Mim's the Word

The Florida Congresswoman is all cattle

2011-08-14T11:35:00.003-04:00

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Congresswoman from Florida’s 20th District, was talking on one of the news shows last week about some of the goings-on in Washington. For an idea being proposed that she did not agree with, she pronounced that “that dog will not hunt.” A few seconds later, she made a reference to someone being “all hat and no cattle.”

For a nanosecond or two, I thought that she must have just run out and bought my new book, Wicked Good Wordshttp://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Good-Words-Johnnycakes-Regionalisms/dp/0399536760/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313251128&sr=1-3 . It’s a collection of America’s regionalisms—those things we say that signal we’re from here and not there. Then I got a grip and realized that the Congresswoman was simply well attuned to the expressions that Floridians—some of them, at least—use.

“That dog will not hunt,” or as it’s more commonly heard, “that dog won’t hunt,” is an expression familiar to many Southerners. (Yes, even in South Florida, Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz’s district, you can still find some Southerners among the many Northerners like me who have come here.) Folks in the Ozarks were among the first to use this expression as a way of saying “that won’t work,” but saying it more colorfully.

You’ll also hear the inverse, “that dog’ll hunt,” although not as frequently. (And these days, almost never when it comes to goings-on in Washington.)

“All hat and no cattle” is how many in the southern part of the country say that someone is full of hot air, or doesn’t follow through: an imposter. Just because you can put on a cowboy hat doesn’t mean you know to rustle cattle.

Okay, you may be thinking, makes sense for Texas. But Florida? Yep. Florida does, indeed, have some cattle ranches. Go figure.

The new watchword for Wal-Mart: strafe

2009-10-16T09:45:00.001-04:00

“Wal-Mart Strafes Amazon in Book War” blares the page one headline in today’s Wall Street Journal. “Strafe” would have sent me running for cover, had I known its meaning. Instead it sent me scurrying to the dictionary.

As it turns out, strafe has a very specific—and rather lengthy—meaning. To quote American Heritage: “To attack (ground troops, for example) with a machine gun or cannon from a low-flying aircraft.” Like trench coat, strafe is a vestige of World War I. It’s from the German strafen, to punish, which is what Germany wanted to do to England at the time.

That war is over. Now it seems Wal-Mart and Amazon will engage in their own punishing campaign to see who can go lower on the price of a book. (Mainly it’s authors who will get punished.)

Strafe is what I call a one-syllable wonder: one of those economical words in our language that says in one sound what might otherwise take a sentence to explain. Add it to your arsenal of words that pack a powerful punch. And if someone threatens to strafe you, take cover.

At the Library of Congress, some words for the Capitol

2009-10-02T12:26:00.004-04:00

Last week I went to the Library of Congress on business—although I don’t think it’s possible to be in the take-your-breath-away-beauty of the Jefferson Building of the Library and feel like it’s hard work.

I had never been to America’s library before, so I didn’t realize that the Library is literally across the street from the U.S. Capitol building. The two are now connected through an underground tunnel. They also share an icon in their lofty treatments of Minerva. Atop the Capitol building, she fulfills her role as goddess of might in war. Inside the Library, she assumes her equal role as goddess of wisdom.

But what really joins these two buildings are the books—not because of what they are but because of what they represent. This is, after all, the library that Thomas Jefferson established for members of Congress, even though it is open to all (that’s democracy for you).

Government grounded in words

As Librarian of Congress James Billington reminded guests at the reception for this year’s National Book Festival, our country, more than most, is built on a foundation of governance that’s grounded in the written word. How fitting, then, that everywhere you turn in the Jefferson Building, there is writing on the walls. They are the words of great thinkers through the centuries—Bacon, Virgil, Cicero, Milton, Shakespeare and a host of others.

The inscriptions carry an apostolic quality, as well they should. The Library of Congress is America’s secular cathedral. It represents not simply books but learning, and not only learning but knowledge, and not just knowledge but, when we as a nation play our heritage cards right, civil comportment.

“Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.”

The words are Emerson’s, and they are among the hundreds that capture this transcendent power of the possible.

More than the tunnel that connects them, more than the domes that define them, even more than Minerva, the immutable bond between Library and Congress rests with the words. In the most hopeful and uplifting of ways, the writing of American possibility is on the walls at the Library of Congress. Let's hope that members of Congress visit often.

Declare your independence today from dumbed-down words

2009-07-04T13:16:00.000-04:00

Just about 233 years ago today, a small band of revolutionary thinkers agonized over whether to use inalienable or unalienable in the declaration of independence they were crafting.

Would the question even come up today?

