Health, Heart, Brexiting, and Begging the Question in a Post-Truth America

Business continues to translate into busy-ness (did I mention that I was promoted to managing editor at The Saturday Evening Post?), and, for better or worse, blogging here lands pretty low on my to-do list. But that doesn't mean I'm not writing! Here are some things for you to look at over at Copyediting.com:

Happy Dictionary Day 2016!

Noah Webster, considered the Father of the American Dictionary, was born on October 16, 1758. That day is now marked as National Dictionary Day.

Oh the Horripilation!

Halloween 2010 by Armando Salum, Veracruz, via Wikipedia

As the scary clown population rises, Halloween nears, and the election gets creepier, journalists must surely be looking for some variety in how they describe the eeriness that seems to be pervading our daily lives.

I'm here to help — or rather, I was last week, when I published "Words to Make Your Hair Stand on End" at Copyediting.com. It's chock full of words you can use the next time you'd kill for a good synonym for goose bumps.

And I'm using kill metaphorically, of course. 

And Now, a Few Words from Our Presidential Candidates

Today at Copyediting.com, I wrote about four words used during Monday's presidential debate that sent people to Merriam-Webster's for clarification. But what really has the masses talking (by talking I mean tweeting, and by masses I mean four or five people) is one of the scariest images I've ever used in a post. Here it is:

Roald Dahl and the OED

This week at Copyediting.com, I wrote about the recent update announcement from the Oxford English Dictionary and its honoring of Roald Dahl's linguistic legacy on his hundredth birthday.

The OED Honors Roald Dahl

Last week, the Oxford English Dictionary honored children's
author Roald Dahl in its quarterly update.

I'm rather excited to see scrumdiddlyumptious appear in a dictionary, though I assume it will be some time before Word's spell-checker will recognize it. Guess I'll have to add it myself, because I plan on using it often.

Guiltless Filler

I would feel guiltier about not posting here for almost three months if I hadn't been so busy with writing and editing projects that, you know, pay. Here, why don't you read some of them:

5 Pairs of Uncommon Confusable Words
The internet houses a plethora of “Commonly Confused Words” lists — Google returns 1.15 million hits for that phrase. Such common confusions are child’s play for experienced editors. No, we get tripped up by the less commonly used but easily confused words.

Neither and Nor, Together and Apart
Breaking up the correlative conjunction pair neither…nor is somehow a bit trickier than separating the parts of other correlative pairs. Using neither and nor without their correlative mates, though, can throw some people for a loop.

Sand, Sun, and Summertime Vocabulary
Ah, summertime: bright sun, warm beaches, cool surf, and daydreams of actually seeing any of these things while we huddle over our computers working our wordy craft.
To mark the start of this estival period and our dreams of sandy shores, here is a small collection of beach-related vocabulary.

But Can I Start a Book Review with "But"?
My review of the new book by the Chicago University Press editors, But Can I Start a Sentence with "But"?

The Funnest Column
Should you use more fun and most fun or funner and funnest? (Answer: Yes.)

The Ultimate E: One Final Letter Can Make All the Difference
Pairs of words that differ in spelling only by the presence or absence of a final letter e, but that single letter can make all the difference. Copy editors and proofreaders alike should take care around these words.

A Historic Column
Without a doubt, this year’s presidential election will be historic. It’ll also be historical, eventually. And that can’t be said about most things. Whether you’re writing about current politics or past outrages, understanding the difference between historic and historical can mean the  difference between “this happened” and “THIS HAPPENED!!!

A Plural Problem in the Animal World
Do you know the plural of octopus, platypus, and rhinoceros? Do you really?

I have some short fiction I've been saving up, too. I'll post some of that here, too. And hopefully it won't take me three more months.

Headline Shatters Expectations

I don't know about you, but when I hear the word shatter, I think of flying glass. I think of movie superheroes throwing nameless villains through plate glass windows, or white-hatted gunslingers throwing black-hatted bandits through . . . plate glass windows.

I don't know much about glass. Just that I enjoy watching costumed figures flying through it, causing it to shatter, hundreds of tiny glass stars flying through the air, drawing blood, and tinkling to the ground.

It was because my mind attaches this image to the word shatter that this headline from NewYork.com caught me by surprise.

