takeourword.com Blog

We (Melanie and Mike) took these photographs recently:

We hope that Lexus did not actually fabricate that license plate frame! Maybe the author is actually trying to make a point. Hers is already possessive. By adding an apostrophe, does it become “superpossessive”? Perhaps she won’t let him drive it? Mmm, we doubt it.

Does the below bumper sticker suggest a name for the car, or is it making a statement? If we’re to believe the apostrophe, it’s the former.

On another topic (that of our last blog entry), we have been keeping track of the decline of past participles. On television yesterday we heard a policeman say, “It could have went either way.” Then tonight, while channel surfing, we stopped briefly on “Dancing With the Stars” and heard one of the dancers say, “Shannon has showed…” We were too busy trying to write this down to remember the rest of the sentence.

We expect if you really listen, you’ll notice the absence of past participles here and there, too. Jot them down and post them in response to the blog entry entitled “Past Participles - A Dying Breed“.

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Swum. Sung. Written. Bitten. Thrown. Drawn. We hear these words much less frequently today than we did in the recent past. These past participles are being overlooked in favor of using simply the past tense as a past participle. Examples:

Present perfect tense: Should be “I have swum.” More often we find “I have swam.”
Past perfect (pluperfect) tense: Should be “I had swum.” More often we find “I had swam.”
Future perfect tense: Should be “I will have swum.” More often we find “I will have swam.”

Why does it seem that this is happening more and more as time goes on? Are we simply growing more sensitive to it as we age, or is it truly happening more often now than it did, say, twenty years ago? Could it be due to a massive influx of speakers of English as a second language? Your thoughts?

Yes, our activity on this blog suggests that we are working on a new issue of the TOWFI webzine. The words we are looking at for “Words to the Wise” are sterling, ponder, willy nilly, gringo revisited, and The Old Bill (British slang for “the police”). Meantime we have added a link to Name Lab to our Links page.

M&M

Jake or Jakey. No, we are not referring to a friend named Jacob. Instead, we are referring to slang terms for firefighters. A reader from San Francisco wrote in asking about this (jakey is used in SF; jake is used elsewhere, especially New England).

Not even the OED references this slang usage (but, then, the OED’s only real weakness is American slang). However, we must admit that it’s not easy for even the research experts at TOWFI to find many instances of these words. There are plenty in the Boston Globe, to be sure, but they are all recent - here’s one from just a few days ago:

He had a discriminating touch when it came to buying breads and pastries, and was particularly pleased when he got to cook meat, said Stephen Keogh, captain of Engine 30.

” ‘Boys, I have some nice steaks’ or ‘a beautiful roast tonight,’ ” Keogh recalled him saying. “Then he would add, ‘My wife, Anne, is a vegetarian and we rarely have meat at home, so I like to get some nice cuts of beef.’ ”

He described Cahill as a “jake of guts and wit.” (link to article)

We couldn’t find jakey in any of the newspapers at Newspaperarchive.com, other than a few references to the personal name Jakey, and we searched the San Francisco Chronicle’s on-line archive and found nothing there, as well (though it only goes back to 1995).

However, we did find references to these words in places other than newspapers. For example, jakey turns up in a book called Fighting Fire, written by one of San Francisco’s first female firefighters, Caroline Paul. Here’s an excerpt:

Not that I know what a fireman is like. Fire Man, jakey, smoke-eater. There are many names. Fireman is no longer accurate for the new department, but it fits the old-timers in a curious, archetypal way - Fire Man. Jakey did not come from a guy named Jake, as I had once thought, but from the J-shaped keys that firefighters once used to open the corner fireboxes. Smoke-eater, self-explanatory, has a rough, tough edge that I do not relate to. (link to book excerpt)

The Plymouth (MA) Fire Local 1768 web site also discusses these J-keys:

A Good “Jake”

(Posted 3/9/06) New England affectionate slang for Firefighter. This word was first used as a reference to firemen in the early 20th century in the Greater Boston area, and its origins are recognized as officially unknown by several authors. While it is now a widely accepted term in the fire service, it is almost exclusively used in New England, and almost exclusively used to bestow great praise and the highest levels of respect. To be called a “Good Jake” is the highest form of praise a Boston area firefighter can possibly receive from a peer.

