Heighth, Weighth, & Other Measuremenths

While correcting a student for what I have always thought to be a mispronunciation of "Height", my principal chose to correct me in front of the students. The student was saying "hith" and I told her to say "hit" (with a long I sound and no th sound at the end) while he claimed that she was correct too. I researched this quickly, consulting 3 dictionaries, and he continues to disagree. HELP! You're the guru and I'm confident you'll have the definitive answer. His pronunciation seems to be obsolete at best.

Here's the word from the master, Bryan A. Garner, Dictionary of Modern Usage:
"Height has a distinct /t/ sound at the end. To pronounce or write this word as if it were heighth is less than fully literate. . . . The mistake may occur for any of several reasons: (1) other words conveying measurement end in -th . . . (3) [it was once standard] in Southern England."

You’re right; your principal's wrong (although Garner's "less than fully literate" is a more painful pronouncement). However, the greater sin is his having corrected you in front of your students. That wasn't nithe.

The Flu or Like the Flu?

Flu symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, headache, muscle aches, and extreme fatigue.

Then what are “flu-like symptoms”? Well, they would include a fever, but not really; a sore throat, but not really, a headache, but not really, etc.

The day Rudy Giuliani had his jet turn around so he could check into the most local hospital with his “flu-like symptoms,” I had a migraine accompanied by symptoms of the flu. So did thousands of other people across the country. It never occurred to me to call a doctor or check in to a hospital or try to turn a plane around. I called in sick, put an icepack on my head, and waited for the pain to go away.

Okay, we all know there’s no real equality. Planes turn around for the rich, the popular, and ex-mayors of major cities who happen to be running for president; and hospitals have special entrance doors for the same people, which means that hospitals are not unlike night clubs.

I guess the difference between a flu symptom and a flu-like symptom lies in the diagnosis; that is, if the patient indeed has the flu, they’re flu symptoms, but if it turns out that the patient has a different illness, the symptoms are flu-like. That means, Giuliani didn’t have the flu. He had something far more exotic or dire or dull.

He’s not my problem, though. He would be my problem if he became President of the USA, but that’s unlikely. Giuliani has too many Napoleonic qualities; too Bushy. Oh, dear; and then there’s the wife.

Once again, I have to ask why news reporters all used the same phrase “flu-like symptoms” instead of hunting down specifics. I flipped channels; I checked the online newspapers; I listened to the radio. Every reporter used the same phrase: “flu-like symptoms” (although the NY Times used the two terms interchangeably).

Come on; we all know that “flu-like” is a euphemism for “hangover” just as “exhaustion” is a euphemistic way of saying "overdose." We need a new crop of reporters; and, since that’s not going to happen, how about a less mysterious set of euphemisms?

Close Encounters of the News Guy Kind

The other day, I heard the same term in reference to a near accident involving two planes on a runway—"close encounter." Yes, “two planes had a close encounter on the runway.” Indeed, I heard the expression at least fifty times in the space of thirty minutes on almost every news show.

And, of course, I had to wonder if the close encounter was of an extraterrestrial nature. It wasn't. So, I ran to my personal bible—the Oxford English Dictionary—to check on the term. Sure enough, a close encounter is defined as "a supposed encounter with a UFO or extraterrestrial." And a close encounter of the first, second, etc., kind involves "increasing degrees of complexity and apparent exposure of the witness to aliens."

So, what happened on the runway should have been a "close call," a "near miss" or, more accurately, a "near collision.” But, I guess the copywriters decided it was time dip into the science-fiction genre, you know, to give the copy a bit of pizzazz. So, planes that almost come into contact on the runway or in the air are now "close encounters." It wouldn't have mattered if only one newscaster had used the term, but every single one of them on every single news program—that's just too much to bear.

I do pick on the news media—especially broadcast news—because it's so proud of its vapidity. I must, however, admit that I’m almost impressed by how rapidly slanted or incorrect usage whips through the pipelines. There must be lexicon spies out there. “Ooooh, that’s cool. ‘Close encounter.’ Hey, let’s use that one, too. It’s so, well, fresh.”

Actor Wanted--Blond, Buxom, Bawdy

Suddenly, women who act for a living are calling themselves “actors,” an appellation that distresses me for some of the same reasons the word “guy” when referring to women distresses me.

Is this what that women’s movement during the 1970s was all about? So, we could give up taking men’s names in marriage, but snag them for use in other areas of our lives?

Once, a young man—obviously not too sure of himself—flew into a fit of apoplexy when I announced that “gals”—not “guys”—was now the generic term for men and women. I suppose if we decided that “actress” was now the generic term for men and women who act for a living, more than one young man would sputter and spit with rage.

