Dreaming of autumn and fall

[Mutts, September 22, 2018.]

I dreamed last night that I had discovered, in some large reference work, the difference between autumn and fall. It turned out that the words are not synonymous, that they name separate seasons, one of which precedes the other. But which comes first? The answer is now lost to me.

And then I saw today’s Mutts. And then, in Richard Lanham’s Style: An Anti-Textbook (2007): “No synonymity is ever exactly synonymous.”

Precognitive dreaming? Coincidence, I’d say. And a strange kind of fun. I had an earlier experience of such fun after dreaming about teaching King Lear.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Saturday Stumper, by Lester Ruff, was a challenge. It helped to know stuff — “Bart’s first words” (2-Down, nine letters). A known known. Other stuff — “Calvin Coolidge, by birth” (3-Down, nine letters) — known unknowns. O epistemology. For me, the puzzle was solvable only with a good deal of help from crossings.

Four clues that I especially liked: 1-Across, eight letters: “Probationer’s problem, perhaps.” 37-Across, ten letters: “18+ points, to librarians.” 42-Across, eight letters: “Paper that requires reporting.” And 1-Down, nine letters, a blast from TV past: “’90s diet with menu cards.” No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

As our president would write, WOW

Just WOW. From The New York Times:

The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.

Mr. Rosenstein made these suggestions in the spring of 2017 when Mr. Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director plunged the White House into turmoil. Over the ensuing days, the president divulged classified intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office, and revelations emerged that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Comey to pledge loyalty and end an investigation into a senior aide.

Word of the day: panoply

Like myriad and plethora , panoply , Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day, is a word I can live without. But gosh, is its origin surprising:

1 a : a full suit of armor
   b : ceremonial attire

2 : something forming a protective covering

3 a : a magnificent or impressive array
   b : a display of all appropriate appurtenances

Panoply comes from the Greek word panoplia, which referred to the full suit of armor worn by hoplites, heavily armed infantry soldiers of ancient Greece. Panoplia is a blend of the prefix pan-, meaning “all,” and hopla, meaning “arms” or “armor.” (As you may have guessed already, hopla is also an ancestor of hoplite.) Panoply entered the English language in the 17th century, and since then it has developed other senses which extend both the “armor” and the “full set” aspects of its original use.

In case you’re wondering: no relation to hoopla.

“Everything was upside-down”

W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn, trans. Michael Hulse (New York: New Directions, 1998).

Related reading
All OCA Sebald posts (Pinboard)

Typography cheatsheet

A typography cheatsheet, from Typewolf.

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See?

MSNBC, sheesh

Heard a few minutes ago: “As the walls close in on multiple fronts . . .”

All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

Strunk and White mattering

“Strunk & White was the first text for millions that persuaded reluctant writers that the writing craft was not an act of magic, but the applied use of both rules and tools”: Roy Peter Clark writes about “Why Strunk & White still matters (or matter) (or both).”

In 2009 Geoffrey Pullum’s Chronicle attack renewed my interest in “Strunk & White” — or The Elements of Style, a book I hadn’t thought about for many years. (My response to Pullum is one of the most widely read posts on this blog.) I remain ambivalent about The Elements: I couldn’t imagine using the book (so painfully dated) in a writing class, but I think it has greater value than its detractors allow.

Related reading
All OCA Strunk and White posts (Pinboard)

The Write Stuff

From BBC Radio 4, The Write Stuff, “the radio panel game of literary correctness.” Alas, the show is not a podcast; it plays only on radios and in browsers. If it were a podcast, you would want to listen at a higher speed. Very fast and alarmingly smart.

Thanks to OCA reader Steven for telling me about this show.

Yesterday and Today

To the journalist who found my post about Christine Blasey Ford and asked that I ”help [him] out” with a column he’s writing by providing specific examples of the epithet “that woman”:

As we used to say in elementary school, Do your own homework. Or, Keep your eyes on your own paper. Jeez.

[I imagine that someone who writes for USA Today and other newspapers might think of me as ”some blogger.”]