It's all about words . . .

Words Say the Darndest Things

By Paul Chimera

Every Sunday The Buffalo News must be filled with, what, hundreds of thousands of them? Millions, maybe?
Words. They’re like relatives; unlike friends, you can’t really pick them, but you’re pretty much stuck with them.
And we’re stuck, moreover, with some clumsy – often unwittingly funny – situations as we navigate through the morass of odd phrases and clunky clauses, idioms and idiosyncrasies along the way to making sense of our world through what we write and read.
Certain conventions are hard to break when it comes to the terms we use. Recently, while tarrying in my kitchen, my sister and mother referred to tin foil. Wait, I insisted. That’s old-fashioned. It’s aluminum foil now, and I defy you to find a box of the stuff that says “tin foil” on it.
Sitting down, the discussion led to davenport. That’s what I heard growing up in my house. Especially since ours was white, and shoes defiantly left on while playing couch potato on the davenport meant a prompt rebuke. Now there’s a prefix that puzzles: “re.” We re-shuffle, we re-unite, we re-invent ourselves. But do we “buke” a second time?
A wordsmith friend of mine delights in the odd couple, flammable and inflammable. Don’t they mean the same thing? Yet sensitive and insensitive surely don’t. What a crazy language we’ve got.
I’ve actually come up with two very common words that mean the exact opposite – yet can be used to mean exactly the same thing! Don’t believe me? Check it out:

See if you can do better next time.
See if you can’t do better next time.

Can, and the contraction for cannot. Opposites? Um, not always.
This reminds me of the pesky “it’s and “its” conundrum. If I had a chicken wing for every time I see those words misused, I could open an Anchor Bar franchise. It’s is, of course, a contraction for “it is.” Its, by contrast, is a personal possessive pronoun, as in "The dog chased its tail.” No apostrophe needed.
The confusion comes in because normally possession requires an apostrophe, as in, “The dog’s tail was long.” But not when it comes to pronouns like its, or for that matter, hers and ours and theirs.
But you get a gold star if you can answer this question: what else does “it’s” mean? How about when it’s used this way: It’s been fun! Now it means “it has.”
Told you our language is weird.
Did you notice I used the word “tarrying” earlier? There’s a bunch of words that sound like people’s names, sometimes regrettably. Consider the sound of a very common name when one must answer nature’s call and go to the “John.” Or to the “Lou,” thanks to our British friends (of course, they spell honour with a “u”, so what do they know?).
A “Jim” is where you play dodge ball, while we sing a “Carol,” “Bob” for apples, “Mary” our spouse, and even – this is reaching way back on history’s dance floor – do the “Freddy,” for Pete’s sake! (There are naughtier ones, such as “Mary Jane,” but I’m not here to Philisbuster).
These strange relatives, these peculiar words that populate our language, must give those learning English as a second language the challenge of a lifetime (which is a euphemism for “constant headache!” See section on euphemisms later in this article). Consider, for instance, how many words are spelled exactly the same but have entirely different meanings.
We swim in a pool; pool our resources; join a car pool; and notice that someone’s trousers are pooled around his ankles (don’t peek, lest you reach the peak of voyeurism).
Some of my favorite wordgasms (I just made that one up) are ones that don’t need to be there at all. In journalism school, beginning reporters learn never to write “completely destroyed.” How can anything that is destroyed be partially destroyed? It’s either destroyed, or damaged, but not completely destroyed.
The next time you hear about an offer to receive a “free gift,” ask yourself: if it’s a gift, isn’t it free by definition? And saying something is “very unique” suggests there are levels of uniqueness. There aren’t. If something’s unique, it’s one of a kind. If there were two, they wouldn’t be unique.
There’s even some multi-nationalism in this war of words. Our neighbors to the north report that someone is “in hospital,” omitting the word “the”. Yet that sounds awkward and just plain wrong to Americans.
By the same token, though, we say that our child is “in school” – not in “the” school. Hey, maybe the Canadians have it right after all.
If they do, a lot of TV newscasters – ostensibly the bastions of “proper pronunciation” – clearly don’t. If I had a dollar for every “perspective” I’ve heard them say – when it should have been “prospective” – I could get a second Anchor Bar franchise. (HINT: the root word of prospective is prospect. So, if someone is a good prospect for the job, he or she is a prospective candidate).
Perspective, meanwhile, means your view of the situation – as in “You’re looking at that from an interesting perspective.”
Notice I said “he or she” in the preceding paragraph. Before it became politically correct, not to mention sensible, to be gender-neutral when it comes to these masculine and feminine pronouns, “he” was used exclusively: Every single person had his book turned to page 24.
But now we must write “his or her” or “her or his” or “his/her.” I’ve even seen the painfully clumsy: s/he when referring to she or he. (HINT: think plural. Instead of each person had “his or her…” try, All the students had their books turned to page 24.)
If all these individual words weren’t trouble enough, along come those menacing oxy-morons and effusive euphemisms (try to say that five times fast!). You know the classic oxy-morons: military intelligence and jumbo shrimp come to mind.
But euphemisms are my favorite. That’s where you try to soften the blow, as it were, in an effort to say something in a more innocuous manner. Thus, a military document might refer to an aircraft as having “impacted with the ground prematurely.” You and I might say it crashed (I don’t mean to pick on the military – really).
I’ve seen ads hawking “TVs with non-multi-color capabilities” (a.k.a., black & white), and of course cars that are “pre-owned” (sounds so much kinder than “used”).
Oh, how we could go on. “Adverse” and “averse” are constantly misused, as in this goof: I am not adverse to having you stay over. It should, of course, be “averse” (just think of the word “aversion,” as in I have an aversion to people who overstay their welcome). In fact, sometimes I have an adverse reaction to it.
But not all is wicked in Wordville. Think of some of the new words that have joined the family in recent times. It was only about six years ago when we welcomed (with trepidation) Y2K into our vocabulary – an alphanumeric combo that now has a distinct, if dubious, reputation. And consider “blog,” which only months ago meant nothing to us, but now is as ubiquitous as, well, chicken wings in Buffalo.
A “blog” connects (clumsily) the word “Web” and “log,” forming an entirely new word that essentially means an online diary.
Hey, there’s a thought: I ought to create my own blog. News readers hungering for more wild wordplay could go nuts. Of course, you’d run into some relatives, but mostly you’d be among friends.

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Paul Chimera is an Amherst-based writer and part-time instructor at Daemen College. His biggest pet peeve is when people say, “I could care less.” They really mean to convey that they couldn’t care less.