The Artisanal Grammarian

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The Artisanal Grammarian

Handcrafted guidance for playing with words The Artisanal Grammarian Manifesto

I love words. I've made my living with words for more than four decades. A. Q. Yes.

I think putting words together should be fun. OK, I realize that not everyone is going to share the delight I derive from parallel construction. Perhaps I should even abandon my dream that, someday, everyone in the English-speaking world will appreciate the joys of suspensive hyphenation. But at least I can pass along some of the things I've learned about how to communicate well, gently suggest ho

w to avoid being grammatically incorrect, and maybe even explain why so many things about the English language are so weird. Perhaps the following FAQ (frequently asked questions) and FGA (frequently given answers) will help explain:

Q. Why “artisanal”? Because all the cool stuff today is artisanal. But how can grammar be artisanal? Because grammar is cool, and all the cool stuff today is artisanal. OK, now you’re just begging the question. I’m impressed that you know the original usage of “begging the question.” So I’ll let you in on the secret: It’s a joke. Well, partly a joke. So many grammarians — even some of my friends — come across as overbearing grammar snobs, pouncing on the slightest error and insisting that everyone in the world must STOP YOUR STUPIDITY RIGHT THIS MINUTE OR ELSE! That’s no way to win friends and influence people’s word usage. So The Artisanal Grammarian offers kinder, gentler advice about grammar, usage, punctuation, syntax, and style — handcrafted to fit the needs of today’s busy grammar consumers. The name is supposed to be ironically pompous (in the “verbal irony” sense of irony). Get it? Uh, sure. Handcrafted and pompous. In a verbally ironic way. Whatever you say. Thank you.

07/12/2018

Just How Dead Is a Doornail?

In the first paragraph of "A Christmas Carol," Charles Dickens avers: "Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail."

He then takes a delightful detour, wondering "what there is particularly dead about a door-nail." He muses, "I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it."

"Dead as a door-nail" (or, as we spell it today, "doornail") indeed goes back through many generations of ancestors. It entered the language in the mid-1300s, shortly after "door-nail" itself.

The phrase, with its forceful alliteration and loping rhythm, dances trippingly on the tongue, to borrow an expression from Shakespeare — who used "dead as a doornail" in Henry VI, Part 2.

But there really is something particularly dead about a doornail. In building a door, one drives a long nail through two or more layers of wood. One then clinches it, bending the protruding end flat so the nail can't work loose.

Such a misshapen nail would be "dead," as in not reusable.

The Artisanal Grammarian hopes you get to experience "A Christmas Carol" this season. For Dickens' original version, click https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol_(Dickens,_1843).
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Photo of dead doornail: Max Pixel (www.maxpixel.net/Texture-Old-Olg-Rusty-Door-Nail-Detail-Iron-1303410), CC0 public domain

29/11/2018

Shoo That Shoe Outta Here!

Poor Jeff Sessions. As U.S. attorney general, he endured public Twitter-cism from his boss, President Donald Trump. Earlier this month, at the president's command, he reluctantly resigned. Now, a rumored run for his old U.S. Senate seat may fall afoul of footwear.

At least, that seems to be the suggestion of this online headline: "Jeff Sessions May Not be Shoe-In for His Former Senate Seat."

The Artisanal Grammarian has no idea what a shoe-in might be. A sneaker convention, perhaps?

The headline writer meant "shoo-in," a term with a surprisingly disreputable history. It began as late-1800s racetrack slang for a horse that won by, ahem, prior arrangement.

The exclamation "shoo!" goes back to the 1400s. It means "go! get out of here!" In a rigged horse race, the other ostensible contenders would figuratively shoo the designated victor ahead of them across the finish line.

