Synantonyms...?

Once upon a time, there was a conversation. One person pontificated, somewhat ironically, that she was a taker, not a giver. She attempted to clarify her statement by saying that her sister was a caregiver, and she a caretaker. Hilarity ensued, as hilarity is wont to do.

Time passed, as time is also wont to do.

There was then another conversation, wherein this tale was told to the purveyor of a certain blog, and all present recognized the blogworthiness of the anecdote.

Brains were racked for any other example of a pair of antonyms (giver-taker) which, by the addition of a prefix, suffix, or compounding word (care), became a pair of synonyms. The best pair that could be found was "sinkhole" and "swimming hole", which are not actually synonyms, but certainly are much more similar than "sink" and "swim."

And so we ask you, o faithful readers, our muses, we beseech thee tell us, is this an example of a class of words, either of antonyms or of synonymizing augmenters, or is this a random linguistic accident of the sort produced by thousands of monkeys with thousands of typewriters?

Thanks to Tali for the idea, and for your forbearance as we take artistic liberties with the tale.

Have we gone far enough?

Political correctness is old news, but there's one area of our culture that we haven't purged of latent and tacit racism: completely benign idioms.

Consider:

• If we get our finances in order, we'll finally be out of the Native American and back in the African American.
  
• Well that's really the pot calling the kettle African American, isn't it?
  
• I was always impressed that Ansel Adams could capture so much depth and emotion in his African American & Caucasian photographs.
  
• The President today signed the comprehensive civil rights legislation into law during a ceremony in the Caucasian House Rose Garden.
  
• I'm dreaming of a Caucasian Christmas...
  
• In the Middle Ages, two-thirds of Europe's population was wiped out by the African American plague.
  
• When camping, be sure to pack away all of your garbage so as not to attract the attention of hungry African American bears and grizzlies.
  
• That acne cream really takes care of those unsightly african-americanheads and caucasianheads.
• Joe didn't get into the frat he wanted because one of the members African-Americanballed him.
• After being accused of having communist sympathies, Mort was African-Americanlisted and couldn't get another screenwriting job.
• Surely, one of the most brilliant sales pitches in all of literature was Tom Sawyer's convincing his peers to pay him for the privilege of Caucasianwashing the fence.
• Once they had the incriminating pictures, they were able to african-americanmail him for millions.
  

Did we leave out any good ones?

You keep using those words... I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

Thanks to friend and regular comment contributor Keith for this bit of deft wordplay. Ah, the joy of English, where verbs are homonyms of nouns and adjectives, and helping verbs can be main verbs, and adjectives can concatenate themselves onto nouns as prefices or suffices, and they all have a gay old time.

The mad frog was hopping around the man.
The madman was hopping around the frog.
The man was mad frogging around the hop.
Around the frog, the man was hopping mad.

The moron says what?

Is there a word for the opposite of "schadenfreude," where instead of perverse joy you feel sadness for the misfortune of others? I suppose, perhaps, "compassion," but it would probably sound better in German. In the interest of completeleness, "compassion" in German is, according to the Babelfish online translator, "mitleid." Or, using the same device but constructing the German in a manner parallel to the English translation of "schadenfreude" (harming joy), it would be "schadensorge" (harming sorrow). But that's probably a very foul bastardization of the German.

I feel mitleid and schadensorge when I see sentences such as "The clown stuck his penis in somebody's eye, having decided between the midget and I." or "The clown stuck his penis in whomever was standing closest, and of course it had to be a midget ." In a way, they are the saddest of all grammatical errors, because they are on some level the consequence of the perpetrator trying desperately hard not to make a grammatical error. Since people regularly (and incorrectly) use "me and" or "and me" as part of the subject of a sentence, they are constantly reminded, at least, one can hope, in grammar school, that they should use "and I." Likewise, "whom" (and its -ever derivative) is severely underused. It's rather a mark of sophistication to use it properly.

So when a person uses these underutilized turns of grammatical phrase, but they use them incorrectly in the place where the other, more common expressions would actually be right, it brings a tear to the linguistic humanist's eye. It's like a puppy who's so excited when you come home that he unknowningly and incontinently tinkles on the floor, and you get angry and scold him, but he can't even understand what he did wrong in the first place. And so the cycle repeats, and, embittered by the cruel and unjust world, the puppy turns to drugs and finally a life of crime, until he has to be put down. That poor puppy. And all because you don't understand grammatical cases. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Linguistic Pet Peeves

This is just a list of those phrases that people say, usually without thinking about what they really mean, that I find irksome. If you use them, it by no means means that you're a bad person, it merely proves that nobody really thinks about everything they say.

• "I'm going to let you go." People use this often to end a telephone conversation, and taken literally it's sort of a nice gesture. Unfortunately, most of the time that it's said, it's said disingenuously - you don't "let someone go" because you know they have something to which they should attend, but because you have something to which to attend, but you instinctively don't want to be the one responsible for ending this stimulating conversation.
  
