Going through a phase

Wait, is this a phaser or a fazer?

  Which of these sentences is spelled correctly?

1. But nothing fazes Richard, so he'll be up for it.
2. But nothing phases Richard, so he'll be up for it. 

Did you say "phases"? If so, you were WRONG (ok, I admit it, it gives me a little thrill to be able to say that occasionally). Nothing fazes Richard.

The word meaning "disconcert, trouble" has nothing to do with "phase".  FAZE is a very old word, derived from Old English fésian (to drive away), which by the 15th century was also being used to mean "frighten, alarm". Like so many words that have died out of Standard British English, this one survived in North America, and by the 1830s had taken on the meaning "disconcert, disturb". It was subsequently revived in British English.

The homophone PHASE comes ultimately from the Greek word designating each of the aspects of the moon or a planet, according to the amount of its illumination. It is a mere stripling compared to "faze", having entered English in the 17th century. Very quickly its use was extended from the strictly astronomical sense to mean "a distinct period or stage in a process of change or development".

And then, GUESS WHAT??? It BECAME A VERB. 

First, in the early 1900s, in electrical engineering:

To adjust the phase of (an oscillation, alternating current, etc.), esp. in order to bring it into phase or synchrony with something else.

and then, in the late 1940s, more generally: 

To organize, carry out, or introduce in phases. Freq. with in (or out): to introduce into (or withdraw from) use, operation, etc., gradually or in stages.

Remarkably, people were unfazed by this function shift. As they should be.


COMING THIS FALL! My ever-popular Rollicking Story of the English Language course. REGISTRATION NOW OPEN AND SPACE IS LIMITED. More info here: http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/p/history-of-english-language-courses.html
 
Would you enjoy talking about words with Wordlady over many, many glasses of wine? Why not check out my trip to Bordeaux and Toulouse in July 2017. Unlike most of my Tours en l'air trips, this is more about food, wine, and sightseeing than about ballet (though there is some of that too). BOOKING NOW, SIGNUP DEADLINE SEPTEMBER 20. More info here:
http://toursenlair.blogspot.ca/2016/08/toulouse-bordeaux-ballet-trip-july-2017.html

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Of hordes and hoarding

Photo by Hello I'm Nik 🍌 on Unsplash

 
I hope you all now have a nice hoard of presents and shiny electronic devices as a result of your loved ones battling the hordes in the shops before Christmas and in the Boxing Day sales. 

If only they could have bought you a handy way to distinguish "horde" and "hoard", which are very frequently confused.


Horde, defined by the OED as "A large gathering of people, esp. of wild or fierce people; a gang, troop, crew", has a fascinating etymology.  The Persian word urdū meant "camp". Russian borrowed this as orda to designate a tribe or troop of Asiatic nomads, dwelling in camps , and migrating from place to place for pasturage, or for war or plunder. From Russian it spread to Polish, where it acquired an initial h, and from thence to other European languages in the 1500s. By the 1600s it was already being used to mean any large gathering, especially an unruly one. This "horde" is typically used only as a noun.

Now, in case you're making wild etymological leaps and wondering whether urdū  has anything to do with "Urdu" (the language of Pakistan), well, ..... yes, it does! How exciting is that? Back in Asia, the phrase zabān-i-urdū was used to mean ‘the language of the camp’. This became shortened to urdū and the language came to be called that. (For a couple of English words with Urdu origins, visit this post and this post.)

The other "hoard" goes all the way back to Old English, and was spelled hord from that time until the 18th century, when the "hoard" spelling took over, probably on the analogy of "board". Hord was the Anglo-Saxon word for "treasure" (a word derived from French), but as was typical for money-related words after the Norman Conquest, it was replaced to a certain extent by its French equivalent. 

However, we kept "hoard" as a useful word for an accumulation of things, with slightly different connotations than "treasure". "Hoard" can also be used as a verb.

It's hard to find a mnemonic to help you remember which word has the "a" and which one doesn't, but here's my best stab at it:

Many synonyms of "hoard" also have an "a":
save stash cache gather garner amass 

For "horde", think of its synonym "crowd". No "a"!

I hope that helps!

Thunderstruck

We had quite a spectacular thunderstorm in Toronto the other day, with lashing rain and lots of those flashes of light that come with a big boom.