Yes, I know, the term “actor” has been adopted by women who take their thespian skills seriously and want the world to look upon them as professionals worthy of their salaries. They regard the –ss suffix as demeaning because of its history. After all, it used to mean “wife of,” and so I quite understand the dilemma they face in associating themselves with such a tag. I simply don’t understand why women always have to assume a masculine label.

Indeed, in terms of stage and screen, the lexical pickings are slim. I guess “player” isn’t a good alternative, since it has been taken over by former rogues and Don Juans. “Performer” is out, since a performer is usually a singer or dancer. “Thespian” is too evocative of high-school theater clubs; “trouper” is way too reminiscent of troubadours and traveling; “role player” is too loaded with lying and psychology. How about “theatrician”? No. Sounds too much like electrician.

If we can’t come up with a more appropriate word than “actor” for women performers, how about calling everyone who acts on stage and screen an “actoresse”? (We’ll keep the –or in actor to make it easier for men to accept the transition to gender-designation freedom.) “Esse” means “nature” or “essence.” So, an actoresse—pronounced ak-tor-es-seh), is a person who is the very essence of acting.

From or For or In Bed: He's Still Indicted

Last week, in reporting the same tired story over and over and over again, television reporters on every single English-language news channel repeated the phrase “he was indicted from his hospital bed” at least a thousand times within the space of an hour.

The phrase bothered me for three reasons.

First, its very repetition was a cruel aural punishment. Do television reporters meet on a weekly basis at their teeth-polishing salons and decide on a catchphrase of the week?

Second, the person who was “indicted” from his hospital bed was in a mental institution. Why would he have been in bed?

Third, I’m not so sure one can be indicted from anywhere. After all, one is never from court.

So I went on a little etymological hunt.

When one is indicted, one is arraigned, or accused. So, if one is, in fact, lying in a hospital bed when the judge and lawyers enter the room, they will proceed to indict him in his hospital bed.

But, that sounds a little strange, because it might suggest that everyone got into bed with him for the indictment. So, to safeguard against such misinterpretation, television writers changed the active indict to a passive to be indicted: “Mr. Alleged Perpetrator was indicted in his hospital bed.”

What we never find out is what Mr. A.P. was indicted for. But, I guess there’s definite ambiguity in “Mr. Alleged Perpetrator was indicted for murder in his hospital bed.”

Did he murder someone in his hospital bed?

So some bright copywriter or copyeditor came up with the idea of using a different preposition—from—to act as a clarifier, or dis-ambiguizer. However, because we never would say, “Mr. Alleged Perpetrator was indicted for murder from court,” it doesn’t work.

It’s a lexical mess, and had the newscasters not repeated the phrase so many times on one day, I probably wouldn’t have considered the matter, well, indictable. They might have agreed on something like: “Mr. Alleged Perpetrator was in his hospital bed when prosecutors indicted him for murder.”

But, they didn’t.

I still don’t understand, though, why he was in bed in the first place. Was it the middle of the night?

Hypercorrections and Whomever

If you’re not sure whether to use who or whom and their sisters whoever or whomever, look for the subject of the clause. Take a look at the following sentences.

1. Until they change their policy, I will continue to write nasty letters to whoever is in charge of the company.
   
   Until they change their policy, / I will continue to write nasty letters to / whoever is in charge of the company.
   
   
2. Until they change their policy, I will continue to write nasty letters to whomever I please.
   
   Until they change their policy, / I will continue to write nasty letters to / whomever I please.
   

In the first sentence, “whoever” is the subject of the clause. Why? Because “whoever” is “in charge.” Specifically, “whoever” is the subject of the linking verb, "is."

In the second sentence, “whomever” isn’t doing anything other than receiving my action of writing.

Try googling “whomever” and you’ll find an abundance of writers who heartily wish to sound oh so correct, yet fall into the cruel embrace of that most insidious of grammatical monsters, hypercorrectness.

Or, if you prefer clarity with a touch of humor, buy a copy of the Princeton Review’s Grammar Smart, one of my favorite books of all time. I’d love to meet whoever wrote this un-dried-out, un-fuddy-duddy guide to maneuvering the grammar maze.

Its target audience?

The book is for whoever shuts down at the mere mention of grammar, whoever learned to hate grammar in high school—which makes you ancient, for its been a long time since grammar fell victim to intellectual downsizing—and whoever thinks grammar has all the appeal of a visit to a dentist who doesn’t believe in Novocain or happy gas.

Television News: All the News That’s Fit to Slant

Yesterday’s television headline and scroll bar blurb: "Mother Dies in Airport Jail Cell. "

It turns out that this unfortunate “mother” was the daughter-in-law of someone famous. In addition, according to news reports, she was mentally ill and had had a history of substance intoxication. I have no idea if the 45-year-old woman had ever worked; nor do I know the ages of her children or if she lived with them or why she was traveling alone in her condition.

