Watch Out For Miss Alice

Whenever my friend and upstairs neighbor Scotty Crawford (now deceased) referred to the police as "Miss Alice," I thought it was a humorous name he had made up. I learned later from a book about the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York's Greenwich Village that gay men back then called cops "Alice Blue Gown."

Linguistic Pet Peeves

Everyone has words, phrases, or expressions that can be called pet peeves. I have two of them. The first pet peeve is one you often see printed in newspaper obituaries: "So-and-so died surrounded by family and friends." It irks me because, one, it probably isn't true, and two, it makes those who knew the person sound like a bunch of vultures eagerly waiting for death to come so they can begin the reading of the will or to grab as many family heirlooms as they can. Plus, how would they know the exact moment of death? Was a doctor or undertaker present at the bedside beforehand?

The second pet peeve is "So-and-so is 95 years young." If you're 95, you're not young. Saying someone is 95 years young, instead of 95 years old, stigmatizes old age and is another example of ageism.

Throw Your Troubles To The Wind

Whenever I feel stressed out or have a lot on my mind, I like to take a long, leisurely walk, preferably in New York's Central Park, my all-time favorite greenspace.

The feel of fresh air on my face, the sight and smell of greenery, and the sound of wildlife never fails to clear my head and lift my spirits.

Until I recently heard a segment on the public radio show The World, I didn't know there was a name for this activity that I've been doing for many years. It's called uitwaaien (pronounced out-vy-een), a Dutch word for "out-blowing" or "walk with the wind."  There isn't, unfortunately, an English equivalent, according to one online article.

In the Netherlands it's a common practice for people to take these open-air strolls on windswept days to relieve themselves of stress and anxiety. And it's a lot cheaper than taking pills or going to therapy sessions.

So the next time life gets you down, try uitwaaien and let the wind blow away your troubles.

I'm Finna Discuss "Finna"

The first time I saw the word "finna" was in a Facebook post by one of my great-nieces (she's 36 years old). It was a strange looking word to me, a baby boomer. My first thought was that it was something she made up.

But one evening, to my surprise, as I was leaving the public library on 115th Street in Harlem, at closing time, I saw a book on a book cart with the title Finna: Poems. The book is by Nate Marshall and was published by One World in 2020.

On its back is a definition of "finna." It's described as being from African-American vernacular English and means "going to; intending to."

No doubt the word is used a lot by those involved in hip-hop culture.

Well, folks, I'm finna sign off, bringing this blog post to a close.

Ralph Ellison And The Yiddish Language

Sometimes the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" Q & A feature will ask interviewees to name "the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently."

For me, it was learning that the African-American author Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man) spoke fluent Yiddish. That was a total surprise!

In Arnold Rampersad's 2007 Ellison biography, Harriet Davidson, an Ellison friend, related to Rampersad that Ellison told her "he had picked up a lot of it when he was young, in Oklahoma City and," she continued, "his mother had worked for Jews." During visits "he and my husband would sit on the porch and converse very easily in Yiddish. Ralph had no trouble speaking or understanding it. It brought him even closer to us."

Give "Queer" The Boot

When I was on an elevator in an office building here in New York, it was either in the late seventies or early eighties, I rode with three other men. The one standing in front of me kept turning around to look at the two men standing in a corner. As soon as he got off on his floor, one of the men said to the other, "He must be a queer." Needless to say, he didn't use the word "queer" as a term of endearment. From then on the word "queer" has become cringeworthy.

I refrain from using it whenever possible because it's such an ugly word. Even dictionaries still describe it as offensive, as a pejorative. If the gay and lesbian community continue to embrace that word, they should also be willing to embrace "faggot," "bulldagger," "fairy," and "pansy." Like "nigger" and "kike," they are equally ugly, hateful, evil, and disparaging.

There are many highly educated gay men and lesbians. You would think someone within that segment of the gay and lesbian community could come up with terms that are more edifying and life-affirming. Trying to "reclaim" hurtful terms does not erase or sanitize their negative histories.

Note: This blog post originally appeared on my Facebook page on April 19, 2023. I've made a few minor changes.

The Man Who Coined The Word "Gig"

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of people nationwide were laid off their jobs and had to apply for unemployment benefits from the state and federal governments, there was talk of including people who were part of the gig economy. These individuals, called gig workers, ordinarily didn't qualify for unemployment, because they were not on anyone's payroll. They were freelancers, independent contractors. Due to the unusual circumstances brought on by the pandemic, they got to collect unemployment checks.

That brings me to the origin of the word "gig." While reading a book called Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way by Caseen Gaines (Sourcebooks, 2021), I learned where the word came from. It's "a term," writes Gaines, an award-winning New Jersey-based author and journalist, "[African-American band leader James Reese] Europe coined [in the late nineteen-teens] to describe a one-night performance, which quickly caught on in the jazz community."

Now we know who should receive credit for creating "gig," a word that has become applicable to people both inside and outside of show business.

