Some Misused Words And A Hint

Perhaps you have heard these words misused? Does it drive you up the hall like it does me?


Stanch and Staunch

Stanch is a verb that means "restrain a flow." Staunch is an adjective that means "firm in attitude, opinion, or loyalty." Both words are pronounced the same way. The distinction is actually quite recent; a hundred years ago, the two words were treated as interchangeable spelling variants. Such is no longer the case, so it's important to distinguish one from the other.


Imply and Infer

Imply means to "hint or suggest without stating directly." Infer means "reach an opinion from facts or reasoning." The two terms are sometimes mistaken to be interchangeable. In actuality, they are quite distinct. The sender of an indirectly stated message is doing the implying, while a receiver that reasons what the message is is doing the inferring.



Flaunt and Flout

Flaunt means "display ostentatiously." Flout means to "disobey openly and scornfully" or "show contempt for." Some use one for the other, but confusing the two words is still widely seen as an error and best avoided.



Continual and Continuous

Both continual and continuous describe an action or process that occurs over a long period of time. Continual, however, permits that the action may be interrupted by short breaks. Continuous means that the action never pauses. We live continuous lives, eating and sleeping continually.



Aggravate and Annoy

Aggravate means "worsen." Annoy means "bother" or "exasperate" or "provoke." Many speakers and writers use aggravate to mean "annoy." Although aggravate has been used in this manner for four hundred years, considerable controversy over this use exists today. Some contend that using aggravate to mean anything other than "worsen" compromises the effectiveness of the word by blurring the distinction it has from similar words. Others argue that annoy can be said to mean "worsen one's temper," which suggests that aggravate is not so inappropriate to use as a synonym for annoy after all. Understand that aggravate means "worsen" and not "bother," but then feel free to use aggravate in contexts where it would be taken to mean "worsen one's temper" rather than "bother" or "irritate."


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A quick tip -

Do you have difficulty pronouncing such words as similarly and regularly?

A good way to get past the problem is to say these words as if they were names. Similar Lee and Regular Lee should become your friends. I am sure you can find other Lee's in your vocabulary neighborhood.

"Shovel-Ready" Buried!!

Recently in the news -

Dec 31, 8:43 AM (ET)

By JEFF KAROUB

DETROIT (AP) - In its annual effort to protect the Queen's English, a Michigan university is insisting that "shovel ready" be buried, "tweet" be tossed and all "czars" be banished.

Lake Superior State University shamed those and several other words and phrases Thursday when it released its 2009 List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.

It insists that "shovel ready," incessantly invoked by the Obama administration to sell its $787 billion federal stimulus bill, dug its own grave. It forced its way into speeches and out of the mouths of the president and too many other politicians in past months.

"Stick a shovel in it. It's done," seethed Joe Grimm of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., in his nomination to the university's Word Banishment Committee. Grimm is a visiting journalist at Michigan State University and a former recruiter and editor at the Detroit Free Press.

The exact age of the phrase isn't known, but it had been a quiet favorite of economic development types for at least a decade - a fondness that led a utility company in upstate New York to secure the shovelready.com Web site in the late 1990s.

"Shovel ready" became a clarion call for the White House during the past year as shorthand for the kind of taxpayer-funded work projects that had been through the design and permitting process and were ready to launch.

Still, its vigor waned from verbal wear and tear in recent months. It didn't help that some of the projects weren't quite ready for a shovel, the literal or figurative kind.

"When something dies, it, too, is 'shovel ready' for burial and so I get confused about the meaning," wrote Jerry Redington of Keosauqua, Iowa. "I would suggest that we just say that the project is ready to implement."

The phrase was joined in dialectical death on the Michigan school's 35th banned words list by, among others, "transparent/transparency,""czar,""sexting,""tweet,""teachable moment" and "app." App - as in the iPhone's "there's an app for that" ad referring to the device's various applications - was preceded in death by "killer app," which was banished in 2002.

Many other terms related to the federal stimulus - or the failing economy that inspired it - have been thrown into the semantic scrap heap for 2010, including "stimulus" (the more blunt "bailout" bit the dust last year), "toxic assets" and "too big to fail." Apparently, failure was an option.

"Shovel ready" is survived by many other scrutinized phrases, including "death panel,""low-hanging fruit" and "door-buster," and none should assume immortality. The Word Banishment Committee doesn't shy away from executing its duties.

