Category: Language Matters

‘Journo’ Bias at the AP and the Meaning of ‘Shyster’

'Journo' is my term of disapprobation-unto-contempt for liberal-left journalists. It is on a par with 'shyster' as a term of abuse for a certain sort of lawyer. Dig this from today's news:

NEW YORK (AP) — A club shooting in the New York City borough of Brooklyn early Sunday morning has left three people dead and nine others wounded in a year of record-low gun violence in the city.

NYC is quite the craphole these days, both above and under ground, and she seems bent on becoming the cesspool of the nation. Madman Mamdani the Islamo-commie-anti-semite, has a good shot at the mayoralty, I am told. 

On the Etymology of 'Shyster' (written 4 July 2011)

I've often wondered about the etymology of 'shyster.' From German scheissen, to shit? That would fit well with the old joke, "What is the difference between a lawyer and a bucket of shit?' "The bucket." I am also put in mind of scheusslich: hideous, atrocious, abominable. Turning to the 'shyster' entry in my Webster's, I read, "prob. fr. Scheuster fl. 1840 Am. attorney frequently rebuked in a New York court for pettifoggery."

According to Robert Hendrickson, Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, p. 659:

Shyster, an American slang term for a shady disreputable lawyer, is first recorded in 1846. Various authorities list a real New York advocate as a possible source, but this theory has been disproved by Professor Gerald L. Cohen of the University of Missouri-Rolla, whose long paper on the etymology I had the pleasure of reading. Shakespeare's moneylender Shylock has also been suggested, as has a racetrack form of the word shy, i.e., to be shy money when betting. Some authorities trace shyster to the German Scheisse, "excrement," possibly through the word shicir, "a worthless person," but there is no absolute proof for any theory.

A little further research reveals that Professor Cohen's "long paper" is in fact a short book of 124 pages published in 1982 by Verlag Peter Lang. See here for a review. Cohen argues that the eponymous derivation from 'Scheuster' that I just cited from Webster's is a pseudo-etymology. 'Shyster' no more derives from 'Scheuster' than 'condom' from the fictious Dr. Condom. Nor does it come from 'Shylock.' It turns out my hunch was right. 'Shyster' is from the German Scheisser, one who defecates.

The estimable and erudite Dr. Michael Gilleland, self-styled antediluvian, bibliomaniac, and curmudgeon, who possesses an uncommonly lively interest in matters scatological, should find all of this interesting. I see that the Arizona State University  library has a copy of Gerald Leonard Cohen's Origin of the Term "Shyster." Within a few days it should be in my hands.

‘Asylum Seekers’

Is a home invader an asylum seeker? Only in very rare cases.  So why are people who immigrate illegally called asylum seekers? A few are but most are not. What we have here, once again, is the characteristic 'progressive' abuse of language. You should have learned by now that no word or phrase is safe around a leftist. Conservatives are not against asylum; they are against the abuse of asylum.

At the same time that so-called progressives abuse 'asylum,' they also abuse 'xenophobic' when they apply this term to those of us who stand for the rule of law. You are one dumb conservative if you acquiesce in the Left's abuse of language. 

If you are a conservative, don't talk like a 'liberal.'

He who controls the terms of the debate controls the debate.

‘Pastime’

Whatever we are here for, we are not here to pass time. Our time is to be used and used well. You say it doesn't matter how we spend our time since nothing matters? That may or may not be so.  But it matters which.  If something does matter and you live as if nothing matters you may end up not only having wasted your time but  your eternity as well. So time  spent getting to the bottom of this question is time well spent. 

‘Per’ versus ‘As Per’

I have become annoyed recently by the increasing use of 'per' instead of 'as per' by journalists. Here is an example:

And that essentially was the end of her [Kamala's] campaign. Per Democratic strategist James Carville, “It’s the one question that you exist to answer, all right? That is it. That’s the money question. That’s the one you want. That’s the one that everybody wants to know the answer to. And you freeze, you literally freeze, and you say, ‘Well, I can’t think of anything,'” he said in a postelection analysis.

