July 2008 Archives
US Independence Day: unremitting;
manumission; John
Hancock; consanguinity;
hackneyed; sufferance;
Benedict Arnold
Speeches and Orations: philippic; soapbox;
jeremiad; panegyric;
epilogue; homily;
declamation (soliloquy)
Ancient Metal Elements (metaphorically): silver
tongued; tin god;
iron curtain; copper-bottomed;
quicksilver; lead-foot;
gold star
Lingo of Corporate Takeovers: golden
parachute; pac man defense;
staggered board; greenmail;
poison pill; white knight
Oxymorons: tender offer;
pianoforte; sophomore (sophomoric,
sophomania); oxymoron;
black gold; neoconservative (idiot savant); preposterous
US Independence Day
Today,
July 4, is Independence Day in the
unremitting – never relaxing or slackening;
persistent
The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a
History of unremitting Injuries & Usurpations.
– Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence
(Congress’s redraft changed this to “repeated”.)
Why was
the drafting assigned to so young a man as
The committee met, discussed the subject, and then
appointed Mr. Jefferson and me to make the draft … . The subcommittee met.
¹
manumission – release from slavery
[from
Latin manus hand + mittere to let go, send]
… the Revolution and the ideals that came out of it led
directly to the abolition of slavery in the Northern states; … the voluntary manumission of 20,000 slaves by their masters by
1800; and the genuine antislavery sentiments of most of the nation's Founders …
–
[Alexander]
– Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2008
Here's a
word we've used before, several years ago, but it fits this theme so well that
we'll repeat it.
John
Hancock – a person's signature
John
Hancock was the first signatory of the
the governor-elect's [Arnold Schwarzenegger's] autograph
is gaining value. … As for the outgoing governor's John Hancock, "I've been doing this for 23
years, and no one has ever asked me for a Gray Davis autograph," Stickel
said.
–
Purchasing Agent Sharon Page requested commissioners affix
their signatures to the purchase order, and Ware was only too quick to offer
his John Hancock.
–
[
– Elli Wohlgelernter,
More from
the
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British
brethren. … [but] They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.
consanguinity – relationship by blood or common
ancestry (more generally, a
close affinity or connection)
As you justly observe, there is not an idea in it but what
had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before.
– letter to Timothy Pickering, 1822
hackneyed – stale and trite; used so
frequently and indiscriminately that it has lost its freshness and become
commonplace
[Did it
have the same meaning as of 1822?]
sufferance – absence of objection rather than
genuine approval; patient endurance (esp. of pain or distress)
Again,
from the Declaration of
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the
necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The word alter was put in by Congress, where
Interestingly,
most dictionaries don’t list today’s term as a “word”. At most they consider it
a reference to the historical person, who was U.S. General in the Revolutionary
War. He planned to surrender West Point to the British for 20,000 pounds, and
he fled to
Benedict
Arnold – a traitor
The key
phrase in today’s quote is John Kerry’s term, though the earliest
reasonably-full quote I can find comes from the month of his spokesman.
John Kerry will repeal every tax break and every loophole
that rewards any Benedict
Arnold CEO or corporation
for sending jobs overseas," a spokesperson in Kerry's
– CNN/Money, Feb. 25, 2004
Speeches and Orations
On the
Independence Day holiday, before the advent of radio and television, folks
would gather in the public square and be entertained by patriotic speeches. In
that spirit, we follow our Independence
Day theme by presenting
various types of speeches and orations.
An angry, bitter
speech can be called a tirade, a rant, a harangue (negative concepts do seem to develop multiple synonyms!),
or a philippic.
philippic – a bitter verbal denunciation,
scathing and insulting
An eponym:
from the name the Greek’s gave to Demosthenes’ speeches against Philip II of Macedon, 351-341
B.C. The Romans adopted the term for
His speech was brilliant, capricious, rambling, savage,
predictable, astonishing - a sustained philippic against
– The Independent, Dec. 11, 2005, re Harold Pinter’s
acceptance of the Nobel Prize
This latest philippic from Noam Chomsky sets out to overturn
every belief about their country Americans hold dear. The self-image of the
– New York Times, June 25, 2006 (book review)
soapbox – verb;
informal: to make an
impromptu or unofficial public speech, often flamboyantly (noun: a temporary platform used while making
that speech)
But most
often used in the idiom on
(one's) soapbox – speaking
one's views passionately or self-importantly.
