Category: Language Matters

On the Etymology of ‘Shyster’

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.

If You Are a Conservative, Don’t Talk Like a Liberal

I've made this point before but it bears repeating. We conservatives should never acquiesce in the Left's acts of linguistic vandalism. Battles in the culture war are often lost and won on linguistic   ground. So we ought to resolutely oppose the Left's attempts at linguistic corruption.

Take 'homophobia.'

A phobia is a fear, but not every fear is a phobia. A phobia is an  irrational fear. One who argues against the morality of homosexual practices, or gives reasons for opposing same-sex marriage is precisely — presenting arguments, and not expressing any phobia. The arguments  may or may not be cogent. But they are expressive of reason, and are intended to appeal to the reason of one's interlocutor. To dismiss them as an expression of a phobia show a lack of respect for reason and for the persons who proffer the arguments.

There are former meat-eaters who can make an impressive case against the eating of meat. Suppose that, instead of addressing their arguments, one denounces them as 'carniphobes.' Can you see what is wrong with that? These people have a reasoned position. Their reasoning may be more or less cogent, their premises more or less disputable. But the one thing they are not doing is expressing an irrational fear of eating meat. Many of them like the stuff and dead meat inspires no fear in them whatsoever.

The point should be obvious: 'homophobia' is just as objectionable as 'carniphobia.' People who use words like these are attempting to close off debate, to bury a legitimate issue beneath a crapload of PeeCee jargon. So it is not just that 'homophobe' and 'homophobia' are
question-begging epithets; they are question-burying epithets.

And of course 'Islamophobia'  and cognates are other prime examples.  Once again, a phobia is an irrational fear.  But fear of radical Islam is not at all irrational.  You are a dolt if us use these terms, and a double dolt if you are a conservative.

Language matters.

  

Socialist, Shmocialist

It is a tactical mistake for libertarians and conservatives to label Obama a socialist.  For what will happen, has happened: liberals will revert to a strict definition and point out that Obama is not a socialist by this definition.  Robert Heilbroner defines socialism in terms of "a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production."  To my knowledge, Obama has never advocated such a thing.  So when the libertarian or conservative accuses Obama of socialism he lets himself in for a fruitless and wholly unnecessary verbal dispute from which he will emerge the loser.

It is enough to point out that the policies of Obama and the Democrat Party lead us toward bigger government and away from self-reliance, individual responsibility, and individual liberty.

It is even worse to label him a 'communist.'  Every communist is a socialist, but not every socialist is a communist.  If our president is not a socialist, then a fortiori he is not a communist.  It is intellectually irresponsible to take a word that has a definite meaning and turn it into a semantic bludgeon.  That's the sort of thing we expect from leftists, as witness their favorite 'F' word, 'fascist,' a word they apply as indiscriminately as 'racist.' 

"But haven't you yourself said, more than once, that politics is war conducted by other means?"  Yes, I have said it, and more than once.  In the end that's what politics is.  I call it the Converse Clausewitz Principle.  But we are not quite at the end.  Before we get there we should exhaust the possibilities of civil and reasonable debate.

"But what if the tactic of labeling Obama a socialist or even a communist would keep him from a second term.  Wouldn't that inaccurate labeling then be justified?"  That's a very tough question.  An affirmative answer would seem to commit one to the principle that the end justifies the means — in which case we are no better than liberals/leftists.  On the other hand, how can one play fair with those who will do anything to win?

Hyphenation and Other Punctilios of Grammar

Dear Bill,

Being someone who uses gerunds not only correctly but elegantly and bothers to hyphenate compound modifiers, you'll appreciate, I hope, my noting that '20 year old' should be '20 year-old' because it is a hyphenated noun. Were ;">we to make his age adjectival by the addition of an extra noun, though, an extra hypen would be required, as in 'the 20-year-old man'.

Best wishes,
Will. 

I accept the correction, Will.  But there is a residual puzzle. How can '20' modify the noun 'year-old'?  There is also the question whether I should have written 'twenty' instead of '20.'   This is clearly bad writing: 'He gave me 5 books.'  Correct is: 'He gave me five books.'  But few will write, 'He gave me five thousand four hundred and seventy seven books' instead of 'He gave me 5,477 books.'

There is no end to punctiliousness once you start down that road.  For example, I just used 'you' in a slightly nonstandard way.  And as for hyphens, should we follow the Teutonic tendency of letting them fall into desuetude? 'Nonstandard' or 'non-standard'?  'Truth maker' or 'truth-maker' or 'truthmaker'?

