Category: Language Matters
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‘Unthinkable’ Used Thoughtlessly
People say that such-and-such is 'unthinkable.' An electromagnetic pulse, for example, one that destroys the power distribution grid, would be a calamity in comparison to which the COVID-19 pandemic would pale into insignificance. An EMP event is said to be 'unthinkable.' And yet we are now thinking about it. What one thinks about can be…
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Word of the Day: Assuasive
Merriam-Webster: soothing, calming. Example: "Like all good listeners, he has a way of attending that is at once intense and assuasive: the supplicant feels both nakedly revealed and sheltered, somehow, from all possible judgment." (David Foster Wallace) I am a good listener, but far more intense than assuasive. You have the verb 'assuage' in your…
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Don’t Talk Like a ‘Liberal’
When you do, you validate their obfuscatory and question-begging jargon. For example, leftists believe in something they call 'hate speech.' As they use the phrase, it covers legitimate dissent. It is foolish for a conservative to say that he is for 'hate speech,' or that 'hate speech' is protected speech. Dennis Prager has…
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Word of the Day: Prodromal
From 'prodrome,' a premonitory symptom of disease. Etymology: French, literally, precursor, from Greek prodromos, from pro- before + dromos act of running, racecourse — more at PRO-, DROMEDARY Example of use found at Diogenes' Middle Finger: Now we are engaged in a prodromal civil war, and American constitutional democracy is the contest’s prize. The universities and the media, always diseased, have…
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A Pronoun Puzzle: “He who hesitates is lost”
Grammatically, 'he' is a pronoun. Pronouns have antecedents. What is the antecedent of 'he' in the folk saying supra? It does not have one. A Yogi Berra type joke is in the offing. We're hiking. We must go forward; we can't go back. But the path forward is perilous and requires a bold step over…
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‘Handsome Devil’
I visited a couple of aunts some years back. As I entered her house, Aunt Ada exclaimed, "My, you are a handsome devil!" Aunt Margaret said to Ada, "Don't call him a devil!" But of course Ada did no such thing; Margaret failed to appreciate that 'handsome' in 'handsome devil' in this context and almost…
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The Left’s Verbal Theft
A lot of conservatives are making the mistake of surrendering perfectly good words to the Left. This is another indication that conservatives in the end conserve little or nothing. The fact that leftists use and misuse 'narrative' or 'problematic' or 'toleration' or 'diversity' or 'equity' does not make these words radioactive. Or take 'spiritual' and…
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‘The Wrong Side of History’
This is a re-thought and much improved version of a post that first appeared on this weblog on 15 May 2012. ………………………….. I once heard a prominent conservative tell an ideological opponent that he was 'on the wrong side of history.' This question I want to raise is whether this is a phrase that a…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some 1940’s Proto-Rock
Freddie Slack and Will Bradley Trio (1940), Down the Road A Piece. If you like to boogie woogie, I know the place.It's just an old piano and a knocked out bass.The drummer man's a guy they call Eight Beat Mack.And you remember Doc and old "Beat Me Daddy" Slack. Man it's better than chicken fried in…
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“Trust, but Verify!”
I said: Perhaps the greatest diplomatic line of all time was uncorked by Ronald Reagan in his confrontation with Mikhail Gorbachev, he of the Evil Empire: "Trust, but verify!" The Reagan riposte makes sense diplomatically but not semantically. If I trust you, I do not verify what you say or do. If you think otherwise,…
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The Erasure of History at the University of Leicester
Another incident in the suicide of the West. And in England of all places. The battle appears to be lost in the mother country and in the rest of the Anglosphere with the exception of the United States of America. Here is where the West will make its last stand, or else begin to turn…
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Diversity Worth Having
Diversity worth having presupposes a principle of unity that controls the diversity. Diversity must be checked and balanced by the competing value of unity, a value with an equal, if not greater, claim on our respect. Example. ONE language only in the public sphere makes possible MANY voices to be heard and understood by…
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Honor thy Mother
Our biological mothers bore us into the world of matter; the mother tongue into the realm of objective spirit. Both deserve respect and honor, the latter more so than the former inasmuch as the spirit is higher than the flesh. What the mother tongue receives from the matricidal Left is neglect and abuse and Orwellian…
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On Acquiring a Large Vocabulary
But how useful in a society of semi-literates? Substack latest.