The term eventually outran its unsavory connotations and came to describe any easy winner. It also had its identity stolen by "shoe-in." Though that misspelling seems increasingly common, it has not won a mention in any mainstream dictionary. Yet.
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An Artisanal Announcement

The Artisanal Grammarian is coming to your inbox! If you invite him, that is.
Starting Monday, December 3, he will offer his linguistic musings in an e-newsletter every Monday through Friday. You can begin every weekday with 200 or so enlightening, amusing, and always artisanal words about words. A subscription costs just $10 a year. (One post a week will also appear here on Facebook, free.)

To learn more or to sign up, visit www.theartisanalgrammarian.com. If you do it now, you can become a charter subscriber. Won't that be exciting?
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Official U.S. Senate portrait of Jeff Sessions via Wikimedia Commons

20/10/2017

What It Really Means: Harass

It used to be a lot worse to be harassed. When “harass” entered the English language in the 1610s, it meant “to lay waste to or devastate.” Within a decade, the meaning had softened to the current “to vex by repeated attacks” or “to annoy persistently.”

We got the word by lopping off the last two letters of the French “harasser,” which meant “to tire out” (still a definition the Merriam-Webster dictionaries recognize) or “to vex.” “Harasser” derived from another French word, “harer,” meaning “to provoke” or “to set a dog on.”

People argue over what constitutes being harassed, but everybody agrees on what "harass" means. How it’s pronounced is a different story. In “The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations,” Charles Harrington Elster states: “Harass, hands down, wins the Most Hotly Debated Pronunciation in the Language award.”

Is it “HARE-ess,” like the name Harris? It was originally, and that’s still preferred in British English (and in America by Webster's New World dictionaries).

By the mid-1800s, some English speakers had begun accenting the second syllable. Ever since, “huh-RASS” has been gaining. Merriam-Webster now lists that pronunciation as preferred.

No matter how hotly someone may debate the issue with you, either is correct.
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U.S. Air Force attack dog training photo by Josh Plueger, via Wikimedia Commons

05/09/2017

That’s Why We Call It a Pigskin? Oh, Yuck

We’ve called a football a pigskin since at least 1894, long after it had anything to do with a pig.

Even proto-footballs from pre–Civil War days, when the game was taking shape as an amalgam of soccer, rugby, and mob violence, were seldom if ever pigskins.

But some were pig bladders.

Ball sports had used inflated animal bladders for centuries. They were roundish, durableish, and easily inflatable if you didn’t think about what you were blowing into.

Occasionally, players encased the bladder in leather — maybe, sometimes, pigskin. But few bothered. Why devote extra time and resources to what was still a child’s game?

In 1844, Charles Goodyear patented the process of vulcanizing rubber. Within 20 years, rubber replaced animal bladders as the ball material of choice. Cowhide casings to enhance durability became more common.

Footballs became oval (technically, they're prolate spheroids) accidentally, as round(ish) balls deflated during games and nobody took the time to fully reinflate them.

The introduction of the forward pass in 1906 solidified the preference for a more throwable shape. Rule changes in the 1930s made the ball longer and slimmer, again for better throwing.

Today, National Football League balls consist of a polyurethane bladder encased in steerhide leather, mostly from Iowa, Kansas, or Nebraska. No pigs are harmed at any point.
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Blowing up the bladder as part of a traditional pig slaughter in Italy, early 1980s; photo by Pasquale Paolo Cardo from Finale Ligure (Savona), Italy (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons

04/09/2017

Why Do We Call a Football Field a Gridiron?

We call a football field a gridiron because it used to look like one.

Until the early 20th century, football fields resembled hashtags run amok. Chalk lines crisscrossed every five yards in a checkerboard pattern. The design reminded fans of the metal gridirons used for cooking over fire.

Starting in 1882, teams had to advance the ball at least five yards within three downs. On a free kick, opponents had to stay 10 yards from the kicker. Those five-yard boxes helped players and referees keep track of such distances and accurately place the ball after each play.

But, frankly, they didn't help that much. By the early 20th century, grounds crews had eliminated the lines running up and down the field, leaving only today’s familiar cross-field lines.