 Do you say, 'The engine whose plugs are fouled?' or 'The engine the plugs of which are fouled'?  I prefer the latter despite its stiltedness.  An engine is not a person.  And if you don't agree with me on this point, will you say it is acceptable to write, 'The man that was shot' rather than 'The man who was shot'?

'She hanged herself' is correct.  But few nowadays are observant of the 'hanged'/'hung' distinction.

But should a writer like me, who aspires to a certain muscular elegance in his style, be using a slightly quaint and archaic, and perhaps even obsolete word such as 'nowadays'?

I distinguish 'each other' from 'one another' and call down my anathema upon those who write like this:  'Due to  their almost exclusive association with each other, liberals reinforce their political correctness.'

And so it goes.  

On The Ground With G. E. Moore

(This is an entry from the old Powerblogs site.  It was written a few years ago.  It is just a bit of pedantry in which I wax peevish over pleonasm.)

‘On the ground’ is getting a bit too much use for my taste. What the devil does it mean? "Coming up, a live report from Geraldo Rivera, on the ground in Fallujah." Where else would he be if not on the ground? Hovering in mid-air? Burrowing underground? Why not just say that he is in Fallujah? Or does it mean that he is literally on the ground?

Of course, very few civilized mortals spend any appreciable time literally on the ground, i.e., in direct contact with the surface of the earth. I don’t reckon that Geraldo, tough guy that he is, has ever walked barefoot over the Iraqi sand. I am now sitting with my pants and underpants on in a chair which rests on a rug and a pad beneath which is a concrete slab. Thus my gluteal contact with the earth is subject to a six-fold mediation. And when I go backpacking and sleep in the wild, my contact with the ground is subject to a similar manifold mediation: clothes, sleeping bag, self-inflating ThermaRest mattress, tent floor, groundcloth. And yet that could be called sleeping on the ground as opposed to sleeping in a warm bed at home.

Thoughts such as these may have been at the back of G. E. Moore’s mind when he penned a passage in "A Defence of Common Sense" (1925) that some have found puzzling. Speaking of his body, he writes,

Ever since it was born, it has either been in contact with or not far from the surface of the earth . . .

What did Moore have in mind with "not far from the surface of the earth"? Did he do much jumping? Go up in planes or balloons? Or was he thinking that while sitting in his study, he was not in contact with the surface of the earth but also not far from it either?

Waterboarding Led to Bin Laden Capture

One question about waterboarding is whether it is torture.  Liberals, who are generally sloppy and inflationary in their use of language, say it is.  These are the same people who think that ID checks at polling places 'disenfranchise' those without identification. (See this contemptibly idiotic NYT editorial.)  But on any responsible use of terms, waterboarding cannot be called torture.  (If that is what you call it, what do you call a Saddam-style red-hot poker 'colonoscopy'?) 

Waterboarding led to the Bin Laden capture as Peter King (R-NY) revealed last night on the O' Reilly Factor. 

Suppose we acquiesce for a moment in the liberal-left misuse of 'torture' whereby it subsumes waterboarding.  Even under this concession, could anyone in his right mind think that it is always and everywhere wrong to use torture?  That is the kind of extremism that characterizes liberals and libertarians.  They cannot seem to realize that otherwise excellent principles often admit of exceptions.

Free speech is another example. 

 

Never Bullshit! Mitt Romney on Non Sequiturs and the Null Set

Thinking about the mendacity of Obama, Schumer, and Kyl, I was put in mind of a post of mine dated 6 June 2007 from the old Powerblogs site in which I expose some bullshitting by Mitt Romney.  Here it is again.  If you want to be taken seriously by intelligent people, you must never use words you do not understand in an attempt to impress.  The only people you will impress will be fools.  By the way, some feel Romney is a viable Republican pick for 2012.  I wonder.  His being Mormon may not be a problem, but how remove the albatross of RomneyCare about his neck?  We have moved too far in the socialist direction.  We need to move back the other way, toward liberty and self-reliance, and I rather doubt that Romney is the one to lead us.

…………..

Governor Mitt Romney was asked the following question during last night's debate:

     We've lost 3,400 troops; civilian casualties are even higher, and
     the Iraqi government does not appear ready to provide for the
     security of its own country. Knowing everything you know right now,
     was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?

Romney replied:

     Well, the question is kind of a non sequitur, if you will, and what
     I mean by that — or a null set. And that is that if you're saying
     let's turn back the clock, and Saddam Hussein had opened up his
     country to IAEA inspectors, and they'd come in and they'd found
     that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein,
     therefore, not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn't be
     in the conflict we're in. But he didn't do those things, and we
     knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in. I
     supported the president's decision based on what we knew at that
     time. I think we were underprepared and underplanned for what came
     after we knocked down Saddam Hussein.

