Amazing how many interesting word-uses you find in the daily papers, if you look. Today’s local rag has ten, and today’s Wall Street Journal has nine on the editorial pages alone. I have to admit that quite a few were unfamiliar to me. Excerpts:

-- Book review: "We learn about [Michelangelo’s] feckless brothers and father dunning for ducats."
-- Voters, who "may be gulled by the comfort of a familiar name, must remember that these are men who sold them out."
-- In the "Museum of Terror" in Budapest: "To music interrupted occasionally by the ranting of some demagogue, one walks thru Hungarian history - the communist show trial of Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty and the long banality of 'goulash communism'"
-- President Bush's "State of the Union [speech] was singular in its fright-night tone."
-- Article title: "Pickup Artist Applies KISS Principle" [Keep It Simple, Stupid]
-- to leverage [ad: "Leverage your skills and make your new career a reality"]
-- to biograph [Commenting on food-books such as Caviar: The Strange History: "Every food group is being biographed – but is there really a story there?"]

[Wall Street Journal]
-- "The nitpicking argument about whether Saddam has connections with terrorists is almost too ludicrous for discussion. Of course he does."
-- The overspending US Congressmen "know they never had it as good as they did during the brief halcyon days of federal [budget] surplus. In an ideal word, the budget would be 'balanced.' But until that nirvana arrives ..."
-- "The end game has begun for Saddam Hussein."
-- "A dangerous fissure has developed, enlarged through reiterations in the Security Council. No one needs homilies about pre-emption, which has always been an option never improved by public discussion."
-- "The case for military action cannot be deferred indefinitely as Iraq continues to play its cat-and-mouse game with U.N. inspectors. Nor can it be held hostage to lowest common denominator consensus in the Security Council. A broad coalition would also prove useful after hostilities: it will help an initiative to jump-start peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians."
-- "The budget allocates [funds to develop] the ‘littoral combat ship,’ which will allow the Navy to project power into rivers and coastal waterways that are hard to reach now. (Think Persian Gulf.)"

[This message was edited by shufitz on Tue Feb 4th, 2003 at 18:08.]

Odd but I found most of your bold-faced words well within my vocabulary if not among those I use on a regular basis.

Then again, I've been feckful most of my adult life...

I desperately looked for a thread for this post, and while it may not belong here, it did come from a newspaper! And, it really is quite funny.

Given the recent lawsuit regarding McDonalds, Mark Cloud, in a Chicago Tribune column, suggests the following lawsuits:

1) Me vs. Supercuts -- "Who can resist a haircut that costs less than a movie with popcorn, soda and Goobers? The walk-ins welcome policy is so devilishly convenient. How can I resist the seductive: 'As hip as you want to be' slogan? Yet, I have a hairdon't, not a hairdo!"

2) Me vs. Barry Manilow -- "Why, Barry? Did you dervive some sick pleasure out of ruining my taste in music? Was it some sort of game to force me to like your sappy ballads? The fact is, I was just a small boy when I started listening. I didn't know any better -- 'Copacabana,' 'I Write the Songs,' 'Looks Like We Made It' -- dear God they were catchy tunes to my tender ears! I think you should pay me the approximately $30 that I spent on your records, plus punitive damages. It was I who came and gave without taking. But now I want some of it back."

3) Me vs. Et al. -- "I plan to sue 'Survivor' for making me let myself watch reality shows, the city of Buffalo for causing me to love spicy chicken wings so much that I often continue eating them even after my mouth is super-fire-hot, and God for making me dependent on air, which is now really polluted and bad for me to breathe."

quote:

---

) Me vs. Et al. -- "I plan to sue ... the city of Buffalo for causing me to love spicy chicken wings so much that I often continue eating them even after my mouth is super-fire-hot..."

---

New vocabulary from the newspaper, on how manufacturers of machine-made "oriental" rugs work to make their product hard to distinguish from the pricier authentic handmade Orientals:

quote:

---

They're also getting more clever about making their rugs look a bit sloppy. In handmades, rug aficionados look for "abrash" -- imperfections in colors caused by traditional wool-dyeing methods. Karastan has a new Ashara line that uses multiple colrs to imitate the flaws. For our panel, it was practically a tossup between the real thing and an inexpensive look-alike.

