A simple question from my daughter-in-law Heather caused a bit of confusion, and when I’m confused, I dream up ideas for a column.
Here’s what happened: Heather, my son Benji and I went to the Las Vegas Recreation Center for a workout. I pulled out three water bottles from the trunk, one for each. After our workout, Heather asked, as I stood perspiring on the scale, “How many ounces did you lose?� It occurred to me the question was perfectly ambiguous, even triguous. Did she mean how many ounces of water did I sweat, or how many ounces of weight did I shed, or even how many ounces of bottled water did I spill? In my case, finding those ounces occurs easier than losing them.
What if I’d answered 16 ounces? Would that equal a pound or a pint? Why must “ounce� be a measure both of volume and of weight?
So we spent part of the day discussing nuances of language. We wondered, “If English has three-fourths of a million words, why do so many of them perform double duty? Why can’t there be a word for every object, every nuance, every action?
Ben often tries to trip up his old man, fishing out an unusual word and asking if I know its meaning. The word he gave me was “sublime.�
“Well that’s easy, Ben,� I said. “It refers to excellence or grandeur, something lofty,� but before I attempted a fuller definition, Ben cut in with, “I’m referring to a chemistry-type definition, a verb, Pops.�
“Got me there, recent college boy. I can’t imagine ‘sublime’ as a verb. To me, sublime is an adjective that comes to mind when I think of Kate Bosworth.�
So Ben showed me a definition, which goes like this: To sublime something is to have it change into vapor when heated and back to a solid as it cools. Like a candle, perhaps?
I like to chase words and puzzle over why certain words behave as they do. Why, for example, do “ravel� and “unravel� mean the same thing? Why does “sanction� denote both approval and disapproval? You can sanction one’s actions by supporting them, or you can place sanctions on bad people whose actions you don’t approve of.
Why does “tap� connote sealing off, as in tapping the flow of water, and drawing out oil from a well as well?
Recent usage has modified “transparent.� It used to refer to poorly concealed efforts, as in “a transparent attempt to buy votes.� Now, a search committee whose process is transparent receives accolades. Or does transparent refer to a mom or dad who’s undergone a sex-change operation?
I was in graduate school when I came to realize the two main meanings of “apostrophe� are disparate. In a desperate attempt not to become dispirited, I searched for an apostrophe in a Shakespeare play when the professor alluded to it.
Naturally, I wondered why it mattered so much what mark of punctuation the Bard had used in “Hamlet,� but soon realized the prof’s meaning of apostrophe is not that little thingie that people often insert before a terminal “s,� as in “Would you like frie’s with that, Sir?� or that people omit when it theres no reason to.
And the other meaning of the word? My dictionary defines “apostrophe� as “an exclamatory passage in a speech or poem addressed to a person who is typically dead or absent.� Accordingly, Hamlet, the Danish prince, and others, stood on mountaintops or balconies as they addressed many apostrophes to dead or absent figures.
That, then is a primer on the strange lives of some words and further evidence that it’s a miracle anyone can learn English.
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Who keeps changing the marquee at the Serf Theater? Working with only about a dozen letters, night-trippers have introduced a new flick, “He Shines On.� It’s not to be confused with the the award-winning story, starring Kevin Costner, Kevin Klein and Kevin Spacey, about a dedicated boy who makes a fortune putting polish on people’s shoes.
This use of “shine,� which generally includes the word “don’t,� refers to “shining one on,� which is what a person does to assure you the used car he’s pitching is perfect, or that you’re big enough and strong enough to make the team.
Strange how perfectly ambiguous some words can be.