Editor's Corner

OK, I admit that today’s Editor’s Corner is pure fluff. I heard the funniest misused idiom the other day and just have to share it with you: kitten caboodle.

This is what I’m imagining—a whole caboodle of kittens:

But what is the correct idiom, and what on earth is a caboodle?

I believe the idiom the speaker was thinking of is kit and caboodle. I did some research and wasn’t able to find a date of first usage; however, I did gather the following information.

The word caboodle refers to everything in a group—or to relate to the image above, every last kitten in the litter. It basically means that you’re not leaving anything out. Interestingly, kit means the same thing, so this idiom is redundant.

Kit has been used to refer to everything in a collection or group since the mid-1700s, and caboodle has been used to mean the same thing since the 1840s. But the idiom we know today as kit and caboodle may have originally been slightly different. According to Dictionary.com, “…caboodle is thought to be a corruption of the phrase kit and boodle.” And guess what boodle means? You’ve got it, it means the same thing as kit, which means the same thing as caboodle. They all mean “everything in a collection or group.”

That’s a lot of redundancy to work through, but that’s how idioms are born and how they grow up. So, even though the idiom we know today is kit and caboodle, the next time someone asks you how much or how many donuts (or dollars, French fries, jewelry, etc.) you want, I dare you to ask for the whole kitten caboodle. And then let me know how it goes. I love a good laugh.

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Good day to you!

Although I thought it was, the word I’m about to harp on is not a new word. Lately, though, I’ve been hearing and seeing it everywhere (that’s the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in action!), so I decided to research its common usage and its etymology.

The word is surveil: it is a verb meaning “to subject to surveillance.”

I have to admit, this word has been bothering me. I usually try not to let the evolution of English words get under my skin because we all play with language and use it to our advantage, whether that be to make a point, to get noticed, to save time, or maybe to shock. But this word has been haunting me lately. It’s everywhere—on the radio, in LinkedIn Learning lessons, in magazines, on TV shows. All of a sudden, it seems to me, people everywhere are being surveilled instead of being monitored or spied on or followed. And they are surveilling instead of monitoring or following someone.

Although it’s only recently been on my radar, it turns out, this is not a new word. It’s been in use since 1884, according to Merriam-Webster. Get with it, Donna!

Here’s the scoop: surveil is what we call a back-formation. The noun surveillance came first (dating back to 1802) and a mere 82 years later, people decided to finagle it into a verb rather than use one of the synonymous verbs we already had.

Here are examples of how the noun and the verb are currently used:

• Electronic surveillance methods are increasingly being used. (noun)
• He decided to surveil his son to find out who he was sneaking out to meet in the middle of the night. (verb)

OK. So, it’s a legitimate old word. I still don’t like it. I just don’t like the sound of it, But I’m no longer indignant about it (much). I realize that language is not stagnant. And back-formation is a common way that new words come into being. To help me on my path to acceptance of the word surveil, I’ve compiled a partial list of verbs formed from nouns by back-formation:

• automate from automation
• babysit from babysitter
• burgle from burglar
• diagnose from diagnosis
• edit from editor [dbb – Uh-oh. This doesn’t help my argument.]
• injurefrom injury
• panhandlefrom panhandler
• sedatefrom sedative
• surrealfrom surrealism
• swindle from swindler
• televise from television
• vaccinate from vaccination

And here are a couple of verbs that were formed from adjectives:

• laze from lazy
• obsess from obsessive

And since none of those words irritate me, I’m going to do my best to get over my disdain toward surveil. Don’t hold your breath though. I’m not feeling amenable—I don’t think I’m going to amen on this one. 😜

• amenfrom amenable (meaning to yield)
  [dbb – I made it up and I know it’s a stretch, but it could catch on! Give it 80 years or so.]

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Greetings, folks. I was recently asked about articles (a, an, the)—how to use them, when to use them, even how to pronounce them. So I thought I’d go over the basic grammar rules. Want to come along with me on this journey? Let’s go.

There are two kinds of articles: indefinite articles (a and an) indicate that a noun refers to something unspecific or general and the definite article (the) indicates that a noun refers to something specific.

We’ll start with indefinite articles. Here are some examples:

• Would you please hand me a book? (any book)
• I would love an appetizer. (any appetizer)

When do we use a and when do we use an? Good question—one I’ve been asked a few times recently. We use a before a word that starts with a consonant sound:

• a bird
• a catapult
• a lovely day
• a unicorn

And we use an before a word that starts with a vowel sound:

• an airplane
• an energetic hummingbird
• an FBI agent

Note that it’s the sound of the following word, not the letter it begins with, that determines whether we use a or an. That’s what seems to be confusing folks. Even though FBI starts with the consonant F, we would say an FBI agent because the letter F is pronounced eff—and that’s a vowel sound. On the other hand, we would say a unicorn because unicorn starts with a hard U sound (you-nicorn).Compare that to the word umpire, which starts with a soft U sound (uhm-pire). We would use an when referring to an umpire.

