Word of the day: sledgehammer

Walking through the hardware store, I wondered: why sledgehammer? Does it have something to do with sledding? A mighty hammer used to free a sled stuck in ice?

The Oxford English Dictionary traces sledge to the Old English slecg, equivalent to the Middle Dutch and Dutch slegge and related to similar words in Old Norse and other languages. The surprise comes at the end of the etymology: “The stem *slagj- is derived from that of slay.” So a sledgehammer is a killing hammer? No, not really: the obsolete slay in question means “to smite, strike, or beat,” and sledgehammer or sledge, as the dictionary points out, refers “especially” to a blacksmith’s hammer.

Sledge, as I vaguely remembered, does also mean “sled” or “sleigh.” But that sledge derives from the Middle Dutch sleedse — no smiting there, just a sled. And sleigh comes from the Dutch slee, a contracted form of slede. No smiting there either.

The word hammer comes from the Old English hamor, hamer, hǫmer, equivalent to similar words in a number of Germanic languages. Says the OED, “The Norse sense ‘crag’, and possible relationship to Slavic kamy, Russian kameni stone, have suggested that the word originally meant ‘stone weapon.’” Primitive, man, primitive.

[Whatever we were looking for in the hardware store, it wasn’t a sledgehammer. I think it was microfiber cloths.]

“Only appearance”

A complete story:


Franz Kafka, “The Trees,” in The Complete Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (New York: Schocken, 1971).

Related reading
All OCA Kafka posts (Pinboard)

“Mad”

A Daily News editorial is saying it plainly:

The President of the United States is profoundly unstable. He is mad. He is, by any honest layman’s definition, mentally unwell and viciously lashing out.

[What prompted this editorial: what the paper calls Donald Trump’s “Wednesday Twitter spasm.”]

“Bon Appétit!”

Here’s a third piece of Lassie fan-fiction. The first two: “The ’Clipse” and “The Poet.” You can click on each page for a slightly larger view. Enjoy.














Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

And four more pieces of Lassie fan-fiction
“The ’Clipse”: “The Poet” (with Robert Frost) : “On the Road” (with Tod and Buz from Route 66) : “The Case of the Purloined Prairie” (with Perry Mason and friends)

[“You are alone in the kitchen”: inspired by the failed flip of a potato pancake. Julia Child did indeed prefer white pepper to black.]

Washington Phillips, Grammy nominee

Dust-to-Digital’s Washington Phillips And His Manzarene Dreams has been nominated in two Grammy categories: Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes. I wrote a review of this extraordinary album last year.

The NSA’s Grammar Geek

Now available at governmentattic.org: advice columns on grammar and usage from the National Security Agency’s Grammar Geek(s). “Gabby” took over as the Geek after “Gigi” retired. Both names are pseudonyms.

A choice bit from Gigi:

Oh! If I had a dollar for every time I have heard a news anchor solemnly state that such and such “went down” today, I would have enough money for several new grammar books — all of which I would throw at the TV.

How marvelous that the NSA can spy on millions of Americans and still keep its sense of humor.

How to improve writing (no. 73)

Today we have rearranging of parts. From a New York Times opinion piece, a sentence that needs improvement:

Harding, the former Moscow bureau chief of The Guardian, has been reporting on shady characters like Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was indicted last month, long before Trump announced his candidacy.

I see two problems:

“Last month, long before Trump announced his candidacy” makes for a momentary muddle. Place “long before Trump announced his candidacy” at the beginning of the sentence, and you can see the second problem more clearly:

Long before Trump announced his candidacy, Harding, the former Moscow bureau chief of The Guardian, has been reporting on shady characters like Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was indicted last month.

See the problem? It’s a matter of tense: Long before x did y, Harding has been reporting. I suspect that the original arrangement of the sentence’s parts allowed the writer to miss this now-obvious error. Once more:

Long before Trump announced his candidacy, Harding, the former Moscow bureau chief of The Guardian, was reporting on shady characters like Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was indicted last month.

I’d say bring back the copy desk, but I don’t think copy editors edit opinion pieces. (Anyone know?)

Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 73 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. I’ve added italics to the name of The Guardian in the Times sentence.]

Dog science

The narrator (a dog) has explained that there are two kinds of food: food from the ground and food from above. Science has determined that there are two ways of procuring food: “the scratching and watering of the ground” and “the auxiliary perfecting processes of incantation, dance, and song.” But if the perfecting processes work to give the ground sufficient potency to attract food from the air, why do dogs look upward and not at the ground when they sing, dance, and chant?


Franz Kafka, “Investigations of a Dog,” in The Complete Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (New York: Schocken, 1971).

Related reading
All OCA Kafka posts (Pinboard)

[Watering the ground? It seems to mean just what you think it means.]

Chock full o’Coffee

“Most of the people in New York — we’ve been there forever and they get it, but if you’re in Omaha and suddenly we’re on the shelf and you see the brand for the first time, there’s confusion”: The hard work of assuring shoppers that Chock full o’Nuts coffee is just coffee — no nuts.

Chock full o’Nuts is our household’s everyday coffee. Pistachios are our everyday nuts.

Related posts
A 1964 guidebook description : Chock full o’Nuts reverie : Chock fill o’Nuts in a movie : Chock full o’Nuts lunch hour, 1955 : Chock full o’Nuts skyline with the WTC

An interview with Annie Atkins

From the podcast 99% Invisible: “Hero Props: Graphic Design in Film and Television,” an interview with the graphic designer Annie Atkins, maker of graphic props for film. Atkins was the lead graphic designer for The Grand Budapest Hotel. Yes, the Mendl’s box.