She'll Be Funeralized: What?

This morning, yet another TV reporter sent shivers down my spine when he announced that the victim of a murder would "be funeralized." He quickly stepped on his own toe and stammered, "Sh- she'll be... A funeral will take place tomorrow."

"Oh, no," I exclaimed. "Funeralize?"

Lazy me immediately checked Dictionary.com. Okay, yes, "funeralize" is an old word--1600's--meaning to conduct a funeral. But, can it be used in the passive?

I hoped not. Why not? After all, one can be eulogized, one can be buried, interred, entombed, lowered into the ground. One is dead. The only non-passive action of a dead person is to decompose.

Okay, fine, I'll get up and check my OE:

Yup. According to my bible, the OED, to funeralize means to conduct a funeral; it also means to make sad or melancholy.

Oh, you naughty TV reporters. It's not your fault. But, now that you've landed the job, could you please do your homework? Your language skills just funeralizes the hell out of me.

Cyndi Lauper Feels Bad, and That's Correct

Donald Trump, you're wrong. Cyndi Lauper, you're right.

It's "I feel bad."

That's because "feel" is a linking, or connecting, verb. As its name indicates, a linking verb connects the subject with the adjective.

"I feel badly" means I'm very bad at feeling things. I run my fingers across the class and do a terrible job of it.

"I feel bad" means just that--I'm upset, sad, disappointed.

But, don't feel bad; lots of people get this one wrong.

Word Reference: I Recommend

I found a wonderful website--no, it's not this one--for questions and discussions regarding grammar and usage, not just in English, but in Italian, French, German, Chinese, etc. . Some of the participants have lots to teach and are happy to teach it, to correct your errors and assumptions--and just as many are just happy to learn from them or shrug their shoulders at them.

Do check it out: http://forum.wordreference.com/

Turnip Missing

Reporters, you've just got to stop announcing that people "turn up missing." It's too trendy, too lazy. Not only that, but no one seems to know where the term came from or why you keep using it. Well, well, aren't we in luck, because I have a guess.

Could it be that the term comes to us in its present disturbingly awkward form from Latinate speakers of American English who are used to the more natural (to them), "it is missing to me" or "they are missing to me"? 

"Mi manchi" (It) or "Tu me manques" (Fr): I miss you, literally, you are missing to me.

"Que te falta?" (Sp) What do you need? Literally, "What is missing to you?"

Add that to the perfectly acceptable English or Latinate "to find oneself" (in a hole or at a loss or lost) and it's an easy slide into the linguistic uglies.

But, I'm just guessing.

"Brainstorm" Deemed Non-PC

In the "you can't make this stuff up" department, I came across this item here:


UK councils: no Latin lovers
By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer Jill Lawless, Associated Press Writer – Mon Nov 3, 3:13 pm ET

LONDON – It's a bona fide scandal.

Britain's Latin and Greek aficionados are outraged at a decision by some local councils to veto the use of Latin words and phrases — including bona fide, ad lib, et cetera and e.g. — in official documents.

The councils say Latin is no longer widely understood. But classicists say axing Latin phrases is an attack on the foundations of English — the linguistic equivalent of "ethnic cleansing."
"Think of the number of words from Latin that are now part of the English language: alias, alibi, exit, terminus," said Peter Jones, a retired professor of classics at the University of Newcastle and founder of Friends of Classics. "Are they going to cut out those words?"

"The English language is a hybrid animal that has adopted any number of words and phrases from other languages which have become a part of English," he added. "To deny the hybrid nature of the English language is almost like ethnic cleansing of English."

The council in Bournemouth, a town of 170,000 on England's south coast, has a "plain language" policy that lists 19 Latin words and phrases to be avoided, and suggests replacements. The council recommends "improvised" instead of ad hoc, and "genuine" for bona fide.
Salisbury City Council in southern England also advises staff to avoid ad hoc and et cetera, as well as French phrases like "in lieu" and "fait accompli."

British local authorities have been under pressure from their umbrella body, the Local Government Association, and others to cut their use of jargon and confusing language.
The Plain English Campaign, which has been fighting official jargon for three decades, said a majority of councils had adopted some form of plain-speaking guidelines, although few appear to have gone as far as Bournemouth in eliminating Latin.

The campaign said it supported the council's policy.

"We are talking about public documents where people need to read, understand and take action that may affect their lives," spokeswoman Marie Clair said Monday. "This is information that everybody needs to know about, regardless of their level of education."

Latin and ancient Greek were once considered the cornerstones of a first-class education. But the languages are no longer widely taught in Britain. Friends of Classics says Latin is taught in only 15 percent of state schools — a modest increase from a few years ago.

But Latin's backers say thousands of common English words have Latin roots, and argue the replacement phrases can be even more difficult to understand. To some ears "existing condition" is less harmonious than "status quo," and "the other way round" less snappy than "vice versa."
No one from the Bournemouth council was willing to speak to The Associated Press on Monday, but a spokeswoman said the language guidelines have been in effect for two years without attracting notice.

