The response to last week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Work of Art, in which I planned and planted misuses of the English language, was great. The reaction ranged from the concern that your resident Language Cop somehow had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lost it\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to a let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s-do-it-again attitude.<\/p>\n
A half dozen readers either e-mailed or dropped off their responses, and one person went even farther, finding a stray question mark in my column and catching me on my capitalizing a word that shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have been.<\/p>\n
The column was mainly about how people use words and expressions that seem correct but carry a different \u00e2\u20ac\u201d sometimes humorous \u00e2\u20ac\u201d meaning. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like cutting off your nose despite your face or getting knocked over with a fender.<\/p>\n
Chad Boliek\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s e-mail paid me back in kind, as he mentioned that he found seven planned abuses and added, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You hit the provisional male on the head this time.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Trini Martinez correctly noted, among other things, that ex-President George W. Bush had used \u00e2\u20ac\u0153disassemble,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d meaning to take apart, when he meant \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dissemble,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to deceive.<\/p>\n
And others joined in to correct the linguistic blunders I committed. I particularly enjoy it when a reader responds in the same vein in which I wrote the column, as Martha Johnson did by writing, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been caring this around with me until I was able to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdo my homework\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and see if I could find the misuses . . . So let me command you on this test. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re student of 38 years ago, Martha.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Martha\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that old? Her mother is that age, and then some. Martha added that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153when I told a person my mom had turned 100 years old, he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWow! Your mom is a centurion!\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
No, Sara McWilliams, the person people affectionately call \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chula,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is of course a centenarian, and she never served in the ancient Roman army.<\/p>\n
And reader Jose Marquez, who corrected the misuse of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153disburse\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153disperse,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d also caught me on my reference to my dog Heidi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s manners. I had written that Heidi had passed on bad culinary habits to the Great Dane that was brought in to set a good example for my dog. Marquez wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Culinary means of the kitchen or cooking. Now Duke is a bad cook too. At least you have two dogs that cook.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Nacho Jaramillo e-mailed to give his take on words like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153complimentary,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (filled with praise) and the word with the identical sounds, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153complementary,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d meaning something that completes or enhances something else.<\/p>\n
My sister Dorothy T. Maestas, who never lets a grammatical error go unpunished, compiled a list of some 14 abuses of the language, which she says she \u00e2\u20ac\u0153discovered after a cursive glance at the column.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
She honed in on usages I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t intended, particularly in my creative use of Spanish as I referred to the word for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pregnant,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which I wrote is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153encinta,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but which Dorothy says should be two words.<\/p>\n
Reader Anne Kennedy correctly noted that I needn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t capitalize \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cavalry,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is not a proper noun. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d mentioned my struggles with that word and the similar word Calvary.<\/p>\n
Some of the verbal abuses I intentionally inserted are:<\/p>\n
I hope the grammar search was enjoyable. One person who apparently thought I had been up until 3 writing the column was the boss, whose job it is to check the copy.<\/p>\n
He warned me that next time I choose to plant these linguistic train wrecks, I ought to warn him, at the beginning of the column, not the end.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Church bulletins, small-town newspapers and public signs supply interesting messages, which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure their creators swore were correct in the first place. Here are some that have been published:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Alex King, a web developer, provided some of the following definitions:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
I pay almost no attention to rock stars and think that groupies who pay big bucks to attend concerts and get to crowd the bandstand, arms waving, are clueless. Understandably, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know George Strait from Marvin Gaye.<\/p>\n
But there is one exception: Whitney Houston. When I first heard \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Greatest Love,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I became a huge fan, but from a distance. I asked my then-teen son Diego to call me whenever he saw her on TV or heard her songs on radio.<\/p>\n
That led to phone calls at unearthly hours. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ask myself, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How do I get out of this? What if Diego calls me when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m in class?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Not to worry, as we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet have a cell phone. Diego\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153duty\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to phone me waned in the past few years, possibly corresponding with the singer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own fading star.<\/p>\n
Whitney died, drowned in her bathtub. The music world has lost an icon, and fans will be the lesser for it.<\/p>\n
And that includes a certain 72-year-old in his dotage.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
My ravaging of the English language is nowhere near an end. So, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be surprised to find more misuses \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in this week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s column.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The response to last week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Work of Art, in which I planned and planted misuses of the English language, was great. The reaction ranged from the concern that your resident Language Cop somehow had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lost it\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to a let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s-do-it-again attitude. A half dozen readers either e-mailed or dropped off their responses, and one person went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":876,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions\/876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}