ADS-L Digest - 5 May 2009 to 6 May 2009 (#2009-127)
Betsy Lowe
bbjmlowe at EMBARQMAIL.COM
Thu May 7 20:56:37 UTC 2009
About "fuse box": please. It's not worth discussing. It's about a silly, quasi-literate pretentious journalist trying to find a descriptive phrase that hasn't been used before and developing a metaphor that sounds cool but doesn't mean anything. Pretty soon it will be hot jargon and added to the lexicon without anyone really knowing what it means. The verbal version of the emperor's new clothes.
Betsy Lowe
Jay and Molly's mom
910-483-2268
"I suddenly realized that
anyone doing anything
weird really wasn't that
weird at all and it was the
people saying that they
were weird that were
weird."
Paul McCartney
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Subject: ADS-L Digest - 5 May 2009 to 6 May 2009 (#2009-127)
There are 7 messages totalling 277 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. distinguished alum (2)
2. "fuse box" eggcorn? (2)
3. losing steam (2)
4. New Book on word myths/misconceptions: Origin of the Speciious
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Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 10:45:26 -0500
From: Barbara Need <bhneed at GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: distinguished alum
On 5 May 2009, at 7:46 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> And I really doubt that the average non-classicist has any concept of
> the the distinction in either meaning or pronunciation between -I and
> -AE or the meaning of the nueuter plural, -A.
Wilson,
In my experience, non-classicists consistently use [aI] for alumni and
[i] for alumnae.
Barbara
Barbara Need
Chicago
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 09:03:00 -0700
From: Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: distinguished alum
On May 6, 2009, at 8:45 AM, Barbara Need wrote:
> On 5 May 2009, at 7:46 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> And I really doubt that the average non-classicist has any concept of
>> the the distinction in either meaning or pronunciation between -I and
>> -AE or the meaning of the nueuter plural, -A.
>
> Wilson,
>
> In my experience, non-classicists consistently use [aI] for alumni and
> [i] for alumnae.
and that's what AHD4 recommends, as i pointed out in the posting on my
blog (though not in the earlier draft here on ADS-L; my blog posting
is not just a re-publication of the ADS-L posting, but a revision and
expansion of it).
arnold
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 14:19:05 -0400
From: Alison Murie <sagehen7470 at ATT.NET>
Subject: Re: "fuse box" eggcorn?
On May 4, 2009, at 2:46 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Fwd: "fuse box" eggcorn?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 1:45 AM -0700 5/4/09, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: Max Heiman
>>> Date: May 3, 2009 7:59:52 PM PDT
>>> To: zwicky at stanford.edu
>>> Subject: "fuse box" eggcorn?
>>>
>>> I thought I'd pass the following along. News coverage of the recent
>>> air force flyover of downtown Manhattan referred to the situation as
>>> having "turned into a political fuse box," an expression I've never
>>> heard and which doesn't make much sense to me. (I think of a fuse
>>> box like a relief valve, a device to keep things from blowing up.
>>> Perhaps the writer meant it like a crackling, high-voltage
>>> situation?) The only google hits I get for "political fuse box" or
>>> "turned into a * fuse box" are copies of the same single article.
>>> Do you have any guess whether this is an eggcorn (and for what) or a
>>> nonce coinage? I'm just curious. The article is here
>>> http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/air-force-one-backup-rattles-new-york-nerve/
>>
>> puzzling to me. "fuse bomb' is close to 'fuse box", but doesn't make
>> much more sense to me. "flash point" makes more sense, but is
>> phonologically very far from "fuse bomb".
>>
>> (the authors of the article are A. G. Sulzberger -- yes, the son of
>> the publisher -- and Matthew L. Wald.)
>>
> Searching through the mental lexicon under "political f...", locating
> "political football" and "political firestorm", and settling on
> "political fusebox"? I think "tinderbox" must be involved somehow,
> and that is a metal box originally (though a different one, to be
> sure). Maybe "(political) tinderbox" + "(short) fuse"? Or
> "(political) tinderbox" + "light(ing) the fuse?
>
> LH
~~~~~~~~~~~
I've been surprised not to see the meaning of "fusebox" most familiar
to me: that of the safety fuses on household electrical circuits
(mostly replaced, these past forty years by "breaker boxes" at the
service entry). It doesn't throw much light on the "political
fusebox" unless as an unlikely reference to its being the place of
first resort when something goes wrong (e.g., the lights go out).
AM
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 14:43:07 -0400
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Subject: Re: "fuse box" eggcorn?
At 2:19 PM -0400 5/6/09, Alison Murie wrote:
>On May 4, 2009, at 2:46 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>Subject: Re: Fwd: "fuse box" eggcorn?
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>At 1:45 AM -0700 5/4/09, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>>>Begin forwarded message:
>>>
>>>>From: Max Heiman
>>>>Date: May 3, 2009 7:59:52 PM PDT
>>>>To: zwicky at stanford.edu
>>>>Subject: "fuse box" eggcorn?
