WordsWordsWords

Being a word geek, I tend to browse my language books for kicks, even if I don’t have anything to look up. Today, I noticed a book that I happened to have sitting in the bathroom and thought to myself, “I wonder what this grammar says about the use of the comma? That might be fun to look at.” I’m always especially interested to see where they come down on the Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma), because that tells you something about what slant the whole book has. I have a library copy of this book and am considering purchasing it, but I want to know what I’m getting into if I do.

I ended up in a section called “Common Punctuation Mistakes,” and found a delightful directive on the use of the exclamation point. I reproduce it here for your enjoyment.
***
Overuse of exclamation points. Exclamation points, used to convey excitement, should be used sparingly—that is, when their omission would look strange. For example, the following sentence merits the use of an exclamation point due to its subject matter:

    Correct: When the lottery official placed the check for $43 million in Samantha’s hands, she jumped up and down, screaming “This is the best day of my life!”
    Incorrect: These pretzels are making me thirsty!

Note, too, that exclamation marks should not be used to indicate emphasis, irony, or humor. In addition, you should avoid using multiple exclamation marks in a row at the end of a sentence.

I understand the authors here are reacting to a legitimate surfeit of exclamation marks currently seen in writing, as evidenced by the above. Exclamation marks are multiplying because, by this overuse, they are losing their emphaticity. But what joylessness! Does it take $43 million to “merit” an exclamation point?!?! How shall I emphasize the depth of my thirst and the saltiness of the pretzels if they rob me of this device? I can but disregard their edict. I shall be as excited, emphatic, ironic, and humorous as I desire. And I invite you to do the same!!!

The Professor and I saw the latest Harry Potter movie, and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I have some of the others. It seemed to me a lot like a typical horror movie, only with less blood. What I mean is this: it seemed like there was no more than a thin thread of a plot, serving only to string together one scene of pursuit and violence after another. The audience sits there and thinks, “No, Ron! Don’t go back to the pond alone!” Meanwhile, it doesn’t even occur to Ron, who for six years has been evading threats and squeaking by with his life, that danger might lurk therein. It reminded me of a B-grade slasher film where the half naked sorority girl answers the door as the audience cringes, knowing the murderer is standing just outside. Minus the half naked sorority girl, of course, but plus a really huge special effects budget. This was the penultimate Harry Potter film.I will probably go to the last one because I’ll feel compelled, but I did find myself thinking a few times, “Oh, for godsake. Just kill him off already!”

I don’t want you to think I’m not a Harry Potter fan. I always have been, ever since the Professor and I read the first book aloud to each other as we drove a few thousand miles together on a road trip in our tan-colored Ford Ranger. It was a great trip, and Harry has always been a bit special to me because I associate it with that lovely time.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed is the spells, or more specifically, the words that Ms. Rowling chose to name the spells. Most of them are crafted from Latin roots, and they are good illustrations of her love for wordplay (think Diagon Alley or Knockturn Alley!) Below, I’ve made a little matching quiz of spell names, their roots, and what they do.

____________
1.f.B; 2.k.O; 3.h.J; 4.b.F.; 5.n.H; 6.d.M; 7.o.D; 8.l.K; 9.j.E; 10.g.A; 11.i.N; 12.e.L; 13.a.I; 14.m.C; 15.c.G

Click here for the list of spells used to compile the quiz. Dictionary.com and OED also consulted for etymologies.

This is the end of my fourth day sitting on my butt and watching Netflix (streaming through our new Roku box) while I battle with the flu. At least I think it’s the flu. It can be a bit hard to know whether a particular incidence of sickness is a cold or the real, honest to God flu. For the sake of today’s etymology, it doesn’t really matter, though.

“Flu,” coming from “influenza,” is an unusual shortened form of a word. We typically take either the first part or last part of the word, like lab for laboratory or plane for airplane. Few words take as their short form a middle syllable. Two others that I’ve found are fridge (refrigerator) and scrip (prescription).

Influenza is simply the Italian word “influence.” In this case, it originally referred to the belief that the stars affected illness. (This is at least as credible to me as the idea that the stars determine your personality or indicate whether it’s a good day to ask for a raise.) The word comes from Latin influere, meaning to flow in. People of that era believed that an ethereal liquid flowed from the stars and affected human destiny.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the use of this word for disease is documented in Italian since the early 16^th century. It was a short hop to a meaning of “epidemic.” In 1743, an outbreak of influenza began in Italy and spread through Europe. It was at that time that English borrowed the word. The short form “flu” (at first spelled “flue”) has been used in English since at least 1839.