Romney's response was quite good especially given the pressure he was under. But why did he spoil it by inserting unnecessary terminology that he obviously doesn't understand? It makes no sense to refer to a question as a non sequitur. A non sequitur is a proposition that abbreviates or 'telescopes' an invalid argument. For example, 'If the war in Iraq were serious, then we wouldn't be trying to fight it with an all-volunteer force.' That is a non sequitur in that the consequent of the conditional proposition does not follow from the antecedent. Non sequitur just means 'It does not follow.' But an interrogative form of words does not express a proposition. (Possible exception: rhetorical questions; but the question posed to Romney was not  rhetorical.) So to refer to a question as a non sequitur show a serious lack of understanding.

Romney should have replied simply as follows. 'It was not a mistake to invade Iraq since at the time the decision was made, that was the right course of action given what we knew.'

It is also nonsensical to refer to a question as "a null set." For one thing, there is only one null set. Talk of 'a' null set suggests that there are or could be several. More importantly, a question is not a
set, let alone a set with no members. "But isn't a question a set of words?" Well, there is for any question the set of words in which it is formulated, but that set is not identical to the question. But I
 won't go any further into this since, although it leads into fascinating question in metaphysics and the philosophy of language, it  leads away from the point I want to make.

 
"And what point would that be?" Never bullshit! You make yourself look stupid to people who really know. Never pretend to know what you don't know. Don't try to impress people with fancy jargon unless you really  know how to use it. Concern for truth dictates concern for precision in the use of language.

Call me a pedant if you like, but language matters!

The Difference Between Me and You

I'm sensitive, you're touchy.  I'm firm,  you are pigheaded.  Frugality in me is cheapness in you.  I am open-minded, you are empty-headed.  I am careful, you are obsessive.  I am courageous while you are as reckless as a Kennedy.  I am polite while you are obsequious.  My speech is soothing, yours is unctuous.  I am earthy and brimming with vitality while you are crude and bestial.  I'm alive to necessary distinctions; you are a bloody hairsplitter.  I'm conservative, you're reactionary.  I know the human heart, but you are a misanthrope.  I love and honor my wife while you are uxorious.  I am focused; you are monomaniacal.

In me there is commitment, in you fanaticism.  I'm a peacemaker, you're an appeaser.  I'm spontaneous, you're just undisciplined.  I'm neat and clean; you are fastidious.  In me there is wit and style, in you mere preciosity.  I know the value of a dollar while you are just a miser.  I cross the Rubicons of life with resoluteness while you are a fool who burns his bridges behind him.  I do not hide my masculinity, but you flaunt yours.  I save, you hoard.  I am reserved, you are shy.

I have a hearty appetite; you are a glutton.  A civilized man, I enjoy an occasional drink; you, however, must teetotal to avoid becoming a drunkard.  I'm witty and urbane, you are precious.  I am bucolic, you are rustic.  I'm original, you are idiosyncratic.

And those are just some of the differences between me and you. 

Double Negatives, Intensifiers, and Double Affirmatives

If Mick Jagger can't get no satisfaction, then, from a logical point  of view, he can get some satisfaction. Logically, a double negative amounts to an affirmative.  But we all know what 'can't get no satisfaction' means. It means what 'can't get any satisfaction' means. So what reason do we have to classify the '___can't get no . . .'  construction as a double negative? Arguably, 'no' in this construction is not a logical particle signifying negation but an intensifier.

If that is right, then there is nothing illogical (contradictory) about 'I can't get no satisfaction' or 'I ain't got no money.'  It is bad English, no doubt, but not in point of illogicality.  What makes it ungrammatical is not its being logically contradictory, but its deviation from standard usage where this is the usage of the middle and upper classes.  If you say, without irony, 'I ain't got no money,' then you betray your low social status.  If you are extremely careful not to make grammatical mistakes then you are probably either low class aspiring to middle class status, middle class, or middle class anxious about class slippage. 

Furthermore, if what I am suggesting is right, then 'double negative' is a misnomer.  There are not two negation signs in 'I can't get no satisfaction,' only one: the first, the second being an intensifier.

Intensifiers are words like 'very,' 'really,' 'actually, 'extremely,' 'insanely,' and so on. They typically modify an adjective or adverb.  'That book is insanely expensive.' 'She talks extremely fast.' Some border on the oxymoronic: 'She is insanely intelligent.' In the three examples just given the adjective/adverb is genuinely modified by the intensifier. In some cases, however, the modification is wholly redundant. 'What she said is absolutely true' conveys no more than 'What she said is true.' Compare 'What she said is undoubtedly true.'  'Undoubtedly' is an intensifier that adds to the sense of 'true': 'undoubtedly true' convey a different content than 'true.' But 'absolutely true' and 'true' convey the same content.

