Dr. Goodword’s Language Blog

On Kieth Olberman’s MSNBC show “Countdown” last Tuesday, Howard Fineman of Newsweek said: “He doesn’t have that great of a story to tell,” instead of, “He doesn’t have that great a story to tell.” Why do people make this mistake?

The problem resides in the nature of quantifiers, which serve as both nouns and adjectives in sentences.  “Quantifier?” you might want to ask. “What is a quantifier?”

A quantifier is pretty much what it sounds like: a category of words that indicates quantities. Much, some, many are all quantifiers. So is little, as in, “Little of the money Madoff made off with can now be found.”

We know little in this case is a quantifier because of the presence of the preposition of following it. In English, of marks the items or substances that are measured by quantifiers. It is used with all the quantifiers mentioned above:

• much of the money
• some of the money
• many of the investors

Unsurprisingly, numbers are also quantifiers, as we see in:

• two of the investors
• 43 of the investors
• eleven of the investors

The problem is that all of these quantifiers can also function as adjectives: much money, some money, many people, a little dog; even the numbers: two investors, eleven investors. This is one of the characteristics of English quantifiers: they are both adjectives and nouns. This leads some to use pure adjectives as quantifiers, as Fineman did when he said, “that great of a story” where he apparently meant either “that great a story” or “that much of a story.”

In fact, the correct construction itself may be a syntactic curve ball that confuses some speakers.  Noun phrases like, “that great a story”, are unique in allowing the adjective to be placed before the article a(n). This construction may throw some speakers, leading them to think a preposition is missing. Well, it isn’t. That is a normal syntactic construction of English, one that proves the article does not always come first in a noun phrase.

Someone (probably Paul Ogden) last month sent me a link to an article by Robert Fulford in the National Post of Canada called, “Are Clichés the Achille’s Heel of Language?” He comes to no conclusion (some clichés are bad; others are OK) but it opened the door to a question I have long pondered: “Why do literary critics and grammarians write so much about clichés but never mention idioms?

What are most often called clichés are, in fact, idioms. For example, if you enter “cat” into the amateurish Cliche-Finder website, the following idioms are produced:

These are not clichés but idioms. An idiom is a phrase that is a metaphor of the meaning intended, as cats and dogs really means “heavily, intensely”, while skin a cat in the second example simple mean “do anything”. The entire phrase fly off the handle means “to get angry” while to climb the walls means “to be extremely frustrated”.

These are idioms, phrases that cannot be interpreted word for word and each is, in fact, treated as though it were a single word. Unlike actual words, idioms are stored in the right side of our brain, the side that does holistic thinking. Right-brain thought interprets the world in terms of whole things rather than breaking them down into their individual components for interpretation. That is how we process idioms: pretty much the same way as we process individual words.

Clichés are, as any good dictionary will tell you, trite, overused expressions like sprawling epic, minor quibble, penetrating insight, emotional roller-coaster, mentioned in Fulford’s article. These are not idioms with one meaning, but rather analyzable phrases comprising individual words bundled together. The problem with them is that they are overused when other word combinations are possible, combinations that express more subtle semantic variations.

Clichés are turns of phrase that were original when first used but which have subsequently become boring and wooden, if not stilted. They need to be replaced by fresher metaphors: a hurricane of emotions for emotional rollercoaster, a petty quibble for minor quibble, an eye-opening insight for penetrating insight (or something better).

We could just as well say, expansive epic, broad epic, awkwardly oversized epic, and so on. In each case the phrase’s meaning is changed only by the meaning of the replacement adjective while the meaning of epic remains unchanged. By making such changes in different contexts, however, we achieve a higher level of subtlely and expressiveness.

We do not have this flexibility with idioms. We cannot adjust “fly off the handle” to “fly off the frying pan” or “leap off the handle” and still retain the reference to losing our temper. Unike those of the cliché, the meanings of idioms are tamper-proof.