Yes, LIGHTNING. 

Notice the spelling. The noun is not "lightening". Lightening is something you do to your hair. They were originally the same word, but the noun for the electrical storm sense has had this special spelling since it first showed up in the language in the 14th century, just in case someone reading "a huge bolt of lightening" might get confused and think it meant a large amount of peroxide. 

Apparently the earlier, Old English word for the phenomenon had been "leye-rash" (literally, light move fast). 

Just to be somewhat confusing, not to mention annoying (otherwise we would be talking about some logical language rather than English) there is a verb "to lighten" meaning "(of lightning) flash", as in "It rained, thundered, and lightened all night". If you put this in the progressive tense it would be "It was raining, thundering, and lightening".

Summary: LIGHTNING is the noun, LIGHTENING is the verb.

Photo by Brandon Morgan on Unsplash

Or we could just say "famous"...

As you might guess, since I spent a large chunk of my life writing dictionaries, I'm a pretty good speller. But there's one fairly common word that I always have to think twice about and double-check in a dictionary before I write it: renown. Clearly I am not alone in this, as a Google search revealed the following hits:

renown: 2.4 million
reknown: 9 million
renoun: 406,000 (this spelling is my particular downfall)

renowned: 133 million (40 million of them in "world-renowned")
reknowned: 9 million (about 3.5 million of them in "world-reknowned")
renouned: 11 million (about 4.5 million of them in "world-renouned")

Probably lots of the "reknown" hits were in sources saying "this is a misspelling", but still the number is staggering. If the numbers for "renowned" weren't so decisive, lexicographers would have to start thinking about whether they should change the spelling of "renown" to "reknown".

What a quick Google search cannot reveal is how frequent another problem is: using "world-renown" as an adjective, as in "world-renown scientist", when it should be "world-renowned".

Bob Hanna, world-renowned philosopher

Just this morning I saw an article in The Australian referring, with wild disregard of spelling,  to a "world-reknown philosopher" (yes, there are such things, apparently).


   
Clearly I haven't come up with a good mnemonic for this one, as it's still a stumbling block for me. Somehow, "celebrity philosopher" doesn't seem like an option. I remind myself there is no "k" (which seems to be the biggest problem) by remembering that the word in French is renommée, but that will only help you if you speak French.  But I still want to spell it with a "u" rather than a "w". Thank goodness for dictionaries! Don't rely on your spellchecker, as, interestingly, the reproving red spellchecker squiggly did not show up in either my word-processing program or my email program for the misspelled words above.

I guess we can at least be thankful  that we are not lumbered with the spelling proposed by16th century pedants who loved sticking extra silent letters into English words to reflect their Latin origins (God knows where they got the "p", though): "renoumpn"!

The eyes have it

A very frequently misspelled word is ophthalmology, the branch of medicine dealing with the eyes (and its derivative ophthalmologist). Most commonly, people forget the first h, likely under the influence of "optic", but the first l also often falls by the wayside. If you have problems with this word (and who can blame you?), you have two options:
1) This word is about eyes, and we have two of those, so think about that to help you remember that there are two h's and two l's.
2) Use the word "eye doctor"! (if only life were so easy...)

When REALLY not to use "u" after "q"

The capital of one of Canada's northern Territories, Nunavut, goes by the euphonious name Iqaluit (it used to be called Frobisher Bay, much less musical). In Inuktitut, Iqaluit means "many fish". Unfortunately English spelling has a habit of putting a "u" after the letter "q", so English speakers commonly misspell Iqaluit as Iqualuit (in fact I just saw that spelling in yesterday's Ottawa Citizen). Indeed, in September 2009 the Prime Minister's Office used this misspelling repeatedly in a press release, causing a great brouhaha when the Nunavut Language Commissioner pointed out that "iqualuit" means "people with large unwiped bums" (that's bums in the "buttocks" sense, for any American readers who are confused). DEFINITELY a mistake you don't want to make.
Another Inuktitut borrowing into English with a "q" not followed by "u" is qiviut, or the fine underbelly hair of a muskox. There's a bit of trivia to impress your friends with.

Are you pseudisodomous?