If you’re still on board, let’s move on to the definite article the, whichdenotes something specific as shown in these examples:

• Would you please hand me the book about artificial intelligence? (a specific book)
• I would love one of the vegetarian appetizers. (a specific type of appetizer)

Although the is the only definite article, many of us do pronounce it differently depending on the sound of the first letter of the word that follows it. Most of us say thuh (like duh) before any word that begins with a consonant sound:

• the meeting
• the conflict
• the zoo

However, many of us say thee before any word that begins with a vowel sound:

• the elevator
• the apple
• the umbrella

That’s it. You are now a definite and indefinite article expert. It probably won’t get you a pay increase, but it might lead people to think of you as a supercilious nuisance. That’s got to count for something.

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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A very good morning to you! I hesitated before sharing this information about the difference between the words shall and should because most of us rarely use shall anymore. But I like the word, even though it does have an old-timey feel to it (or maybe because it does).

I’ll start with a little information about the word shall. The first thing to remember is that shall is used to covey what you or someone else plans, intends, or expects to do. The second thing to remember (and this can be quite helpful), is that shall is often used interchangeably with the word will.

Examples

• We shall arrive at the party fashionably late to ensure that everyone notices Mick’s typically outlandish ensemble.
• All glee club meetings shall be held on campus and must be attended by a staff member.
• Shall we dance?

On the other hand, the word should is a little more familiar to us. It indicates obligation, duty, or correctness.

Examples

• We should visit Aunt Mackie this weekend—she’s been hinting that it’s been a while.
• Glee club members should all pass an audition before being allowed to join the club.
• Electric cars should be made more affordable.
• Should he call her before just showing up at her house?

Along with the fact that shall sounds stuffy to many people, I believe that our confusion between the words shall and should stems from the fact that should also functions as the past tense of shall. This usage is much more common in British English than it is in U.S. English, but we’ve all heard or read sentences similar to the following.

Examples

• If the king should die unexpectedly, his son, the prince, ascends to the throne.
• Should you be involved in an accident, you will lose your driving privileges.

And there you have it. You can now call yourself an expert on the difference between the words shall and should.

But should you? Only if you want your nerd glasses broken by one of the cool kids.

I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving.

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Here I go again! Not too long ago I sent you 10 Words that Don’t Mean What You Think They Mean. Today, I have a list of words that you may be using incorrectly. This list comes from Dictionary.com.

I was unaware of the nuance of a couple of these words, and I find this kind of thing so delightful! I fully admit to being a word nerd, and I hope some of you are kind enough to travel down this nerdy path with me.

It’s OK if you are disinterested in this topic, I only hope you’re not uninterested. And I hope you have a glorious day.

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Did the subject line of today’s Editor’s Corner spark your interest? Well, for those of you who like to swear and were hoping I might be talking about curse words, I’m sorry to disappoint you. But now that you’re here, let me tell you about grammatical expletives.

In grammar (unlike in my life when someone cuts my spouse off in traffic), an expletive is a sentence that begin with phrases like “There is/was,” “There are/were,” and “It is/was.” Both curse words and grammatical expletives are considered to be filler words—words that take up space, but don’t add meaning.

So, is it OK to start your sentences with grammatical expletives? Well, yes, but they really should be avoided in many cases. Here are some examples of what I mean along with some alternatives:

• There are many people who think Elvis is still alive.

Many people think Elvis is still alive

• It was a very violent storm that hit the region last night.

A very violent storm hit the region last night.

Are there times when it’s OK or preferable to start your sentence with an expletive? Absolutely. If you revise your sentence to avoid the expletive and it just doesn’t sound right, you should leave it as is. For example, I would not change the sentence “There is no place like home.” The alternative, “No place is like home” just doesn’t have the same punch, and it’s not just because of Dorothy and her ruby red slippers.

Here’s another example of a sentence I probably would not change: “There is a problem with your plan.” The alternative, “Your plan has a problem,” just doesn’t work for me. It sounds harsher and more judgmental.

Now, if I intended to be judgmental, a revision like that might work. Look at this:

• Dear spouse, there is a problem with your aggression when driving.

Dear spouse, your aggression when driving is a problem.

Let the argument and the real expletives begin!

Have a curse-free day!

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Hello, readers!

Thank you to Jane Gredvig for sharing a Facebook reel with me to share with you. Don’t worry if you aren’t into Facebook, I’ve taken notes and done some additional research that I’ll share with you here.

Note: I am using male and female as the words were defined in the past, as long ago as the 1300s.