All we can do to eliminate repetitious idioms from our speech and writing is to avoid them altogether. But avoiding idioms renders language lifeless and academic if not lexically prudish. Idioms are the curve balls of language that shape its character.

We have a separate category of jokes based on the potential literal interpretation of idioms (The flies in our kitchen are so frustrated they are climbing the walls). We play with them every day in other ways, as well. Idioms are, in fact, unavoidable in any written or spoken language that is alive. Long live idioms!

English has two expressions referring to turkeys that seem unrelated. To talk turkey means to get down to serious straighforward talking while cold turkey is a term usually applied to withdrawing directly from an addition: to kick a drug habit cold turkey or give up smoking cold turkey.
 
We are not suffering from a lack of explanations. One goes back to colonial times when Indians often brought turkeys to the original settlers on the East Coast. Since the turkey was often the coin of trade, “talking turkey” could have meant getting down to serious negotiations. We have no evidence of that.

Michael Quinion picks upon the Oxford English Dictionary’s claim that the phrase at one time meant “to talk agreeably or affably, to say pleasant things”, suggesting that this sense arose around the Thanksgiving table, where turkey has been the central fare for some time in the US. (The phrase definitely came from the US.) The examples of this meaning that I can find are not convincing and Quinion doesn’t provide any.

I am going to suggest another possibility. The OED claims that one of the meanings of this phrase was at one time “to talk in high-flown language”. This makes sense since turkeys strut, their feathers puffed out and their tail feathers fanned like a peacock’s, when they gobble. The OED found at least one example suggesting this meaning from John Beedle’s Sleigh Ride, Courtship and Marriage, a novel by William McClintock published in 1841: “I was plaguy apt to talk turkey always when I got sociable, if it was only out of politeness.”

While high-flown language is looked on disparagingly in the US, it is usually reserved for serious situations rather than affable ones. “Seriously” seems to be the meaning of the phrase in this line from A Little Bit of Tid-Re-I, II, published in 1824: “So that, all things considered, I hope neither the Indian, whom the Yankey could not cheat in the division of their game (a turkey and a buzzard,)..will accuse me of not talking Turkey to them in this article.”

The 1903 issue of Dialect Notes II has an entry: “Talk turkey, v.phr., to talk plainly: ‘I’m going to talk turkey with him and see if I can’t get him to mend his ways.’” The American preference for straightforwardness in serious discussions could have pulled the meaning of this word in the direction of “plainness” but something else happened at about the same time that makes this even more likely.

Early in 20th century this talking turkey was sometimes extended to talking cold turkey. This expression clearly meant “talking plainly but very seriously”. Cold implies the status of people and machines before they are warmed up, right after starting, and fits the sense of plainly, i.e. without preparation, rehearsal or warming up. The January 4, 1928 issue of The Daily Express (11/5) contained the following sentence: “She talked cold turkey about sex.”

Now, even though the OED’s examples seem to reverse the chronology, I am suggesting talk cold turkey in the sense of “talk plainly and very seriously” became simply talk turkey, not vice versa. We should not depend too heavily on published sources here. Talk cold turkey may well have preceded talk turkey in the sense of “plainly and seriously” in speech but took more time finding its way into print.

The interesting aspect of the extended phrase, talk cold turkey in the sense of “plainness”, is that the other mysterious turkey phrase is cold turkey. Quinion says that this sense is unrelated to the first; but is it?

If cold turkey meant “plainly and very seriously” at the turn of the century, could it not easily have migrated to the sense of kicking a drug habit plainly and very seriously, which is to say, without help, intervention, or preparation? It would have been strongly influenced by the phrase cold sweats, a state which often accompanies withdrawing from an addiction. I think this history makes eminent sense and is supported by evidence, however scant it may be in spots.

A side note: turkey also meant  “nothing, not a word, diddledy, squat”, toward the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century as we see in this sentence: ”You never said turkey to me about leaving.” This meaning no doubt derived directly from the phrase talk turkey. If you talk turkey, turkey is what you talk, i.e. words.