Is my annoyance misplaced?  I love the English language, my beloved mother tongue, and it angers me when people misuse and maltreat her. But in this case I may have overreacted.  Merriam Webster:

The fact is that both per and as per have existed in English in the sense “according to” for a very long time–since the 15th and 16th centuries, respectively. The choice of which to use (or avoid) is entirely a matter of taste. The more ponderous as per is often found in business and legal prose, or in writing that attempts to adopt a formal tone. It is not incorrect to use, but some find it overly legalistic and counsel avoiding it for that reason.

Retribution and Psycho-Political Projection

'Retribution' has two main senses in English, and they are importantly different. The word can refer to revenge or to a form of justice, retributive justice. Do I have to explain that justice is not revenge? Conflating the two, journalistic shills for deep-state malefactors try to dismiss as revenge what is a quest for justice to right the wrongs perpetrated against Donald Trump by said malefactors.  

Tulsi Gabbard's exposure of the Russia Collusion Hoax has leftists in our government sweating. Jonathan Turley names names: John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe.

But of course one cannot expect our political enemies to play fair in what they take to be a war.  So this comes as no surprise:

Former Attorney General Eric Holder told MSNBC on Sunday morning that the Justice Department is being politicized to attack enemies of the Trump administration and "put at risk the lives and well-being" of people who oppose the president.

Talk about projection!  What Holder & Co. are accusing our side of doing is precisely what they have been doing all along. 

There is also the underhanded ploy of accusing us of putting lives at risk when our side rightly responds to their illegal actions.  We are supposed to accept the injury meekly, lest our legitimate objections to their outrages inspire some lunatic to go on a rampage. Yet another application of the Left's double-standard 'principle.' 

We should never forget what sort of sorry specimen this Holder was and is. See Photo ID: Eric Holder's Assault on Common Sense.

Are Catholics Christians?

A fellow philosopher writes,

While reading Clarence Thomas’s opinion in Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services (2025), I came across this sentence: “Americans have different views, for example, on whether Catholics are Christians.” I’ve heard it said, before, that Catholics aren’t Christians, but never knew what to make of it. (The same thing is said about Mormons.) Have you written about this (about whether Catholics are Christians)? What must one think Christianity is in order to believe that Catholics aren’t Christians? Strange.
I haven't written about this topic because it is perfectly obvious that (Roman) Catholics are Christians.  Proof: The Catholic Apostle's Creed. Every Catholic is a Christian, but not conversely.  Calvinists, for example are Christians but not Catholics. Similarly for all the other Protestant sects. No Protestant is a Catholic. That too is obvious.  
 
Did Justice Thomas, for whom I have great respect by the way, cite anyone who claimed that Catholics are not Christians?  Who would say such a thing?
 
People say the damndest things. There are people who say that math is racist. Now that does not even begin to make sense, involving as it does a Rylean category mistake. Not making sense, it cannot have a truth value, that is, it cannot be either true or false. Mathematics does not belong to the category of items that could sensibly be said to be either racist or non-racist.  Compare: 'How prevalent is anorexia nervosa among basketballs? More prevalent than among footballs?' Those questions involve category mistakes.  Other examples: What is the volume of the average thought? What is the chemical composition of the number nine?  What size shoes does God wear?
 
People who assertively utter 'Math is racist' are using those words to say something else, although it is not clear what. Perhaps they  mean to say that since blacks as a group are not good at mathematics, giving them math tests is a way of demeaning or oppressing them and can have no other purpose. Or something.  Speaker's meaning in this case strongly diverges from sentence meaning.
 
Can this distinction help us explain what people mean when they say that Catholics are not Christians?  Going by sentence meaning, the claim is obviously false.  But one might use those words to express the proposition that Catholics are not true Christians, where a true Christian is defined in some narrow and tendentious way, as, for example, someone who refuses to accept the Hellenically-tainted doctrines emanating from a magisterium (teaching authority)  that interposes itself between the individual soul and God as revealed in Holy Writ.
 