Despite the policy, the town retains a Latin motto on its crest: "Pulchritudo et salubritas" — beauty and health.

Linguistic controversies are nothing new in Britain, cradle of the English language, where people have strong opinions on what constitutes proper usage.

In recent years officials have moved to avoid language that gives offense to ethnic minorities, disabled people and other groups.

Predictably, some feel the drive has gone too far. Many were bemused earlier this year when it was reported that a town council had banned the word "brainstorm" because it might offend people with epilepsy, a condition that involves periodic electrical storms inside the brain. Tunbridge Wells council advised using "thought showers" instead.

London's Harrow Council says banning Latin is a step too far.

"I would have thought banning phrases which have been part of the texture of our language for centuries is frankly the least of a town hall's problems when it comes to communicating with the public," said Paul Osborn, the council's head of communications

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.

Her Is Fighting With He?

Is it possible? Could it be? I can’t absolutely confirm this, but, unless mine ears doth lie, I heard CNN news reporter Paul Steinhauser say in reference to Hillary Clinton, “Her and Barack Obama are fighting it out.” Tsk-tsk. (Really perplexing is the fact that Microsoft’s grammar checker doesn’t find fault with this construction.)

Horrified, I began to flick through the channels looking for grammar relief. But, I was in for one linguistic dismay after another.

1. From a morning newscaster: “It is now 6:15, or somethin’ like that.”
2. From another newscaster: “Heath Leger and Michelle Williams have split up.” (Not so much a grammar problem, but who are these people and why is this news?)
3. From yet another newsperson: “What a beach bummer for people in New Jersey.”
4. From someone selling a product: “I’m a very picky eater. All the things I was eating normal.” ( Microsoft’s grammar checker doesn’t find fault with this construction either.)
5. From another salesperson: “This is incredible, amazing, wonderful. This just blows you away.”
   

I hear a superheroine named "Word Girl” is now buzzing through the airwaves of children’s entertainment. Good luck, kid. Could you fly by CNN and give them a few pointers?

By the way, Microsoft Word’s Spellchecker approves of the word “superhero,” but draws a red line of warning under the word “superheroine."

Express Yourself: Erase Your Face

It’s true that we can convince people that black is white or hot is cold or fake is real. Lawyers do it for a living and get paid very well indeed for having developed this skill. “The video tape clearly shows that my client robbed the convenience store in self-defense,” claims the lawyer without cracking a smile. Even little kids—perhaps future lawyers or advertising executives—know how to manipulate language in order to transfer fact into the cloudy realm of reasonable doubt: “The dish got broke.” “The ball went into the window.”

All it takes is a little twisting of lexicon and syntax as well as an unwavering belief in one’s own version of what is real, and people do start to wonder if their heretofore grasp of reality is perhaps a little off-kilter. That’s why reality and illusion are always bumping into each other in courtrooms and advertising copy.

The latest lexical trick comes from the makers of Botox with their new advertising slogan, “Express yourself.”

In essence, they are telling us that they will stick needles in our faces to eradicate all those nasty facial expressions we’ve developed over the years, plump out our thought lines, polish away our life experiences, and turn us into expressionless clones of one another.

Sure, at first glance, you might not agree that wiping out your face’s ability to move is a way of expressing yourself. But, that’s because you’ve only heard it once or twice. After a few months of advertising, you’ll begin to understand why it’s impossible to express yourself with all those facial expressions getting in the way.

Alleged Perps & Crimes

Hypercorrection occurs when speakers pockmark a language with misapplied rules of grammar, pronunciation, semantics, syntax, etc. They’re just trying to do the right thing, and it gets them all twisted up. That’s why you’ll hear people say things such as, “He wants to speak to you and I [sic]” or “I pledge allegiance … to the Republic for Richard Stands” [really sic, but true] or “I thank whomever is responsible” [super sic].

Political hypercorrection is an extension of linguistic hypercorrection, and I hear it almost daily on my trusty local and national news shows. (I don’t hear it on international news programs, because broadcast companies in the USA don’t offer these. No one exists but us.) And, the hypercorrect word of the week is “alleged.”

Because we live in a society that (allegedly) defends the innocence of those accused of crimes until they are found guilty in a court of law—even if the crime is recorded on camera—we are morally and legally obligated to refer to the accused as “alleged” perpetrators; hence, we have alleged murderers, alleged robbers, alleged child molesters, and so on.

Lately, however, I’ve noticed newscasters referring to alleged crimes. “The alleged attack took place on Saturday night.” “The man was arrested for the alleged robbery.” And the implication-charged, “The alleged rape...”

Well, I protest. There’s no moral or legal reason to call a crime “alleged,” for that tag accuses the victim—or am I supposed to say alleged victim?—of lying, dramatizing, or using the legal system for dishonest purposes.