My old friend Chris Stewart in South Africa wrote recently:

“I do however remember that I was pondering how certain words only survive in phrases (like Kith as in “Kith & Kin”, or Fell as in “Fell Swoop”—or, as the dyslexic community I belong to might say, a “Swell Foop”, which somehow seems to sound like it means something).“

Phrases like “kith and kin” and “to and fro”, in fact, don’t survive. We insist on having current words even in our unpredictable idioms. Most Americans now say “kissin’ kin” and “back and forth” instead of using their archaic counterparts. You meet the archaic phrases only in the written word.

“One fell swoop” is OK because all the words in that phrase are current English words, with or without their original meanings. The important issue seems to be that the components of English phrases, idiomatic or not, be current words in English, whether they make sense in the phrase or not.

The same applies to folk etymology, which I have just explained in the latest addition to Dr. Goodword’s Office and the alphaDictionary resources (click here). Folk etymology converts strange-sounding foreign words into user-friendly English words. The interesting fact is that folk etymology does not care if the words involved make sense so long as they are actual, current English words.

Old French, mousseron, for example, became English mushroom. Mushroom? Mushrooms are not rooms and they have nothing to do with mush? That doesn’t matter to folk etymology so long as mush and room are current English words.

A neologistic sniglet of the 2004 US presidential elections has returned to us.  We wouldn’t suggest adding it to our dictionaries but it is worth remembering:

Electile Dysfunction: The inability to become aroused by any of the choices for president put forth by either party in the 2008 election year.

Thank you Paul Ogden and Chris Stewart.

Joey Malsky raised an interesting question in regard to the phrase be in fine fettle.

Fettle: It occurs to me that the otherwise nonsensical phrase fit as a fiddle could have been derived from in fine fettle, preserving the sense while using a more familiar word. (What’s that called again?) Is there any evidence of this transition?”

Replacing an unfamiliar borrowed word with a more familiar one is called folk etymology (French crevisse becomes crayfish in English). But we have no evidence of folk etymology being involved in the rise of fit as a fiddle.

I have three books that discuss this idiom and all say the same thing: no one knows why fitness and fiddles are associated but the association goes back to the 17th century. The Oxford Dictionary’s earliest citation is 1603 (fit as a farthing fiddle) but no explanation of why fiddle rather than mud duck or saxaphone. In the dozen or more examples OED gives, none confuse fiddle with fettle. If one or two had confused them—if there were examples of in fine fiddle for in fine fettle, we would have a basis to suspect that they are related.

This expression fit as a fiddle is one of an large lexicon of crystalized (which is to say, idiomatized) manner adverb phrases:

• crazy as loon
• sly as a fox
• hungry as a wolf
• quick as a wink
• greedy as a hog
• strong as a horse
• skinny as a rake
• sick as a dog
• crooked as a snake
• straight as an arrow
• clean as a whistle
• quiet as a mouse
• wise as an owl

—just to mention a few off the top of my head. As you can see, there isn’t much of a pattern here, just folk prejudices, so there is no reason why we would expect one for fit as a fiddle.

Of course, we love alliteration and first syllable of fiddle being almost identical to fit gives fiddle a slight edge on being chosen as the simile for fit. However, etymology has nothing beyond that to say for the relationship.

Another confusion that has been brought to my attention recently is the phrase “last-ditch effort”. Some speakers are now bringing it out of the dirt, cleaning it up, and taking it for “last-stitch effort”.

The metaphor here comes from the military and refers to a stand in the last trench. Thomas Jefferson wrote of “a government . . . driven to the last ditch by the universal call for liberty.”  It is interesting to note that the phrase seems to be dying out but the adjective, last-ditch, clings on to life. Well, we need to cling on to both of them.