Here we are, in this revolutionary age of click-and-learn, and still the notion lingers, like some moldy imperial decree, that Americans can’t be smart about their words, that they must be presented their news in terms that resonate with eighth-graders (okay, ninth-graders if you’re daring).

Americans of any mettle should chafe at such a condescending—and unnecessary—attitude. Why dumb down words when it’s so easy to look them up? Especially now that so many of us get at least some of our news online, where finding a definition takes just a few keystrokes.

Even readers of The New York Times have to look up the meaning of some of the newspaper’s terms. (“Sui generis” topped a recent list. Go ahead—see how long it takes you to look it up.) I declare that to be a good thing: it means we know we’re still capable of learning.

In fact, I’d say it was our inalienable right.

Who took the “ugh” out of “doughnut”?

2009-06-05T13:40:00.000-04:00

June 5th is National Donut Day, so get thee to a Dunkin’ Donuts (where my husband will be) or a Krispy Kreme. But whatever happened to the “ugh” in “doughnut”?

The word itself is an Americanism. Washington Irving put “doughnut” on the linguistic map back in 1809. It was a lot easier to say and spell than its unappetizing synonym of “olykoeks” (literally, oil cakes).

We Americans have long had a thing about “u” words. “Dialogue” is now “dialog,” “honour” is “honor.” So it’s not surprising that we took the “ugh” out of “doughnut.” Besides, most of us would swap that “ugh” for “yum.”

Obama’s Hurricane Recession

2009-03-01T11:06:00.001-05:00

When President Obama began his message to Congress last week with details of his economic recovery plan, his words were startlingly familiar—at least to many Floridians.

“We will rebuild,” he said. “We will recover.”

That Obama-speak was also hurricane-speak. “Rebuild” and “recover” are the watchwords of devastation. Those are the phrases that people in Florida (and no doubt in other hurricane-prone parts of the country) hear after each storm blows through, blows down the power lines, blows away the roofs.

It seems a fitting parallel. As with hurricanes, so with recessions: both expose a weak infrastructure.

If there’s a silver lining to this dark cloud, it’s that eventually, we do rebuild and do recover from the hurricanes. Let’s hope the recession follows the same path.

If Lincoln had blogged on Inauguration Day…

2009-01-21T12:47:00.000-05:00

…he would not have found Obama’s language overly familiar. For despite what some were expecting, President Barack Obama’s inaugural address was not an echo of Lincolnian cadences. But what Lincoln would have recognized in Obama was a shared mastery in turning words into deeds.

Once upon a time that seems not to matter now, these barely-known candidates from Illinois were dismissed as being no more than adroit wordsmiths. But both have shown that carefully considered words can yield hoped-for actions. The right words, in the right hands, become instruments of power.

Had Lincoln blogged, he might have commented on the transformative power of Barack Obama’s inaugural words. Almost instantly, they put into motion a national mindset of we, the people, together, we can.

In Obama’s good words rest good deeds poised to be done—the kinds of actions that elicit in Americans what Lincoln might have called “the better angels of our nature.”

Granted, it’s just a beginning. But what a way to begin anew.

I’ll have whatever Calista Flockhart is having

2009-01-06T17:10:00.000-05:00

Am I the only person who had never heard the term “brain sex” until Kitty (Calista Flockhart) said it to her husband, Robert (Rob Lowe) on TV’s “Brothers and Sisters”?

If I understood her correctly, it means the kind of verbal sparring that occurs when two people speak to one another on a subject they care about in animated, intelligent, lucid, lively, bright, colorful and descriptive sentences.

We word lovers have long known that words matter. Now there’s one more reason why being smart about your words can make you happy.

A Victory for Eloquence

2008-11-07T19:28:00.003-05:00

It took months, weeks, days of grueling, grinding work to win the presidential election. But within two hours of doing so, President-Elect Barack Obama scored a major victory for the American language: he brought eloquence to the national stage once again.

In his acceptance speech, he made a graceful allusion to Martin Luther King Jr.’s statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Then he drew directly from the closing paragraph of Lincoln's first inaugural address when he stated, “We are not enemies, but friends.”

The World Changes, trumpeted the headline in an Italian newspaper, announcing the election results. For all the power that Barack Obama will soon have to change the world, it will be the power of his words that will move many of us—not only to action, but to think.

Your thoughts? Click the Comments button if you’d like to have words.

Not again! Say it isn’t so, Sarah

2008-10-25T08:45:00.001-04:00

Palin, in Greek, means “again.” Listening to Sarah Palin relay her redneck story when she was in Ohio recently—“You know what I said when somebody said to me, ‘Sarah, you’re a redneck’? I said, ‘Thank you’”—one starts to hear it all over again.