We are now in the vicinity of No True Scotsman.  Among the so-called informal fallacies is Antony Flew's No True Scotsman. Suppose A says, "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge." B replies, "But my uncle Angus puts sugar in his porridge." A responds, "Your Uncle Angus is no true Scotsman!"
 
Similarly, A says, "No Christian is a Roman Catholic." B replies, "But my Uncle Patrick is a Roman Catholic."  A responds, "Your Uncle Patrick is no true Christian!"

Slop Talk

'Due process' is a term of legal shop talk.  Those of us who know something about the law — I know a little — know how to use it correctly. And those of us who think that words ought to be used responsibly in serious discussions should take offense at the 'slop talk' use of 'due process.' Trey Gowdy knows a lot more about the law than I do. But a couple of Sundays ago he  asked how much 'due process' Laken Riley's assailant showed her. Sean Hannity is another who has asked this question.

That got me thinking about what sort of 'due process' Ibarra should have shown Riley. "You have the right to plead, to pray, and to protest your upcoming rape and murder; you have in addition the right to avail yourself of the services of any well-armed Good Samaritan who might come along."

What were Gowdy and Hannity driving at? That wide-open borders are a recipe for disaster? That the very notion of legal due process needs to be re-thought? Unclear. Commentators who want to be taken seriously  should say what they mean and mean what they say.

Democrats are slop heads in the main; we expect incoherence, inanity, and slop talk from them. Conservatives ought not ape them.  Does my use of 'ape' make me a racist? What if I were to use such words as 'niggardly' and 'denigrate'?

The WAPO fentanyl 'mystery' is another good illustration of how contemptibly stupid our political enemies can be. Karoline Leavitt has fun with it.  In other news, her intersectional and highly 'wokified' predecessor has quit the Dems, and like 'Fake Jake' Tapper and others will endeavor to tap into the money to be made from telling tales of dementia and dysfunction in high places.

Further examples are easily multiplied beyond all necessity. "Tampon Tim" Walz is a bloody good source of them.

‘Old Hat’

It's an expression I have often used.

To say of something that it is old hat is to say that it is old, or well-known, or passé.

Wondering about the origin of this curious phrase, I turned to Robert Hendrickson, Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd ed. (2004), p. 529. What I found there surprised me:

Today old hat means out of date or not new, and it has meant this for at least a century. But back as early as 1754 it was "used by the vulgar in no very honorable sense," as Fielding put it. It then meant, in Grose's punning definition from his 1785 Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: "a woman's privities: because frequently felt."

This is no doubt interesting, but how does it explain the origin of the the adjectival phrase 'old hat'? That 'old hat' was once used as a noun by a certain class of people to refer to "a woman's privities" does nothing to show the origin of 'old hat' as currently and adjectivally used.

Journalists and the Spread of Illiteracy

CNN reported at the time that the footwear rule came into play after the local mountain rescue crews became exacerbated by having to rescue so many people tripping over their own feet. "These are difficult paths, in some cases, similar to mountain paths,” Patrizio Scarpellini, director of the Cinque Terre National Park, told CNN Travel. “Essential to have proper shoes!”

 

Who Put the ‘Man’ in ‘Manufacture’?

A congresswoman asked the question recently. It is a  question from a fem-Dem that exposes her ignorance.

There is no 'man' in 'manufacture' in the way there is a 'bomp' in the "bomp bah bomp bah bomp" and a 'ram' in the "rama lama  ding dong."  

'Manufacture' is built out of two Latin words, manus, manus (fourth declension, feminine) meaning hand, and the verb facere, meaning to make.  Etymologically, to manufacture something it to make it by hand, which is something women can do and often do better than men.

It is also interesting to note that manus, manus (the singular and the plural are the same except that the 'u' is  short in the singular, long in the plural) is one of the few Latin nouns that is both feminine and ends in -us. Herewith, another reason why there is no 'man' in 'manufacture.'