Some people love to get on
a soapbox and pontificate
about the perfection of whatever alternative fuel they happen to be using –
they can make us feel useless and pathetic, not to mention guilty …
– Sophie Uliano, Gorgeously
Green: 8 Simple Steps to an Earth-Friendly Life
jeremiad – a speech expressing a bitter
lament or a righteous prophecy of doom
panegyric – an oration or eulogy in praise of
some person or achievement
A long but
thought-provoking Independence-Day quote contrasts two different types of
orations.
As we celebrate the birth of the
Barnes & Noble [has] so many
books announcing the end of American power, wealth, influence, or just
As a historian, I find this trend
fascinating. After all, none have ever lived in a period more prosperous,
secure and stable than Americans do today. The
So why all the decline theorists?
Here's my theory: Prosperity and security
are boring. Nobody wants to read about them. The same phenomenon occurred in
ancient
The Romans may have been
unquestioned masters of their world, but they sure didn't like reading about
it. And when the empire actually did start its decline in the third century
A.D., criticisms and predictions of collapse became noticeably thinner on the ground.
The military dictators who led the
empire on its downward spiral did not much like reading about their own
shortcomings, and they had ways of making sure that they didn't have to. These
were the days of the panegyric –
an obsequious form of literature that praised the emperor and empire to the
skies. When you start seeing those, it's time to worry.
– Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2008 [ellipses omitted]
epilogue – a speech at the end of a play,
addressed to the audience [also: a
short addition at the end of a book, often dealing with the future of its
characters]
Shakespeare,
speaking (inconsistently?) on epilogues:
No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no
excuse.
– Shakespeare, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream
[Rosalind speaks:] … 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue; yet … good plays prove the better by
the help of good epilogues.
– Shakespeare, As
You Like It
homily – 1. a talk on a religious subject, meant
to be inspirational rather than giving doctrinal instruction
2. a tedious moralizing talk
Two very
different senses, though you can see how one led to the other. Question: when
the word is used in the second sense (as in the second quote), is it fair to
say that it carries a connotation of being trite, of speaking in clichés?
I was watching a Cindy Blaine show the other day, all
about reuniting long-lost daughters with their mothers, and it was so moving I
had tears running down my face. At the end, Cindy gave this little homily about how our families are far too
easy to take for granted and that they gave us life and we should cherish them.
And I really felt chastened.
– Sophie Kinsella, Can
You Keep a Secret?
From General Peckem’s office on the mainland came prolix
bulletins each day headed by such cheery homilies as "Procrastination Is the Thief
of Time” and “Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness.”
– Joseph Heller, Catch-22
declamation – 1. vehement oratory 2. a speech marked by strong feeling; a
tirade
[The verb
form is to declaim.]
We illustrate
by quoting from a Pulitzer-Prize-winning book about the beginnings of the
American Revolution.
George Johnstone, a dashing figure, delivered on of the
longest, most vehement declamations of the night, exclaiming, “Every
Machiavellian policy is now to be vindicated towards the people off
– David McCullough, 1776
A declamation can also mean “a recitation delivered
as an exercise in rhetoric”. That sense is usually referring to a student’s
recitation, but here is another example, from a book near and dear to my heart.
The rules state that the [US Supreme] Court “looks with
disfavor on any oral argument that is read from a prepared text”; it is a time
for argument, not declamation. Justice Frankfurter once said that the
Court saw itself not as “a dozing audience for the reading of soliloquies, but as a questioning body, utilizing
oral argument as a means for exposing the difficulties of a case with a view to
meeting them.”
– Anthony Lewis, Gideon's
Trumpet
Bonus
word:
soliloquy – a speech of one’s thoughts when
alone, or regardless of hearers, especially in a play
[Latin solus alone + loqui speak]
Ancient Metal Elements (metaphorically)
Seven of
the metallic elements were known in antiquity (can you name them?), and it takes
seven words to make up one of our themes. Seems like a match, doesn’t it? This
week we’ll present these seven metals, used metaphorically.
