Editor's Corner

The answers for today’s test, according to Games magazine and the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, Fourth Edition:

EINORTU = ROUTINE

AEGNNTT = TANGENT

DEGINOS = DINGOES

EIOOSTT = TOOTSIE

AAGLNRU = ANGULAR

Congratulations for those of you that came up with the answers!

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Today I have something a little different for you—an anagram test (from the latest edition of Games magazine). I’m only including 5 of 10 so you don’t get too distracted. Here are the instructions:

In a game of Scrabble, it would not be unusual to find any of the following sets of common letters on a player’s rack. Each set can be anagrammed [KC – rearranged] to form one—and only one—seven-letter word recognized by the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, Fourth Edition.

1. EINORTU

2. AEGNNTT

3. DEGINOS

4. EIOOSTT

5. AAGLNRU

Write your answers down on a sheet of paper and I will send out the official answers around noon so you can compare!

Today we have a timely Q&A article from Grammar Girl. (www.quickanddirtytips.com)

Question: "What’s your take on the apostrophe in ‘Hallowe’en’? To use or not to use?"

Answer: One early spelling of "Halloween" was "all hallows’ even," in which "even" meant "evening." The "all" and "s" got dropped, "hallows’ " and "even" became a closed compound, and the apostrophe took the place of the "v," giving us "Hallowe’en"—just one of many transitional spellings along the way to "Halloween."

If you’ve ever been in training with John Thomas, you may have been asked to share something about yourself that nobody else knows. I always freeze up when on the spot, but today, John, I have an answer for you! I am a secret follower of tattoo contests, tattoo TV shows, documentaries about tattoos, and I’m just fascinated by them. I change my mind often enough that I couldn’t think of something I’d want to look at until I’m on my deathbed—but I like to see what other people want to keep on their bodies forever.

For “Fun Friday,” I have portions of an article from DailyWritingTips.com, that combines English and tattoos! Tip to tattoo lovers: take a dictionary with you if you’re getting a tattoo with script!

The Internet-o-sphere abounds with images of tattoo tragedies, and it was difficult to pare the possibilities to a manageable number for this post. But here, in order of egregiousness, are four of the most boneheaded blunders:

No, you’re not. Oh, it’s not a misspelling of handsome? It’s supposed to be awesome. But you would be if you returned to the tattoo artist and—free of charge, of course—had a red caret (^) and a matching “e” inscribed.

Um, the biblical verse, as usually translated into English, is, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”—the statement elegantly terminates with the key word. This fellow’s artistic license in altering the wording and word order is excusable, but the misspelling of fore—not likely a pun on forearm—is not. I would have recommended the standard version, broken after drink—but “broken after drink” is probably the reason for the mistake in the first place.

This isn’t the only tragedy tattoo typo one can find (and you might be surprised by how many ways tattoo artists can render regret/regrets), but it’s the most prominent—and therefore the most tragic.

This misbegotten masterpiece wins the prize for sheer spectacle, and for lasting significance. My surmise is that this fellow has a spot in his heart for his alma mater. Unfortunately, there’s no Clemons University—it’s Clemson. (I hope he got his money back—that looks like a four-figure flub.)

Happy Friday!

The other day, I reminded someone of the “i before e” rule, and then today received this funny sentence:

“I before e except when you run a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbor.” (Thank you, Mr. Wilms!)

I’ve included some of the exceptions here, from an article on Wikipedia. If you are interested in the specific groupings of the words by sound, root words, and more, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_before_E_except_after_C

Exceptions

cie

· ancient

· bouncier

· conscience

· deficiencies

· efficiencies

· fancied

· fancier

· financier

· glacier

· policies

· prescient

· proficiencies

· science

· society

· species

ei not preceded by c

· atheism

· beige

· caffeine

· casein

· codeine

· counterfeit

· deify

· deign

· deindustrialize

· deity

· eider

· eight

· either

· feign

· feint

· feisty

· foreign

· foreign

· forfeit

· freight

· geisha

· height

· heinous

· herein

· inveigh

· inveigle

· kaleidoscope

· keister

· neigh

· neighbor

· nonpareil

· obeisance

· onomatopoeia

· peignoir

· protein

· reign

· rein

· seismic

· sheikh

· skein

· sleigh

· sleight

· sovereign

· stein

· surfeit

· surveil

· their

· unveil

· veil

· vein

· weigh

· weight

· weird

· zeitgeist

· Many proper names, often because they are adopted from other languages

o Keith, Neil, Sheila, Stein, etc.

o Leith, Keighley, Rheims, Raleigh, etc.

o Rottweiler, Cassiopeia

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As I was looking for some information on capitalization today, I did a double-take when I saw a listing in the Chicago Manual of Style for “Particles.” The only particles I studied in school were in the science courses…what could they be?