• "Let me know." I use this all the time, and I hate it. It's a bizarre, polite euphemism for "tell me." Please, good sir, I do beseech thee, permit this poor supplicant the awareness of that which you have to impart. Just answer my damn question!
• "Amazing." The rampant overuse of this word is an example of meaninglessness. For many people, calling something "amazing" is no more descriptive than giving it a thumbs up. It has lost its actual meaning of describing a thing that amazed the speaker. Was that book really amazing? Did it actually amaze and astonish you? Were you dumbfounded? Or do you simply lack the vocabularly or at least the assiduousness to praise it in a more precise manner? I would wager, in most cases, that it's the latter.
• "Standing on line." This I believe to be a Northeastern (aka, Yankee) turn of phrase. This, to me, is an alternate form of "in line." Are there lines painted on the ground in certain parts of the country to facilitate enqueueing? I've been around a bit, and I've never seen them. I've waited, people seriatim, in a lot of places, and I've never seen a guide marker underfoot. The line is an imaginary one, formed by the people waiting. I can't see how anybody is "on" that line. But they sure seem like they're "in" it, inasmuch as they're the constituents of it.
  

I'm sure our devoted readership has other such phrases that it deplores, rationally or otherwise. As always, please share, and we'll include.

get outta here

There are many colorful ways of telling someone to bugger off, or of announcing one's own imminent exodus. Here are a few. As always, we welcome submissions.

• Make like a tree and leave.
• Make like a hockey player and get the puck out of here.
• Make like a fetus and head out.
• Make like the Catholic Church and get the fuck out of here.
• Make like an exorcist and get the hell out of here.
• Make like Siamese twins and split . . . and then one of you die.
  

Juvenile Brinkmanship

It seems the proclivity to engage in arms races develops in us from a tender young age. Consider the following two examples.

1. From a psychology textbook, courtesy of our friend in Columbia's psych department:

We study exchanges like these, between David and Josh, two young children, in a section of my textbook on the development of "prosocial behavior."

• David: I'm a missile robot who can shoot missiles out of my fingers. I can shoot them out of everywhere - even out of my legs. I'm a missile robot.
• Josh: (tauntingly) No, you're a fart robot.
• David: (protestingly) No, I'm a missile robot.
• Josh: No, you're a fart robot.
• David: (hurt, almost in tears) No, Josh!
• Josh: (recognizing that David is upset) And I'm a poo-poo robot.
• David: (in good spirits again) I'm a pee-pee robot.

What kind of robot are you?

----

2. During Sunday school recently, I went into a neighboring 2nd-grade classroom to get a few markers, and the students were doing a Passover art project. Two boys close to where I was standing were drawing the Angel of Death, and here is the brief exchange I overheard (names have been assigned arbitrarily; any resemblance to their actual names is purely coincidental):

• Moishe: My Angel of Death has a scythe to kill people!
• Shmuli: Oh yeah, my Angel of Death has a pitchfork!
• Moishe: Mine has a scythe and a pitchfork!
• Shmuli: Well, mine is spiky.

Unfortunately, I didn't hear what was surely a thrilling conclusion to this Angel of Death arms race.

What does your Angel of Death look like?

gizoogle my noogle

I'm happy to report that http://www.gizoogle.com/ has a "translizzle" feature. I tested it with a bit of verse by our good friend Erasmus Darwin, the 19th century botanist, biologist, and poet. He's Charles Darwin, of Beagle fame,'s grandfather. The first passage is his text; the second, the translizzle. Though it is by no means the most ridiculous example one can imagine, it is everthemore (isn't that better than "nevertheless"?) delightful. It picks up steam toward the end.

Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.

Translizzle:
Organic life beneath tha shoreless waves
Was bizzorn n nursed in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spherical glass,
Move on tha mizzay or pierce tha watery mass;
These, as successive generizzles bloom,
New powa acquire n larga limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetizzles doggy stylin'
frontin' realms of fin n feet n wing.

We encourage you to generate your own translizzles. As always, we will post those that are worthy.

In that vein, our good friend Rav Rockin Mullet has offered two shining examples of what he calls a “jewish gangsta haiku”.

hanukkah haiku:
me gotsd a dreidle
I made dat shiz out of cliz –
shit got dry – fuck dat!

passover haiku:
you may gotsd dem ho’s
and you may gotsd a fly crib
but we fuck you up – ten plagues, biatch*!

[*NOTE: the Haiku Authority of America (“HAM”) has agreed that “biatch” may be interpreted as one or two syllables, depending on who be holding a mu-fuggin gun to their heads. Thank you for your understanding and unconditional support for our greater mission (biatch!).]