The term “Jake” is most probably derived from the term “J-Key”. The first street-corner fire alarm box system was invented and constructed in the city of Boston, and was based on a telegraph system, novel in its day. Inside each box, next to the automatic alarm mechanism that tripped when someone pulled the hook, there was a small telegraph tapper, called a telegraph key, that firemen could use to communicate back to headquarters once they arrived on scene. As time passed, many World War One veterans had become Boston firefighters, and the telegraphs that these men were familiar with were the U.S. Army issue J-3 portable telegraph key (known as the WWI “trench key”), as well as other military J-Series telegraph keys, which were all known commonly as “J-Keys”. These veterans probably used this as a common slang for the keys they used inside their fire alarm boxes.

Being a “Good J-Key” probably meant a fireman who was cool under the pressure and could send clear morse code. “J-Key” was eventually shortened to “Jake”, and when spread to the public, “Jake” came to be a common term for firemen in general.

So whether jake and jakey came from the shape of a key, or from a J-series telegraph key, it does seem pretty clear that they did derive from J-key. What we don’t know is when this happened, though it is likely, if the information in the Plymouth article above is correct, that it arose after WWI. We’ll keep searching. If you come upon any useful information on this topic, please post here.

Another interesting question: Were you familiar with these words, jake and/or jakey, as used to refer to firefighters, before you read this blog entry? Let us know.

On NPR last week, a reporter mentioned “weather-related incidences”. Ugggh. Try “weather-related incidents.” Incidence is defined as “the act or an instance of happening.” On the other hand, incident is defined as “a definite and separate occurrence; an event.” The sample phrase given for incidence is “A high incidence of malaria,” while the sample phrase for incident is “an international incident.” One wouldn’t say “an international incidence”.

We think part of the problem is that the plural of incident is incidents, which is a homophone of incidence. So people get confused and start substituting incidence for incident, and then, logically, incidences for incidents.

How about if we really confuse matters and say, “A high incidence of weather-related incidents”? Actually, that might be a good mnemonic device for remembering the difference between incident and incidence!

PS/ Have you noticed that we started putting our periods and commas back inside the quotation marks (when proper)? We think we have made our point, after 10 years, regarding the outdated reason for including punctuation inside quotation marks, and we are finally getting tired of the endless messages from kind-hearted English teachers to holier-than-thou pedants (kind of like us) preaching that Periods and Commas And Question Marks and Exclamation Points Always Go Inside the Quotation Marks. Even though they’re wrong (the aforementioned punctuation does not ALWAYS go inside the quotation marks, even if you are an English teacher), we are very bored with having to send the same response message day in and day out. Enough already! Just remember: the only reason commas, periods, question marks and exclamation points are almost always placed inside quotation marks today is an artifact of the typesetting industry and nothing more.

We recently invested in an Aerogarden, which is touted as an aeroponic growing system (though we have read an article which disputes this). We haven’t received the Aerogarden yet, but we were reading some reviews on-line and came upon a discussion as to why one would choose the AeroGarden over a proper garden, with dirt, etc.:

Let’s see - go out rent a tiller, till up part of your yard, mend the soil based on what you are going to be planting, plant your seeds and hope they come up.

Yes, he mentions that one would have to mend the soil, a favorite pastime of many. After all, what else does one do with broken soil? Of course, the writer meant amend. We think his use of mend here qualifies as a true eggcorn (see our Eggcorn link at right to find out what eggcorns are). Amend means “to correct or improve,” which is what one does with soil that is not optimal for growing edible plants. One adds rich organic matter to amend the soil. Mend, on the other hand, has many nuances of meaning, but probably the most common today is “to repair something that is broken” or “to repair garments [that are torn or worn]”.

Now, some may say that, since mend is simply an aphetic form of amend, one shouldn’t be faulted for using mend instead of amend. And we agree. We are not faulting the writer in question. We are simply commenting on the eggcornian nature of his word choice and allowing ourselves to be a bit amused by it. In a good way. Oh, and mend and amend both come from Latin mendum “fault”. Latin emenda meant “to free from fault,” where the e- prefix is a form of ex- “out”. The e- shifted to a- in Old French, and the French form was adopted by English as amend. Like most English words with Old French roots, it dates from after the Norman Conquest, and the earliest recorded instance of amend is from about 1220. Remember, mend is an aphetic form of amend, though even the OED acknowledges that mend appears earlier in the written record than amend.

By the way, you may be asking why we need an AeroGarden when we have land for gardening in proper soil. Well, our day jobs are in The Big City and we have a small apartment there, as the commute to our country home is a bit too far to manage every day, or even once a week. And, if our apartment patio had water, we would plant veggies there, but, strangely, it doesn’t! So AeroGarden to the rescue (we hope. We’ll let you know how it does).