End zones appeared in 1912, thanks to the creation of the forward pass. Before then, scoring a touchdown required crossing the end line. But a pass caught beyond the end line would be out of bounds. So end zones were added, with the main field shortened from 110 to 100 yards to make room.

The hash marks — the short lines marking each yard between the cross-field lines — debuted during the first National Football League playoff game in 1932.

Next on The Artisanal Grammarian's schedule: The repulsive reason for calling a football a pigskin. Stay tuned.
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Archbold Stadium, Syracuse University, 1910; postcard from Onondaga County Public Library collection, Syracuse, New York, via Wikimedia Commons

01/09/2017

What It Really Means: Deluge

“Deluge” has two primary meanings, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionaries: “an overflowing of the land by water” and “a drenching rain.” Hurricane Harvey brought both.

The word comes from the Latin “diluvium,” meaning “a flood.” The French turned it into “deluge,” just as they turned “abbreviare” into “abregier” (in English, “abridge”) and “assuavidare” into “assuager” (in English, “assuage”). The Artisanal Grammarian has no idea why speakers of French like to change the “vi” sound to “dg,” but evidently they do.

The word “antediluvian” also derives from “diluvium.” More directly, it comes from Thomas Browne, an English physician and author. He coined it and hundreds of other words, including “electricity” “suicide,” and “veterinarian." You can seek them out — if you possess the stamina — lurking deep within the dense thickets of words that make up his sentences.

“Ante” means “before,” so we can guess that “antediluvian” might mean “before a flood.” In this case, Browne had specifically in mind the great flood of the Bible, which Noah rode out in his ark. The word quickly came to refer also to anything particularly ancient or outmoded.

The Artisanal Grammarian wishes the best of postdiluvian luck to all those affected by Hurricane Harvey.
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Sir Thomas Browne and Lady Dorothy Brown, his wife, painted by Joan Carlile sometime before 1680, via Wikimedia Commons

20/08/2017

How Is an Eclipse Like the Number 11?

What do “eclipse,” “delinquent,” “derelict,” and “eleven” have in common?

They all can trace their roots back at least 4,500 years to “leikw,” a Proto-Indo-European word meaning “to leave.” Proto-Indo-European, or PIE, is the common ancestor to most European and many Asian languages, last spoken about 2500 BC.

You can see immediately how “to leave” relates to most of those words. In a solar eclipse, the sun leaves our sight. Something or someone who is delinquent leaves the practice of adhering to the rules and customs of the greater group. Something or someone who is derelict is left behind or leaves his or her duties behind.

But “eleven”?

That goes back to a Proto-Germanic way of counting. Anything number over 10 was described in terms of how many units were left after subtracting 10. So 11 was “one left” after subtracting 10. Twelve was “two left.”

Eleven and twelve are the only remnants in our language of that counting system. So why haven’t we converted to “oneteen” and “twoteen” to match the rest of the numbers between 10 and 20? Or to “ten-one” and “ten-two” for consistency with “twenty-one,” etc.?

Because the English language is weird.
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Photo of 1999 solar eclipse by Oregon State University (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons

18/08/2017

What It Really Means: N**i

“N**i,” as applied to Germany’s infamous Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party), began as an insult.

At the beginning of the 20th century, quite a few Austrian men bore the name “Ignatz.” During World War I, some Germans shortened that into a not especially flattering nickname for troops from Austria-Hungary: “N**i.” After the war, that became a German colloquialism for a foolish or clumsy person — a rube.

The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei began in 1918, adopted that name in 1920, and came under the control of Adolf Hi**er in 1921. Opponents, especially in southern Germany, soon applied the "N**i" nickname to the party and its members.

It echoed “sozi,” an earlier abbreviation of “sozialistische” (“socialist”). About 1930, “N**i” emerged as the preferred English-language noun and adjective for the party and its members.

