Spelling in the news

In Fresno, California, three men posing as police officers misspelled the word sheriff on their costumes. The error, though, does not appear to be what led to their arrest.

The scheme — posing as law enforcement and raiding the residences of marijuana growers — makes me wonder if these fellows took their cue from The Wire’s trickster-god Omar Little. Just a thought.

Related reading
All OCA spelling posts (Pinboard)

Speed-cops on patrol

Another Mencken footnote:

In July, 1932 (News of the World , July 24), the Assistant Bishop of Guildford, Dr. Cyril Golding-Bird, appeared before the Farnham (Surrey) magistrates on a charge of dangerous driving. The policeman who arrested him testified that, on being overhauled, he demanded “Are you a speed-cop ?” His Lordship, evidently in fear that the use of an Americanism would prejudice the bench against him, stoutly declared that he ”was not sufficiently colloquial” to have used it. But the magistrates, taking a serious view of the matter, fined him £10 and costs and suspended his driving license for three months.

H. L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, 4th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936).

Also from The American Language
The American v. the Englishman : B.V.D. : English American English : “[N]o faculty so weak as the English faculty” : Playing policy : “There are words enough already” : The -thon , dancing and walking : The verb to contact

Craft vogue

On Weekend Edition Sunday this morning: “now the city is working on crafting a pot-club ordinance.”

When everything from poems to pot to munchies is crafted, it’s time to say vogue word and move on. The verb to craft here accomplishes nothing that to create or to develop or to draft or to work on would accomplish. The work of writing an ordinance implies a degree of care and skill.

Words I can live without
Artisan , artisanal : Bluesy , craft , &c. : Delve , -flecked , &c. : Expressed that : Pedagogy : That said : Three words never to use in a poem

[Google returns 500,000 results for craft and ordinance minus beer. With beer : 939,000 results. Crafted munchies? Yes, really.]

Domestic comedy

[Coffee. ]

“It’s really good.”

“I know it’s good. It has [reading ] ‘smooth, sweet caramel notes’ and a ‘refreshing citrus-like finish.’”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

A clever c(l)ue

The Newsday Saturday Stumper is a wonderful crossword, harder on average, I think, than the Saturday New York Times puzzle. Here from today’s Stumper is a beautifully tricky clue. 61-Across, eight letters: “Cue for the tenor, perhaps.” No spoilers: the answer is in the comments.

Today’s Stumper is by Brad Wilber, the co-constructor of a puzzle whose TORME left me more than slightly exasperated a while back. (I still suspect though that the inapt clue for that answer was Will Shortz’s work.)

A related post
Newsday ’s Saturday Stumper

“Floss, Floss, Floss!”

It is August in Biarritz. Vladimir is ten. Colette is nine.


Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (1966).

Very Proustian, this interlude at the beach.

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

Force of Evil

Force of Evil (dir. Abraham Polonsky, 1948) stars John Garfield as an attorney involved in a scheme to take over the numbers (policy) rackets in New York City. Martin Scorsese, who introduces the film on DVD, thinks of it as a neglected noir masterpiece. I’m not sure I agree: the scheme and the romantic subplot are not exactly convincing. But George Barnes’s cinematography is aces. And the film has something for everyone, or at least for me. Click any image for a larger view.


[A Phi Beta Kappa key.]


[A locked drawer. Holding what?]


[A private line.]


[A Dixon Ticonderoga.]


[A Chemex coffeemaker. That’s Beatrice Pearson with Garfield. She worked mainly in the theater and appeared in just two films.]


[A pocket notebook. A “bank” is a numbers operation. Check.]


[A telephone booth, as seen from a lunch counter.]


[The same telephone booth and Beatrice Pearson. That’s her white glove above.]


[A notebook in a key case. (Huh?) Left , right , left , right : the combination for a safe.]


[A bakery, open late.]


[Mr. Hooper, moonlighting. This is the second time I’ve seen Will Lee as a bit player.]


[More Ticonderogas!]

Related reading
More Ticonderogas: Bells Are Ringing : Harry Truman : Lassie : The Dick Van Dyke Show : The House on 92nd Street

More notebook sightings: Angels with Dirty Faces : Cat People : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dragnet : Extras : Foreign Correspondent : Home Town Story : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The Lodger : Murder at the Vanities : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : T-Men : Union Station : The Woman in the Window

Word of the day: guarantor

I went online to make a co-pay for my yearly physical and found a form that asked for "guarantor's name." Were they asking about my HMO? No. After seeing, a few lines later, a request for the guarantor's birthdate, I could guess that the guarantor was me.

A guarantor is “one that gives a guaranty” or “one that guarantees.” And a guaranty is “an undertaking to answer for the payment of a debt or the performance of a duty of another in case of the other's default or miscarriage.”

Perhaps guarantor is a fit word for one who makes a co-pay. Yes, I have to pay, and I’m good for it. But this form’s language is unnecessarily obscure. What’s wrong with patient ?

The “gutticles of the percha”

Mr. Cummings was Vladimir Nabokov’s drawing master:


Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (1966).

Webster’s Second defines gutta-percha :

A substance resembling rubber but containing more resin, from the latex of several Malaysian trees of the genera Payena and Palaquium . It is nearly white to brown, hard and rather elastic, softens on heating, and can be vulcanized. It is used esp. as an electric insulator and in temporary fillings in teeth.

The word derives from the Malay. According to the Second : “gëtah gum + përcha the tree producing it.”

I cannot think of gutta-percha without thinking of James Joyce’s “The Dead”:

—Goloshes, Julia! exclaimed her sister. Goodness me, don’t you know what goloshes are? You wear them over your  . . . over your boots, Gretta, isn’t it?

—Yes, said Mrs Conroy. Guttapercha things. We both have a pair now. Gabriel says everyone wears them on the continent.

—O, on the continent, murmured Aunt Julia, nodding her head slowly.

Now when I think of gutta-percha, I’ll think of Speak, Memory, too.

Related reading, via Pinboard
All OCA Nabokov posts
Other words, other works of lit: Apoplexy, avatar, bandbox, heifer, sanguine, sempiternal : Artificer : Expiate : Ineluctable : Iridescent : Magnifico : Opusculum

[Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary gives a different etymology: “gĕtah sap, latex + pĕrcha scrap, rag.” The Oxford English Dictionary agrees with Webster’s Second (and Third ). Gutta owes something to the Latin gutta drop, also the source of the English word gutter .]

Undergrads and creative writing

From an episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge, “Writing for a Living.” The writer and editor Chad Harbach is talking about the explosion of graduate and undergraduate creative-writing programs. He calls undergrads “the bottom of the pyramid, if you will,” and goes on to describe the University of Virginia undergrads he taught while working on his MFA:

“Some of them were there because they really wanted to do this thing, and some of them had just heard that creative-writing classes were the easiest classes you could possibly take.” [Laughter .]

N.B.: Harbach does not dispute what those students believed.

Pyramid (as in scheme ) is a metaphor often applied to creative-writing programs. David Foster Wallace made the point, minus the metaphor, in “Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young” (1988):

Creative Writing Programs, while claiming in all good faith to train professional writers, in reality train more teachers of Creative Writing .

Who must of course have students.

[Harbach is the editor of MFA vs NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction (2014). A 2010 piece in Slate gives a shorter version of his argument: “MFA vs. NYC.”]