Red versus blue.
Us versus them.
Me versus you.

Thanks to the implosion of Wall Street, Americans may be long divided between those who profited in the fall (cause) and those who’ve watched their savings, jobs, homes, retirement fall apart (effect). Isn’t that enough of a divide?

Do we really need to go back to that Bush League dichotomy of you’re-one-of-us-or-you’re-not?

Not again. Please—not ever again.

Who you calling maverick? The debate Obama and McCain won’t have (so we will)

2008-09-07T16:59:00.003-04:00

“Words mean something.” Sure, you’d expect to see a statement like that on a word-lover’s blog. Surprise—those three words belong to Barack Obama, as quoted in today’s New York Times.

But what exactly do words mean?

Audacity, meet maverick

When I was finding the right words for Smart Words, two that I included were “audacity” and “maverick.” This happened months before we knew who our presidential candidates would be. (Unlike blogs, books still take a bit of time a-borning.)

“Audacity” is boldness and adventurousness. “Maverick” is from Samuel Maverick, a Texas rancher who refused to brand his cattle; his namesake word means one who is an independent thinker.

Barack Obama is the author of The Audacity of Hope. John McCain will tell you he’s always been a maverick.

But after the Democratic and Republican conventions, one wonders if either candidate should claim ownership of either word.

McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin was one where “audacity” fits easily into the sentence. It certainly was bold, and no doubt will prove to be adventurous. Whether it was wise is another matter.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, refused to let himself be branded as an impossibility and became the country’s first African-American presidential candidate. Some would call that the mark of a true maverick.

“Words mean something.” But not always, and not only, what they set out to mean.

What do you think, fellow word-lover? I’d love to hear from you. Just click on “Post a Comment” on the next line…and let’s have words.

A Smart-Words Manifesto

2008-08-16T17:31:00.004-04:00

The trend is encouraging: there are Smart Cars, smart buildings, even smart cows (or at least, Smart Balance margarine and Simply Smart milk). We’re shown how to be smart about money, perhaps because more of us have less of it thanks to the price of that margarine and milk.

Isn’t it time we started being smart about our words?

In one sense, we already are. English is a finicky language, filled with rules and exceptions to them. And, just to keep us on our linguistic toes, it’s rarely met a language it didn’t like and want to borrow from.

Thus we have words from Sanskrit (juggernaut) and Algonquin (mugwump) and French (dishabille) and Spanish (aficionado) and Latin (caveat) and Greek (hubris) and German (Schadenfreude) and plenty more.

The number of words in the English language hovers at around a quarter of a million, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (which Ammon Shea, a fellow word-lover, recently read in its entirety). Only the number of guys who’ve wished they were Tiger Woods surpasses this.

Certainly, English is one of the most…verbose of the world languages. The fact that most of us who speak the language can string together coherent sentences says much about our smarts.

Isn’t it time we showed the world our smarter selves? Why not use more of this vast wealth of words at our fingertips?

It doesn’t always have to be about the big, Bill Buckley words. It’s really about using the right words—the ones that send a little frisson of pleasure down the spine when you hear them or read them or write them. (Really, words can do that.)

As a nation, we’ve been Dummied down too long. The assumption seems to have been that because we don’t know something—how to say eleemosynary, for example—we can’t learn. Nonsense.

Americans have been smart enough to figure how to keep a democracy relatively intact for more than 200 years. (Winston Churchill once described democracy as “the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time,” and then used his mastery of the language to help protect it from ruin.) If we can do that, surely we can figure out how to put more words to work for us.

Once upon a time America had eloquent leaders—Kennedy, Lincoln, John Adams and just about everyone in his crowd. Perhaps we will again. Eloquence has a way of uplifting, of bringing out “the better angels of our nature,” as Lincoln said—even if it means bringing out, or clicking onto, the dictionary.

We Americans don’t need to be talked down to. We’re smarter than that. It’s about time we showed this better angel of our nature to the world, and to ourselves.

(About eleemosynary—it’s a long way of saying “depending on charity” and is pronounced ell-ee-uh-MAH-sin-ar-ee.)

And what do you think, oh smart one reading this—do you agree? I’d love to hear from you. Please post your Comment…and let’s have words.

A portmanteau for the first post

2007-12-31T10:31:00.000-05:00

It's the last day of the year and the first time I'm trying a blog. The word book I'm writing right now includes the word portmanteau. I would say that the word blog is itself a portmanteau. Would you agree?