By this afternoon, I was feeling a bit better. I’m hoping that in no more than a day or two, the stars’ effect on me will have subsided so that I can be off the Barcalounger and back on my way. For more information and a pretty picture of the flu virus, see this San Francisco Examiner article.

Intrepid Reader Sara of Seattle says, “I’m curious about your usage of the word ‘since’ such as in the beginning of this thread. I once had an English teacher tell me it was wrong to use it in that context. It should refer to time.” (The passage Sara is referring to was in an email I’d sent to a few friends. It started, “Since we’re friends on Facebook, you may already have seen my announcement about the fact that I’ve started a new blog.”)

Indeed, Sara, some would draw a hard line between “since,” which they say must refer only to a time lapse between the events in the two clauses, and “because,” which must refer to causation between the two. Under this rule, we would see

Since I moved to Seattle, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring the farmers markets.
Because I moved to Seattle, I’ve been able to see my brother in Olympia every week.

My regular readers know that I’m a descriptive, not a prescriptive, linguist. I believe it’s typically more helpful (and definitely more interesting) to describe what is than to decree what should be. I also believe that language is pretty good at policing itself, and that “incorrect” forms—incorrect in this case meaning that they are awkward, function poorly or create confusion—will eliminate themselves through their own ineffectiveness. If something is being widely used, it’s because it works as well as it needs to. If it weren’t doing a good job of communicating meaning, it would fall out of use.

Let’s consider the question of effectiveness in this case. While the primary argument for differentiating these two is that the difference prevents ambiguity, I can’t remember a single time when I’ve heard “since” and was confused about whether the speaker was referring to time or causation. Other contextual clues usually serve to clarify which meaning the word has. Sometimes, “ever” is added to differentiate the time intention. “Ever since I moved to Seattle…” would not be confused with an expression of causation.

I’d also argue that the time/causation dichotomy is often either irrelevant, or so conflated that there is no practical difference between the two. For example, Let’s substitute “since” in the second sentence. “Since I moved to Seattle, I’ve been able to see my brother in Olympia every week.” That sentence seems to mean both that the speaker has seen her brother every week from the time she arrived, and that the visits have been made possible by her move. Presumably, the listener has other information—maybe the fact that the speaker was previously living farther away, in Walla Walla, Wenatchee, or Washougal—that illuminates the meaning of the sentence as well.

But perhaps I am ranting about nothing. I’ve checked several current published authorities on this, and none is exhibiting the pedantry I expected to find. The Webster’s New World English Grammar Handbook is silent on the matter. In its section on conjunctions, it gives a number of examples of usage errors to avoid. The since/because dichotomy is not one of them. I checked three dictionaries—the dictionary.com Unabridged based on Random House, the Oxford Dictionary of English, and the Oxford English Dictionary (the latter two are different things). All three give as one of their definitions of “since,” something like “because,” “inasmuch as,” or “for the reason that.” And get this. The OED dates this sense of the word to the 16^th century. An example from 1595: “But since all humane flesh is mortall,..what auailes my sorowful grones and passions?”

So, dear Sara, I recommend that you fill your linguistically carefree days wondering not at all about “since” and “because.” May your days be filled instead with only a modicum of grones and passions of the worst kind, but a plethora of grones and passions of the best.

I read today in a newpsaper article titled “Facebook tries to friend Japan” that 60% of U.S. Internet users have a Facebook account. The social network site’s rise to prominence has rapidly introduced the verb “to friend” into current English. Typically, we would use the word “befriend” to speak of making friends with someone, but in the case of Facebook, “to friend” has taken on a specialized meaning—to invite someone else to associate their site profile with yours. Just like the relationships themselves, these virtual associations sometimes need to be severed. Thus, we’ve also seen the rise of the word “unfriend.” Some have cried foul at this linguistic turn of events, thinking that “friend” has no place as a verb and that “unfriend” has no place at all. Never mind the fact that for centuries, English has been tossing words around among noundom, verbdom, and adjectivity with profligacy and ease.

In any case, it turns out that neither “friend” nor “unfriend,” as verbs meaning either to make a friend or to sever a friendship, is new to English. The use of “to friend” in this sense goes back to the 13^th century! (The Old English was spelled differently, natch.) “Unfriend” as a noun meaning “enemy” also dates to the 13^th century, while the verb form is documented from the 17^th century. The OED gives this quote as an example: “I Hope, Sir, that we are not mutually Un-friended by this Difference which hath happened betwixt us.” That sounds like the perfect thing to say next time one of your old high school friends is being an online idiot and you are considering cutting him off.
_____________
Afterword. Spell check does not recognize the following as valid words: Facebook, unfriend, noundom, verbdom, adjectivity, and natch. Well, pthththt to them.
Afterafterword. Spell check does not recognize the following as a valid word: Pthththt.