Here is what I found in the CMOS:

Names with particles

Many names include particles such as de, d’, de la, von, van, and ten. Practice with regard to capitalizing and spacing the particles varies widely, and confirmation should be sought in a biographical dictionary or other authoritative source. When the surname is used alone, the particle is usually retained, capitalized or lowercased and spaced as in the full name (though always capitalized when beginning a sentence). Le, La, and L’ are always capitalized when not preceded by de; the, which sometimes appears with the English form of a Native American name, is always lowercased.

Here are some examples listing the person’s full name, followed by the last name only:

Alfonse D’Amato; D’Amato

Diana DeGette; DeGette

Walter de la Mare; de la Mare

Thomas De Quincey; De Quincey

W. E. B. DuBois; DuBois

Daphne du Maurier; du Maurier

Robert M. La Follette Sr.; La Follette

John Le Carré; Le Carré

Pierre-Charles L’Enfant; L’Enfant

Anwar el-Sadat; Sadat

Abraham Ten Broeck; Ten Broeck

Robert van Gulik; van Gulik

Stephen Van Rensselaer; Van Rensselaer

Wernher von Braun; von Braun

If that’s not enough for you, CMOS has additional topics and rules for names in each of the following languages: French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Hungarian, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese. I don’t know about you, but I am so thankful that our everyday work no longer includes bibliographies!

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Hello!

It’s time for Editor’s Corner again. Since I’m easing back into work after a vacation filled with the French and Dutch languages, I thought I’d share some words with you that we have borrowed from Dutch. It turns out we share many words, since English and Dutch are both Germanic languages. In particular, the nautical world is full of Dutch terms (only a few listed here).

boss from baas

brawl from brallen

buoy from boei (="shackle" or "buoy")

coleslaw from koolsla (literally "cabbage salad")

cruller from Dutch krullen (="to curl")

dam from Middle Dutch dam (compare Amsterdam or Rotterdam)

domineer from Dutch domineren (="to rule")

elope from ontlopen (run away)

frolic from vrolijk (="cheerful")

furlough from verlof (="permission [to leave]")

grab from grijpen (="to seize, to grasp, to snatch")

kink from kink (referring to a twist in a rope)

knapsack possibly from knapzak (literally "bag of snacks")

landscape from landschap

rucksack from rugzak (="bag that is carried on your back")

skipper from Middle Dutch scipper (now schipper, literally "shipper")

slurp from slurpen

splinter from splinter

split from Middle Dutch splitten

wiggle from wiggelen (="to wobble, to wiggle") or wiegen (="to rock")

Terms from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Dutch_origin

This will be the last Editor’s Corner for a few weeks, as I prepare to go on vacation to some not-so-imaginary places. Today’s gift from me to you is a list of 12 imaginary places, from Daily Writing Tips (http://www.dailywritingtips.com/12-imaginary-places/).

Religion, legends, and literature alike are replete with various conceptions of ethereal or terrestrial paradises or places with romantic flair. Here are a dozen examples of ideal locales, including their names, their origins, and their definitions.