Beginning
with one that pertains to last week’s Oratory theme.
silver
tongued – having the power of fluent and persuasive speech;
eloquent
The rabbi was so famous for his silver tongued biblical exegesis that he preached at
four different synagogues on the Jewish Sabbath, and many Christians, including
friars, priests, and noblemen, entered the Geto [sic] just to hear him. …
Vistorini was sure that no few of the priests who came to listen did so in
order to steal the rabbi’s words.
– Geraldine Brooks (Pulitzer Prize-winning authoress), People of the Book
tin god – a self-important and overbearing person
(esp. a minor official)
He lacks the human touch. I’ve never seen such colossal
conceit. The man has set himself up as a little tin god..
– B. F. Skinner, Walden
Two
An egomaniacal, dictator type of man (whose woman … allows
him to act like a tin god without the slightest resistance) …
– Pat Allen and Sandra Harmon, Getting to 'I Do'
iron
curtain – a barrier that prevents free communications of ideas and
information
The need to obtain patent protection, in turn, drives
firms to throw up iron curtains around their research the moment they
get close to a viable drug candidate.
– Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration
Changes Everything
copper-bottomed – Brit.: thoroughly reliable
[from
copper sheathing applied to the bottom of wooden ships, as protection]
In mid-2004, Mr Brown's allies believed he had a copper-bottomed promise from Mr Blair that he would
resign that year.
– The Independent, Sept. 26, 2006
New technology has transformed the capacity of institutions
to compile data on citizens. But those records can be traded, stolen and
misused. Time and again, ministers give sincere assurances. Yet these promises
can never be copper-bottomed and public anxieties can never be
properly assuaged.
– The Guardian, Nov. 22, 2007 (ellipses omitted)
Anyone who
has struggled to pick up a spill of mercury knows that it is a hard-to-catch
silver-colored liquid: it flows; it is “quick”.
Those
qualities gave it its older names. The Greeks called it hydrarguros, meaning
“watery-silver” (from hydrarguros we
get its chemical symbol, Hg) and in Old English it was quick-silver. The old name is still used for the
element, or metaphorically to refer to such a shifting character.
quicksilver – rapidly shifting and changeable esp. with the sense of elusive,
hard-to-catch
[Wordcrafter
definition; I’m not satisfied with what the dictionaries give.]
The heat of the day made a shimmer over the tar, and at
the horizon was quicksilver, shining like water in a dream.
– Stephen King, The
Stand
He turned in a circle, trying to catch the minnow of a
thought that swam through his mind, too quicksilverto
show itself clearly.
– Jodi Picoult, Second
Glance
High
prices for gasoline make today's word a timely one.
lead-foot – a car-driver who drives too fast
(also used as verb or adjective)
[from lead
as heavy]
This term
is quite common, but surprisingly, very few dictionaries include it. I give my
own definition, plus some very-recent supporting examples:
“I was a lead-foot,”
said Dan Ronan. “I would drive too fast, too hard, hit the brakes. I was down
to 12 or 13 miles per gallon.”
– CBS 42 (
So, he's taking aim at the lead-foot drivers with his radar gun.
WRCB-TV (
Finally, police officers will continue keeping a watchful
eye on
–
Our
ancient-metals theme ends with gold, and we can choose among many “gold” terms.
Let’s take a familiar one.
gold
star – informal: a symbol of recognition for merit or
effort; also, the recognition itself
Facebook has brought together friends from long ago, and
anything that can make keeping in touch a little easier deserves a gold star in my book.
