Hanks’s OED

Holy cow: Tom Hanks has the twenty-volume second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary on his bookshelves. As seen on Saturday Night Live tonight.

*

See it here. I know — there are only eighteen volumes visible on the shelf. But it is the OED. A screenshot, with a member of the audience asking a question:


[Click for a larger view.]

Today’s Blursday Stumper

Today is Saturday. But it’s also Blursday. I just made up that day of the week, having woken up pretty sure that today was Friday. Today is my first Blursday since my in-house life began on March 14. Feel free to share the idea of Blursday, as long as you, too, do so while staying inside.

I found today’s Newsday Blursday Stumper, by Greg Johnson, a satisfying puzzle. Plenty of difficulty and novelty, but nothing strained or overly arch. I began solving with (what I think is) a giveaway: 19-A, six letters, “’40s actress in the Inventors Hall of Fame.” I would have made more of that first answer if I hadn’t misread the clue for 1-D, five letters, “Forster contemporary.” I was thinking of Stephen Foster and drawing a blank. Oh! Susanna.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially admire:

4-D, seven letters, “Water fitness class.” You were thinking exercise? I was. But the answer made me think of Boy Scout stuff, not that I ever was a Scout.

12-D, nine letters, “Freight hauler of old.” Now there’s an uncommon answer.

14-A, ten letters, “One of 13 in an Ultimate Dunking Set.” A nice bit of misdirection, and a smart way to repurpose a familiar bit of crosswordese.

27-A, twelve letters, “Accounts receivable, e.g.” I don’t know how I saw this answer so quickly. Not in my wheelhouse.

32-A, ten letters, “Kitchen remodeling tool.” Represent!

32-D, four letters, “Woman in hysterics.” Lately, there’s one such answer in every Stumper.

40-A, three letters, “Cutting-edge Lord of the Rings feature.” Must be some magical weapon, no? No.

60-A, ten letters, “What a thrift store CD player might say.” That seems to capture the ethos of every thrift store I’ve visited.

One clue that baffles me, even after getting the answer and looking online for an explanation: 48-A, four letters, “Name that sounds ‘mos’ reasonable.’” When a search for “mos reasonable” and the name turns up nothing but crossword-answer websites and random typos (“mos reasonable rates”), something’s not right. But I can’t say that this clue is strained or overly arch, because I have no idea what it means.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

[Blursday is better than Blurday, no? I’ve gone back and forth, as you can see by comparing the post and its URL. And as I’ve discovered, other people thought of the name before I did. There is nothing new under the sun, as someone else also already thought of saying.]

“Smart,” “genius,” “very smart”

Donald Trump*, who boasted not long ago about his understanding of the coronavirus, said this afternoon that the virus is “smart,” “genius,” “very smart,” “a brilliant enemy”:

“The germ has gotten so brilliant that the antibiotic can’t keep up with it.”

Antibiotics fight bacterial infections. They are useless against viruses.

[Once again, Aaron Rupar’s Twitter helped me to make sure I had the words right.]

Reverence

HAPPY GOOD FRIDAY TO ALL!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10, 2020

You don’t have to be a believer to find this message grotesque. But notice the time-stamp as well as the words: Trump* began tweeting this morning at least three hours before this tweet, which is clearly something of an afterthought, hardly the first thing on his mind. I’ve seen that happen with other days and occasions too. Maybe someone prompts him: “Sir, . . . .”

Got logic?

The logic defies logic: the president’s press-briefing appearances endanger his bid for reelection; thus he should step away to better his chances for reelection. Hide his dishonesty, incompetence, misogyny, narcissism, racism, &c. so that he can have four more years in which to put them to use.

Ohio gets it right again

Here's why you should keep social distancing. #InThisTogetherOhio https://t.co/jU4ZAkm3Py pic.twitter.com/fjS7nrgDti

— Ohio Dept of Health (@OHdeptofhealth) April 10, 2020

Ohio gets it right

Clear and memorable:

Social distancing works. We are all #InThisTogetherOhio. https://t.co/jU4ZAkm3Py pic.twitter.com/uKJtfi4cuP

— Ohio Dept of Health (@OHdeptofhealth) April 9, 2020

“Speak the truth”

Barack Obama, yesterday, speaking to U.S. mayors on the challenge of the coronavirus:

“Speak the truth. Speak it clearly. Speak it with compassion. Speak it with empathy for what folks are going through. The biggest mistake any us can make in these situations is to misinform, particularly when we’re requiring people to make sacrifices and take actions that might not be their natural inclination.”

Advice for non-mayors as well.

Wordsmith as a verb

“I’m gonna wordsmith it.” The meaning is clear: someone is prepared to go over a piece of prose with unstinting care to get everything right. That’s what a wordsmith — “a person who works with words,” “especially : a skillful writer” — does. But is wordsmith a verb?

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the transitive verb smith, or smið — ”to make, construct, or form (a metal weapon, iron implement, etc.) by forging and hammering” — to the year 1000 or so. The word soon acquired a figurative meaning: “to create or refine, esp. as if by the work of a smith.”

The OED entry for wordsmith has the word only as a noun, with a first citation from 1873. But the dictionary adds the (undefined) variant wordsmithing, with citations from 1920 and 2006 — “not an excellent bit of wordsmithing,” “any wordsmithing and posturing.” Word Spy cites an earlier appearance, from 1899: “Small wonder that in slang every man tried his hand at word-smithing.” Wordsmithing in these three citations appears to be a gerund, a verb form functioning as a noun.

But where’s the verb? Wordnik has a Wiktionary definition of Wordsmith as a verb: “To apply craftsman-like skills to word use.” Alas, no citations. But wait: Wordnik also has an entry for wordsmithed, with citations from the Internets. From 2010: “We broke into groups, developed draft text, and then wordsmithed as a group to produce the final text.” Here’s an older (1988) non-Wordnik example of wordsmith as a verb, from Richard Feynman via Google Books:

Gradually, I realized that the way my report was written, it would require a lot of wordsmithing — and we were running out of time. Then somebody suggested that my report could go in as an appendix. That way, it wouldn’t have to be wordsmithed to fit in

— and that’s where the preview runs out.

Google’s Ngram viewer has wordsmithing first appearing in 1941; wordsmithed, in 1963. Both words rise in use in the 1960s and again beginning in the 1980s, with wordsmithing far more common than wordsmithed.

What I think I’m seeing: a noun that gives rise to a gerund that gives rise to a verb. Curious indeed.

Now I’m gonna apply craftsman-like skills to what I’ve written before posting it.

A related post
The spirit of the shokunin

[A dictionary with entries for verb forms would have made my life much easier when I studied French and Spanish.]

Proof reading

McKean’s law at work in a letter to a newspaper:

I continue to be amazed and amused at the frequency of misspellings, improper punctuation, incorrect use of words and other proof reading errors that seem to plague our print media.

Or as I used to say on pages that went out with writing assignments:

Use the computer to check spelling, but don't trust it to proof read for you. Please, don't be car less.