1. Arcadia (the Greek region of Arcadia): an idealized, unattainable pastoral state, bereft of civilization

2. Atlantis (allegorical legend recounted by Plato): an island with a complex, advanced civilization that was submerged in a cataclysmic disaster in preclassical times)

3. Camelot (European legends and folklore): the seat of the court of King Arthur, renowned for its splendor

4. Cockaigne (European medieval legend): a place of idleness and luxury

5. El Dorado or Eldorado (Spanish legend): the name given to a Native American chieftain and, by extension, to the prosperous city and surrounding empire he supposedly ruled; later, a metaphor for happiness or personal fulfillment

6. Erewhon (Samuel Butler’s satirical novel Erewhon): a seemingly utopian society with the same flaws as actual civilization

7. Faerie (European fairy tales and folktales): the magical realm of fairies and other legendary beings

8. Neverland or the Neverlands or Never Never Land (J. M. Barrie’s stage play Peter Pan and his novelization Peter and Wendy): an idyllic land serving as a metaphor for escapism and perpetual childhood

9. Shambhala (Buddhist tradition): a mythical hidden kingdom in Central Asia adopted as an ideal state by believers in mysticism

10. Shangri-La (James Hilton’s romantic novel Lost Horizon): an idealized paradise in a hidden valley in Asia

11. Utopia (Sir Thomas More’s allegorical novel Utopia): an island with a harmonious sociopolitical system; in uncapitalized form, any idealized society

12. Xanadu (Chinese history): a city in what is now Inner Mongolia, the historical summer palace of Kublai Khan, but also, inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan, an idealized place of luxurious splendor

Kara Church

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This morning I received this article from The Grammarist newsletter. I had no plan to talk about horsies, but after reading this article and saying horsey, horsy, horsie out loud, it made me laugh, so I thought I’d send it along. 🙂

I hope you are having a wonderful Monday.

Horsey, horsy, horsie

Some dictionaries list horsy as the primary spelling of the word that can be (1) an adjective meaning horse-like, (2) an adjective meaning of or having to do with horses, or (3) a diminutive of horse. But these dictionaries are behind times. Horsy had a brief heyday in the middle of the 20th century, but horsey was unquestionably the preferred spelling before around 1940, and it is again the preferred spelling. This is the case throughout the English-speaking world.

There is also horsie, which is used most often as the diminutive of horse, but it is rare compared to the other two.

Examples

In Google News searches covering a large selection of major English-language publications and limited to 2000 to the present, most instances of horsy are in the New York Times, which seems to be an outlier on this issue. But outside the Times (where horsey does also appear, but not as often as horsy), horsey is the far more common spelling. Here are few examples from around the English-speaking world:

· They stock the barn with all kinds of horsey goodies: brushes, blankets, water buckets, feeders, saddles, stirrups, bridles, bits, reins. [Denver
Post]

· Slightly older but less weathered by an outdoor horsey lifestyle, Ann has certainly been busier since the nuptials were scheduled. [Sunday
Express (U.K.)]

· Horsey movies are usually buddy flicks, partnering the steed with often young and diminutive pals. [Globe
and Mail (Canada)]

· Those behind the scheme are convinced that the polo lifestyle as much as the horsey discipline will swing it their way. [New
Zealand Herald]

To see the ngram charts on this topic, go to the bottom of the article here: http://grammarist.com/usage/horsey-horsy-horsie/

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Great job! We had 142 respondents, and 117 of those picked the correct answers. See the explanations of each word below.

By the way, today’s questions and answers are from www.grammarbook.com.

1) CBAB –11

2) CBBA – 3

3) DBAB –117

4) DABB –11

Choose the correct sentence from each group:

A) You know better than to medal in other people’s business.

B) You know better than to metal in other people’s business.

C) You know better than to mettle in other people’s business.

D) You know better than to meddle in other people’s business.

Explanation: Use the word meddle to mean interfere unwantedly. Medal is a decoration or badge, metal is an earth element, and mettle indicates boldness.

A) Having life insurance gives us piece of mind.

B) Having life insurance gives us peace of mind.

Explanation: Use the word peace to mean calm. Piece is a portion of something.

A) Before hanging the wallpaper, check to see if the walls are plumb.

B) Before hanging the wallpaper, check to see if the walls are plum.

Explanation: Use the word plumb to mean perpendicular. Plum is a type of fruit.

A) Would you like to have a sneak peak at the restaurant before it opens?

B) Would you like to have a sneak peek at the restaurant before it opens?

C) Would you like to have a sneak pique at the restaurant before it opens?

Explanation: Use the word peek to mean glance furtively. Peak is the top of a mountain and pique is to wound someone’s pride or to excite interest.

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