Mourners of fallen phrases can take heart. Those previously banished don't necessarily remain in the lexiconical hereafter. There is still life left, deserved or not, for "24/7" (which made the list in 2000), "it is what it is" (2008), "happy camper" (1993), "LOL" (2004) and "state of the art" (1993).

Yet Another Five Wonderful Words

Enjoy these!!

Growlery growl'er-ee, n (English; cf. Dutch grollen, to grumble)

A retreat for times of ill humour. This term has largely become obsolete, which is strange, given that so many people seem to need a place to go when they are in a bad mood - a place to be alone and think. Of course, being alone is one thing that almost anyone can manage. Thinking is quite another. It's similar in meaning to the Latin-derived sanctum sanctorum, with the added connotation that the individual in question is going to the place to be alone while upset.


Jeremiad jer-i-my'ad, n (From Jeremiah, author of the Book of Lamentations)

A lamentation or prolonged complaint; an angry or cautionary harangue. Poor Jeremiah! He writes one complaining letter to God, whines about the state of the world, gets it published in the most popular book of all time, and his name is forever attached to the concept of complaining and lamenting one's fate. I think there's a moral message in there somewhere, but I haven't figured out yet what it is.


Kenspeckle ken'spek-l, adj (Scottish English, from Old Norse kennispeki power of recognition)

Easily recognizable or distinguishable; conspicuous. This word sounds very interesting, and is all the more remarkable because it is etymologically unrelated to the similar-sounding and synonymous conspicuous (Latin con, an intensive, and specere, to look). Kenspeckle is mostly used in Scotland and northern England these days; perhaps it should enjoy greater currency.


Spatchcock spach'kok, v or n (English, probably from dispatch and cock)

To insert into a text too hurriedly or inappropriately; a fowl stuffed and cooked immediately after killing. This is probably my favourite word of all time. Though there's little use for it any more as a noun, the idea of hurriedly killing, stuffing and cooking a bird has enormous metaphorical value. As a verb, spatchcock is a term that should be picked up and used by every editor who has ever had to read a manuscript that has been prepared in such a manner.


Boustrophedon boo-strof-ee'don, adj and adv (Greek, from bous ox and strophe a turning)

Of writing, alternating left to right then right to left. Not a word with a great deal of utility, unless you study ancient inscriptions, but very descriptive. I like the metaphor of an ox ploughing the field back and forth from one direction to the other.

A Blast From The Past

From the 4 November 1979, "On Language" column by William Safire:


The Fumblerules of Grammar

Not long ago, I advertised for perverse rules of grammar, along the lines of "Remember to never split an infinitive" and "The passive voice should never be used." The notion of making a mistake while laying down rules ("Thimk," "We Never Make Misteaks") is highly unoriginal, and it turns out that English teachers have been circulating lists of fumblerules for years.

As owner of the world's largest collection, and with thanks to scores of readers, let me pass along a bunch of these never-say-neverisms:

Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.

Don't use no double negatives.

Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't.

Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed.

Do not put statements in the negative form.

Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

No sentence fragments.

Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Avoid commas, that are not necessary.

If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.

A writer must not shift your point of view.

Eschew dialect, irregardless.

And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.

Don't overuse exclamation marks!!!

Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.

Hyphenate between sy-
llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.

Write all adverbial forms correct.

Don't use contractions in formal writing.

Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.

It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms.

If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.

Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language.

Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors.

Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.

Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.

Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.

If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole.

Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.

Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

Always pick on the correct idiom.

"Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'"

The adverb always follows the verb.

Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

APOCOPE

APOCOPE?

OK, so what is apocope? Is it contagious or fatal?

Apocope is leaving out the last sound, syllable, or part of a word.

When you talk about mag instead of magazine, fab when you mean fabulous, or cred for credibility, you are committing apocope. Perhaps it’s our rush-hurry-urgent age, but it seems that such energetic abbreviations are becoming more common, not merely with students who produce slangy in-terms such as psych, chem and math. It drives many folks crazy, too!

Apocope comes from the Greek word apokoptein, to cut off, made up of apo-, from or away, plus koptein, to cut. Spelling abbreviations like huntin’ or singin’ aren’t apocopic, because the missing last letter indicates that the final sound of the word has changed, not that it has been lost.

Incidentally, if you instead cut the sound off the start of a word, the right name is aphesis (an example being squire, an aphetic form of esquire); if you drop sounds in the middle (for which the classic — and extreme — example is fo’c’s’le for the crews’ quarters on board ship, in full forecastle), the process is called syncope.

