So how do Mars rovers celebrate?

According to a recent BBC News story:

The US space agency's (Nasa) Mars rovers are celebrating a remarkable five years on the Red Planet.

That leads me to wonder how exactly the Mars rovers are "celebrating". Spinning around gleefully? Moving their robotic arms up and down in jubilation? Or perhaps they are observing the anniversary in a more restrained fashion. Who knows?

While I'm on the theme of celebration, I'd like to mention that The Engine Room is, today, Fuelmyblog's blog of the day. And look, we've been sent a little badge:

Educated censor

I’ve been watching a TV history of the RKO studio which recently covered the post-war communist witch hunt; fascinating, if deply depressing.

The programme also covered Howard Hughes’ purchase of the studio and the close interest he paid to its female stars. Hughes was clearly keen to make the most of their more outstanding attributes – a censor reporting on The Outlaw complained of Jane Russell’s “bathukolpian posing”.

Bathukolpian doesn’t figure in my the OED Concise, but the excellent Online Etymology Dictionary includes: bathukolpian "big-breasted," 1825, from Gk. bathykolpos, lit. "deep-bosomed," from bathys "deep" + kolpos "breast."

I cherish the whimsy that the word was coined by classics scholars as a way of commenting on passing totty without giving offence (“I say, Carruthers, look at the kolpoi on that – bathys or what?”).

Writing web headlines: search and searchability

Just a quick note to say that my second guest post on Pam Robinson's 'Words at Work' blog is now up. It focuses on how to write search-engine-friendly headlines for the web without compromising on quality.

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow...

Have fun with homonyms!

BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting a history of variety and last night’s instalment featured the 1938 launch of the long-running show Bandwagon, including Arthur Askey’s ‘chestnut corner’ routine. During this he and his partner ‘Stinker’ Murdoch rattled off a succession of hoary old schoolboy jokes designed to make the audience groan. But I’d somehow missed one of them during my schooldays so it made me smile, while doffing my cap at dear old Arthur for incorporating two homonyms in a one-line gag:

Stinker: “What do your people do?” Arthur: “They’re in the iron and steel business – my mother irons and my father steals!”

I have a weakness for homonyms and, thanks to a chat on the subject with JD when we shared an engine room, I knew there was more than one variety of the breed. But being woolly on the details I looked them up. The OED duly confirmed that a homonym is a “word of the same form as another but different sense; homograph or homophone...” Little the wiser I turned to Wikipedia, which warns that there are many contradictory views on this subject; I found whole sites devoted to each variant.

However, www.editingandwritingservices.com offers the following which I found illuminating, with good potential for wordmanship.

Homonym One of two or more words having the same sound and often the same spelling but different meanings. Examples: quail (cower), and quail (bird); fair (appearance), fair (county fair), and fair (reasonable).

Homophone One of two or more words pronounced the same but different in meaning, origin, and sometimes spelling. Examples: cite, sight, and site; sea and see; your and you're; bow and bough.

Homograph One of two or more words spelled alike but different in origin, meaning, and sometimes pronunciation. Examples: bow of a ship, a bow and arrow, and a bow (deference/manners).

Heteronym One of two or more words that are spelled the same but that differ in pronunciation and meaning. Examples: bass (voice) and bass (fish); polish (shine) and Polish (from Poland); tear (rip) and tear (from eye).

So iron/iron and steel/steal are both homonyms, but steel/steal is also a homophone and iron/iron isn’t (though the “sometimes” in these definitions remind us that they are open to argument). Iron/iron aren't homographs as they share a root; neither are steal/steel as they are spelled differently. Neither pair are hetronyms as they are pronounced the same.

Wikipedia sums it up thusly:

“The words bow and bough are interesting because there are two meanings associated with a single pronunciation and spelling (the weapon and the knot); there are two meanings with two different pronunciations (the knot and the act of bending at the waist), and there are two distinct meanings sharing the same sound but different spellings: (bow, the act of bending at the waist, and bough, the branch of a tree). In addition, it has several related but distinct meanings - a bent line is sometimes called a 'bowed' line, reflecting its similarity to the weapon. Thus, even according to the most restrictive definitions, various pairs of sounds and meanings of bow and bough are homonyms, homographs, homophones, heterophones, heterographs, and are polysemous.”