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, wrote an essay for The New York Times called “Unhappy Meals.” It was published on January 28th, 2007. In it Pollan discusses what is wrong with the American diet and how we can fix it. The fix is described in the first line of the essay: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” We have ascribed to that “fix” for some time, but it took Pollan to put it into words that are universes beyond anything we could ever write on the subject. So read the essay. It’s long but worth your time.

Why are we talking about this here? What does it have to do with language? Well, you know us. We just had to nitpick a little bit about an error.

First, in the last few pages of the essay:

None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and
of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods
that have been highly processed.

Now, we admit this is serious nitpicking, but “none…are” just sounds so harsh to our ears. It, of course, should be “none…is” because “none” means “not one” or “not any one.” Lots and lots of writers and speakers say “none [of x] are,” but it just grates on our collective nerves.

In the essay Pollan discusses some of the food-like substances that pass for real food in the U.S. One of those items is “Snackwell’s” cookies and crackers, which Pollan refers to simply as “Snackwell’s.” We were also going to nitpick about the the apostrophe in “Snackwell’s,” thinking it was part of the malapostrophe revolution, but, alas, that is exactly how the name appears on boxes of Snackwell’s cookies and crackers. Pollan got it right. Apparently, according to Nabisco, Snackwell is a person, place or thing and the cookies and crackers belong to he/she/it. If not, then Nabisco is the one who is guilty of malapostrophism in this case.

OK, we think we’ve gotten the desire to complain about nitpicky punctuation and grammar errors out of our system for a while. We’ll try to get back to etymology tomorrow.

Another television (and food) personality we really like is Anthony Bourdain. He is currently the host of No Reservations on The Travel Channel. Talk about irreverent! He’s smart-ass funny and knows at least a little bit about good food. He travels all over the world to eat interesting, usually delicious, dishes. We say usually because he has had a few things he did not like, including fur mixed with fecal matter and a little meat in Namibia. However, while his travels, meals, and commentary make the show, it was a photo taken in Belfast, Ireland that caught our collective eye:

What’s up with all thos’e apostrophe’s, dude’s? If anyone has a GOOD explanation for this, please post here. Otherwise we’ll assume that the people who erected this “Welcome Tourists!” poem (as Bourdain calls it) in Belfast are suffering from hyperapostrophe disorder. Tony, you’re a writer (and a best-selling one, at that) - did you notice this apostrophe extravaganza, too?

Speaking of irreverent writers, we’re working on a NEW ISSUE of TOWFI!  Yes, we’ve said it before, but it’s true, so stay tuned.

We love Jeff Corwin. He’s like a [purposefully] comic, literate Steve Irwin. He gives snakes and other critters funny Arnold-Schwarzenegger-type voices and does other wacky things that make us laugh while teaching us something.

Funnily, we always thought he was from Canada because every once in a while he’ll let an intrusive r slip in. For example the other day he said something like “draw-ring” for “drawing”. However, we recently learned that he is from New England. Yes, there is a non-rhotic accent in New England which utilizes intrusive r’s. Though Corwin doesn’t appear to be non-rhotic, we have heard him drop an r here and there, suggesting he may originally have been a non-rhotic speaker but learned that he’d cause less commotion if he pronounced his final r’s. (TOWFI’s Mike learned a similar lesson when he moved from Wales to London — he dropped the Welsh accent (which is a lovely, sing-song accent, by the way) and took on a generic English accent. He can, to the delight of listeners, turn on the Welsh accent at will).

Corwin currently has a series on The Travel Channel called Into Alaska. It’s a beautiful series, though we wish more of Corwin’s irreverent humor would show up in it. Anyhow, while the program is beautiful, punctuation at the Travel Channel’s web site is not quite so beautiful, as evidenced in the below image:

The apostrophe is becoming the universal punctuation mark, even when a punctuation mark isn’t needed! We’re pretty sure if Jeff saw that, even though he is not an English major (nod to Garrison Keillor), he’d get it fixed right away. Anyhow, keep up the good work in the naturalist/environmental department, Jeff!

M&M

Greetings,
 
I just read your “etymological” findings on the word picnic [scroll down to the Sez You section — Eds.].  I found your conclusion to be offensively dismissive, but typical of those who refuse to acknowledge the ugly histories of this beautiful nation of ours. 
 
As wordsmiths, you all know better than anyone that a words history and it’s [sic] evolved use can differ staggeringly.  Indeed, the word may have originated before the US lynching nightmares.  But you must consider that before the Emancipation Proclamation was handed down, neither lynch nor lynch mob were in regular use.
 
