Words and Politics (and Bold as Brass)

8 October 2012

In this political season it may be worthwhile to take a moment to ponder the relationship between words and political reality, and which one really influences the other. Do words shape political reality? Or does reality change the meaning of our words? Mark Forsyth takes a good look at this topic in this TED Talk:

One correction, however: I believe that Forsyth gets the origin of the phrase bold as brass wrong. While the tale of Brass Crosby may have helped popularize the phrase, it’s unlikely to be the origin.

While the phrase isn’t recorded until 1789, eighteen years after Crosby’s arrest, the first citation in the OED reads:

1789 G. Parker Life’s Painter xv. 162 He died damn’d hard and as bold as brass. An expression commonly used among the vulgar after returning from an execution.

So we know that the phrase was in oral use earlier than 1789. How much earlier? We really don’t know. But the word brass has meant effrontery and impudence since the mid seventeenth century, long before Crosby was born. And the brass, with the definite article, also predates Crosby:

a1734 R. North Examen (1740) iii. viii. ⁋17 The Author hath the Brass to add, etc.

Furthermore, the pairing of the words bold and brass can be found earlier, albeit not in the form of a phrase.

There is this from an anonymous pamphlet, A Label Without being a Libel against Truth, published by J. Roberts of London in 1728 (emphasis mine):

Prejudice is a Glass if you look through,
It misrepresents e’ry thing to you.
It makes Folks with good Truth to be too bold,
Cries up the canker’d Brass, and cries down pure Gold,
And in this Book such various Faults will find,
As ain’t seen, but by a Prejudiced Mind.

A search of Eighteenth Century Collections Online turns up some fifteen similar co-locations published between 1700–71. It’s not the phrase, but it does show that people were making the alliterative pairing long before Brass Crosby appeared on the scene.

[Tip o’ the Hat to Andrew Sullivan and The Daily Dish]

Contest: Devise a Silly "Grammar" Rule

4 October 2012

Allan Metcalf over at the Lingua Franca blog is sponsoring a contest to solicit new bogus grammar/usage rules.

The example that Metcalf gives is to use “centered on” as opposed to “centered around.”

The rule you propose must be new. It can’t be in any standard usage manual. But it should look “venerable.” It should have a false patina of respectability and erudition.

The contest ends 10 October. The prize is one of Metcalf’s books.

OED Appeals

4 October 2012

The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary are calling upon the public to help them find antedatings and early uses of a number of terms. Those terms, and the dates the OED currently has citations for in its files, are:

• Bellini (1965)

• FAQ (1989)

• disco (1964)

• cootie (1967) (in the sense of the imaginary children’s “germ")

• to come in from the cold (1963)

• blue-arsed fly (1970)

• in your dreams! (1986)

• Kwanzaa (1971)

Such appeals are nothing new, going back to the earliest days of the dictionary, but what’s neat about this appeal is that all the submissions are posted on the web. So you can see what work has been done to date.

Of course, the OED editors are always happy to receive emails containing antedatings and early citations for any word.

The Writing Revolution

21 September 2012

A very interesting article in the most recent issue of The Atlantic about how teaching writing seems to vastly improve the academic potential of students who have a history of poor academic performance.

From a personal perspective, I would agree with this experience. I credit most of my academic success to my eleventh-grade English teacher who focused the entire class on writing solid essays. I can’t think of a better skill to teach students. A focus on good writing leads to clear and critical thinking in virtually any field, not just English classes.

I have two cautions though. First, the premise seems based on anecdotal evidence. I’d really like to see this tested under controlled conditions.

Second, I’d hate to see this turned into a call to “teach grammar.” That’s an approach that has been proven not to work. From the description of the program, they are not teaching grammar; they are teaching writing. The students have known English grammar since they were five years old; they just don’t know how to apply it to the written page. The focus is on teaching how to write coherent complex sentences, not to teach the difference between a gerund and participle. If you have to do some quick remedial instruction on grammar to get a point about good writing across, so be it, but the grammar instruction is an ad hoc, instrumental step, not the objective of the instruction.

Esquires and Attorneys

30 August 2012

Lately I’ve taken to reading Kevin Underhill’s blog, Lowering the Bar. Underhill, a lawyer, comments on the various humorous news stories about legal cases and the profession of law that arise. The blog rarely fails to give me a chuckle with my morning coffee.

His posting from yesterday is not one of the funnier ones (although it has its moments), but Underhill does raise the issue of how courts use the meanings of words in their deliberations. In the case in question, John Heurlin, a lawyer who had been suspended by the California Bar Association, continued to use the titles attorney and esquire and to represent clients. The case is the disciplinary proceeding against Huerlin.

In the proceeding, Heurlin argued that his use of esquire was justified because it does not necessarily mean “lawyer,” that it can mean many things, including property owner and a subscriber to Esquire magazine. The Bar Association, quite properly, counters with this:

This argument is unconvincing because we do not focus on a single usage of a particular word when determining [unauthorized practice of law]. Instead we consider the consider the context of the words and the general course of conduct. [...] Here, Heurlin affixed the label “Esq.” next to his name and included references to himself as “attorney” and “Law Offices of John M. Heurlin” in pleadings and correspondence to opposing counsel. As the Court of Appeal observed, this course of conduct may well have created “the misleading impression” that Heurlin presently is licensed to practice law and currently maintains a functioning law office. And Heurlin underscored his misrepresentations of his status as an attorney when he filed his declaration in the Court of Appeal attesting: “I am an attorney licensed to practice before the courts of the State of California....”

To which Underhill adds:

It’s also unconvincing because, for example, no human being on the face of the Earth would ever put “Esq.” after his name to indicate that he subscribes to Esquire. Let me know if I’m wrong about this, by all means. Yours sincerely, M. Kevin Underhill, J.D., Esq., Sci. Am., Nat. Geo., Sprts. Ill. (Swimsuit).

The 1989 second edition of the OED includes this usage note for esquire:

The designation of “esquire” is now commonly understood to be due by courtesy to all persons (not in clerical orders or having any higher title of rank) who are regarded as ‘gentlemen’ by birth, position, or education. It is used only on occasions of more or less ceremonious mention, and in the addresses of letters, etc.; on other occasions the prefix “Mr.” is employed instead. When “esquire” is appended to a name, no prefixed title (such as “Mr.,” “Doctor,” “Captain,” etc.) is used. In the U.S. the title belongs officially to lawyers and public officers.

Bryan Garner’s eighth edition of Black’s Law Dictionary defines esquire as “a title of courtesy commonly appended after the name of a lawyer.”

So it appears that the bar association is correct. While esquire is indeed used generally as a non-specific title of respect, in a legal context it carries the meaning of “lawyer,” and representing oneself as esquire or Esq. in court papers when one is not a lawyer does amount to misrepresentation (in more ways than one).

I also believe that Underhill is correct in that no human in history has ever applied titles to himself based on the magazines he subscribes to, although I wouldn’t put money on it. The world is a big place and anything you can think of, someone has probably has already done.