Many of you may be familiar with the word pejorative. Meriam-Webster defines pejorative as “a word or phrase that has negative connotations or that is intended to disparage or belittle.” Some synonyms for pejorative are insulting, derogatory, demeaning, and uncomplimentary.

The video, however, is about pejoration. It is a noun that means (also from M-W) “a change for the worse…specifically: an historical process by which the semantic and connotative status of a word tends to decline.” The Facebook reel claims that pejoration is a negative indicator of cultural biases if you look at language evolution throughout history. Now for some examples.

First, the voyage from a non-judgmental term for a woman, to a term meaning a promiscuous woman or prostitute.

As you can see, these terms are all for women. Where there are so-called male equivalents, these are not weighed down with the heaviness of the female version.

To bring this back to the negative indicator of cultural biases, there are examples from American cultures that are racist, classist, sexist, and just plain odd.

Notorious used to mean famous; now it means famous for something terrible. Silly has gone from happy to feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish. And awful went from full of awe to really bad.

Two of the sets of pejorative words representing classism are villain and boor, which meant farmworker. But as you know villain is now someone who does harm and a boor is an uncouth, rustic, uncultured person.

The final example is immigrant, which the video presenter says isn’t an insult, but many people give it a very negative emphasis. Keep your eyes open for words that seem to be evolving in their meanings over time, particularly those vilifying certain groups of people and what is going on in our culture that reflects these language changes.

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

Editor’s Corner Archives: https://episystechpubs.com/

Good morning or afternoon or evening—whatever time you are reading this email, I hope it is a good time.

My friend Jane G. suggested that it might be interesting to look into false etymologies: what they are and how they occur. What a good idea, I thought, and I decided to include a few examples. Thanks for the suggestion, Jane!

A false etymology is a popular but false belief about the origin of a specific word or phrase. According to Wikipedia, false etymologies “often have the feel of urban legends and can be more colorful and fanciful than the typical etymologies found in dictionaries, often involving stories of unusual practices in particular subcultures (e.g., Oxford students from non-noble families being supposedly forced to write sine nobilitate by their name, soon abbreviated to s.nob., hence the word snob).”

Wikipedia says that this phenomenon happens for a variety of reasons. Some false etymologies are “reasonable interpretations of the evidence that just happen to be false.” Perhaps a scholar attempted to discover the origin of a word or phrase and provided a theory based on the best evidence they had, but it was later found to be incorrect. Over time, as our knowledge grows, sometimes our theories change.

Some false etymologies are more purposefully false or deceptive—or maybe they just come from untrustworthy sources. Someone claiming to be an expert may offer an etymology that is picked up and spread around. And some origin stories just spread like gossip because they’re surprising, intriguing, or scandalous.

Now that you know what they are, let’s look at a partial list of false etymologies from Wikipedia:

There are far more false etymologies than are listed here. Over the years, I’ve learned to be less gullible when it comes to believing the origin of a word or phrase without doing a little research. I believed the false story about the origin of the phrase “rule of thumb” for much of my life. It just sounded so believable. (They often do!)

These days, we have the luxury of numerous search engines that allow us to research and find information. I find myself falling down a lot of interesting rabbit holes while searching for information about language and writing. It’s better than TikTok and Instagram™, if you ask me. By the way, the phrase “down the rabbit hole” originated in Lewis Carroll’s classic book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but I bet you knew that.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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Happy Halloween!

It’s one of my favorite times of the year: Autumn, and in particular, Halloween. From the Ghost Glossary at Thesaurus.com, I have some Halloweenish words for you, and there are many more on the website.

Ghosts are spirits of the dead, often imagined as floating or moving around in a wispy, immaterial form. The word ghost developed from the Old English gast, which means “soul, spirit, life, breath.”

Ghosts are common in folklore around the world, and there are many different names for them:

• spirit: A general synonym for a ghost, spirit can also be used in terms for ghosts that haunt a specific place or that have a specific characteristic. For example, you can have a forest spirit that haunts the woods or a vengeful spirit that’s out for revenge.
• specter: Sometimes used to refer to an especially scary ghost, the word specter comes from the Latin word spectrum, meaning “appearance.” Specters are spirits that you can see.
• apparition: A supernatural thing that appears suddenly, like a ghost. An apparition may or may not be the spirit of a person. You could see the apparition of a horse, a ship, or an entire battle scene, for example.
• wraith: A wraith is a ghostly version of a living person whose appearance is thought to signal their imminent death.
• phantom, phantasm: A spirit or apparition, a phantom or phantasm is especially prone to appearing and disappearing suddenly.
• revenant: The spirit of a person that has returned after death. In other words, a revenant is another word for a ghost.
• shade, shadow: Both shade and shadow are poetic synonyms for ghost. Shade is sometimes specifically used to refer to spirits of the dead in the underworld as imagined in ancient Greek and Roman mythology.
• Gremlin:Refers to an invisible creature known for wreaking havoc in machinery, especially airplanes. The term is first recorded in the late 1920s, and it may be related to the word goblin, but its origin is unknown. In popular culture, the appearance of gremlins varies widely.
• Goblin: A small, ugly creature known for harassing humans. The word goblin comes from the Middle High German word kobold, which refers to a mischievous creature or spirit that haunts houses or mines (the name of the metal cobalt comes from the same word—from the miners’ belief that malicious goblins placed it in the silver ore). In popular culture, goblins are often depicted as tiny, cunning minions of evil or wild and dangerous tricksters.