But only outside Germany. The N**is did not call themselves N**is. They preferred “Nationalsozialisten” (“National Socialists”) or simply “Parteigenosse/Parteigenossin” (“party member,” in masculine and feminine forms). Only after World War II did the nickname come into common use in Germany itself.
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Photo of memorial at Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria by Gianmaria Visconti (CC BY-SA 2.5), via Wikimedia Commons

18/08/2017

Word Triplets Tuesday: Tenure, Tenor, Tenner

Last November, just after the presidential election (seems eons ago, doesn’t it?), Gregg Popovich bemoaned “the disgusting tenure and tone” of the campaign.

Popovich coaches the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball Association (brilliantly) and often speaks out on politics and social justice.

He didn’t quite pick the right word. He meant “tenor” (“general meaning”), not “tenure” (“the act of holding a position, an office, or property”).

If you go back far enough — several thousand years — both words do have the same root: “ten,” which meant “to stretch” in Proto-Indo-European, from which most European and many Asian languages sprang.

“Tenor,” with the “general meaning” definition, came to English about 1300 from an Old French word of the same spelling. Within 100 years, it also referred to a high male voice, because that’s what usually carried the melody (where the “general meaning or sense” of a song resided).

“Tenure,” also from Old French, appeared about 1400 and originally denoted the holding of property. The definition expanded to include the holding of a position or status by 1590.

And then there’s “tenner,” originally (starting about 1845) British slang for a 10-pound note. It's now also occasional American slang for a 10-dollar bill. The Artisanal Grammarian is not aware of any references to a “disgusting tenner.”
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Gregg Popovich speaking at the White House with his team in January 2015; official White House photo, via Wikimedia Commons

17/08/2017

Wednesday Writing Tip: Say Hi (and Bye) to ‘Eclipse Glasses’

Some terms stand the test of time. Shakespeare invented dozens of still-familiar idioms. Or at least he got them into print first.

We can thank him for “faint-hearted,” “fancy free,” “break the ice,” “cold comfort,” “dead as a doornail,” “good riddance,” “kill with kindness,” “love is blind,” “one fell swoop,” and even, “Knock, knock! Who’s there?”

Some terms burst into prominence but quickly disappear, like a total solar eclipse.

So enjoy “eclipse glasses” while you can, because it (and the devices the term describes) will disappear after Monday.

And when you’re writing, keep in mind the ephemerality of your language. Current slang may convey hipness (or whatever the current slang word is for “hipness”), but its use-by date comes quickly. This post, for example, will seem obsolete by Tuesday — unlike The Artisanal Grammarian’s other posts, which of course are destined for the ages.

However, save those glasses to watch the next total solar eclipse on July 2, 2019. If you’ll be in Chile, Argentina, or the southern Pacific Ocean.

Bonus: The Artisanal Grammarian’s current favorite knock-knock joke:

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Doctor.

Doctor Who?

Yes.
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Eclipse glasses, by Eclipse Glasses (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

16/08/2017

Word Twins Tuesday: Flier or Flyer?

Would you call someone soaring through the air a flier or a flyer?

What about an advertising circular? Or a speculative financial investment?

Frankly, you could go with whichever spelling you prefer and tell anyone who objects to take a flying (not fliing) leap. Writers of English have used both variants more or less interchangeably for centuries.

The Artisanal Grammarian has found a few references — but only a few — that call “flier” the American spelling and “flyer” the British spelling.

The Merriam-Webster dictionaries consider “flier” to be more common for things that fly or risky investments, but “flyer” for those handbills that get shoved into your hand or stuck under your windshield wiper.

The Associated Press Stylebook caused a stir among copy editors in May when it switched from “flier” to “flyer” as its preferred spelling for everything except taking a risk.

So the consensus of The Artisanal Grammarian’s dictionaries and style guides is to take a flier on a risky venture but otherwise to be a flyer.

Also, the venerable athletic shoes are PF Flyers. And the iconic brand of little red wagons is definitely the Radio Flyer.
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A street-legal art car in the form of a giant Radio Flyer red wagon at the 2007 Fremont Fair in Seattle; photo by Joe Mabel (CC-BY-SA-3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

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