Bibliopolitan, A Definition

Sooner or later someone was going to ask me about my Twitter handle--@bibliopolitan. That someone is Jill Davis, who recently became one of my Facebook friends. According to her Facebook profile, Jill lives in Manhattan and is a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (also known as the Mormons).

In an online message to me, Jill wanted to know what a bibliopolitan was. I explained that "A bibliopolitan is my word for someone whose love of books and literature covers a wide range of topics and genres."

Her response was "I love that!"

Using The Word "Unhoused" Instead Of "Homeless" Removes Stigma And Prejudice

Listening to a newscast on WNYC-AM, a public radio station in New York, the announcer used the word "unhoused" in referring to those lacking a place to call home. It's a reasonable substitute for "homeless." The last syllable of that word ("less") carries with it judgment, stigma, shame. It makes people feel that they are less than others.Whereas "unhoused" has a more sympathetic feeling and sound to it.

The word "homeless" conjures up images of people who wound up that way because of some character flaw, whether true or not.

The ways people lose their shelter are various and not always their fault such as a fire, illness, unemployment, or an unscrupulous landlord.

By referring to those unlucky to be without a home as "unhoused" allows them to be treated with civility, respect, humaneness, and dignity.

A Translator's Literary Advice

Margaret Jull Costa is described by the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" interview column (March 7, 2021) as a "prolific translator" of Spanish- and Portuguese-language literature.

In the interview she was asked what book she would recommend be read by everyone before age 21. Her response: "I would say probably read everything you can lay your hands on, then reread it when you're 40 or older to find out whether it was any good and, if so, what it was really about. But," she continued, "if I had to choose one it would be The Great Gatsby, just to see what it's possible to do with the English language."

If I had to choose one book to reread it would probably be A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. I first read it when I was 11 or 12. I can still remember certain scenes from it: preadolescent Francie Nolan reading a book on the fire escape; her mother on her hands and knees scrubbing the wood floors; her father's corpse in repose in a casket in the apartment.

A Briticism Used In An American Op-Ed Article

 "Argle-bargle" is a term I've never encountered until I read Jennifer Senior's op-ed piece in The New York Times (September 23, 2020), called "The Ginsburg-Scalia Act Was Not a Farce." The article is about the friendship between Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, who were on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Ms. Senior described Justice Scalia as a "hero of the Federalist Society, defender of originalism, dreaded foe of progressive argle-bargle." [Italics mine.]

I looked up "argle-bargle" in my copy of  the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, Second Edition (2004), suspecting the term might be a British import. The closest term in the dictionary is "argy-bargy," identified as of British origin and meaning "a dispute or wrangle."

Consulting one of my two battered copies of The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, I found the word "argufy," of no particular origin. It is defined as "to argue or wrangle, esp. over something insignificant." That's about as close to "argle-bargle" as I could get in an American dictionary.

"Argle-bargle" is one of those British expressions that have entered American speech, much like "gobsmacked," "shambolic," and "the full monty."

One clue to the origin of "argle-bargle" is Cockney rhyming slang. Lonely Planet's London guidebook (Lonely Planet Publications, 2012) says that Cockney rhyming slang "may have developed among London's costermongers (street traders) as a code to avoid police attention. This code replaced common nouns and verbs with rhyming phrases." For example, " 'going up the apples and pears' meant going up the stairs, the 'trouble and strife' was the wife, 'telling porky pies' was telling lies and 'would you Adam and Eve it?' was would you believe it?"

In the meantime, maybe I should send a copy of this blog post to Melissa Mohr, who writes the "In a Word" column for The Christian Science Monitor Weekly magazine. Ms. Mohr might be able to shed some light on "argle-bargle." 

Learning Another Word For Jet Lag

While reading Jeanne Mackin's riveting novel, The Last Collection (Berkley, 2019), about the rivalry between Paris couturiers Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel, I learned a new word--desynchronosis, the physical ailment one experiences traveling across time zones via airplane. It's better known as jet lag or jet fatigue.

Are You A Dogophile Or A Caninophile?

In his 2003 Time magazine essay, "Of Dogs and Men," later reprinted in Things That Matter (Crown Forum, 2013), his essay collection, the late syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer used the word "dogophilia" to describe the close relationship that humans have to their dogs.

A better, more elegant word would have been "caninophilia," the love of dogs. One website calls the word "a bastard mix of Latin and Greek," but it sounds much better than "dogophilia," a word that sounds ugly to my ears and robs such a passion for dogs of its beauty, mutuality, and elevated status. It would be like calling a person who has a deep passion for books a bookaholic or a bookophile instead of a bibliophile or, to use the name of this blog, a book maven.These latter terms are more elegant, celebratory, and respectful.

Some people might say that I'm nitpicking but to me words matter. How they are used conveys one's attitude and view of the world. To me, "dogophilia" trivializes a very important, deeply felt relationship.