• cacodemon: To the ancient Greeks, an evil demon, or a cacodemon, is the opposite of a good spirit or angel (called a eudemon).
• eidolon: A phantom or apparition. In the Iliad, an eidolon was a shapeshifting spirit that took the appearance of Helen of Troy and, in some versions of the story, may have even caused the Trojan War.
• banshee: In Irish folklore, a spirit in the form of a wailing woman who appears to or is heard by members of a family as a sign that one of them is about to die. Banshees are especially known for their horrifying scream (the “cry of the banshee”).
• dybbuk: In Jewish mythology, a dybukk is a ghost of a dead sinner that seeks to possess a living person. According to the stories, a dybbuk can only be removed through a religious exorcism.
• jinn: In Islamic mythology, a jinn (popularly known as a genie) is a spirit that influences humans to be good or evil. In popular culture, they are often portrayed as super powerful magical creatures who grant wishes (which often turn out much differently than the wisher intended).
• doppelgänger: A ghostly double or counterpart of a living person. The word doppelgänger comes from a German term literally (and spookily) meaning “double-walker.”

Don’t forget, if you want to read more about ghosts, goblins, and bogeymen, see the full article here.

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

Editor’s Corner Archives: https://episystechpubs.com/

Good morning, and welcome to another beautiful Thursday.

I love it when my grammar resource sites provide me with unusual lists of words, which MSN did recently. They sent me (and millions of other people) a list called “10 Words That Don’t Mean What You Think They Do.” Ah, just my cup of tea! Some of these might be surprising to you, so read on and enjoy.

1. Contingency: There’s no such thing as "a contingency of experts," "of French chefs," "of Chinese ministers," or the like. A contingency is something that might happen ("We must prepare for every contingency"). A group of people is a contingent.

2. Disinterested: If you’re not interested in something, you’re uninterested. "Disinterested" means that you have no direct stake in something, financially or in some other sense. A judge in a courtroom should always be disinterested in the proceedings, though they may interest [the judge] very much.

3. Exhibit: If you go to the museum to see a Picasso exhibit, you’re just seeing one painting or print or whatever. An exhibit is a single item. Think "Exhibit A." An exhibition is a whole collection of exhibits, which is probably what drew you to the museum.

4. Flagrant: People use "flagrant" to mean obvious, as in "a flagrant error" or "a flagrant invitation." It means something stronger than that, though—not just obvious but particularly offensive or objectionable. The aforementioned error and invitation are more correctly "blatant."

5. Further: San Francisco isn’t further from New York than Boston is and you didn’t run further than you should—it’s "farther" in both cases. "Farther" refers to physical distance, "further" to non-physical or metaphorical ones ("Let’s not take this argument any further.”)

6. Infamous: This adjective gets applied to all kinds of things these days—"The restaurant’s infamous chocolate cake," "The team’s infamous victory over their rivals," and so on—when what people actually mean is "famous" or "celebrated." "Infamous" isn’t a compliment: It means disgraceful or having a bad reputation.

7. Insure: You can’t insure that something bad won’t happen. You can insure yourself—that is, buy insurance—so that you’ll be compensated if something bad does, but what you want to try to do is ensure that something bad won’t happen. "Ensure" means to guarantee or make certain; "insure" means to buy insurance or otherwise indemnify.

8. Notorious: See "infamous," above. "Notorious" sometimes gets used in the same way ("The restaurant’s notorious chocolate cake.") But it doesn’t just mean famous—it means famous in a bad way, or known unfavorably.

9. Penultimate: This is the penultimate word in this list. And, no, it’s not the last one. The last word is the ultimate one; "pen-" is a Latin prefix meaning "almost," and "penultimate" means second-to-last.

10. Tortuous: It sounds like something that tortures you, but that would actually be "torturous." "Tortuous" means winding or twisting, like a road that curves up a mountainside.

Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™

Pronouns she/her/hers

9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123

Symitar Documentation Services

About Editor’s Corner

Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.

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