Saturday, April 04, 2020
Long-overdue Language Update for 2020
In an attempt to regain normalcy and equipoise, Professor Polistra returns with a small mix of new and old word oddities.
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Normalcy (emphatically old)
Prof P got curious whether Harding made any references to the Spanish Flu pandemic. A quick google for '1920 campaign speeches' found it without even trying.
From the transcript:
Normal was strictly math jargon until 1900 when Freudians brought it into common usage. Normality started a bit later, and it's pretty clear that Harding coined Normalcy. Harding was a powerful writer and speaker with slightly offbeat grammar. (See cataclysmal.) Unsurprisingly, FDR had the same tendencies.
So Normalcy wasn't a word until Harding said it, but it was a word AFTER he said it. A word in common usage is a word, no matter how many grammarrhoids claim it isn't.
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Marshall Law (new)
Now that Martial Law is grim reality in most places, people have forgotten how to spell it.
Even Strategic Culture, generally well edited, has this headline:
Standing on the Precipice of Marshall Law
[Later: They edited the headline.]
We're not on the precipice, dummies. We already jumped. It's time to get rid of partisan nonsense about what could happen if we "elect" the wrong candidate. No matter which candidate we "elected", all the "conspiracy" "theories" have turned out to be wildly understated as usual.
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The Couch Precinct and Judge Deady (old)
From a humorous account of the dictaphone:
It will pronounce a long sentence with as much feeling as Judge Deady. It never makes a mistake in repeating. Its ability in that direction has stood every test, except that of voting in the Couch precinct.
The Couch Precinct was in Sacramento, as seen in this directory.
It was usually called the Couch Tavern Precinct, which gives a clue to its tendencies but doesn't explain the voting.
Judge Deady shaped the laws of Oregon when it became a state. His rhetorical abilities aren't mentioned in online sources.
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Trick and Professional (new)
From DW coverage of the Thuringia coup by Merkel:
...Politicians must be professionals. When you see that AfD by a kind of trick is gaining power in the coalition, you must hinder it.
Trick = voting.
Professional = no voting allowed.
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Health epidemics (new)
From a Tesla 'disclosure'....
Furthermore, unexpected changes in business conditions, materials pricing, labor issues, wars, governmental changes, tariffs, natural disasters, health epidemics...
Come to think of it, the phrase isn't redundant. We are forced to believe that we're in a health epidemic when we're actually in a Marshall Law epidemic.
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Disway (new)
Ultimately, the #Russiagate tactic did not disway voters from electing Trump.
Pretty good portmanteau word.
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Extablishment (new)
Excape and excetera have always been common, but extablishment is a new and viral extension of the same principle.
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Vibrate (old)
In the 1800s vibrate simply meant move, not oscillate.
From the Sholes and Schwalbach typewriter patent:
First, in combining a series of connecting wires or ligaments with a series of type-bars of
a type-writing machine, pivoted and set so they may vibrate and all strike at the same place,
... with a pivot at one end and a key on the other, with a vibratory frame composed of a vibratory bar or arm attached to each end of a connecting-bar pivoted in line across over the key-levers so they may vibrate in vertical planes ...
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Normalcy (emphatically old)
Prof P got curious whether Harding made any references to the Spanish Flu pandemic. A quick google for '1920 campaign speeches' found it without even trying.