>>>>
>>>>I thought I'd pass the following along. News coverage of the recent
>>>>air force flyover of downtown Manhattan referred to the situation as
>>>>having "turned into a political fuse box," an expression I've never
>>>>heard and which doesn't make much sense to me. (I think of a fuse
>>>>box like a relief valve, a device to keep things from blowing up.
>>>>Perhaps the writer meant it like a crackling, high-voltage
>>>>situation?) The only google hits I get for "political fuse box" or
>>>>"turned into a * fuse box" are copies of the same single article.
>>>>Do you have any guess whether this is an eggcorn (and for what) or a
>>>>nonce coinage? I'm just curious. The article is here
>>>>http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/air-force-one-backup-rattles-new-york-nerve/
>>>
>>>puzzling to me. "fuse bomb' is close to 'fuse box", but doesn't make
>>>much more sense to me. "flash point" makes more sense, but is
>>>phonologically very far from "fuse bomb".
>>>
>>>(the authors of the article are A. G. Sulzberger -- yes, the son of
>>>the publisher -- and Matthew L. Wald.)
>>>
>>Searching through the mental lexicon under "political f...", locating
>>"political football" and "political firestorm", and settling on
>>"political fusebox"? I think "tinderbox" must be involved somehow,
>>and that is a metal box originally (though a different one, to be
>>sure). Maybe "(political) tinderbox" + "(short) fuse"? Or
>>"(political) tinderbox" + "light(ing) the fuse?
>>
>>LH
>~~~~~~~~~~~
>I've been surprised not to see the meaning of "fusebox" most familiar
>to me: that of the safety fuses on household electrical circuits
>(mostly replaced, these past forty years by "breaker boxes" at the
>service entry). It doesn't throw much light on the "political
>fusebox" unless as an unlikely reference to its being the place of
>first resort when something goes wrong (e.g., the lights go out).
>AM
>
I thought that was the starting point for the thread, at least
implicitly--it's certainly my only association for "fuse box". The
panel of circuit breakers in our basements is often still called "the
fuse box" by us oldtimers for the same reason we refer to the fridge
as "the icebox"--although I confess that I don't actually remember
when the iceman came(*th) the way I do remember changing the fuses
when one burnt out (much more of a hassle than flipping the circuit
breaker). The problem is that that kind of fuse box doesn't seem to
bear any semantic relation to the political fuse box above, which
strikes me as much more like a tinderbox (with maybe a bit of "short
fuse/light the fuse" thrown in, as noted).
LH
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 16:36:10 -0700
From: "James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com>" <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM>
Subject: losing steam
An odd use of a well-known metaphor, from the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090505-710867.html
MAY 5, 2009, 10:01 A.M. ET
"Fed Bernanke: US Economy To Resume Growth Later In '09"
bu Brian Blackstone of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The U.S. recession appears to be losing steam, with growth likely to resume later this year on the back of firmer household spending, a bottoming housing market and an end to inventory liquidation, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday.
OT: How can you always spot a doctor or nurse? They think "to present" is an intransitive verb
James A. Landau
test engineer
Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 19:52:34 -0400
From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
Subject: Re: losing steam
At 5/6/2009 07:36 PM, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:
>An odd use of a well-known metaphor, from the Wall Street Journal:
>
> http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090505-710867.html
> MAY 5, 2009, 10:01 A.M. ET
>"Fed Bernanke: US Economy To Resume Growth Later In '09"
>bu Brian Blackstone of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
>
>WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The U.S. recession appears to be losing
>steam, with growth likely to resume later this year on the back of
>firmer household spending, a bottoming housing market and an end to
>inventory liquidation, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday.
Can't dragons lose steam? Makes them less dangerous, since their
boilers must be out.
Joel
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 19:34:50 -0500
From: "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at MST.EDU>
Subject: New Book on word myths/misconceptions: Origin of the Speciious
I've obtained copies of a few recently published books on words and will briefly share some relevant information about them with ads-l. Btw, I have no financial interest in any of these books.
Here's the first one:
_Origin of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language_, by Patricia T O'Connor and Stewart Kellerman. New York: Random House. 296 pp., cost: $22.
Kellerman and O'Connor are a husband-and-wife team. O'Connor is a former editor of the New York Times Book Review, and Kellerman is an editor of the New York Times and a foreign correspondent for UPI.
The book mentions various ads-l members, including Michael Quinion,Sam Clements, Benjamin Zimmer, Barry Popik, Jesse Sheidlower, Arnold Zwicky, and myself. Fred Shapiro's YBQ is mentioned in the bibliography.
Incidentally, cf. ads-l member David Wilton's _Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends_ (Oxford U Pr., 2004).
I'll have to look at the individual items a bit more before commenting on them. For now, though, might I invite Patricia O'Connor and Stewart Kellerman to join ads-l. It's free, we'll welcome their input, and the discussion here is enormously helpful for anyone writing about word origins.
Gerald Cohen
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 5 May 2009 to 6 May 2009 (#2009-127)
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