If you haven't heard the news, Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton was nominated for 16 Tony awards last week, a new record. The old record, held jointly by Billy Elliott and The Producers, was 15 nominations.

Hamilton beat the record by 1 nomination. Put another way, Hamilton broke the previous record by the smallest increment possible. Not exactly an explosive event, if you ask me. Not "shattering."

Imagine this word used in a headline about another discipline:

Danica Patrick Shatters Speed Record by .0001 Seconds

or

'Jaws' Chestnut Shatters Hot Dog Eating Record by Half a Weiner

Words mean things, even when used metaphorically.

A more accurate headline might have been "'Hamilton' One-Ups 'Billy Elliott' and 'The Producers.'" It'd be better SEO, too.

The ACES Spelling Bee

The first day of the American Copy Editors Society national conference is over. We were all given a lot of good food for thought and good food for digestion (thanks, Portland!). After the sessions were over for the day, many of us attended a raucous adult spelling bee, possibly the only spelling bee in which spellers sipped beer between words.

This year, except for the first round, the word lists were themed for each round, which made the bee more interesting as we tried to guess what the next spelling word would be based on the theme.

So, for those interested, here is the word list from the 2016 ACES spelling bee. Words in bold are the ones that eliminated contestants. The words that I misspelled, sitting in the audience with my laptop, are marked with an asterisk.

• ambiguity
• veterinarian
• rudimentary
• chastisement
• boondoggle
• bankruptcy
• provocative
• artesian
• venison
• tertiary
• subterfuge
• tantamount
• nostalgia
• limousine
• antithesis
• papyrus
• diacritic
• monograph
• virgule 
• caret
• biblioclast
• fleuron 
• palimpsest
• enclitic
• opusculum
• brevet 

  

  Portland, Oregon. An underwhelming view from an eleventh-floor hotel room.

• majuscule
• imprimatur
• colophon
• incunabulum
• Connecticuter *
• Michigander
• Louisianian
• Mississippian
• Delawarian
• Tennessean
• Utahan
• Wyomingite
• Wisconsinite
• Missourian
• bialy*
• lutefisk*
• geoduck
• knish 
• chitterlings 
• burgoo*
• cioppino*
• ptarmigan
• beryl
• loblolly
• sequoia
• palmetto
• saguaro
• chickadee
• tourmaline*
• pendanus
• subrident*
• sortition
• demiglâce
• sybaritic
• nockerl*
• cardiomegaly

This year's winner was Kate Karp, who runs her own adult spelling bee in Long Beach, California. Congratulations, Kate!

Neglect and Excuses and ACES 2016

I have been neglectful of this blog lately. Just how neglectful wasn’t apparent until I pulled open the blog this morning. Has it really been almost a month since I posted?

Fortunately, I have a great excuse: I’ve been very busy. Freelance work has been rolling steadily in, and when combined with my nine-to-five (well, eight-to-six) job, I haven’t had much time to write for myself. Or to do much of anything, really. (But I have continued to post at Copyediting.com.)

And there's other good news, for me anyway. I am now entering what has consistently been the high point of my year: the annual conference of the American Copy Editors Society. Three days in Portland, Oregon, with more than five hundred editors, lexicographers, linguists, and logophiles.

These are my people.

This is my fourth ACES conference. Last year, I came in third place in the spelling bee fundraiser. This year, I plan to win. 

Which probably means you’ll see a post this weekend all about the word that knocked me out of the competition.

---UPDATE: I was surprised, shocked, and above all dismayed to discover, when I checked in at the conference, that all the spots in the spelling bee had already been taken. Hmph.---

 

Regardless, I’m sure I’ll have a lot of interesting things to share once this conference is over. 

But if you just can’t wait, follow the hashtag #ACES2016 on Twitter for the next three days to see what we’re learning, what we’re eating, and which horrible jokes make the rounds.

And for those of you who are attending ACES 2016, especially if we’ve never met before, come find me!

New Word Thursday: jactancy

From the Latin jacere, to throw — the same source from which we get both eject and ejaculate — the noun jactancy means bragging or boasting.

This is one of those words that has more forms than it needs. Other attested noun forms are jactance, jactation, and jactitation, the last two of which can also refer to a shaking or tossing of the body, in a medical sense. One who boasts or spasms (or, I suppose, both) jactitates.