One of the reasons English spelling is so difficult is that vowels in unstressed syllables often get reduced in speech to an indeterminate sound (called a schwa). There is nothing wrong with this; it is just the way English is pronounced. But it means that, for instance, the last two syllables in "autonomous" sound exactly the same as the last two in "synonymous", despite their different spelling. Be wary! Don't make the mistake of spelling "synonomous" or "anonomous", etc.

"Synonymous", like "anonymous", "pseudonymous", "eponymous", and a few other words you probably don't use daily (like "pseudeponymous" - falsely named or attributed), includes the Greek word onuma (name), which acquired a y instead of the u in Latin. "Autonomous", on the other hand, comes from the Greek nomos (law).

And then there's the euonymus, a type of bush whose name literally means "well-named" or "lucky" in Greek.

Note that just to make our lives miserable on the spelling front, there is no o in the final syllable for this one, as it is not an adjective but a Latin noun. According to Pliny, the flowering of the euonymus presaged pestilence, and thus its name was either euphemistic or ironic.

As a special treat for you word lovers looking for something with which to impress your friends or win spelling bees, here's that fancy word I used in the title of this post: pseudisodomous. Are you thinking it's something titillating? I bet you are, but don't get too excited: it describes a method of building or type of masonry in ancient Greek architecture in which the courses of blocks were of unequal height, length, or thickness, but the blocks in each course were alike. Riveting, I know. Sorry!

Led astray

The past tense and past participle of the verb "lead" is "led". Today I am leading you down the garden path; yesterday I led you down the garden path. It is almost more common to see it misspelled "lead" than to see it spelled correctly. The "lead" that sounds like LED is the heavy metal. Since it is so very easy to make this spelling mistake, you will have to stop yourself every time you use the past tense of the verb "lead" and check your spelling. YOUR SPELLCHECKER IS OF NO USE! Here's a little sentence to memorize that may help you: Ed fed Ted and led him to bed.

No ants!

It's a common mistake to use the word "tenant" when what is meant is "tenet". A tenant is someone who pays to occupy or use property but does not own it. A tenet is a basic belief. Both words ultimately come from the Latin word tenere (to hold). "Tenet" is in fact the form of the verb meaning "he/she/it holds". Perhaps a way to remember the correct spelling of "tenet" is this: while ants may occasionally turn up in your rented home or business, there's no way they can infiltrate your (or anyone's) religious, political, or philosophical beliefs.

Another common mistake is to double the n in "tenant". Goodness, n's are intrusive! "Tennant" is a surname (originally for someone who was a tenant farmer, just to be confusing), but not an acceptable variant spelling of the word "tenant".

English spelling: a cross we have to bear

Misspelling across with two c's is surprisingly common. Remind yourself that it is in fact related to the word cross; originally, in the Middle Ages, across meant "in the shape of a cross", that is, with one (often shorter line) intersecting a longer line at right angles. So you could hold your arms "across" your body. Then it started to have the sense of "from one side to the other of something", when the longer side was being traversed. Nowadays, when we go "across", something, it doesn't matter if we're using the shorter axis or the longer; we're just getting from one side to the other. In fact, if I say "I cut across the park", I'm likely to be doing it diagonally, which is the longest axis of all. But if you remember the image of a cross, it will perhaps help you to avoid that incorrect double-c spelling.

More than one Brussel

I am currently organizing a great "Ballet and chocolate" trip to Paris and Belgium over Eastertime (if you're tempted, please email me at toursenlair@gmail.com for more info!), so I've been thinking a lot about the capital of Belgium, and more specifically about its famous mini-cabbages. Don't forget: Brussels has an s on the end of it (except in Flemish, but we're not speaking Flemish) so those little brassicas are Brussels sprouts, not Brussel sprouts (a very common spelling mistake).

Photo by Keenan Loo on Unsplash

No such thing as "just desserts"

I LOVE desserts. Cake, cookies, ice cream, pumpkin pie... love 'em all. So never would I dismiss these wonderful treats as "just" desserts (unless of course I was saying "Let's eat just dessert and forget about the main course"...).
Neither should you use the phrase "just desserts". Because what you probably mean is "just deserts". When someone gets what is coming to them, it is what they deserve. "Desert" in this case is spelled with only one "s".
Whatever way you think about it, there is no such thing as "just desserts"!
See also my desert vs. desert post.

