Those poets and pundits tiring of the voguish mushy in its meaning of “excessively sentimental” might try the Briticism soppy, which means “dreamily silly” or “emotionally overboard,” as in this recent Times of London assessment of “canine and feline transition” in Washington: “Mr. Bush genuinely seems to be as soppy about animals as any of his predecessors.”
The synonymy of such lovesick sappiness: mawkish is unpleasantly insipid; maudlin is teary (an alteration of the weeping penitent Mary Magdalene); gushy is prone to pour out torrents of flattery; schmaltzy is cornball; gooey implies a substance or emotion both sticky and slithery; squishy-soft is moistly weak; bathetic, from the Greek bathos (“depth”), coined on the analogy of pathos to pathetic, connotes both triteness and insincerity.
Does this mean we should treat the sweetly sentimental mushy with scorn or cynicism? Of course not; we should never forget the gentle quality of romance long attached to the word, at least when pronounced with an uh. But let’s not overdo the sentiment; a touch of tartness helps the saccharine go down. As Al Capone’s men said to the members of Bugs Moran’s gang before lining them up and letting them have it in a Chicago garage, a Happy St. Valentine’s Day to all.
Another mush with political overtones is polenta, which is how Mario Cuomo described Walter Mondale. The American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition notes the word polenta as being of Italian origin and defines it as “a thick mush made of cornmeal and boiled in water or stock.” Cuomo, as I recall, went to his ethnic roots to describe Mondale’s blandness.
Gary Muldoon
Rochester, New York
My …What? How do you start a speech if you’re president?
My countrymen was the standard opening of a presidential address for generations. But that was back in the days when men were men—that is, when man embraced womankind and before both mankind and womankind became humankind.
Some speakers chose My fellow countrymen, even though John Wither-spoon in 1781 denounced that as “an evident tautology” and advised, “You may say fellow citizens, fellow soldiers, fellow subjects, fellow Christians, but not fellow countrymen.” If a member of the Judson Welliver Society of former White House speechwriters were writing an opening for Mark Antony today, it would have to be “Friends, Romans, fellow citizens”—perhaps followed by the nonmetaphoric “lend me your auditory facility.”
My friends was a salutation that got Horatio Seymour, governor of New York, into trouble when he used it to address draft rioters in 1863. But when Franklin D. Roosevelt began using it in 1910, in a campaign for the New York State Senate, it became his signature opening and is still closely associated with him as a verbal handshake at the start of his series of radio “fireside chats.” (FDR did not, as legend has it, use My fellow immigrants in addressing the Daughters of the American Revolution.)
Abraham Lincoln also used My friends in saying farewell to his neighbors in Springfield but used no salutation at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg; that decision was appropriate to the occasion’s solemnity. In his second Inaugural Address, Lincoln used Fellow countrymen, the anti-redundancy Witherspoon to the contrary notwithstanding.
In his farewell address, President Clinton saluted his audience with My fellow citizens, his most frequently chosen salutation, consciously following the one chosen by Thomas Jefferson in his first Inaugural Address. Clinton also often used My fellow Americans, but that, like fellow citizens, seems to ignore the global audience. John Kennedy handled that problem nicely in his Inaugural Address with “My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you….”
Moving past the salutation, the farewell addresser must pass two tests: first, to exhibit none of the bitterness he feels toward his carping critics, and second, to say good-bye. George Washington almost failed the first; Bill Clinton finessed the second.
In the first draft of his farewell in 1796, written in his own hand on May 15 and sent to Alexander Hamilton for his review, President Washington gave vent to his feelings about the Anti-Federalist press: “As some of the Gazettes of the United States have teemed with all the Invective that disappointment, ignorance of facts and malicious falsehoods could invent,” wrote our nation’s preeminent founding father, “to misrepresent my politics and affections; to wound my reputation and feelings; and to weaken, if not entirely to destroy the confidence you had been pleased to repose in me; it might be expected at the parting scene of my public life that I should take some notice of such virulent abuse. But, as heretofore, I shall pass them over in utter silence.”
That is an example of paraleipsis, the rhetorical technique of pointing something out by asserting you will not point it out, often preceded by the phrase “not to mention.” Critics like the pamphleteer James Thomson Cal-lender (secretly subsidized by the Anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson) evidently infuriated Washington.
Hamilton, who had been G.W.’s wartime aide-de-camp and later his treasury secretary, reacted as a faithful speechwriter should. He sent a fresh draft of a farewell address back to Washington, leaving out the anti-press diatribe. The president, with his true feelings off his chest, agreed to the excision and is not remembered for what he did not say.
Washington’s contribution to presidential inaugurals came after the oath itself: the emphatic “so help me God.” That is not in the oath prescribed in the Constitution; it was added by Washington. Ever since that first inauguration, the chief justice doing the swearing-in has had to ask the president-elect beforehand if he wanted to repeat Washington’s addition. All have, with the possible exception of Franklin Pierce.