But if you want to research polysemes and capitonyms, you’re on your own.

It's time for place for learning

The Daily Telegraph reports that a new primary school has banned the use of the word “school” in its title because it has “negative connotations”. Instead the school is to be known as “a place for learning” after its governors decided the word school is too “institutional”. The head teacher (“primary educational facilitator”, perhaps?) says: “We want this to be a place for family learning, where anyone can come... we wanted to de-institutionalise the place and bring the school [sic] closer to real life.”

Predictably, the Plain English Campaign has condemned the whole idea as “ridiculous”. It cites other recent examples of a “political correctness agenda” including “knowledge navigators” (teachers, though I think educational facilitator is more accurate and slightly less silly); the glorious “education centre nourishment assistants” (dinner ladies); “idea stores” (libraries); and an attempt to ban the word “inmates” for prisoners in case it offends them.

You really couldn’t make it up.


Telegraph.co.uk: Primary school drops word school from name...
The Engine Room: A library by any other name

Writing web headlines: web versus print

Pam Robinson, former news editor at the LA Times, recently asked me to write a guest post on web headlines for her 'Words at Work' blog. I got so carried away that I wrote two - and the first one is up now. It focuses on some of the differences between print and web headlines and the reasons for those differences.

My second post will look at how search considerations influence the writing of web headlines, and all being well I'll have it up by tomorrow evening.

After that, no more moonlighting from me for a while - unless someone pays me well or asks me really nicely!

A doughnut is a doughnut

One of the more obscure TV channels has a habit of dropping 60-second 'celebrity news' bulletins into the middle of movies, and last night I failed to hit the remote quickly enough to avoid a gushing report on the German premier of the film Sex in the City. Which would be of no interest to the Engine Room, had not one of the stars (sorry I can't tell them apart) told the crowd of film buffs: "Ich bin ein Berliner".

The original use of this phrase, of course, was in President John F Kennedy's famous speech near the Berlin Wall in June 1963. He used it to warn the Russians that the USA would not abandon Berlin, which remained a thorn in the side of the Warsaw Pact.

Cynics have pointed out that JFK should have said “Ich bin Berliner” and that including the “ein” meant he was claiming to be a sort of pastry known as a berliner, rather than a resident of the beleagured city. (Presumably in the same way hamburgers and frankfurters are snacks or residents of Hamburg and Frankfurt, depending on the use of the indefinite article?)

No doubt the Germans, and Russians, knew exactly what the President meant as context is everything in such cases. And in the context of a film premier, the use of that defiant Cold War rallying call indicates that the self-important actress concerned is definitely a doughnut.

Boots throat lozenges: when 24÷3=12

Spotted on the back of a packet of Boots own-brand throat lozenges:

Adults and children over 6 years:
Suck one lozenge.
Dissolve the lozenge slowly in the mouth.
Repeat this dose every 3 hours, if needed, up to a maximum of 12 lozenges in 24 hours.
Do not exceed the stated dose.

I'm not a maths genius, but I do know that 24÷3=8. So why warn people not to exceed 12 lozenges in 24 hours?

And if people are going to disregard the first part of the instruction ("Repeat this dose every 3 hours, if needed"), what makes Boots think they will pay heed to the second part ("a maximum of 12 lozenges in 24 hours")?

One quote, two opposing interpretations

A Daily Mail article from last year (click for a larger image):


I am intrigued by the quote from Ann Robinson at the top of the second column: "We cannot under-estimate the impact higher household energy prices will have on customers."

Presumably Robinson means that the impact of higher energy prices shouldn't be underestimated; that to do so would be unwise. However when I first read the article I took her to be saying that it was impossible to underestimate the impact of higher prices; in other words, that the impact would be so small as to be negligible. This, obviously, conflicts with what Robinson says next.

One quote, two opposing interpretations. Context indicates which one is correct.

Online version of the story from This is Money


Happy new year, by the way, and I hope your energy bills aren't too high in 2009...