Sing a long what?

 A spelling mistake I see very often is "Sing-a-long", as in "Sing-a-long Messiah". As opposed to "Sing-a-short Messiah"?

Ok, so Messiah is a long sing, but that's not what they meant! It mystifies me why people don't recognize the adverb "along" when they write this phrase. "Along" is hardly an obscure word! The audience is singing along with the performers. In fact, you can even write "singalong" as one word (although admittedly it does look vaguely Malaysian), thus saving you the question of where to include hyphens at all. So your choices are:
Singalong Messiah or Sing-along Messiah.

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! If you are not already subscribed, you can either:

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Photo by David Beale on Unsplash

Spelling mistakes: Piqued by peeking at a peak

An extraordinarily common spelling mistake is "sneak peak". Since a peak is a mountain, it would be pretty difficult to sneak one anywhere. What people mean is "sneak peek". I know they are being influenced by the -ea- in "sneak" (and truly English spelling is sadistic in cases like this), but that's no excuse. Whenever you find yourself using this phrase, STOP! and think about the spelling.

What is the difference between peak, peek, and pique?

A mountain or something that looks like one (whipped egg whites, for instance) or a metaphorical high point is a peak. It can also be used as an adjective, as in "peak condition", and a verb, as in "athletes train to peak for the Olympic Games".

A quick look is a peek. This can also be used as a verb, as in "he peeked around the corner". If you have a hard time remembering that it's spelled with a double e, think of other words that have to do with seeing things: see, seek, peer, even leer if that helps (hey, whatever it takes...)

If you're angry or resentful, you're having a fit of pique. If something makes you interested, it piques your interest. This is a fairly old word in English, coming from Middle French pique a quarrel, resentment, which in turn came from piquer to prick, pierce, sting.

It is apparently quite common for people to misspell "pique" too, writing "it peaked my interest", possibly thinking that the phrase means "bring one's interest to a high point". But it doesn't mean that. Perhaps thinking of the etymologically related word "piquant" will help. Food that is piquant stimulates your appetite for more, just as something that piques your interest makes you want more.

So if taking a quick look at a mountain makes you want to know more, you could say your curiosity was piqued by peeking at a peak!

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Don't make this common spelling mistake

Today I saw this surprising spelling mistake in the newspaper:
"Research shows owners who spoil their pets do not complain about behaviour problems more than ridged ones".
After puzzling a bit over what kind of a ridge the pet owners might have, I realized that the writer meant "rigid".
This made me think about a much more common spelling mistake; "priviledge(d)" for "privilege(d)".
How can you remember not to put a "d" in these words?
They both come from French, so if you remember that the consonant combo "dg" does not exist in French, that may help you. But only, of course, if you know French!
"Rigid" comes from the same Latin word meaning "be stiff" that gave us "rigor" (as in "rigor mortis") and "rigour" (strictness), and as you see, they have no "d". Perhaps a good mnemonic for "rigid" would be "oil rigs are rigid" -- we certainly hope they are!
"Privilege" comes from two Latin words: privus (private) and legis (law). A privilege is a "private law" -- one that applies to an individual only. Legis also turns up in "legislature" and "legislation" etc., which may help you, but only if you don't also spell those words with a "d"!
Personally, whenever I go to my ballet class or ride my bicycle or go for a walk, I think how privileged I am to have legs; I certainly never think it a privilege to have ledges!

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No flora in your lightbulbs or toothpaste

Two related words which are very commonly misspelled are "fluorescent" and "fluoride". Don't forget the "U". Fluorescence and fluoride have nothing to do with flowers. They're derived from a mineral, fluor, called that because it is easily melted and thus fluid.

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! If you are not already subscribed, you can either:

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Waiter! There's a gun in my salad!

 

















Just reading a newspaper article about edible flowers which has the following flower-prep recommendation: "Remove the stamens and pistols from most flowers". Always good advice! I agree it's not that appetizing to find a gun in your salad, but really what they meant was "pistil".

Pistil is derived from a diminutive of the Latin word pilum (a pestle; one of those small club-shaped implements used to crush things in a bowl).
Above is a picture of a pestle and one of a pistil. You can see how one was named after the other.