You won’t find the true history of the word from the research findings of someone at the Smithsonian Institution with three letters behind his name.  You’ll find it by talking to Blacks who survived the pre-civil rights era South.  The maids, drivers, butlers, and field workers who were proverbial “flies on the walls” when southern Whites would discuss these things.
 
If the “pick a n*gger” meaning has no merit, then please explain Nickajack Lake and Nickajack Bridge in Tennessee.  So named after an industrious well-known Black man named Jack who garnered favor with the leading White men of his town.  However, after becoming “too wealthy” (ie-stepping out of a n*gger’s place), he was lynched and hung in the woods by the body of water that was nicknamed (no pun intended) N*gger Jack Lake.  In the late ’70s, the area was officially named Nickajack.
 
My grandparents and parents are from the South and can testify to the tradition of nic and nig” being used to refer to Blacks.
 
To call someone absurd for acknowledging the sick, sordid history of the word picnic is not only insulting, but it’s part of the United States of Amnesia’s policy of re-writing history so that it doesn’t reflect the hypocritical horrors inflicted on US citizens of African descent.
 
Please do more research before you take such a strong stance on a subject that is so difficult to prove or dis-prove.
 
Disappointedly yours,

Mr. G

OUR RESPONSE:

Dear Mr. G:
 
We will get straight to the point, which is that you are missing the point.  You need to very carefully go back and read the discussion of picnic in Issue 32 of Take Our Word For It.  We are not dismissing the horrific history of the treatment of blacks by whites (if you read Dr. Smith’s entire response, you will see that.  If we did want to be dismissive of that history, we would not have published his entire letter, as much of it does not have to do with the specific etymology of the word picnic).  We are not saying that the words nig, nic and n*gger were not used to refer to blacks - they were, and you have some decent evidence of that in the placename you discuss below.  In fact, we do not even mention nic and nig in the discussion.  Nor are we saying that picnic has absolutely never been used to refer to lynchings.  Instead, in our discussion, we are dismissing the promulgation of MISinformation regarding the specific origin of the word picnic.  The word does NOT come from “pick a n*gger”.  That was the point of the piece.  We deal with etymology, which is a scientifically-based study of the origins of words.  Scientific research shows that the word picnic arose well before the era of lynchings and does not derive from “pick” and “n*gger”.   It actually derives from a French word.
 
Many people make the same mistake you did.  They are fervent believers (as all of us should be!) in acknowledging and keeping alive the history of what was/is done to blacks in this country, and they feel that any debunking of anything related to those issues is a slap in the face of those issues.  You must learn to discriminate between the Truth and the Issue.  The Issue is that blacks were/are horribly mistreated.  The Truth is that the word picnic did not arise out of the mistreatment/abuse/murder of blacks and there are no records prior to the late 20th century of it being used to refer to a “lynching”.  In fact, Dr. Alonzo Smith, an African-American, tells us that lynchings were not “family outings”.  We said in our discussion that there is absolutely  no evidence that picnic derives from “pick a n*gger” (while there is profound evidence that it derives from French and originally referred to a kind of pot-luck gathering) and that there are no known recorded instances of it being used, even after its origin, to mean “pick a n*gger” (until perhaps recently, after the creation and dissemination of the apocryphal e-mail on this issue, to which we responded in Issue 32 of Take Our Word For It).  If you have some reliable written records that use picnic to mean “pick a n*gger” prior to the late 20th century, please send them to us!
 
The fact that p*cnic does not derive from “pick a n*gger” does not mean that Nickajack Lake’s name does not derive from “N*gger Jack”.  It does not mean that there are not other words or placenames that have their derivations in the Lynching Era.  It simply means that picnic does not derive from “pick a n*gger”.  Perhaps there are some people today who think that picnic means (versus derives from) “pick a n*gger”, but the evidence shows that they did not get that meaning from any historical usage of the word in that sense.  And, for your information, we discuss the etymology of lynch in Take Our Word For It and there are plenty of instances of it in the written record prior to the Emancipation Proclamation.  So using that to bolster your argument is meritless.
 
It does no good to make up word histories that simply compound the problem of racial tensions.  Instead we need to work at the root of the racial problems!  There is still a lot of racism in the U.S. and in the world.  In an effort to soothe racial tensions, we believe it is important to debunk spurious etymologies and other erroneous historical resources (such as the supposed “Willie Lynch” letter whic