But apocope is getting more wide-spread each day. We no longer have conversations but engage in convos. We do not order combination grinders for lunch but grab a combo. Even sports fans are getting beaten over the head with apocope. The Cleveland Indians play at Jacob's Field, right? Nope - they play at The "Jake". Even the University of Connecticut has been a victim. It is not Rentschler Field where they play football. It is The "Rent".

(sigh)

I long for the day when a sporting venue is purchased by a shiitake mushroom conglomerate.

"Welcome fans! Today's game from the ..." Well, you know.

Still Another 5 Words

A language is the soul of its people. This is nowhere illustrated more profoundly than in the Yiddish language, the language of Jews of eastern and central Europe and their descendants. A tongue full of wit and charm, Yiddish embodies deep appreciation of human behavior in all its colorful manifestations. The word Yiddish comes from German Judisch meaning Jewish. But it is not the same as Hebrew, even though it is written in Hebrew script.

Here's what Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer had to say about the language in his 1978 Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

"Yiddish language - a language of exile, without a land, without frontiers, not supported by any government, a language which possesses no words for weapons, ammunition, military exercises, war tactics ...
There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love. The Yiddish mentality is not haughty. It does not take victory for granted. It does not demand and command but it muddles through, sneaks by, smuggles itself amidst the powers of destruction, knowing somewhere that God's plan for Creation is still at the very beginning ...
In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful Humanity."

Many of the everyday English language words such as bagel, klutz, and kibitz are terms from Yiddish. Today let's start our list of five words with another Yiddishism.


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schnorrer (SHNOR-uhr) noun

One who habitually takes advantage of others' generosity, often through an air of entitlement.

[From Yiddish, from German schnurren (to purr, hum, or whir), from the sound of a beggar's musical instrument.]


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pettifogger (PET-ee-foguhr, -fo-guhr) noun

1. A petty, quibbling, unscrupulous lawyer.

2. One who quibbles over trivia.

[Probably petty + obsolete fogger, pettifogger.]

"The nitpickers, the whiners, the pettifoggers are everywhere. And they are so numerous and so noisy that they threaten to block our view of and drown out the clarion call of the squirrels." Bill Kraus, Without Health Care Reform, Forget It, Capital Times, 15 Dec 1993.

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Aesculapian (es-kyuh-LAY-pee-ehn) adjective

Relating to the healing arts; medical.

[From Aesculapius, the god of medicine and healing in Roman mythology.]

"These apparitions, as is the nature of their kind, vanished as soon as the crowing of the Aesculapian cock announced that the intellectual day of Europe was on the point of breaking." Draper, John William M.D., LL.D., History Of The Intellectual Development Of Europe: Chapter IV. Part II, History of the World, 1 Jan 1992.

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flatulent (FLACH-uh-lent) adjective

1. Of, afflicted with, or caused by flatulence, the presence of excessive gas in the digestive tract.

2. Inducing or generating flatulence.

3. Pompous; bloated.

[French, from Latin flatus, fart.]

"It's well known that a flatulent episode can range from a barely detectable rumble to a propulsive burst sufficient to attain low Earth orbit, depending on general health and recent visits to all-you-can-eat salad bars." Kluger, Jeffrey, What a gas, Discover Magazine, 1 Apr 1995.

"The trial of Andrew Johnson in the U.S. Senate during Washington's lovely spring of 1868 alternated between flatulent speechifying and blistering invective." John Burnett, Bob Edwards, Andrew Johnson Impeachment, Morning Edition (NPR), 21 Dec 1998.

Flatulent speechifying is now the order of the day in our Congress and it has trickled down through the entire political world even reaching down to the local level. What a concept! Trickle-down flatulence!

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm!

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piacular (pie-AK-yuh-luhr) adjective

1. Making expiation or atonement for a sacrilege.

2. Requiring expiation; wicked or blameworthy.

[Latin piacularis, from piaculum, propitiatory sacrifice, from piare, to appease, from pius, dutiful.]

"Dogs were also favourite piacular victims, as in the Lupercalia (February 15)." Foot Moore, George, History Of Religions: Chapter I, History of the World, 1 Jan 1992.


