Geoff Nunberg

'Horrific' And 'Surreal': The Words We Use To Bear Witness

Geoff Nunberg — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:17:00 +0000

Mass shootings, bus crashes, tornadoes, terrorist attacks — we've gotten adept at talking about these things. Act of God or act of man, they're all horrific. At least that was the word you kept hearing from politicians and newscasters describing the Boston bombings and the explosion at the fertilizer plant in Texas.

That may not strike you as surprising — the events were horrific, weren't they? But it's actually a new way of describing things. "Horrific" is an old word; it turns up in Thackeray and Melville. But until recent times it was rare and literary.

Even Dictionaries Grapple With Getting 'Marriage' Right

Geoff Nunberg — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:23:00 +0000

It's a funny thing about dictionaries. First we're taught to revere them, then we have to learn to set them aside. Nobody ever went wrong starting a middle-school composition with, "According to Webster's ..." but that's not how you start an op-ed commentary about terrorism or racism.

Historical Vocab: When We Get It Wrong, Does It Matter?

Geoff Nunberg — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:05:00 +0000

Has there ever been an age that was so grudging about suspending its disbelief? The groundlings at the Globe Theatre didn't giggle when Shakespeare had a clock chime in Julius Caesar. The Victorians didn't take Dickens to task for having the characters in A Tale of Two Cities ride the Dover mail coach 10 years before it was established. But Shakespeare and Dickens weren't writing in the age of the Internet, when every historical detail is scrutinized for chronological correctness, and when no "Gotcha!" remains unposted for long.

"The Whole Nine Yards" Of What?

Geoff Nunberg — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:19:00 +0000

Where does the phrase "the whole nine yards" come from? In 1982, William Safire called that "one of the great etymological mysteries of our time."

He thought the phrase originally referred to the capacity of a cement truck in cubic yards.

Geoff Nunberg's Word Of The Year: Big Data

Geoff Nunberg — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:10:00 +0000

"Big Data" hasn't made any of the words-of-the-year lists I've seen so far. That's probably because it didn't get the wide public exposure given to items like "frankenstorm," "fiscal cliff" and YOLO.

Even Americans Find Some Britishisms 'Spot On'

Geoff Nunberg — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:30:00 +0000

Mitt Romney was on CNN not long ago defending the claims in his campaign ads — "We've been absolutely spot on," he said. Politics aside, the expression had me doing an audible roll of my eyes. I've always associated "spot on" with the type of Englishman who's played by Terry-Thomas or John Cleese, someone who pronounces "yes" and "ears" in the same way — "eeahzz." It shows up when people do send-ups of plummy British speech. "I say — spot on, old chap!"

But that wasn't really fair to Romney.

One Debate, Two Very Different Conversations

Geoff Nunberg — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 16:32:00 +0000

When you consider how carefully staged and planned the debates are and how long they've been around, it's remarkable how often candidates manage to screw them up. Sometimes they're undone by a simple gaffe or an ill-conceived bit of stagecraft, like Gerald Ford's slip-up about Soviet domination of eastern Europe in 1976, or Al Gore's histrionic sighing in 2000. Sometimes it's just a sign of a candidate having a bad day, like Ronald Reagan's woolly ramblings in the first debate with Walter Mondale in 1984.

But President Obama's flop was more puzzling.

When Words Were Worth Fighting Over

Geoff Nunberg — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:28:00 +0000

I have a quibble with the title of David Skinner's new book, The Story of Ain't. In fact, that pariah contraction plays only a supporting role in the story. The book is really an account of one of the oddest episodes in American cultural history, the brouhaha over the appearance of Merriam-Webster's Third International Dictionary in 1961.

At 2,700 pages, Webster's Third was literally a monumental work of scholarship. It was the first American unabridged dictionary in 25 years, and the first to make use of the findings of modern linguistics.