Many different words can be used as intensifiers. On television a while back a pundit remarked, "John Kerry didn't respond to the Swift Boat ads and it literally sunk his campaign." 'Literally sunk' is   nonsense if 'literally' is being used as the antonym of 'figuratively.' Political campaigns, because they do not literally  float, cannot be literally sunk. If they are sunk, that is a figure of speech. So, being charitable, I will say that the pundit was using  'literally' as an intensifier. I will not accuse him of not knowing  what 'literally' means. Though I shrink from the Wittgensteinian exaggeration that meaning is use, meaning has  something to do, a lot to do, with use. Why can't a person use 'literally' as an intensifier? I don't recommend this nonstandard usage of course, being the linguistic prick that I am; but though  prickly I also try to be charitable and open-minded.

Catch my drift?  A teenage girl says of her mother "She literally had a cow when I told her I was dating Jack."  If you point out to the girl that a human being cannot literally have a cow, and she is very bright she might reasonably respond, 'I was using  'literally' as an intensifier, not as the antonym of 'figuratively'." 

I suggest that there are wholly redundant modifiers that appear to  entail, but do not entail, logical contradictions. I suggest that in  'I can't get no satisfaction' and 'I ain't got no money,' 'no'  functions as an intensifier and not as a sign for negation. If that is right, then these examples are not examples of double negatives. An  example of a double negative construction is 'It is not uncommon____.'  Here it is indeed the case that the two negation signs cancel with a  positive upshot. But this is not the case in the ungrammatical 'I don't know nothing,' 'I ain't got no money,' 'I can't get no satisfaction,' and the like.

The following, therefore, is just plain false: "A double negative is the nonstandard usage of two negatives used in the same sentence so that they cancel each other and create a positive." We are also told that 'I don't want nothing' means the same as 'I want something.' That is simply false. It means that same as 'I don't want anything.'

Now what about double affirmatives? Eddy Zemach once commented on a paper I read at the American Philosophical Association. A tough commenter, but a gentleman of the old school. Later he told me and some others a story about Sidney Morgenbesser and John Austin. Austin had claimed in a lecture that although many languages feature double  negatives that add up to an affirmative, no language features double affirmatives that amount to a negative. Morgenbesser's brilliant reply came quickly, "Yeah, yeah." To this we might add 'yeah, right,' and  'yeah, sure.' These are genuine double affirmatives that convey a  negative meaning.

  

‘He’s His Father’s Son’: More on Tautologies That Ain’t

Riding my bike the other afternoon, it occurred to me that 'He's his father's son' is yet another example of a phenomenon I have noted before, namely, a broadly tautological form of words which is standardly employed to express a decidedly nontautological proposition.  Taken literally, in accordance with sentence meaning (as opposed to speaker's meaning) our example expresses something that cannot be false.  For how could a man fail to be his father's son?  As opposed to what?  His father's daughter?  But that is not what speakers typically mean when they utter the sentence in question.  They mean something that could be reasonably questioned, something like:  He is like his father in significant ways.

I suppose the underlying phenomenon is the divergence, on some occasions, of sentence meaning from speaker's meaning.  Sentence meaning is the meaning a sentence has as part of the language system, English in our case.  Sentence meaning is at the level of sentence types.  Speaker's meaning comes in when a sentence type is tokened on a given occasion (whether in speech or writing, etc.).  by a speaker.  One then must consider what the speaker intended, and how he was using his words.

Consider 'beer is beer.'  Outside of a logic or metaphysics class no one would use this form of words to illustrate the Law of Identity.  The meaning is that all beer is the same.  For an extended discussion of this example, see my When is a Tautology Not a Tautology?  But what about 'Men are men and women are women'?  As Seldom Seen Slim pointed out to me, this does not express a conjunction of two formal identity claims.

Remember "Let Reagan be Reagan"?  Was there need for a special allowance that Reagan remain self-identical?  Was there any danger that he might suddenly become numerically self-diverse? 

Find more examples.

‘Booty’ and ‘Holocaust’ to be Removed from New Edition of Bible

Did they take the word 'ass' out too?  Or has that word already been removed?  Leave it to a liberal jackass to pander to the dumbest among us. 

We conservatives need to gird our loins, saddle our asses and and sally forth to smite these change-for-the-sake-of-change jackwagons, planting our boots in their 'booties' as needed.  (Figuratively speaking, of course.)