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What is the most famous number in history? The one that is both irrational and transcendental, and pursued since ancient times in Babylon, Egypt, India, and beyond, the one with a feature film made around it, the one that appeared in the O.J. Simpson Murder Trial, the one that has been calculated to billions of decimal digits? Of course, we are talking about pi, everyone's favorite number that continues to consume both countless hardcore mathematicians as well as ordinary mortals!

March 14 (3.14) is Pi Day.

Which Newspaper Do You Read?

Recently, you may have received an e-mail containing a journalism evergreen that has been circulating for a few years. It is always worth a few laughs whenever it appears. Here it is with a few revisions.

I received this from a family member last week and thought it would be a good item to share with you. By the way, my dear family member, I am truly sorry that you "felt lead" to pass this on. That must mean you have just been shot. It is "led"!

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1. The Wall Street Journal is read by people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could find the time -- and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the subway.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheists who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy unless, of course, they are not Republicans.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.

12. None of these is read by the guy who is running the country into the ground.

13. None of these were read to the previous guy who was running the country into the ground.

Ah! The Newspaper!

A newspaper is a daily marvel, even a miracle. There are 1,730 of them published daily in the United States with a combined circulation of nearly 62 million. Limitless possibilities exist for error, human and mechanical. Add the crushing pressure of deadlines, and it's surprising there aren't more mistakes.

When goofs do occur, editors scurry to print corrections, even though we often prefer the misprint to the corrected version.

Here just a few samples:


1. IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you are one of hundreds of parachuting enthusiasts who bought our Easy Sky Diving book, please make the following correction: on page 8, line 7, the words "state zip code" should have read "pull rip cord."

2. It was incorrectly reported last Friday that today is T-shirt Appreciation Day. In fact, it is actually Teacher Appreciation Day.

3. There was a mistake in an item sent in two weeks ago which stated that Ed Burnham entertained a party at crap shooting. It should have been trap shooting.

4.From a California bar association's newsletter: Correction -- the following typo appeared in our last bulletin: "Lunch will be gin at 12:15 p.m." Please orrect to read "12 noon."

5. We apologize to our readers who received, through an unfortunate computer error, the chest measurements of members of the Female Wrestlers Association instead of the figures on the sales of soybeans to foreign countries.

6. In Frank Washburn's March column, Rebecca Varney was erroneously identified as a bookmaker. She is a typesetter.

7. There are two important corrections to the information in the update on our Deep Relaxation professional development program. First, the program will include meditation, not medication. Second, it is experiential, not experimental.

8. Our article about Jewish burial customs contained an error: Mourners' clothing is rent -- that is, torn -- not rented.

9. In the City Beat section of Friday's paper, firefighter Dwight Brady was misidentified. His nickname in the department is "Dewey." Another firefighter is nicknamed "Weirdo." We apologize for our mistake.

10. Just to keep the record straight, it was the famous Whistler's Mother, not Hitler's, that was exhibited. There is nothing to be gained in trying to explain how this error occurred.

11. Our newspaper carried the notice last week that Mr. Oscar Hoffnagle is a defective on the police force. This was a typographical error. Mr. Hoffnagle is, of course, a detective on the police farce.

12. Yesterday we mistakenly reported that a talk was given by a bottle-scared hero. We apologize for the error. We obviously meant that the talk was given by a battle-scarred hero.

13. In a recent edition, we referred to the chairman of Chrysler Corporation as Lee Iacoocoo. His real name is Lee Iacacca. The Gazette regrets the error.

14. Apology: I originally wrote, "Woodrow Wilson's wife grazed sheep on front lawn of the White House." I'm sorry that typesetting inadvertently left out the word "sheep."

15. In one edition of today's Food Section, an inaccurate number of jalapeno peppers was given for Jeanette Crowley's Southwestern chicken salad recipe. The recipe should call for two, not 21, jalapeno peppers.

16. The marriage of Miss Freda vanAmburg and Willie Branton, which was announced in this paper a few weeks ago, was a mistake which we wish to correct.

Peephole in a Barbed Wire Fence

Several years ago, San Franciso Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll asked for information about the phrase "I stand before you to sit behind you..." I remember that he was deluged with comments. Like many of his correspondents, I had heard a version of the phrase as a child; it's the start of a contradictory nonsense verse. One night last week, as I searched for sleep, I got thinking about that phrase. The next morning I did some searching.

I performed an extensive Web search on the story part (which usually starts "One bright day in the middle of the night"), resulting in links to many Web pages that contained some version of the verse; most versions had the same basic structure, but almost every page had some slight difference from other versions.