I often make fun of newscasters for their grammatical blunders, their giggling, their repetition of “you guys,” but it’s not all their fault, since they’re hired for the cut of their highlighted hair and impossibly white teeth, not for their writing or journalistic skills. News stations are in the business of money making, so I can’t really fault the producers.

However, I do fault the writers, who should know better. If there’s a body wrapped in duct tape decomposing under a tarp, it’s not an alleged murder. If there’s a video recording of a convenience-store robbery, it’s not an alleged robbery. It really happened, people.

Yo, television writers! Here’s a project for you. Every day, just once a day, and you can have weekends off, open any grammar book at random and let your finger drop to the page. Then read one or two sentences about the structure of your language. If you do this five days a week for a year, just think of the possibilities!

It’s not politically incorrect for you to create clear copy so that newscasters can speak on a higher than elementary-school level.

Oh, dear. Perhaps it is. (I gotta get with it.)

Literally Malapropary

John Gardner’s Dictionary of Modern Usage lists a series of “vogue words” (pg.682) that include expressions such as bottom line and lifestyle and worst-case scenario” In fact, he could have extended the list to include a few hundred additional lexical trendyisms. I mean if we dialogue in any given environment, we’d all interface in a meaningful way, right? It’s a no-brainer, a win-win situation whose parameters would resonate with a synergy that would definitely impact our cutting-edge society in a constructive way.

Darn! He didn’t include literally on the list. Oh, well. I’ll just fill that one in here. And, now, fresh from the medium of television, some literally unliteral lexical malapropisms:

When I heard the news, it literally blew my mind. (And yet she continues to sit up and speak.)

It’s a literal can of worms. (In Washington? Okay, maybe it is.)

Looking out over the desert, it’s a literal ocean of sand. (Well, I guess this could pass as a metaphor; but, I say an ocean should remain an ocean and a desert should remain a desert.)

The crowd was silent, literally crying, “Foul!” (Some trick.)

He’s so awesome, I was like literally dying. (And then what happened?)

“There’s a pool of blood under the tarp literally covering the body.” (Those tarps are always so literal.)

The audience literally walked out of the auditorium. (How would you suggest that they walk out?)

Why don't I avoid regular television programming? (Literally speaking, of course.)

I Sanction That: Or Do I?

A friend of mine resents the confounding ambiguity of the word “sanction.”

“Well, just avoid using the word,” I suggest. No, that’s not reasonable. He wants to find the guilty party who started this mess.

So, I promise to do a little research on the matter. All the word-history websites offer the same explanation, verbatim, and without references, so I won’t repeat it here. In my own words, this is the sad little story.

Let’s start with our lexical stepmother and a very kind one at that—Latin. “Sanction” comes from the Latin sancio (sacire sanxi sanctum), meaning “to consecrate or make hallow by a religious act” (Cassell’s Latin Dictionary). According to The Free Dictionary online, the first use of “sanction” appears in the 1500s, but try as I might, I couldn’t find the actual quotation. However, it was used in reference to “law,” or “decree.”

Evidently, during the 100 years or so that followed, the word did a little twisting and turning and came to refer to “the penalty enacted to cause one to obey a law or decree” (cf the Free Dictionary, which gives no references, so who knows how true this is).

Since we get most of our lexicon—that is, our classy lexicon, our big words—directly from French rather than indirectly from Latin, I went hunting on the Web for current French usage and discovered a conference titled “Sanctionner sans punir” (to sanction without punishment), which means the French use “sanction” to mean “to prohibit. An article in a French journal is titled “Il faut sanctionner le négationnisme.” Again, the word is used to mean “prohibit.”

I skimmed numerous French-language blogs in which "sanction" was synonymous with "prohibit" and was about to close the book on the matter when ambiguity showed its tragicomic face in a reference to Robespierre, which translates as follows: “Robespierre never sanctioned the French Revolution.”

Well, did he or didn’t he? I need a good historian to answer that one. As one of its leaders, he certainly wasn’t against it, but since he first profited by it and then lost his head to it, I don’t know whether he neglected to prohibit it or neglected to give it his okay. Alas. So the French have the same problem. So do the Italians with “sanzione.” Sere can we lay the blame?

Well, we all know what happens when lawyers get their claws into language. They spin it and twirl it and create all sorts of knots that leave the rest of us in a state of confusion too much to bear. So, we give up and let the lawyers have their way with us and with our language. My theory is that sanction, originally a clear little noun to mean a law sanctified by the church or some religious order, became clouded after it was turned into a verb by all those fancy sycophants who hang around government buildings and make their living playing with language in order to protect their guilty clients from evil truth—lawyers. And, since we can’t beat them at this game, my advice stands: simply refuse to use the word.

The touch of irony here is that my friend has no problem using the expression “you guys” when he’s talking to groups of men and women. I always have to ask him if he’s talking to the women as well as to the men. And he thinks I go too far and should “get a life,” a remark I consider unsanctionable.