My son, a resident of Copenhagen, Denmark, for several years, often finds time to skim American-English newspapers, excerpts of which he forwards to me and to Facebook friends on this side of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
Has Adam picked up an affliction from his dad? I thought I was the only one in the family to sit mesmerized after observing something that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s strangely worded.<\/p>\n
One of the most common misuses of the language \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and the one Adam chose to comment on \u00e2\u20ac\u201d deals with the misuse of the words \u00e2\u20ac\u0153literally\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153figuratively.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The two are often confused. As are many people.<\/p>\n
My son has \u00e2\u20ac\u201d literally \u00e2\u20ac\u201d picked up some of his dad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hyper-attentiveness to the language and its misuses. In a post this week, Stan forwarded a mug shot of some movie star with a caption that reads, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Top 10 actresses that will literally take your breath away.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
My son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s response: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Really? Are they going to sneak into my bedroom and smother me with a pillow? Are they going to waterboard me? How are they \u00e2\u20ac\u201d literally \u00e2\u20ac\u201d going to take my breath away?”<\/p>\n
I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think my son has much cause to worry; whoever wrote that bit about breathlessness obviously meant it in the figurative sense. The trouble is that we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hear \u00e2\u20ac\u0153figurative\u00e2\u20ac\u009d very often, even when we mean it. We say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153literally\u00e2\u20ac\u009d instead.<\/p>\n
People use expressions all the time that they literally don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean. If a person exclaims she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153been waiting outside for hours and froze to death,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d we take it as a hyperbole, a gross exaggeration. Otherwise, if she had indeed frozen to death, she probably wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have that much to say.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true that we also use expressions for effect. When we say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I flew over here the minute I got the news,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re probably not talking about a quick plane trip, but more likely a drive across town or a sprint down the hall.<\/p>\n
The literal meaning is what the word connotes. If we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re able to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I froze to death,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re speaking figuratively in the sense of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was so cold I almost froze to death. But literally? Not so.<\/p>\n
What about other uses of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153literally\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Suppose a theater critic says Katherine Zeta Jones \u00e2\u20ac\u0153literally stole the show\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? The writer might be using \u00e2\u20ac\u0153literally\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to exaggerate Jones\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theatrics and not that she needs to be arrested and jailed for theft.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153And as for you, Dad, you should have caught that ball.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thus spoke yet another son, Ben, years ago when I let a fly ball get past me during a Thanksgiving softball game in a field near our house.<\/p>\n
Yes, I should have caught that ball, but I was distracted, too pre-occupied by Ben\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s way of expressing my shirked duties. I should have caught that ball, I confess, but what did my youngest son mean by that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and as for you\u00e2\u20ac\u009d business?<\/p>\n
It hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t occurred to me that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and as for you\u00e2\u20ac\u009d automatically implies that Ben scolded someone else before scolding me. Assume Ben told yet another son, Diego, that his pitching was wild. Diego then hangs his head, mopes a bit and tries to get the ball over the plate with the speed and precision of Tom Seaver. Only after that may Ben use the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and as for you\u00e2\u20ac\u009d phrase. Doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and as for you\u00e2\u20ac\u009d mean that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already bawled out at least one person, and the second (or third or millionth) would be me (or, as my English teacher would say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153would be I\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?<\/p>\n
My feeling is that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and as for you\u00e2\u20ac\u009d means someone next in line is going to receive a dressing down. But Ben began with me, not having scolded anyone before me. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why I needed to write this long treatise on the use of language.<\/p>\n
And as for you, readers, beware of threats that begin with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153and as for you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
How difficult is it to provide basics like hot and cold running water? Many people who attended the East-West game last week at Marr Gym discovered there was no running water for hand washing in at least one of the men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s restrooms. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bit messy \u00e2\u20ac\u201d not to mention unsanitary \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to need to use the drinking fountain outside the restroom for hand washing.<\/p>\n
It was a huge basketball game, not a measly intramural scrimmage we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re discussing. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s keep things in such large facilities in working order, especially when the gymnasium is packed.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
It took two people to replace her. I refer to Lupita Gonzales, who has written roughly 70 Senior Profiles that have appeared on the last Friday of each month. They feature individuals and sometimes couples who make a difference in San Miguel and Mora Counties.<\/p>\n
The search for people of interest has taken us (I go along as the photographer) to Wagon Mound, Mora, Mineral Hill and various other far-flung places in the Optic\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s circulation area. As a native of Gallup, N.M., Lupita at first hesitated to write Senior Profile because of not knowing too many people in this area.<\/p>\n
That soon changed, and now she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s much better known in this community.<\/p>\n
Beth Urech, a writer and speaker who claims Las Vegas and Chicago as her places of residence, has taken over Senior Profile, and if anything, Beth is, well \u00e2\u20ac\u201d prolific and extremely capable. Readers likely have already read some of her submissions.<\/p>\n
Local resident Susan Tsyitee has accepted the Optic\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s invitation to serve on the paper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s editorial board, the position held by Lupita. The group, which consists of three Optic staffers, editor and publisher Martin Salazar, circulation and advertising coordinator Cynthia Fitch and me, and two community members, Joseph McCaffrey and Susan Tsyitee, meets weekly to discuss the issues of the day.<\/p>\n
We welcome Beth and Susan to their respective roles and thank Lupita for her dedication to writing Senior Profile for upwards of 75 installments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My son, a resident of Copenhagen, Denmark, for several years, often finds time to skim American-English newspapers, excerpts of which he forwards to me and to Facebook friends on this side of the Atlantic. Has Adam picked up an affliction from his dad? I thought I was the only one in the family to sit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1469,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions\/1469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}