Language geek. I listen to WNYC while I'm shaving and often want to cut my head off. These are quixotic reflections on broadcast speech, with pictures of cute boys.
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
"But" is tricky. It announces a contradiction, but is often applied to noncontradictory things. "It's 70 degrees, but it's going up to 81." There's nothing contradictory about one temperature changing to another. This ultimately leads to absurdities like "He was tall, but hungry."
"He ran for governor, but lost" is kind of ridiculous. "He ran for governor and lost" is what happened. Things in reality don't contradict each other so much as coexist; there's not much "but" in nature.
"Zane has spent the last 20 years creating verbatim theater, but this is his first full-length non-verbatim work." Oy. Try "and." Or "orangutan." Anything but "but."
And "but" can drain a sentence of soul and surprise. Recent NPR report from (maybe) Papua New Guinea:
"The groom is 70 years old. But the bride is only 11." By the time we hear the bride's age, "but" and "only" have warned us of an anomaly and told us how to feel about it. So we go on shaving, unengaged.
If you heard "The groom is 70 years old; the bride is 11," you'd get up on your hind legs and say, "That's INSANE! I will stop this madness!"
NPR: “The issue of abortion has become an issue for the GOP.”
Let’s drop “issue” as a euphemism for “problem.” For one thing, see above -- it’s cruel and unusual to make one word mean both “topic” and “trouble.” For another, the words you least want to euphemize are those that alert you to danger. You might let someone with mental issues take care of your cats, but would never trust them to someone with mental problems.
Three words that radio people mangle in order to sound educated --
"Reticent" means "reluctant to talk about." But you often hear "She was reticent to talk about it." Meaning she was reluctant to talk about to talk about it. So: "She was reluctant to talk about it" or "She was reticent about it."
Usually when someone mentions something "you alluded to," she means what "you referred to." An allusion is a reference without citation. Check out the "I Have a Dream" speech: "Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation." Dr. King alluded to the Gettysburg Address and referred to the Emancipation Proclamation.
"Preclude" is a schmantzy way of saying "prevent," only they're not synonyms. "Preclude" means to block in a binary fashion -- voting for one candidate precludes voting for the other. But it doesn't preclude you from voting for the other -- it prevents you from it. "Preclude from" doesn't exist.
And Dean Stockwell. Jeepers creepers. His pulchritude prevents me from following the plot of anything he's in.
Men who want to control women lending a hand to men who want to control women.
Jill Filipovic at Substack:
In Texas, a 26-year-old woman is dead after her boyfriend murdered her because she had an abortion. Gabriella Gonzalez had reportedly just returned back to Texas from Colorado, where she had traveled to end the pregnancy — she had to travel because abortion is now a crime in Texas. Her boyfriend, Harold Thompson, had a history of abusing her, and reportedly wanted to force her to have his baby. When she returned, he physically attacked her, and then shot her dead.
There are a lot of abusers out there who want to force women to have children against their will. Only some of them are those women’s husbands and boyfriends. Many more of them are Republican politicians and voters.
Abortion bans are gifts to abusive men. We know that pregnancy is a particularly vulnerable time in relationships with abusers, and that abuse routinely scales up when a woman is pregnant. This dynamic is so extreme that homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women in the United States — and the United States is already the country with the highest maternal mortality rate in the wealthy and developed world. We know, too, that women in abusive relationships who are unable to have abortions are more likely to be tied to their abuser years later, while women who were able to end their pregnancies are more likely to have left the relationship.
A pregnancy is a tether. For many women trapped by abuse, abortion is one step toward freedom.
And yet “pro-family” and “pro-life” conservatives push for abortion bans, forcing women to bear the children of abusive partners, and putting those women at risk of greater abuse and even death. Those conservatives tell women the same thing abusive men do: Your body is not yours.
I’ll say the thing it seems weirdly taboo to say: It is wise to end a pregnancy if your partner is abusive.
Of course women should make whatever reproductive decisions they want to make. But we rarely talk about abortion as a good, solid, wise choice. And it is wise, not to mention an act of self-preservation and often protection of existing children, to choose not tether yourself permanently to a person who abuses you, and may very well abuse your children.
[…]
People should be free to have children when and how they choose. And it would be much easier for women to leave abusive partners if they had more support — if leaving wouldn’t mean being broke or homeless, or being ostracized from your community, or putting yourself at greater risk (a number of women are killed when they try to leave). But it is easier when there’s not a child tying you to the person you want to escape. And it is an act of love and protection for an existing or potential child to say: “I am not going to put you in this situation.”