From the transcript:
My countrymen, there isn't anything the matter with the world's civilization except that humanity is viewing it through a vision impaired in a cataclysmal war. Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been racked, and fever has rendered men irrational. Sometimes there have been draughts upon the dangerous cup of barbarity. Men have wandered far from safe paths, but the human procession still marches in the right direction. Here in the United States we feel the reflex, rather than the hurting wound itself but we still think straight; and we mean to act straight; we mean to hold firmly to all that was ours when war involved us and seek the higher attainments which are the only compensations that so supreme a tragedy may give mankind. America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality but sustainment in triumphant nationality. It's one thing to battle successfully against the world's domination by a military autocracy because the infinite God never intended such a program; but it's quite another thing to revise human nature and suspend the fundamental laws of life and all of life's requirements. The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation, and that quantity of statutory enactments and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship. The problems of maintained civilization are not to be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship to government and no eminent page in history was ever drafted to the standards of mediocrity. Nor, no government worthy of the name which is directed by influence on the one hand or moved by intimidation on the other. My best judgement of America's need is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path. Let's get out of the fevered delirium of war with the hallucination that all the money in the world is to be made in the madness of war and the wildness of its aftermath. Let us stop to consider that tranquility at home is more precious than peace abroad and that both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent on the normal forward stride of all the American people. We want to go on, secure and unafraid, holding fast to the American inheritance, and confident of the supreme American fulfillment.We never heard this speech in school. We were INSTRUCTED that the only notable thing about his Normalcy campaign was the "fact" that Normalcy was not a word. Well, it wasn't a word until Harding made it a word.
Normal was strictly math jargon until 1900 when Freudians brought it into common usage. Normality started a bit later, and it's pretty clear that Harding coined Normalcy. Harding was a powerful writer and speaker with slightly offbeat grammar. (See cataclysmal.) Unsurprisingly, FDR had the same tendencies.
So Normalcy wasn't a word until Harding said it, but it was a word AFTER he said it. A word in common usage is a word, no matter how many grammarrhoids claim it isn't.
= = = = =
Marshall Law (new)
Now that Martial Law is grim reality in most places, people have forgotten how to spell it.
Even Strategic Culture, generally well edited, has this headline:
Standing on the Precipice of Marshall Law
[Later: They edited the headline.]
We're not on the precipice, dummies. We already jumped. It's time to get rid of partisan nonsense about what could happen if we "elect" the wrong candidate. No matter which candidate we "elected", all the "conspiracy" "theories" have turned out to be wildly understated as usual.
= = = = =
The Couch Precinct and Judge Deady (old)
From a humorous account of the dictaphone:
It will pronounce a long sentence with as much feeling as Judge Deady. It never makes a mistake in repeating. Its ability in that direction has stood every test, except that of voting in the Couch precinct.
The Couch Precinct was in Sacramento, as seen in this directory.
It was usually called the Couch Tavern Precinct, which gives a clue to its tendencies but doesn't explain the voting.
Judge Deady shaped the laws of Oregon when it became a state. His rhetorical abilities aren't mentioned in online sources.
= = = = =
Trick and Professional (new)
From DW coverage of the Thuringia coup by Merkel:
...Politicians must be professionals. When you see that AfD by a kind of trick is gaining power in the coalition, you must hinder it.
Trick = voting.
Professional = no voting allowed.
= = = = =
Health epidemics (new)
From a Tesla 'disclosure'....
Furthermore, unexpected changes in business conditions, materials pricing, labor issues, wars, governmental changes, tariffs, natural disasters, health epidemics...
Come to think of it, the phrase isn't redundant. We are forced to believe that we're in a health epidemic when we're actually in a Marshall Law epidemic.
= = = = =
Disway (new)
Ultimately, the #Russiagate tactic did not disway voters from electing Trump.
Pretty good portmanteau word.
= = = = =
Extablishment (new)
Excape and excetera have always been common, but extablishment is a new and viral extension of the same principle.
= = = = =
Vibrate (old)
In the 1800s vibrate simply meant move, not oscillate.
From the Sholes and Schwalbach typewriter patent:
First, in combining a series of connecting wires or ligaments with a series of type-bars of
a type-writing machine, pivoted and set so they may vibrate and all strike at the same place,
... with a pivot at one end and a key on the other, with a vibratory frame composed of a vibratory bar or arm attached to each end of a connecting-bar pivoted in line across over the key-levers so they may vibrate in vertical planes ...
Labels: Equipoise, Language update
¶ 12:56 AM