As for me, although I've had many dogs in my life, I'm partial to cats. You can call me a felinophile or a cat lover, not a catophile.


Note: Merry Christmas, everyone!

Learning A New Word--"Shambolic"

While reading journalist Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (Henry Holt, 2018), I came across this sentence in the chapter about Donald Trump's former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon: "By default, everybody had to look to the voluble, aphoristic, shambolic, witty, off-the-cuff figure who was both ever present on the premises and who had, in an unlikely attribute, read a book or two." (See page 60.) [Italics mine.]

The word that caught my attention was "shambolic." I'd never seen it before. Being someone who enjoys learning new words, I consulted two of my American dictionaries and I could not find this word. I then went online and learned that "shambolic" is British slang for chaotic, disorganized, or mismanaged.

Looking further, I consulted the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd edition, a book I found, I think, on a street corner almost two years ago. It defines the word as "chaotic, unorganized." Now I have a new word to add to my vocabulary.

Searching For The Word "Upscuttle"

I recently flipped through an old, battered dictionary that I own with the express purpose of looking up the definition of  "gulag." My search was prompted by a radio interview I  had heard that detailed the brutalization of inmates by guards at an upstate New York prison.

That brought to mind the late "Grandpa" Al Lewis, a former cast member of the 1960s sitcom, The Munsters, and his comparing American prisons to gulags, or Soviet prison camps, on his weekly New York-based radio show on WBAI.

While looking up the word, I found a slip of paper tucked inside the dictionary on which I had written the word "upscuttle" and the name of the person I had heard use it, conservative talk show radio host Barry Farber. I probably heard him use the word sometime in the 1980s when he was on the air late nights on New York's WMCA. ("Upscuttle" is not a word you hear every day.) Unfortunately, I neglected to write down how he used the word in a sentence.

I searched for the word in the same battered dictionary, but I couldn't find it. Neither could I find it in five other dictionaries in my apartment, including the Canadian Oxford Dictionary and a huge dictionary that weighs almost as much as a ten-pound bag of sugar.

Here is urbandictionary.com 's definition of "upscuttle": "When everything in a given area seems to go topsy-turvy at once. A sudden capsizing of circumstances and conditions."

What Do You Call A Massachusetts Resident?

I knew that a person from New York State is called a New Yorker, a person from California is called a Californian, and a person from Texas is called a Texan. But what do you call someone who hails from Massachusetts or Connecticut? None of my dictionaries were helpful on this particular question.

So I finally consulted the ever trusty Internet to solve this mystery and learned a new word--demonym. 

What is a demonym?  It's a word used by geographers to describe where a person comes from. The website I consulted via my cell phone listed the demonyms for all fifty states alphabetically.

I learned that a resident of Connecticut is a Connecticuter and a person from Massachusetts is a Massachusettsan. Do the people in those states know this? The next time I talk to someone from either of those states I will ask them.

Here are some other demonyms: if you are from Iowa, you are either an Iowan or an Iowegian; if you call Illinois home, you are an Illinoisan (pronounced, I assume, Ill-leh-noy-an) or an Illinian (pronounced, again I assume, Ill-len-nee-an); a resident of Maine is called a Mainer or a Maineaker

(pronounced either Main-ah-ker or May-nee-ack-er). The last one sounds a little insulting. Maineite or Mainester might be better. And if you are firmly rooted in the state of Wyoming, you are a Wyomingite.

I now know --as well as lexicographers, I hope--what to call persons living in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

A Better Word For Suicide Due To Bullying Is Needed

Whenever I hear or see the word "bullycide," the image that comes to mind is someone killing his or her tormentor, not someone killing themselves because they were bullied. I wish someone would come up with a more precise term for suicides caused by bullying. "Bullycide" is not it.

No One Can Be Food-Deaf

Book and magazine editor Robert Gottlieb in his memoir, Avid Reader: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), described his lack of culinary skills this way: "...I can't do more in the kitchen than boil an egg, and am generally considered food-deaf."

The term "food-deaf "is an inaccurate description. A person can be tone-deaf because that refers to sound. But a person can't be food-deaf because one doesn't listen to food as its being prepared in the kitchen. The terms that are more accurate, although imperfect, would be food klutz and cooking inept.

There Are Many Gay Lifestyles

People should stop using the term "gay lifestyle" because like their heterosexual counterparts, gays and lesbians do not live cookie-cutter lives.

Lifestyle is about socio-economics, not sexuality. The many lifestyles of gays and lesbians of means are vastly different from the many lifestyles of gays and lesbians who are not so financially blessed.

People who use the term"gay lifestyle" do so as a way to deride and demonize a beleaguered, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multiracial community.

English Speakers Need Not Apply

I have seen Help Wanted signs posted on the windows of several restaurants in New York advertising openings for a delivery man or a dishwasher but in Spanish only. Such signs give an English-speaking job seeker the idea that they need not bother to apply. To me this is discrimination. If it is against the law to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, etc., then why are these signs permitted?