–
Lingo of Corporate Takeovers
The world
of corporate takeovers has developed some colorful lingo – often literally
colorful. We’ll look at some of it this week. Our first example is, like
yesterday’s word, a will be a “gold” term.
golden
parachute – an employment contract providing that a key executive
will be given lucrative severance benefits if the company is taken over
Johnson got the RJR Nabisco board to approve a set of
antitakeover provisions … . The board also approved severance arrangements
known as “golden parachutes” for each of the company’s top ten
officers. Most large
– Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of
RJR Nabisco
What tactics
can a company use to resist an unwanted attempt to take it over? One tactic is
to think “eat or be eaten,” and attempt to gobble up the attacker. That
strategy is named for a voracious monster.
pac man
defense – a stratagem, to prevent a hostile takeover, by which the
target company tries to acquire the bidder
But it was the Bendix affair in
1982 that really got people's attention. The head of Bendix, William Agee,
launched a bid for Martin Marietta. Martin Marietta launched a "Pac
Man defense" and made a hostile bid for Bendix. Then Bendix ended
up being acquired by Allied Corp.
In the course of this, Agee bailed
and took an expensive parachute with him. It was, at that point, the most
expensive golden parachute ever: $4 million.
– Business Week, How Golden Parachutes Unfurled,, Dec. 12, 2005
To stagger is to astound or overwhelm, as with
shock. But when a company’s board of directors is “staggered”, it isn't in
shock; it is using a tactic to remain in control.
staggered
board – a board (of directors) whose members’ terms are
overlapping, not coincident, so that only some directors (not all) are elected
in any single election
[C]orporate governance rating agencies penalize companies
that do not elect all of the directors each year. [S]taggered boards block
takeovers. If the target has a staggered
board, a bidder
must win two proxy contests, conducted more than a year apart, to gain control
of the board. No bidder in the modern era of takeovers has had the patience and
persistence to do this.
– New York Times, Feb. 14, 2007 (ellipses omitted)
Another
“color”ful term, combining green with blackmail.
greenmail – the practice of buying enough
stock to threaten a hostile takeover, so that the company will pay you a
premium price to buy the stock back and get you to go away (also, the money paid to you)
You remember greenmail. [B]oards often
bought out the stakes of investors who were threatening a takeover fight just
to get rid of them. The buyout would be at a premium to the market price,
allowing the investors enrich their pockets … regular shareholders didn't get
the same deal.
Texaco paid in 1984 to fend off a
takeover, while General Motors bought out Ross Perot's stake in 1986. The
investors each reaped more than $100 million in profits.
But thanks to tightened board
rules, a post-Sarbanes Oxley pro-shareholder sentiment, and in several cases,
state laws outlawing greenmail, raiders now have to build a broad
shareholder consensus to get their goals accomplished.
– Forbes, Feb. 21, 2006 (ellipses omitted)
Although
the dictionaries don’t note it, the term is also being used for a corporation's
“go-away” payments beyond the takeover context.
It's not every day that a major corporation offers to pay
$10 million in greenmail to encourage prompt settlement of a
federal investigation.
– eWeek, May 27, 2004
Richman shrugged. “If you have a strong case, take him to
trial.” “Yes,” Casey said. ”But trials are very expensive, and the publicity
doesn’t do us any good. It’s cheaper to settle, and just add the cost of his greenmail to the price of our aircraft."
– Michael Crichton, Airframe
poison
pill – an arrangement that an attempted takeover will trigger
certain events – the events being ones that make the takeover less attractive.
(The arrangement is made as an anti-takeover tactic.) E.g., issuance of
preferred stock that is redeemable at a premium in the event of takeover.
The recent
Microsoft/Yahoo confrontation provides an example.
Yahoo, the internet company that rejected a $44.6 billion
bid from Microsoft, may find that a so-called poison pill in its bylaws isn't enough to defend
against a hostile takeover. The provision is designed to increase the number of
shares outstanding in the event of an unwanted offer, making a takeover costly.
– Yahoo’s poison pill may fail to repel Microsoft, Feb. 13, 2008
A colorful
term to end this theme.
white
knight – a friendly acquirer, sought out by a target firm to
rescue it from an unwelcome acquirer
Is Alcan in search of a white
knight? The Canadian aluminum producer has opened its books to mega
miners Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, in an attempt to fend off a $27 billion
offer from American rival Alcoa
– Forbes, June 20, 2007
Oxymorons
This week
we’ll enjoy some oxymorons – or more precisely, oxyomora. Many will be
familiar, and the intrigue lies in realizing that each is an oxymoron.