Clinton’s farewell had none of G.W.’s first-draft bitterness, though the forty-second president surely felt that there were some vituperative right-wing columnists out, in the framer’s phrase, “to wound my reputation and feelings.” Even now, in the nostalgic glow of nonpartisanship, I am tempted to point out that, in his otherwise carefully composed self-encomium, Clinton’s “working together, America has done well” is a prime example of a dangling modifier. It could be corrected by changing the subject “America” to “Americans” or “the American people,” which would be a plural subject that could be “working together.” But in the father of our country’s paraleiptic tradition, I will pass over this grammatical lapse in utter silence.
In farewell, Washington’s draft took his leave with “I leave you with undefiled hands—an uncorrupted heart—and with ardent vows to heaven.” Lincoln, departing Springfield to take up leadership of a country coming apart, more personally noted: “Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed…. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.” Clinton did not say good-bye at all.
What phrase does a president use to best conclude any speech to the nation? “Good night and God bless you” now seems to be the preferred leave-taking, though some might take it as a response to the sneezing of an entire people. Lately, we have been hearing more “God bless you and God bless America,” which suggests to some a plug for an Irving Berlin song.
Most Americans take a presidential blessing in stride, but some wonder, What credentials does a secular figure have to give a benediction? Contrariwise, in any absence of an evocation of the deity at the speech’s conclusion, the more reverent members of the audience may wonder, Why was the blessing left out? What’s next—will he strike “In God We Trust” from the nation’s coinage?
“Thanks for listening” is not quite right for viewers, and “Thanks for watching” leaves out the radio audience. “Keep those cards and letters coming” is outmoded in an e-mail generation.
How best for a president to wrap up and let the screens go to black? I don’t have that answer. Thank you and good night.
N
Name
That Enemy. “Osama bin Laden’s organization is called Al Quaeda,” e-mails Michael Klein of New York, “also spelled as Al-Quaida. President Bush pronounces it ‘al-KYDE-a’; others pronounce it ‘al-KADE-a’; still others pronounce it in four syllables: ‘al-ka-EE-da.’ Which is cor-rect?” Al Qaeda (no hyphen, and meaning “the base,” or of late, “the head-quarters”) should be spelled without the u after the q, thereby giving it a fricative kh sound. (We went through this with Ayatollah Khomeini.) The pronunciation bruited about the New York Times is “al CAW-id-ah,” with a k sound, though correspondents who have worked in Arabic-speaking countries use the palate-clearing sound of kh.
And while we’re at it, the Persian suffix -stan in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and de facto Kurdistan means “country,” from the Indo-Iranian stanam, “place” or “where one stands.”
A person from Pakistan is called a Pakistani and takes umbrage at being called a Pak or Paki. A person from Afghanistan, however, is called an Afghan and would look at you funny if called an Afghani or Afghanistani.
That is partly because afghani is the name of the currency: about 5,000 afghanis are worth one dollar, while Afghan has the high value placed on any human being (unless you are referring to the rug or the hound). The same shortening—no i or istani—is OK with Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kurds. The Pakistanis prefer the long form for the reason usually expressed in the punch line of a joke as “that’s the Middle East.”
Nameless Event. The surprise attack on the U.S. fleet in 1941 is remembered by the name of the place where it happened: Pearl Harbor. The bloodiest day in all our wars is also identified by its locale: Antietam creek (though southerners often identify that battle by the nearby town, Sharpsburg, Maryland). The shocking murder of a president is known by its victim: the Kennedy assassination.
But what label is applied to the horrific (more horrid than horrible, perhaps because of its less frequent use and similarity in emphasis to terrific) events of Sept. 11, 2001?
Because the calamities occurred almost simultaneously in two cities, they could not adopt the name of one locality or single structure: taken together, they are not written about in shorthand as the twin towers destruction or the bombing of the Pentagon. (And bombing is a misnomer, since no bomb was dropped.) Attack (or Assault) on America has been a frequent usage, but it seems too general, since Pearl Harbor was also an attack on the United States.
Terrorist massacre is accurate, since massacre means “indiscriminate killing of large numbers,” but that phrase has not been widely adopted. The recent tragic events is euphemistic and antiseptic, and the catastrophe in New York and Washington too long.
We may settle on using the date. Just as FDR vividly identified Dec. 7, 1941, as “a date which will live in infamy,” many journalists use “ever since Sept. 11” as shorthand for this new date of infamy. (A further shortening is 9/11, as in “The New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund,” which is also a play on the number punched on a telephone keyboard for emergencies.) In time, however, the nation’s choice of the date of December 7 was replaced by the location of the disaster, as Americans “remember Pearl Harbor.” On that analogy, perhaps a new designation will appear for the disaster that struck an unsuspecting nation now seeking a return to normalcy.
Needing To. “You need to shut up and follow when an order is lawful,” said Lt. Col. Martha McSally as she sued the Defense Department for requiring a female fighter pilot to wear a head-to-toe gown off-base in Saudi Arabia. “You need to step out when it’s unlawful.”
Washington’s health commissioner felt strongly that it was time to let the public know the degree of ignorance about anthrax: “It’s time for us to stop needing to say we know,” said Dr. Ivan Walker, “and let the people know what we don’t know.”
And President Bush made official the growing use of this semimodal auxiliary verb with his answer in a news conference: “Anybody who harbors terrorists needs to fear the United States.”
