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October 26, 2024 - April 21, 2025
If everyone stopped using it, I bet that no one would miss it.
The only thing worse than the ungodly “incentivize” is its satanic little sibling, “incent.”
IRONY Funniness is not irony. Coincidence is not irony. Weirdness is not irony. Rain on your wedding day is not irony. Irony is irony. I once copyedited a work in which the author, if he used the phrase “deliciously ironic” once, used it a dozen times. The problem was, nothing he ever said was either delicious or ironic. Which, as a colleague pointed out, was deliciously ironic.
Brundlefly,
Plus—and don’t pretend otherwise, you’re not that opaque—you know you use it only to irritate people.
They’re lessons.
I don’t think that its cousins “cooperate” and “collaborate” quite do the trick of describing go-betweening (really, do you want me to say “go-betweening”?), and it’s a damn sight better than the personal-boundary-crossing “reach out.”
I will not be put out if you stet me, because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the use of “loan” as a verb.
MORE THAN/OVER
Do as you like. It’s nothing to get worked up more than.
“Myriad” was a noun well before it was an adjective,
Feel free, if you’re that kind of person, to point out that John Milton used “myriad” as a noun. Also Thoreau.
Eventually I learned the traditional differentiation between “nauseous”—causing nausea—and “nauseated”—preparing to heave—but it was too late for me to mend my ways, so I’m still happy, as it were, to be nauseous.
“Noisome” means “stinking.” And “harmful.” And, I suppose, “nauseating.”
NONPLUSSED So then, “nonplussed.” To be nonplussed is to be confused, startled, at a loss for words. Lately the word’s devolved into a synonym for relaxed, cool as a cucumber, chill, and that’s a problem. How has this come to be? Presumably the “plussed” part strikes some eyes/ears as meaning “excited,” so the “non” part seems to turn that on its head, and there you have “nonplussed” serving as its own antonym.*11
It’s “by accident.” ONBOARD The use of “onboard” as a verb in place of “familiarize” or “integrate” is grotesque. It’s bad enough when it’s applied to policies; applied to new employees in place of the perfectly lovely word “orient,” it’s worse. And it feels like a terribly short walk from onboarding a new employee to waterboarding one.
In writing, people die.
It means “the thing before the last thing.”
You can just say “refer to.”
and one can do nicely without a preceding apostrophe.
“set foot in.”
’TIL Once again, for the people in the cheap seats: “Till” is a word. “Until” is a word. “Till”
no justification whatsoever for the prissyism “ ’til.”
try to do it,
Otherwise all you really need is “use.” VERY UNIQUE In the 1906 edition of The King’s English, H. W. Fowler declared—and he was neither the first nor the last person to so declare—“A thing is unique, or not unique; there are no degrees of uniqueness; nothing is ever somewhat or rather unique, though many things are almost or in some respects unique.”
*6 Washington’s dentures were made of ivory, metal, and teeth appropriated from animals and other humans; nah, it didn’t; and (a) they weren’t witches, and (b) they were hanged.
*8 “Hoity-toity” and “fancy-shmancy” are examples of what’s called reduplication, if that’s a thing you’d like to know. See also, among many others, “easy-peasy,” “knickknack,” and “boogie-woogie.”
*11 A word that means its own opposite is a contronym, though the term “Janus word”—you remember two-faced Janus, looking ahead and behind at the same time, yes?—is also applied, and it packs a thrill. “Sanction” (to allow and to penalize) and “cleave” (to hold fast and to cut up) are classic Janus words. And though context will easily indicate for these two which meaning is being used, I wouldn’t say the same re “nonplussed,” so let’s hold on to just the one meaning, OK?
“Adverse” means unfavorable or harmful, as in “We are enduring adverse weather.” “Averse” means opposed to, repulsed by, or antipathetic toward, as in “I am averse to olives and capers.” AFFECT/EFFECT The traditional snap differentiation between “affect” and “effect” is that “affect” is a verb (“This martini is so watery, it doesn’t affect me at all”) and “effect” is a noun (“This martini is so watery, it has no effect on me at all”). Which is true as far as it goes. But only that far. Because “affect” is also a noun: “a set of observable manifestations of a subjectively experienced emotion.”
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A sentence is alright but a number of sentences make a paragraph and that is not alright.
That is, if, owing to an accident, I’m forced off the road in Connecticut and must find my way to Boston via Pawtucket, I’m mandated to travel an alternate route, but on another day, should I opt to make my way to Boston on local streets rather than highways, I am simply choosing an alternative route.
To be ambiguous is to lack clarity, to be murkily open to misinterpretation. To be ambivalent is to have mixed feelings.
“Amuck” is simply a variant spelling of “amok,” and for quite some time it was the more popular English-language spelling. “Amok” overtook it in the 1940s, and I’d like to think that the 1953 Merrie Melodies classic Duck Amuck, featuring the eponymous Daffy, finished off “amuck” in any other but comical contexts. AMUSE/BEMUSE/BEMUSED To amuse is to entertain, delight, divert. To bemuse is to perplex, befuddle, preoccupy, nonplus.
You don’t have to search back too many decades to find frequent use of “any more” where we’d now, at least in America, write “anymore.” (The Brits remain less keen on the fused version.)
“Bated,” which you are unlikely to chance upon disattached from the word “breath,” means reduced or moderated or suspended.
BAWL/BALL To bawl one’s eyes out is to weep profusely. To ball one’s eyes out would be some sort of sporting or teabagging mishap.
“Blond” and “blonde” are also nouns: A man with blond hair is a blond; a woman with blond hair is a blonde.
If you insist on using “blonde” as an adjective, I must insist that you apply it only to women, as the concluding e, via the French, marks the word as feminine.
Otherwise, things that are carried or produced are borne. Diseases are insect-borne. A tree that bears fruit has, then, borne fruit. The right to bear arms is the right to have borne them. And though triumph may be born out of tragedy, one’s grand schemes may not be borne out in reality.
“Breech” is an outmoded term for buttocks; thus trousers were once breeches. A breech birth is one in which the baby emerges buttocks (or feet) first.
“Breath” is often written when “breathe” is called for. This is an especially easy error to commit and, once committed, difficult to catch, so I urge you to be on your guard about it.
(which you may sometimes encounter dehydrated into little cubes).
Cachet is the quality of prestige and distinction,
A caret is a copyediting and proofreading symbol (it looks like this: ^) showing where new text is to be inserted into an already set line.
One has vocal cords, not (no matter how musical one is) “vocal chords.”
To complement something is to go nicely with it,
complementary skills in secretarial work—that is, each serves the other.
complimentary service.
confidantes are, solely, women.
of Jiminy Cricket, whose name derives from the euphemistic oath that is a polite alternative to bellowing “Jesus Christ!”