Hanne Quillevere, a Good Word subscriber living in Canada, was reminded by today’s Good Word, la-di-da,of a funny phrase now slipping out use. She wrote:

“If you are up to dealing with a phrase, rather than a single word, how would you trace the meaning of the phrase, “putting on the dog”? I have now looked through four reference works on idioms, slang and quotations, and while “dog” appears many times, “putting on the dog” does not. I have always thought it meant something along the lines of today’s la-di-da.”

The Oxford English Dictionary reports the phrase “put on dog”, e.g. in A. Gilbert’s No Dust in Attic (1962) xiv. 190: “Matron put on a lot of dog about the hospital’s responsibility”. Here the phrase uses “dog” as a mass (uncountable) noun. The phrase generally means “to splurge, to make a flashy display” or, as one of the OED citations puts it: “cut the swell”. I have always heard it as “putting on THE dog”, too, but I heard it only when living in the South.

This phrase means to do something up in a showy fashion, a synonym of that lovely British phrase, “(dress up like) the dog’s dinner”. (These phrases must have arisen during a stretch when all British dogs were show dogs.) It isn’t the same as “la-di-da” but both these phrases refer to situations that might well elicit a “la-di-da” or two.

Several readers have written in response to our discussion of caboodle reminding us of the reanalysis of the phrase “kit and caboodle” as “kitten caboodle”.  ‘Reanalysis’ means that the words in a phrase are incorrectly separated (misanalyzed) and reanalyzed as a different phrase.  This results from mishearing or unfamiliarity with the spelling of the phrase.

Children are very likely to reanalyze phrases they have never heard before.  It was a child who reported learning a song about some cross-eyed bear named “Gladly” in Sunday School when the teacher thought she was teaching the hymn, “Gladly, the Cross I’d Bear”.  We have immortialized some of the best in our “In Church” section of the Out of the Mouths of Babes pages (click here).

Lew Jury reported “kitten caboodle” and Alan Janesh reminded me of “for all intensive purposes” instead of “all intents and purposes”.  Superman, of course, despised being “taken for granite”.  Better learn how to spell these phrases properly: it isn’t just a “doggy-dog world” out there (dog-eat-dog world) and spelling is mission critical if you wish to be taken seriously.

My favorite reanalysis of all time, however, turned up in a freshman composition collected by a colleague in the English Department at Bucknell, Mardy Mumford, when I was teaching there.  The author of this piece accused someone of having a “devil-make-hair” (devil-may-care) attitude.

A friend of mine has convinced her husband that he needs anger management therapy. Anger management has become a major catchphrase, probably one of the many terms introduced by the medical and pharmaceutical industry to convince us that we need their products and services. This one has become so popular that Jack Nicholson has made a movie about it.

I have some linguistic qualms about this popular term. The first is its redundancy. Anger in the legal system is now called “snapping” or, more technically, “temporary insanity”. We have lawyers and the occasional jury who think that perfectly normal people can, in the midst of a perfectly normal day, “snap”, become temporarily insane, kill someone, then snap back to normality, never to be susceptible to “snapping” again.

There may be some truth to this but until several years ago, snapping was losing control of your temper and was considered normal if uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous. So my first suggestion would be to change anger management to snap management just to avoid the proliferation of synonyms.

But returning to my friend’s case, I have to wonder why we don’t offer anger inducement therapy, since the reason my friend snaps is an overly demanding wife who would drive the Pope crazy. It is funny how phrases like anger management focus our attention on one interpretation of a problem while allowing other aspects of the same problem to slip into the shadows. Maybe not so funny.

Generally, when someone loses their temper it is because someone else irritates them. Whether the fit of anger is disproportionate to the inducement of it or vice versa is a matter of degree but the focus of the therapy should be equally on both the anger or the inducement thereof. If both is offered, we need a term for anger inducement alongside anger managment. I suggest “anger inducement”.

Anger inducement therapists would make a fortune in Washington, DC.