What’s with the new need for need? We’re not talking about the noun, of Teutonic origin associated in Welsh with “starvation”; today, the noun need means “a lack of something essential, a desire for a missing necessity.” Nor is it the simple transitive verb need, as in “I need help,” that concerns us—that meaning of “have the desire to get what is urgently lacking” is clear enough.
It’s the semimodal verb that’s on the rise in usage and requires our help. The language has a bunch of short verbs that help determine the timing or character of the action-oriented verbs that follow. These affect the “mode,” sometimes confusingly called “mood,” of the verb that follows—coloring it as a fact, a possibility or a command. These auxiliary verbs that extend the meaning of the main verbs include can, may, must, shall and will. (In “I may bollix up this explanation,” may is the modal auxiliary that sets the conditional mode, sometimes called “subjunctive mood,” of the verb bollix, a verb whose ancient nautical coinage has its genesis in genitals. The other moods are “indicative” for a statement of fact and “imperative” for an order. In grammar, “melancholy” is not a mood.)
But sometimes those out-and-out modals don’t quite do the job to clarify or color the meaning of the verb that follows. In “I can see,” the modal can is ambiguous: it doesn’t mean the same in “I can see a steeple” as in “I can see deficits as far as the eye can see.” That’s why speakers who want to emphasize can’s sense of “ability” choose to substitute the semimodal verb phrase am able to. It won’t be confused with “know how to” or “is likely to” or “is permitted to”—all different senses in “Can I?”
Same with must, a modal verb that doesn’t always do for do what it used to do when bosses were tough: “I must do my homework.” In written form, it can be ambiguous: either a firm decision or a wishy-washy “if I don’t, I could flunk.” That possible misinterpretation of emphasis led to the semi-modal have got to: there is no mistaking the meaning of “I have got to do my homework” (or be expelled, ruined, spat upon and subsequently spend my life miserably flipping burgers).
We’re now ready to deal with the semimodal need to. “This need to is felt to be a stronger, more literal expression of necessity than must, which is felt to express less need than strict obligation,” says Sol Steinmetz, the great lexicographer and my modal mentor.
But what do people mean when they use the semimodal need to today? “Be required to, obligated to”? Or something quite different—“want to, desire to”? Sol says, “One could indeed say ‘I need to mail this letter’ instead of ‘I want to mail this letter’ when the emphasis is on necessity rather than desire.”
What with the explosion of semimodal usage, I needed to get this off my chest (in the sense of “wanted to,” because I like to flush out vogue uses). Now I need to turn to another subject (in the sense of “am required to,” as in “or else this will be followed by white space, apoplectic editors and a new career flipping burgers”).
This usage of “need” has long irritated me. It seemed to have flourished in Washington during the Clinton years. Remember him telling the country, after distancing himself from “that woman,” “I need to get back to work”?
John J. Sheehy
New York, New York
I wish you had included an analysis of the neologism I need you to (as in “I need you to sign your name, or roll up your sleeve, or take off your bra”), a recent successor to the equally inane for me (as in “make a tight fist for me”). Where do these (faintly belittling) locutions come from—and how do they spread so fast?
Maria Pelikan
New York, New York
Negative Pregnant. One advantage of being a card-carrying language maven is that you suffer no compunctions about asking, “What does that mean?” (Or, in colloquial conversation, “Whassat?”) Your interlocutor rejects the possibility of your being ignorant, which you may well be, and instead thinks: “This is a test. He knows and is trying to trap me.”
In an interview with Richard Danzig, a
former secretary of the navy, about the bioterrorism threat, we came to an arcane point of military strategy. When he said, “That’s an example of the negative pregnant,” I perked up with my usual shucks-that’s-beyond-me question, which he countered with “You’d better look it up. It’s a fascinating legal term.”
I have and it is. It means “a negative implying an affirmative,” and understanding it is a way of stopping the slippery.
Pregnant (from the Latin præ, “before,” and nasci, “to be born”) is most commonly taken to mean “with child in the womb.” But there is a figurative sense of “filled with,” “fertile,” “big with consequences,” which appears in our pregnant pause. Grammarians have the phrase “pregnant construction” to denote a phrase that implies more than it expresses and is thus a favorite with poets. The Century Dictionary’s example is “The beasts trembled forth [that is, came forth trembling] from their dens.”
It was the Augustinian logicians who adopted the negative pregnant. Paul of Venice, working in the 14th century, came up with propositio categorica negativa prægnans. The lexicographer John Cowell in 1607 gave an example of a negative implying also an affirmative, which I will put in updated English: “As if a man, asked if he did a thing upon such a day, or in such a place, deny that he did it in some specific manner, he implies an admission that nevertheless in some form or other he did it.”
If an inexperienced prosecutor asks, “Did you kill your husband on March 15 of last year?” and the witness replies, “I didn’t kill him on March 15,” she is trying to be evasive; to the alert, this implies that she killed him on some other date. That denial of a partial qualification of a charge is a negative pregnant. It’s a sneaky way of wriggling away from an honest answer, and political observers will be glad to learn its name.
The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time Page 24