I could easily go on, and you hope I won't.

But it does raise a question: why are Dems so ignorant? The person in question is a "white, educated female" like so many Never- and Anti-Trumpers. Educated?  Here is another word currently badly misused. Graduating with a degree from a leftist seminary doesn't make one educated in  any serious sense of the term.  We live in a time of inflation and not just of the monetary variety.

Why do Dems and 'liberals' generally have such low standards?  It is almost as if they have never met a standard they did not want  to erase, erode, eviscerate, eradicate.  

I have a lot to say on this topic, but it is time to get to work on more serious writing.  There is more to life than sanitizing the spaces befouled by leftists.  'Sanitize' in the sense of cleaning and making sane. 

MASA! Make America sane again! 

Enforcement of Borders is neither ‘Draconian’ nor ‘Xenophobic’

I just heard a Democrat politician refer to the The Trump-Homan border crackdown as 'draconian' and 'xenophobic.' It is neither.

It is not cruel or severe. Although you may think that 'severe' is  etymologically related to 'sever,' it is not. To witness a penology that includes beheading and limb amputation you will have to take a trip to the Middle East. Iran and Saudi Arabia are go-to locales for draconian punishments. If there are any draconian punishments in the USA at the present time, they are inflicted by leftists. J-6 trespassers and abortion protesters are good examples of inflictees. 

As for 'xenophobic,' it it is the adjectival form of 'xenophobia.'  Now a phobia is an irrational fear.  But we who stand for the rule of law, have no irrational fear of foreigners or of things foreign.  If we did, why would we freely travel abroad and indeed freely live for extended periods in foreign lands? ('Freely' as opposed to 'by military order.') I myself have lived two and a half years abroad: six months in Salzburg, Austria, a year in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, and a year in Ankara, Turkey, and I have intensively studied the native languages, cultures, religions, and histories of these countries.

What's more, I entered legally, did not overstay my visa, obeyed the local laws, ate their food, observed their customs, and dressed appropriately. I did not, for example, walk around Turkey Arizona-style in short pants. I showed respect for Muslim ways. I entered legally in the way my ancestors entered the USA, legally. And like them, I studied the native languages and did my best to assimilate.  

You can always count on a leftist to misuse language. Language abuse is as it were inscribed into their DNA.  Show me a leftist and I'll show you a linguistic hijacker.  The scumbaggery of our subversive political enemies has many sources, but the mother of them all, and the mother of all subversion,  straight from the pit of hell and the Father of Lies, is the subversion of language.

Bergoglio on Borders

What a hypocrite this guy is! You can 'migrate' anywhere, just not into the Vatican.

Don't you love that word 'migrate'? Its use manages to elide two important distinctions in one fell swoop: the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, and that between immigration and emigration.  A worthy addition to the lexicon of the Left.

The Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable

I have been using the title phrase for some time now to refer to Trump-supporting conservatives. But what makes us sane and reasonable? Victor Davis Hanson compiles a list in The Trump Counterrevolution is a Return to Sanity.

In an earlier post I referred to the take-back of our country as a National Sanitation Project, opining  that it might take a generation or two.  But what does sanity have to do with sanitation? The words are in fact connected etymologically, sharing as they do a common root in the Latin sanus,  meaning healthy or sane or sound, as in the Latin saying mens sana in corpore sano, "a sound mind in a sound body." We Trumpians are of sound mind, and some of us inhabit sound bodies.

We need to return the nation to health by draining swamps, enforcing laws, erecting barriers both territorial and  moral, and by fumigating institutions. Leftists want to tear down our institutions; we of sound mind want to fumigate them, removing therefrom the termites who presently infest them. 

You need to get with the program and do your bit. Don't be  slacker, a defeatist, an ingrate. But if you are on the wrong side of this struggle, understand that we consider you enemies.

A threat? No, a warning. Are you wise enough to heed a warning? I can't resist yet another reference to 'Biblical Bob':

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’