---

There was an interesting phrase in our newspaper today that I had never heard before, "jot and tittle"; here's the quote:
"The Brits knew that not everyone would agree with each jot and tittle of their proposal." I rather like it!

I think that's another Britishism. It's slightly old-fashioned, and means "every last thing, however small". A jot means "something very small", or "a very tiny part". It comes from the Greek letter iota, which has the same meaning as jot in English.

A tittle is a small diacritical mark used in writing or printing, such as the dot over the letter i, and hence something very small.

[This message was edited by arnie on Mon Mar 17th, 2003 at 2:23.]

Here's a quote from a report of a rugby match in today's Daily Mail. I should perhaps mention that for the past four years Leicester have finished top of the Premiership league, and have been almost unbeatable. This season they have done less well, although before this match they were still mathematically in with a chance of winning the league again. Newcastle, at the start of the game, were bottom of the league.

quote:

---

It surely rang the death-knell of Leicester's four-year reign over the English game, their last realistic hope of extending the monopoly through a fifth season having floundered against the rising tide of Newcastle's refusal to be left high and dry on the quicksands of relegation.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by arnie:
Newcastle, at the start of the game, were bottom of the league.

---

Interesting. We would say "was bottom of the league," seeing a team-as-entity rather than multiple players. That's one of the UK/US variances I hadn't known.

Come to think of it, we'd say "was at the bottom of the league". And yet in other constructions we'd freely use "bottom" as an adjective.

Yes, this is a common UK/US difference. Technically, "was" in this case would be correct. The subject (Newcastle [Rugby Club]) is strictly speaking a singular noun, but common UK practice is for it to be treated as a plural noun. Often it can be rationalised by saying that we are speaking about a collection of individuals, rather than the team as a unit. However, in this instance that is not the case. It is the club's position in the league, not that of its members.

I am rather surprised about your objection to "was/were bottom of the league". Would you similarly object if it/they were said to be "top of the league"?

Anyway, it was the purple passage of prose from the periodical I posted for the powwow, not my own.

Arnie, that quote definitely shows the difference between English writers about sports versus U.S. writers, if one could call the latter "writers". Perhaps there is a high-quality sports page somewhere in the U.S., though I have never found one. The sports pages I read don't even have metaphors, and, in fact, they struggle to be grammatically correct (often failing). Anyway, I loved the description, gallimaufry or not!

By the way, my AHD says that "tittle" also means "tiniest bit" or "iota".

Some British sports writers are indeed excellent. Cricket, in particular, has been blessed with some superb reporters. One of the greatest was Sir Neville Cardus, who wrote for the Manchester Guardian from the 1920s to at least the 1970s. He was also the paper's music critic. Several collections of his match reports have been published in book form, and I have read a couple of them. His prose style is wonderfully evocative. You can almost imagine yourself watching the match he is reporting between Lancashire and Yorkshire in 1926 or whenever...

was/were

I first heard this UK/US difference on a Monty Python album where someone exclaimed "The audience are loving it!"

I had thought they were deliberately using the incorrect form for comedic effect.

Yes, I agree, CJ. It is definitely considered wrong in the U.S.

Quoting arnie: A jot means "something very small", or "a very tiny part".

As a child, every Saturday, my brother and I were treated to a movie. We were given a dollar to share for treats, and one of our favorite treats was Jots. They were a very tiny, hard gumdrop candy. Much smaller than even the eraser on your pencil. I wonder if this is how they got their name?

(And can you imagine a dollar buying ANYTHING in a movie theater anymore? )

Quarters, maybe.

Actually that isn't so far-fetched. A while back I read of a coin-changing machine that was set to give 95 cents for each dollar that was fed into it. Some one had come up with the bright idea of charging 5 cents to make change! They had to take it out after so many outraged patrons vandalized the damn thing.

C J, that machine is still in use today! Haven't you ever tried to purchase stamps from a machine at the post office? You know the kind, they save you time so you don't have to stand in line. You put $1.50 in and you get 4 37cent stamps. That's our government!