I know that she was a mother. And, mother is a word packed with explosives.

So, naturally, I wondered: Had this woman had been a man who died under similar conditions, would the headlines and scroll bars have read: “Father Dies in Airport Jail Cell?”

Of course not. A man would have been a man or a profession.

Okay, perhaps motherhood was this woman’s fulltime occupation. But, if you throw yourself into the embrace of a substance, isn’t that substance your new fulltime occupation?

Here are a few more factual possibilities:

“Drug Addict Dies in Airport Jail.”
“Recuperating Drug Addict Dies in Airport Jail.”
“Mentally Ill Woman Dies in Airport Jail.”
“Forty-Five-Year-Old Woman Dies in Airport Jail.”
“Angry Woman Dies in Airport Jail.”
Or
“Woman Dies in Airport Jail.”

Alright Is All Right by Me

Fighting about all right and alright? Kiss and make up. I’m here to help.

A huffy and angry Warriner in English Composition and Grammar (1988) warns, “There is no such word as alright.”

Harrumph. So there. It doesn’t exist.

Yeah, but, everyone’s writing it that way.

Let’s check another source, this one from 1998. My rock Gardener (who has never once thanked me for all the accolades I throw in his direction) proclaims: “Alright for all right has never been accepted as standard in AmE. Still, the one-word spelling may be coming into acceptance in BrE.”

Oh, dear. The master might lose his adoring student (that’s me) over this matter. So, off I run to the Oxford English Dictionary and, sure enough, the Brits are not at all put off by alright. However, they do direct the seeker as follows: “Adjective, adverb & noun. See all right.”

Oxford adds, “The spelling alright is often considered erroneous, but cf. analogous already, although, etc.”

And so I do.

I think it’s all right to allow alright to fly free. I know this is the right decision, because MS Word’s grammar check doesn’t put a cautionary red line under the word. Mind you, you're hearing this from a prescriptivist. (MS Word doesn't approve the word prescriptivist.)

Elderly Is a Bowed Back

On this morning’s news, I was shocked and dismayed to hear that a 62-year-old “elderly woman” had been attacked in her own home!

Well, get over it, Joan. Mugging is a way of life among druggies, and non-druggies haven’t gotten fed up enough to fight back.

Yes, but if I get mugged after my next birthday next April, a news writer at my local television station will feel free to spit out the same headline: “Elderly Woman Mugged!”

Me? Elderly?

Help!

While Gardener believes that “[T]his adjective is a euphemism for aged or old” (Dictionary of Modern Usage, 242), I maintain that it suggests a certain degree of physical disintegration that bows the back, shrinks the skull, and elongates the ears. None of this has happened to me yet, so naturally I get a little shook up when I’m about to be labeled elderly. What can I do? Avoid getting mugged?

I wonder if the adjective would have applied if that unfortunate mugging victim had made television news with a more positive occurrence—say, winning the lottery or knocking out an opponent in a wrestling match. In that case, they’d probably call her feisty.

But, when I think about a few well known women who are around my age, I can’t imagine hearing them called “elderly”: Cher, Dolly Parton, Liza Minnelli, Jessye Norman. How about Jane Fonda and Martha Stewart? They’re even older. And, let’s not forget the oldest loud woman in the world, Joan Rivers.

So, elderly seems to be reserved for women without fame, money, or position who suffer from some sort of physical malady. Well, so far in life, I've managed to get by without meeting any of these requirements. Whew. Now I don't have to worry about being mugged.

Oprah, CNN: A Formerly Badly Picture of I & Lucy

Oprah, dearest, what's to be done about those lexical and grammatical flubs you toss so carelessly into the television airwaves? That’s not “a picture of Nelson Mandela and I”; it’s a picture of Nelson Mandela and me.

And, please don’t feel “badly” [sic] about messing up nominatives and objectives or adjectives and adverbs. Sure, the mess ups are badly done, but only about two people in the entire English-speaking world care. However, we two people feel bad, because people listen to you and, alas, copy you as well.

Oprah's not the only public person to commit grammatical misdemeanors. CNN commentators, who really should know better, have nothing on her. Last week, a CNN anchor—Jim Something—said that Fred Thompson had "formerly" announced that he was running for president. Formerly!

Worse, he referred to my beautiful Luciano Pavarotti as Lucy-ano Pavarotti! How could he have done that? In fact, he did it twice; then, someone must have kicked him under the table, for he suddenly began to pronounce his name correctly.

I'm telling you, television people do dreadful dark evils to English.