We open
with one from the corporate-takeover world of last week’s theme. Despite the .
name, there is nothing gentle or “tender” about a tender offer. On the contrary,
it is the usual method used for a hostile takeover.
tender
offer – a general, public offer to buy a firm’s stock at a
premium price
The offer
is made directly to the firm's shareholders, though the firm’s management will
often express its view. Our quote, from a novel, illustrates the conflict.
Centrus Corp.'s tender
offer was, upon Lord's
advice, rejected by the board of directors. However, all indications pointed to
overwhelming acceptance of the offer by the shareholders … .
– David Baldacci, Absolute
Power
The word piano is a shortened form of today’s word.
pianoforte – a piano
[from
Italian, where piano and forte mean “soft” and “loud”. The instrument
was so called because, unlike the harpsichord, its tones were not of unvarying
loudness.]
If Mozart, instead of playing the pianoforte at three years old with wonderfully
little practice, had played a tune with no practice at all, he might truly be
said to have done so instinctively.
– Charles Darwin, The
Origin Of Species
Think of a
20-year old student: not as all-knowing as he thinks he is; sometimes learned,
sometimes childishly foolish. Our name for him is of unclear etymology, but may
be a combination of Greek sophos wise + mōrosfoolish. (You’ve
already seen the “foolish” part in moron.)
sophomore – a student in the second year of
college (or of a 4-year secondary school)
sophomoric – conceited and overconfident, but
exhibiting great immaturity and lack of judgment
Remember
how awkward it was to be young and trying to impress the opposite sex?
If she was interested in me at all, he thought (and God
knows why she would be, he added gloomily to himself), I have undoubtedly put paid
to that by exposing the full range of my sophomoric wit.
– Stephen King, The
Stand
A reader has drawn our attention to sophomania – unrealistic belief in one's own
intelligence; delusion of superintelligence.
Yesterday
we saw moron, “stupid”. Today’s
word combines this with oxy- “sharp” (as in oxygen).
oxymoron – a contradiction in terms (generalized from meaning of “a figure of speech
combining two contradictory terms, for emphasis”)
OED tells
us that oxymoronic first appeared in 1954. Oh yeah? When Of Mice an Men was published in 1937, a review called
it “oxymoronic”.
George was small, wiry, tough, shrewd; Lennie was
enormous, floppy-looking but Herculean, and a halfwit. George and Lennie were
pals. Americans whose eyes are still smarting from the unhappy ending of the
Wall Street fairy tale of 1929 may even overlook the fact that it too is a
fairy tale. An oxymoronic combination of the tough & tender,
Of Mice and Men will appeal to sentimental cynics, cynical sentimentalists. …
Readers less easily thrown off their trolley will still prefer Hans Andersen.
– Time Magazine, March 1, 1937 (ellipses omitted. By the
way; Steinbeck's dog ate an early draft manuscript of the book.)
black
gold – crude oil; unrefined petroleum [Technically “petroleum”
means the material in its unrefined state, but “black gold” emphasizes the “as
it comes from the ground”.]
The greatest oil strike in the history of
– Upton Sinclair, Oil!
The two
roots in today’s word mean “before/behind”, which is an absurd and ridiculous
contradiction in terms.
preposterous – utterly absurd or ridiculous
[from
Latin prae "before" (as in “precede”) + posterus "after" (as in
“post-date”).]
Since such
a familiar word doesn’t need quotes to illustrate it, we’ll select quotes to
amuse.
… 90 percent of the moving pictures exhibited in
– Wolcott Gibbs
Take all your dukes and marquesses and earls and
viscounts, pack them into one chamber, call it the House of Lords to satisfy
their pride and then strip it of all political power. It’s a solution so
perfectly elegant and preposterous that only the British could have managed
it.
– Charles Krauthammer, Celebrities
in Politics: A Cure
[H]anging over the lives of every little girl born in the
second half of the 20th century was the impossibly curvy shadow (40-18-32 in
life-size terms) of Barbie. That preposterous physique, we learn as kids, is what a
woman looks like with her clothes off.
–