Happy Bissextus!

"Be Careful, Clara, that's a fine Specimen!" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In ancient Roman times, the leap day was inserted after the sixth day before the calendas of March, essentially creating a second sixth day.

Hence bis-, two or double, plus sextus, sixth.

Happy Bissextus!

To make more sense of this, see what I wrote about it last Wednesday.

Also, an old tradition says that in a bissextile year (and only in a bissextile year), women can propose to men, and men are not allowed to refuse.

Although proposing might be a bit much, a woman asking a single guy* on a date would be a nice way to mark the tradition. Just saying.

* Like me.

A New Old Word for the Political Season: bomfog

Yesterday, in honor of Presidents' Day but two days late, I published "Presidential Coinages" at Copyediting.com. With a lot of help from Paul Dickson's book Words from the White House: Words and Phrases Coined or Popularized by America's Presidents, I highlighted eleven words that had been coined by U.S. presidents.

A New Look for Copyediting.com

Copyediting.com is wearing some nice new threads these days. Go to the website now and ooh and aah at the slick new look. (What's even better than how it looks for readers is how it works for contributors.)

Eleven More Homophones You Didn't Know Existed

Back in December, I published one of my more popular posts, "Ten Homophones You Didn't Know Existed." There are certainly more than ten. And because I enjoy learning wonderful new ways to spell words I'm so used to pronouncing, I figured, why stop?

So here, then, are eleven more homophones you didn't know existed.

Silence of the Limns

There's this word limn that isn't exactly widely used, or even widely known, but somehow I've seen it used at least three times in the last week. If I believed in signs, I would take that as a sign that I should write about it.

And I'm going to write about it anyway.

Writing Prompt: Another Childhood Memory Reclaimed

I won't claim to understand in the slightest the whole bronies thing — adult men who follow My Little Ponies with more energy and spending money than its target audience of little girls. Now coloring books for adults are landing on best-seller lists. (I understand this more — the almost meditative act of filling in white space and the urge to create.)

That leaves me wondering, what's next?

Deadlines

The accepted story is that, in certain Confederate prison camps during the American Civil War, a line would be drawn around the prisoners' area. POWs who dared to pass beyond that line would risk being shot dead. Thus, the line came to be called the dead line.

Deadlines these days are moments in time, not in space.

A deadline is also the reason this post appears today and not yesterday, when I normally write about a word. Yesterday — well, all week, really — I was working against a deadline on a particularly frustrating and difficult freelance copy editing project. I finished it late last night but, truth be told, I did take a small step across that deadline.

So today, I am thankful not only that such an aggravating project is out of my hands, but that I haven't had me kneecaps shot off, either.

New Word Thursday: apricity

The Midwest — my personal environs — experienced some of its first truly winter-like weather of the season this week, including snow, ice, school delays, and idiot drivers sliding off the road. One bright spark is that I was exposed to a pleasant word I didn't know: apricity.*

From the Latin word aprīcus, "warmed by the sun," apricity is a noun meaning "the warmth of the sun in winter." It's the type of hyper-specific word for a poetic concept that I just love to discover. It just sounds like a word that belongs in a Shakespearean sonnet.

Apricity led me on an exploration of other little-used winter-weather words, like psychrophile, chionoblepsia, and frigorific. I wrote about these an a gaggle of others yesterday on Copyediting.com in a post called "Underused Words for Winter Weather." Check it out.

Logophilius Central

* Thanks, Mom.

New Word Thursday: pelf

Stemming from Old French and related to the word pilfer, pelf is filthy lucre or ill-gotten riches. I found it the other day when someone worked it into a limerick.

Naturally, I couldn't wait to try that myself:

A Christian man, godly and selfless,
Who was powerful, pious, and pelfless,
Lost the fans on his side
On the day that he tried
To make all of our Christmases elfless.

New Year, New Job, New Goals

I'm not a big fan of new year's resolutions. My go-to resolution, if people ask, is simply this: to not break my new year's resolution. I'm not sure whether that qualifies as tautological, paradoxical, or both, which is why I like it.

But this year, some things came together to make the start of the 2016 a true new beginning for me.