Sunday, August 10: The A.D.D. Detective
PANTIES HALF OFF
by Leigh Lundin
The above caption was an advertisement earlier this week. Some of you would have been disappointed if this ad hadn’t caught my eye, but hey– that’s my job. The advertisement and one of those persistant spam eMails started me thinking about words, their meanings, and this around, their sounds.
Consider the word read. Present and past tenses are spelled the same, but pronounced differently. Occasionally, it causes us to backtrack in a sentence and pick up the correct tense.
Say What?
Legionnaires desert in the desert.
They object to the object of the article.
They subject the subject to ridicule.
Farmers produce produce.
One sows grain for his sows.
Whether to paddle or row caused a row.
The rabbi’s job was to read Job.
Santa presents presents.
Trashmen shouldn’t refuse refuse.
The fisherman tied a lead lead.
He sang bass before dining upon blackened bass.
The hunter does little harm to does.
She intimates her opinion amongst intimates.
It’s close enough to close the shop in the close.
Polish polish glasses in Warsaw.
The hawk dove at the dove.
Live and Let Die is live at the Orpheum.
Handicap parking isn’t invalid for the invalid.
He winds the kite against the winds.
He wound the wound with gauze.
The flesh tear caused her to tear.
Words That Bug Me
Sometimes people stumble across words with meanings that seem in conflict with their sound or spellings. In the early 80s, I heard a religous fundamentalist deriding the anti-Christian music of the "satanic rock group Santana". Days ago, I heard the same accusation repeated. Both times I pointed out that the group was named after Carlos Santana, and, like the name Santa, his last name was derived from "saint", not "satan".
I felt they were disappointed, but sometimes I feel the sound or spelling of words seems at variance with their meanings.
- doughty
- fearless, brave and persistent : his doughty spirit kept him going.
- When I read the phrase "thy doughty knight", I see "doughy" and a naked Pillsbury Leo McKern rides into my mental landscape causing the earth to shake and leaves fall from the trees. If I peer at the word too closely, I also see "doubt", a word that once in its career (according to Ellis Peters) meant "doubtless". The best I can do is imagine our WW-I doughboys were absolutely doughty.
- fearless, brave and persistent : his doughty spirit kept him going.
- prurient
- having or encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters : she’d been the subject of much prurient curiosity.
- The Latin origins are interesting and can be interpreted as a "wanton itch". However, when I was a schoolkid, my mind tried to trick me with a Rosanne Rosanna-Danna interpretation of "puritan". It took screwing up an exam before I bitch-slapped my brain into performing correctly. Now it sees "purulent".
- having or encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters : she’d been the subject of much prurient curiosity.
- abattoir
- a slaughterhouse : refrigerated trucks pulled up to the abattoir every night.
- I don’t screw up this word, but I have felt offended because the sound of the word was too beautiful and romantic, like boudoir. Instead of the French, I think we should have drawn upon our bloody Germanic old English roots and called a spade a spade with something like "schlachtengemetzehaus" which has the stink of the meaning in its syllables.
- a slaughterhouse : refrigerated trucks pulled up to the abattoir every night.
- flammable and inflammable
- easily set on fire : the use of highly (in)flammable materials is fraught with risk.
- It seems these words should mean the opposite of each other, but they mean the same. Why is that?
- easily set on fire : the use of highly (in)flammable materials is fraught with risk.
What words are on your list?
… spelled the same, but pronounced differently.
Such words are called heteronyms. If they also have independent etymologies, they may additionally be described as homographs.
flammable and inflammable … It seems these words should mean the opposite of each other, but they mean the same. Why is that?
Inflammable comes from the verb to inflame. The verbal prefix in- (as for example, to inspire or to inform), was frequently misinterpreted as the adjectival prefix in- meaning not (as in inelegant or inappropriate). The end result is that people would frequently think that inflammable was synonymous with non-flammable, i.e., that it meant the opposite of what it actually does mean. Because this misinterpretation could lead to significant danger, the archaic term “flammable” was resurrected in the 1950s to preclude any ambiguity.
Always be sure whether you have been paid to raise a building, or raze a building. Don;t flout when you mean to flaunt. Noisome does not mean loud. And fulsome has so many contradictory meanings that a wise writer should just stay the hell away from it.
Likewise, a sinking ship is foundering, not floundering.
How crushed the flounder will be.
Thanks for today’s brain food. Now you’ve got me puzzling to come up with more examples.
….before I bitch-slapped my brain into performing correctly……
At least ‘she’ was smart……..:-)
I should have mentioned Room’s Dictionary of Confusibles, by Adrian Room, which is full of helpful hints on words like these. A few more pairs from him: deceptive/deceitful, sensual/sensuous, tortuous/torturous, and upstage/downstage.