It is good when women in abusive relationships lay the groundwork for leaving. The women who say “no thank you” to continuing a pregnancy with an abusive man are almost universally attempting a very brave and necessary step away from that man.
That may have been what Gabriella Gonzalez was doing. At the very least, she was stating a claim of sovereignty, even in the face of both a state and a partner telling her otherwise: You don’t own me. And Harold Thompson killed her for it.
Now, women across much of the United States do not have the right to end a pregnancy that ties them to an abusive man, because Republican politicians tell women the same thing abusive men do: I do own you; do what I say.
[…]
And all of these women, whether they die because pregnancies forced by anti-abortion laws or because of partners who kill them, will have had their lives stolen by people who share a single ideology: That women should be under their control.
Jill Filipovic is 100% correct on how abortion bans empower abusive men: “Abortion bans are gifts to abusive men.” This was recently witnessed in the killing of Gabriella Gonzalez by Harold Lavance Thompson.
Hey! Let’s reintroduce these words into circulation.
“Evince,” meaning to show evidence of. It has been swallowed by “evidence” as a verb, but you know better.
“Stanch,” meaning to stop the flow of something, like blood from a wound. Confused (over NPR this morning) with “staunch” -- “trying to staunch dwindling support among Republicans.” This made me cut myself, and blood flowed unstanched.
“Sociable” means gregarious. It has been swallowed by “social,” but “social” is better applied to gonorrhea. So say, “I’d rather shoot up with my friends than alone. I’m very sociable.”
“Healthful” -- My dad says this used to be how you describe something that’s good for you. Now we say “healthy,” but if you say, “Eat your salmon, it’s a healthy fish,” you’re off base, because far from being healthy, the fish is dead.
She knows a sexy man when she sees one. I would leap into Raymond Chandler’s arms too if I could.
“He was worth looking at. He wore a shaggy borsalino hat, a rough gray sports coat with white golf balls on it for buttons, a brown shirt, a yellow tie, pleated gray flannel slacks and alligator shoes with white explosions on the toes. From his outer breast pocket cascaded a show handkerchief of the same brilliant yellow as his tie. There were a couple of colored feathers tucked into the band of his hat, but he didn't need them. Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”
’NYC -- The plural of “process” is pronounced “process-ez,” not “process-eez.” That plural “eez” is for words of Greek origin that end in “is,” like “basis,” to spare us from saying “basises.” So it’s “base-eez,” and “process-ez.”
I’m with Ambrose Bierce. “He was executed” is a substandard way of saying “He was put to death.”
The sentence, not the person, is executed at an execution.
And -- words shape attitudes! People who are blasé about someone’s being “executed” might feel queasy about his being “put to death.” They might be even queasier about what is actually planned -- “scheduled to be killed.” Wouldn’t it be eye-opening for newscasters to say someone has been sentenced to be killed?
(Guy above is not Bierce, but I couldn’t wait any longer to post his picture.)
BRIAN LEHRER: And ... Allen in Bayside, you're on the air.
(SILENCE)
BRIAN: Allen? In Bayside? You're –
ALLEN: Hi.
BRIAN: Hi, Allen. You have a question?
ALLEN: Yes.
BRIAN: Go ahead.
ALLEN: I do, yes.
BRIAN: And what is your question?
ALLEN: I'll ask it on the air.
BRIAN: You're on the air.
ALLEN: Oh.
BRIAN: So go ahead. You're on.
ALLEN: Oh.
BRIAN: And what's your question?
ALLEN: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call.
BRIAN: You're very welcome. What's your question, Allen?
ALLEN: How are you?
BRIAN: I'm fine, and I can hear you, we're on the air, so go ahead with your question.
ALLEN: All right, Brian, I'm a first-time caller, and -- no, a first -- YES, a first-time caller, and a long-time listener.
BRIAN: Okay.
ALLEN: And I'll get right to the point.
--------------------------------
You don’t have to say “Thank you for taking my call.” That’s how call-in shows work. It’s like telling a waiter, “Thank you for taking my order.” Or a stewardess, “Thank you for letting me on the plane.” It’s foundational already. Go ahead.
Over WNYC today -- “But the former president’s tax returns still leave a lot of unanswered questions.”
And -- “There are many unanswered questions about the biography of [infuriating gay Republican congressman who blamed the Colorado Springs nightclub shooting on ‘both sides,’ the rat bastard, and whose résumé has been exposed as a torrent of lies] George Santos.”
You don’t have to say “unanswered questions.” If we had the answers, they wouldn’t be questions. Just say “questions” and take the rest of the afternoon off.
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