Pistol (a handgun) is derived, unusually for English, from Czech. In Czech, the word píst'ala (a whistle, pipe, flute) was apparently first applied during the Hussite wars to a weapon with a barrel and a clear-sounding shot.

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Hurtling over hurdles

I just read a posting for a job which required candidates who could "find creative solutions to hurtles that arise". What they meant was "hurdles". These two words are pronounced the same in North American English.

"Hurtle" is a verb meaning "move wildly at a dangerous speed". A car can hurtle down a street. Something can hurtle through the air.

"Hurdle" is first of all a noun, one of those fence-like objects that runners leap over. The word is also used figuratively, as in the sentence in question.

Originally hurdles were portable rectangular frames of woven wicker, used on farms as temporary gates or walls of sheep pens. As is typical with English nouns, a verb developed out of this meaning "jump over a hurdle".

Perhaps a way to remember that hurtle is spelled with a t is that if your car is hurtling down the street you are likely to get hurt.

Photo by Andrew McElroy on Unsplash

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! If you are not already subscribed, you can either:

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A racket of racquets

Thwock. With the opening of the Rogers Cup tennis championship tomorrow, there will be a racket of racquets at York University. The implement used by tennis players got its name from an Arabic word, rahet (the palm of the hand), the ball originally being batted around with the hand. No doubt having one's hands bruised to a pulp quickly lost its charm, so the stringed bat was invented. The other racket, designating a din or uproar, or also a scam, is, alas, of undetermined origin.

Florist on a bike: a pedalling petal peddler

I was just up at a resort on Georgian Bay where I got some exercise with a pedal boat -- or, as the spelling-challenged resort called it, a peddle boat. Pedal and peddle are two different words. Where feet are involved with pushing a lever (as in a bicycle, or an organ, piano, sewing machine, etc.) the spelling is "pedal". It derives from a Latin word meaning "foot", pes, which became ped- when it combined with a suffix. It also turns up in "pedestrian".

When you're talking about selling something, possibly door-to-door, often drugs, or even more notionally when you are trying to promote an idea, the word and spelling you want is peddle. This seems to be what we call a "back-formation" from the noun "pedlar" (usually spelled "peddler" in North America). Unfortunately we don't know the origin of this word for sure.

For speakers of North American English, there is a third word in this series of homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently): petal, the part of a flower (which comes quite boringly from the Latin petalum meaning the same thing).

So, how to keep these straight if you keep mixing them up?

Here are a couple of mnemonics (memory devices) I have thought up. Do let me know if they help!

Pedal (foot thing). Think bicycles (the thing that comes first to most people's minds when they think about pedals). Have a really vivid image in your brain of Albert Einstein riding a bicycle (or if you know someone called Al, you can put him on the bike in your mental image). Slap a T-shirt on Einstein with his name, AL, in big letters on the back. Those of you who like acronyms can try the following Tour de France-inspired one: Practically Every Day Armstrong Leads: P.E.D.A.L.
With either of these mnemonics you associate "-al" with bicycles, and thus with other foot-controlled things.

Peddle (sell). We don't really have old-fashioned peddlers with their vans full of assorted goods anymore. When we use the verb "peddle", we're more likely to be speaking of someone peddling heroin. Who peddles? Drug dealers. Perhaps this alliterative compound with a double D will help you remember that "peddle" is not for bikes, but it is for selling (although it probably won't be an approved mnemonic for use in Ontario schools).

Petal (flower). Think of other flower-related words: stem, plant, leaf, flower, (if you're really into botany or want to show off, you'll know stamen and pistil, anther, calyx and styles as well, but if you can spell them already you're probably not having difficulty with "petal"). Do you see a letter D anywhere? Nope! And in fact, what letter does turn up in a lot of these flower words? Yes! T! So, if we're talking flowers, it's petal with a T!

Now, what about that word "soft-pedal" (or is it "soft-peddle"?) meaning "tone down, go easy on"? It is in fact "soft-pedal", the image being of a pianist using the pedal that reduces the volume of the note being played.

As for the resort, a further complication in the case of those boats that you propel with pedals is that they are also called "paddle boats" (presumably because you paddle about in them). In most North American pronunciations, short e's and short a's are very close together, so that "paddle" is a very close homophone of pedal, peddle, and petal.

But whatever they are, they aren't "peddle boats"!