnose) are not heard of at all. The words have totally fallen into disuse.

Chilblains. Defined in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Ed. as "an inflammatory swelling or sore caused by exposure (as of the feet or hands) to cold."

Ague. Defined in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Ed. as "a fever (as malaria) marked by paroxysms of chills, fever, and sweating that recur at regular intervals."

La grippe or the grippe. Defined in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Ed. as "an acute febrile contagious virus disease; esp. influenza."

Now, these are all things that you would expect people would still get. People do in fact get malaria, although it is not common in the U.S. any longer; but it is in fact common in certain warmer parts of the world. Maybe there people still talk about having an ague.

As to the other two words, again you'd think you would still hear the words because people must still get those conditions; but you don't in fact hear the words--ever. I think it's a case of, if you have the word for it, you can get it. Without the word in current use, you won't get it. Sort of a mind-body issue.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Richard Stein