All You Create

A friend of mine has a dog — and an extraordinarily adorable one at that — named Google. This same friend is also the technology teacher at a local middle school. The dog’s name, then, makes even more sense, yes?

So when this friend asked me the proper way to spell the word that implies the action of looking something up on the popular search engine named Google (and then suggested that it could make a decent blog topic — smart friend), I just had to help.

Google, the ridiculously cute pup (photo: courtesy of Google’s owner-mom)

So how do you spell it? Depending on your phrasing, there are a few ways to get your point across:

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Here’s a short and hopefully painless post for your quick-reading pleasure.

What is a whipsaw?

A whipsaw is a two-handled saw that dates back to the 1400s. It can be smallish or it can be big enough to cut down large tree. The idea is this: A cutting job that takes enough effort for two people could be made easier if two people actually do the cutting. Most whipsaws average 6 feet in length.

A whipsaw humorously reminds me of the pushmipullyu (a two-headed animal that is part gazelle, part unicorn) from the “Dr. Doolittle” story — when one head moves, the other head instinctively moves in the opposite direction. It’s all about teamwork, my friends.

Alternatively, Webster’s New World College Dictionary (which the AP Stylebook folks regard as the end-all-be-all of dictionaries) also shows two transitive verb meanings for whipsaw:

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I went to a Dave Matthews Band concert (my fourth) last night and, yes, they were as fantastic live as ever. So what does it have to do with language? Ooh, so glad you want to know.

Going to the show, I was thinking about different songs that I hoped the band would play. (”Long Black Veil” was on my list but didn’t make the lineup.) “One Sweet World” popped into my head. (But, alas, it didn’t get any stage time, either.)

Say “One Sweet World” without thinking about a yummy scoop — or bowl — of Ben & Jerry’s “One Sweet Whirled” ice cream; it can’t be done, at least not by me.

And then I thought, “Hey, that would make a great topic for a Bloody Well Write entry.” And so it begins.

So what’s this thing called wherein two words, such as world and whirled, sound alike but have different meanings, origins and (usually) spellings? They’re called homophones, my friends.

In a perfect world (and I use the term perfect extraordinarily rarely, as it’s the unicorn of language — it pretty much doesn’t exist), world and whirled would be pronounced slightly differently, with world having a deeper, rounder sound and whirled sounding a bit more forward in the mouth, sort of tinny. As I mentioned, though, this world is far from perfect and the vast majority of folks would agree that world and whirled sound alike.

Homophones are, in the English language, words that confuse English as a second language (ESL) folks and everyone else trying to expand vocabulary. You may have a particular homophone or two that still haunt you to this day. Have no fear that you’re alone in this matter, because you’re absolutely not. Here are just a few that I usually have to look up to be doubly sure that I’m using the correct word:

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Good news! Bloody Well Write just passed 100 posts (this is No. 101) and is going stronger than ever — thanks to all you grammar-hungry readers. So kudos go to you and yours; I’m very lucky to be able to write for a growing audience and hope that each of you feels welcome to comment on any and all posts. Conversation is good!

Here’s something that has nothing to do with the 100-post comment: non sequitur. It is what it is — something that follows something else when, really, it has no business following that thing. That, gentle readers, is the very definition of non sequitur:

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For those who don’t know me well, I will share this morsel with you:

I’m all about food.

Granted, I’m a pescetarian — someone who doesn’t eat land animals (e.g., chicken, cow, pig, sheep, etc.) — but I do eat seafood and fish, in addition to fruits, dairy products, grains and the occasional vegetable. And tomatoes? They’re OK, I suppose. I’ve eaten them my entire life but haven’t really been in awe of them.

Not, that is, until the past decade, when a friend introduced me to Insalata Caprese. Now, I’m hooked.

Insalata Caprese translates from Italian into English thus:

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It’s 11:10 p.m. A little while ago, I decided to write a quick blog post and so looked up a few things, trying to decide what to write about. Then I remembered something I had learned in school a long time ago: The difference between the term Asian and Oriental. Yep, that’d make a quick post.

But then I thought, hey, that class was awhile ago and I better double-check what I think I know in case I am remembering it wrong. And wammo! No more quick-and-easy post.

What I learned years ago was this:

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Leave it to one-time presidential-hopeful Sarah Palin to continually provide grammar fodder for the media, as well as for bloggers (such as yours truly), Facebook addicts and Twitter hounds alike.

This past Sunday, Palin tweeted the following:

“Ground Zero Mosque supporters, doesn’t it stab you in the heart as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, please refudiate.”

The popular assumption running around the Internet is that someone pointed the fact that “refudiate” isn’t a dictionary-recognized word to Palin, who then deleted the first tweet and entered a new, presumably more-correct version:

“Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real.”

The second version isn’t much better than the first — and that’s without even getting into the politics of what she’s trying, very unsuccessfully, to get across.

Palin was probably trying to use “repudiate” but may have been thinking about the word “refute” and, not fully comprehending (ahem) the distinction between the two, blended them into “refudiate.” Whether by accident or on purpose, the tweeted goof made far-reaching news.

Let’s look at the three words:

Refudiate =

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It’s always a good feeling to receive a message from a friend that includes, among other things, an idea for a Bloody Well Write segment. This short-but-sweet post is a result of just such a message.

Peel = a verb meaning to cut or strip off the outer layer of something, such as …

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Here’s a short, to-the-point entry for your post-July 4th enjoyment.

Alongside, adjacent and adjoining are all words that could be mistaken for synonyms, but they have distinct meanings:

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I never thought about it before I became a proofreader more than a decade ago. I’d venture to guess that most people don’t think about it, either, or ever will. And yet now that I know the difference, it bugs me enough to write an entry on it.

On what?

On the copyright symbol — © — and the redundant use of the word copyright alongside the symbol.

If you look at the copyright information on just about anything, you may very well see something like this:

Copyright © 1989, 1996 by  …. (This particular instance is from the parenting book “What to Expect the First Year.”)

The problem with the above information is that it is repeating the idea of copyright: the word, then the symbol. It’s akin to  “I’d like $40 dollars, please.” The dollar sign ($) and the word dollars mean exactly the same thing, so if you said it out loud, you’d say, “I’d like dollars 40 dollars, please.” You see the ick factor, grammatically speaking, yes?

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