Words I can live without

A spontaneous list: delve, -flecked, get (as in “So-and-so gets it,” meaning that So-and-so sees things as you do), helm (as a noun or verb, unless you’re at sea, literally), limn, the planet (as in “on the planet”), tome. These words are tired. Let us allow them a rest.

Delve often becomes a slightly pompous substitute for examine, go into, or look at. But the primary meaning of delve (“reach inside a receptacle and search for something”) makes the word best reserved for figurative use that suggests a genuine search. It makes no sense to describe, for instance, a letter-writer as refusing to “delve into specifics”: if those specifics are available to the writer, no search is needed. Better to say that the letter-writer is refusing to go into specifics, and give delve a rest. The use of -flecked to form phrasal adjectives also needs a rest: I cringe when I read that a new film is “laugh-flecked.” And when told that someone is at the helm of a committee, I want to abandon ship, even if the person helming gets it.

Michiko Kakutani’s overuse of limn has created problems for the word, which seems to lend itself to misuse anyway, as when an art critic writes that lines on graph paper limn a portrait. No, they form one. Here is the portrait in question. See?

Referring to the planet is silly. The greatest tenor saxophonist on the planet is the greatest tenor saxophonist, period. (That would be Sonny Rollins, I’d say, or David Murray.) One might say greatest living. But “on the planet” will make sense only when there are saxophonists on the moon. For now, “on the planet,” like “of all time,” suggests the American penchant for grandiose statement.

As for tome, the New Oxford American Dictionary notes that use of the word is “chiefly humorous”: tome as a substitute for book sounds a bit absurd. If the novel you’re reading is “an interesting tome,” you’d better be speaking archly. My friend Aldo Carrasco and I used tome as a joke with reference to letters, some of which ran for — think of it — several pages.

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More words I can live without
That said,

[All examples are drawn from journalism or life. The definition of delve is from the New Oxford American Dictionary. Michiko Kakutani’s overuse of limn got me noticing her overuse of mess and messy, which I wrote about here, here, and here. I like extra details in brackets and hope that you do too.]

Telephone exchange names on screen: SLOane

[Click for a larger view.]

SLOane (for Sloane Square) was indeed a London exchange name, and SLOane-2965 was indeed Noël Coward’s number. The SLOane exchange makes a cameo appearance in My Week with Marilyn (dir. Simon Curtis, 2011), a terrific film that mixes comedy, desire, and sorrow in perfect proportions.

What — do you think that just because this exchange name appears in a film about Marilyn Monroe that I’m going to post a screenshot of Michelle Williams as Monroe? You do? Oh, okay. Monroe prefaces this pose (for a small crowd outside Windsor Castle) by asking Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), “Shall I be ‘her’?”


[Click for a larger view.]

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder, My Sweet : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : This Gun for Hire

This Is Coffee!

From 1961, the Coffee Brewing Institute presents This Is Coffee! (Open Culture).

My favorite line: “Perfect coffee, sending its glow into our lives around the clock.” Never no sleeping!

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Adventures in education A scheme to measure student engagement with “galvanic skin response” bracelets recalls an earlier Microsoft scheme to monitor employee metabolism.

Adventures in education

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding research into the use of “galvanic skin response” bracelets to measure student engagement in classrooms. Diane Ravitch explains why we should care — and worry.

2:19 p.m.: I just remembered a precedent for this scheme. In 2008 Microsoft filed a patent application for a system to monitor employee metabolism: “at least one of heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement, facial movements, facial expressions, and blood pressure.” Here is the application. A January 2008 OCA post preserves parts of a now-gone Times of London article about this venture: Microsoft, innovating.

8:55 p.m.: The Washington Post reports that the Gates Foundation has changed the online description of the bracelet project by removing a reference to the use of bracelets in evaluating teachers.

[I found the patent via this January 2008 post from Microsoft Watch.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, June 12, 2012.]

The joke in today’s strip would seem to be that the Flagstons have a fax machine. And they’re not ashamed to use it.

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All Hi and Lois posts (via Pinboard)

[Perhaps salaryman Flagston and his family are making a play for Japanese readers? Fifty-nine percent of Japanese households have a fax machine.]

Neologism finale

The neologism contest that began last Monday has ended. The challenge, issued by my friend Stefan Hagemann, was to invent “a word that describes a particular kind of foolish shortcut, the kind that, often in a foreseeable way, fails to save time and may result in irritation or the feeling that one is absurd and a dimwit.” Stefan judged the seventeen entries. He writes:

I’m thrilled to announce a winner for the grand (epic, really), non-annual, neologism contest, but let me first thank Michael for generously providing a venue and for his encouraging words, without which the contest could not exist. You have a wonderful way, Michael, of helping me distinguish between that which is appropriately silly and that which is merely silly. I would of course like also to thank everyone who entered a word. Forgive the contest cliché, but I had a really tough time picking a winner, so smart and clever and laugh-out-loud funny were all of the entries. Few blogs, I suspect, have such a capable, playful, and witty audience, so to borrow a line from Tom Waits, “everyone’s a winner.”

Now on to the fun stuff: I’d like to honorably mention Geo-B’s “thwartstep.” “Shitcut,” submitted by Anonymous and Sabrebutt, also deserves honorable mention (not only because the word made me laugh the hardest but mainly for that reason). And the winning entry, which blends pun with precision and so best captures the essence of a time saving effort gone horribly wrong is, envelope please, . . . Sean’s “bypasstrophe.” Sean, I found a copy of Leonard Louis Levinson’s Webster’s Unafraid Dictionary: 5000 Gag Definitions in my town’s best used-book store, and I’d like to send it to you. If you would like to e-mail me at first initial followed by last name [at] edgewood [dot] edu with a mailing address, I’d be glad to do so. Anonymous, Saberbutt, and Geo-B, I’d like to send you each something too, so please let me know where I can send it. Thanks once more to everyone who participated and to those like me who read along and marveled at so much imagination.

I’ll echo Stefan by saying thanks to everyone who took part in this endeavor. And congratulations to the winners. I look forward to seeing these neologisms make their way in the world, slowly, with hard work — no bypasstrophes, no shitcuts, no thwartsteps.

[Winners, please note that the first initial and last name in the disguised address belong to Stefan, not to me.]

Poets’ press conference

“Citing both the ageless gloom of morning and a weary sun, its astral luminescence wrapped in arid gauze, the nation’s poets told reporters this week that doubt lingers in the frail minutes of a young dawn, adding that said doubt was a heathen doubt — a father’s doubt — untouched by faith”: from a poets’ press conference.

[It’s sad that this sort of stuff is, for many, synonymous with the words “contemporary poetry.” Here’s a nice gateway to alternatives.]

Nancy meets Stanley Kubrick

[Nancy, January 5, 1944. From Ernie Bushmiller, Nancy Is Happy: Complete Dailies 1943–1945 (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2012).]

I didn’t know that Nancy Ritz did a screen test for The Shining.

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Nancy is here
No (“the greatest Nancy panel ever drawn”)

Neologism contest ends today

Word wanted. Apply within.