With the results of that search in hand, combined with a couple of other sources, here is the saga of the two dead boys. This version combines what I consider the best (most contradictory) pieces of all the versions I've encountered:



The famous speaker who no one had heard of said:
Ladies and jellyspoons, hobos and tramps,
cross-eyed mosquitos and bow-legged ants,
I stand before you to sit behind you
to tell you something I know nothing about.
Next Thursday, which is Good Friday,
there's a Mother's Day meeting for fathers only;
wear your best clothes if you haven't any.
Please come if you can't; if you can, stay at home.
Admission is free, pay at the door;
pull up a chair and sit on the floor.
It makes no difference where you sit,
the man in the gallery's sure to spit.
The show is over, but before you go,
let me tell you a story I don't really know.
One bright day in the middle of the night,
two dead boys got up to fight.
(The blind man went to see fair play;
the mute man went to shout "hooray!")
Back to back they faced each other,
drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise,
and came and killed the two dead boys.
A paralysed donkey passing by
kicked the blind man in the eye;
knocked him through a nine-inch wall,
into a dry ditch and drowned them all.
If you don't believe this lie is true,
ask the blind man; he saw it too,
through a knothole in a wooden brick wall.
And the man with no legs walked away.

Many of the Web versions provide titles (such as "The Backward Rhyme" or "Contradiction Poem"), but almost all of the attributions are to our old friend Anon, with most people having learned it from a relative or as a jump-rope rhyme. One great comment (oddly, from Anon himself) notes: "This poem was taught to me a long time ago by nobody, but her name escapes me." That version is particularly unusual; it goes into more detail (the boys are identical twins, one black and one white) and continues the story: the boys sue the police officer, and the jury sentences them to hang in the electric chair.

Whatever its origins, the verse has obviously long since passed into folklore; comparing the different versions provides a fascinating snapshot of the folk process at work. Some versions are almost certainly misremembered variants of the more standard versions; others are almost certainly mishearings, misinterpretations, or perhaps simply misspellings (as with "a death policeman" in one version, and "through their swords they shot each other" in another). Some versions provide clearly intentional changes, as in "Dead Boys," a song by a musical group called Isotope Finis. The verse has been around the block a time or two; it's known in Alaska, Australia, Boston, California, Indiana, Virginia, and presumably much of the rest of the English-speaking world. (Perhaps readers can tell me if there are non-English versions extant?) It's been around since at least 1940, and is clearly still being passed along. (A surprising number of the Web versions were on "guest book" pages.)

These verses are related to other nonsense/contradictory verses, both folklore and otherwise, from songs like "Nottamun Town" ("From saddle to stirrup I mounted again / And on my ten toes I rode over the plain") to Stephen Foster's "Oh, Susannah" ("It rained so hard the day I left, the weather it was dry; / it was so hot I froze to death...").

British schoolchildren say rhymes like:

One midsummer's night in winter
The snow was raining fast,
A bare-footed girl with clogs on
Stood sitting on the grass.

and

I went to the pictures tomorrow
I took a front seat in the back,
I fell from the pit to the gallery
And broke a front bone in my back.
A lady she gave me some chocolate,
I ate it and gave it her back.
I phoned for a taxi and walked it,
And that's why I never came back.

Here's another:

'Tis midnight and the setting sun
Is slowly rising in the west.
The rapid rivers slowly run.
The frog is on his downy nest.
The pensive goat and sportive cow,
Hilarious, leap from bough to bough.

And one more to end with:

While on a Thursday morning, one Sunday night,
I saw, ten thousand miles away, a house just out of sight.
Its walls reflected inward, its front was at its back.
It stood alone between two more
and its walls were whitewash black.


There is always room on the Word Farm for such creatures as these!

Two News Stories

One real. One not.


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Aquarium lowers water levels after feeding turtles Brussels sprouts.


An aquarium has lowered the water level in their tanks to prevent gas bubbles produced by turtles from triggering overflow alarms.



Staff at the Great Yarmouth Sea Life Centre in Norfolk give turtles a seasonal treat of Brussels sprouts at Christmas which provide a healthy dose of vitamins, minerals and fibre.

However, the turtles, like humans, are prone to heavy bouts of flatulence after eating the vegetables.


Last year a turtle at a Sealife Centre triggered overflow alarms in the middle of the night after the splashes from gassy bubbles hit overflow sensors.

Now the Yarmouth turtle tank - 12 feet in depth and width holding 250,000 litres of water along with George the 3ft long green turtle - has been partially emptied for the festive season.

Thousands of litres have been removed to lower the water by a six inches and keep the sensitive alarms clear.

Displays Supervisor Christine Pitcher said: ''Last time an aquariist had to dash to the centre in the middle of the night, so we're not going to take any chances.

"Sprouts are really healthy for green turtles.

"The high levels of calcium in them are great for their shells, the fibre is good for their digestion and they also contain lots of beneficial Vitamin C, sulphur and potassium."

Senior Marine Biologist Darren Gook added: "We like to treat him to different foods and seeing as it's Christmas we thought brussel sprouts would be good.

"I haven't noticed too many bubbles coming from George yet but hopefully now the water levels have been adjusted flatulence won't cause problems."

Green turtles are mainly herbivores who feed on marine grasses and algae and are found in coastal regions of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

They are the largest turtles in the world and can grow up to one and a half metres (five ft) in length, weigh an incredible 400 kilos (63 stone) and live for up to 80 years.

Poaching and destruction of habitat has led to a decline in numbers and the species is now endangered, with a critically endangered population in the Mediterranean.

The eight-year-old resident male at Great Yarmouth Sea Life centre measures a metre and will reach maturity for another 20 years.


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Grammar Correction Man Beaten To Death

Police today revealed that a 27 year old English teacher has been beaten to death by the checkout staff at a supermarket in Guildford, Surrey.

An eye witness said "It was horrible - the man simply pointed out that the sign reading 'ten items or less' should in fact read 'fewer than ten items' because less means 'not as much' and fewer means 'not as many'."

Police say that following these comments the checkout staff set upon the man using cash bags and an assortment of frozen foods. Six employees have been arrested.

This is the latest in a spate of grammar related crimes; A woman was recently defenestrated by her husband when she pointed out to him that he'd said 'providing the weather is fine, I'll wash the car' rather than the correct 'provided the weather is fine', A 65 year old lady was injured by a man after she informed him of his constant muddling of the words 'whose and who's'.

Police are asking the public to be careful and only correct grammar if it is truly necessary or to add sense to complex sentences.

A police spokesman said "If you hear a double negative or a gerund not logically attached to the subject of a sentence resulting in a dangling modifier, just walk on by. Don't offer a correction; it's just not worth it."

"In the meantime if you suspect you have been the victim of a grammar related crime, please report it to the police"

Have you ever wondered...

Have you ever wondered what makes the butterfly? Surely, you’re thinking, it has nothing to do with a stick of butter sailing through the air. As a matter of fact, the word originally was flutterby long ago, but somehow, over time, it got twisted around.

That led me to some questions...


So, did you ever…


…go to a picnic on a windy day and see the butterfly?

…think you were alone in the woods, chop down a tree and then notice the chainsaw?

…make the woodwork while redecorating a room?

…turn on the TV and have your wristwatch?

…notice in autumn the tree leaves when the wind blows?

…while eating peanut butter have your chopstick?

…hear that in the olden days you could see a carhop?

…learn that women like the sound of a diamond ring?

…eat on a rolling ship and have your bread roll?

…approach a dogwood, being afraid of its tree bark?

…tell anyone that you crashed your bike, bent the frame and the wheel spoke?

…experience an earthquake and watch the kitchen sink?

…finish reading a mystery novel and think about the bookend?

…realize that in day-care a kidnapping is normal?

…knock over a bowl of fruit and enjoy a lemon drop?

…get kissed by your grandmother and have her lipstick?

…think that a beaver colony was a damnation?

…hear the tugboat captain claim he saw a catfish?

…realize that after people stop reciting a poem, it becomes pastoral?

…go to a cheap jeweler to buy a shamrock?

…go to a hotel, ring for service and then notice the bellhop?

…fill the rooms with helium and find you have a lighthouse?

…golf in the snow and have to endure a white lie?

…wonder if a productive farm requires massacres?

…go to the mall to see a barbershop?

…hear crosstalk when two people argue?

…know a cowboy who loves to have his horsehide?


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One note on New Year's Eve -

Judy and I had just gone to bed on New Year's Eve when we heard a strange sound outside by the bedroom window. It sounded like the soft bleating of a sheep followed by chuckles of laughter. I looked out and, sure enough, there was a happy ewe near.