Friday, June 12: Bandersnatches
DESKLESS
by Steve Steinbock
I’m feeling off kilter this week. I have no computer. To be precise, my regular desktop computer is in pieces awaiting a heart transplant. It became an unstable doorstop a few days ago, unable to remain on for more than two or three minutes at a time before rebooting. I don’t have any kind of warranty because we built it ourselves out of various parts.
I have probably mentioned my number-one son, Nate the Über-geek, in past columns. He’s the computer genius here at Bandersnatch Central. At the mere suggestion that I might buy a pre-packaged computer from Dell or HP, I get a twisted look from him — the same kind of look I, as a teen, might have given my father had he suggested I wear a lime green leisure suit. (Then again, I think I may have worn a lime green leisure suit back in the day).
Nate (whose Doodle for Google design won for the Maine) likes to play Doctor Frankenstein with computers. Beside his desk there are two computers, opened with their guts exposed. In the basement, he has the innards of about a dozen discarded PCs spread about, with several makeshift machines in various degrees of functionality, running various operating systems. He has a “Visible” computer built into a clear Plexiglas case, a picture frame computer (with all the parts hanging within a picture frame), and an Amazon computer (the case is a cut up cardboard shipping box from Amazon). He can get all of them to work some of the time, although the cardboard one is probably a fire hazard. But aside from this old laptop, I don’t have one of my own that works.
Anyway, that’s a roundabout way of saying that I’m working off my laptop, cramping my fingers and straining my eyes, feeling like I’m living out a suitcase. Nate tells me that he can set me up with an AMD 939 system. I’ll let you know.
Color Me Chocolate
Janet Rudolph, the founder of Mystery Readers International, editor of Mystery Readers Journal, and proprietress of Murder on the Menu runs a blog called Dying for Chocolate. Last weekend I guest-blogged there. You can read my piece here.
And Now a Word . . . (or two)
The funny thing about expressions is that sometimes we assume it derives from one thing, and it turns out to come from some altogether different source.
For the longest time, I thought the word “unkempt” was just a bad pronunciation of “unkept.” Both words imply sloppiness. But “unkempt,” it turns out, means “un-combed,” as in having messy hair, a trait I no longer have to worry about.
The expression “egg on” has always brought to mind images of Humpty Dumpty being encouraged to slip off his perch to his scrambled fate. It turns out I had a surprisingly apropos image, but not for the reason I thought. The expression has nothing to do with ova, be they bird’s, dinosaur’s, hard-boiled or sunny-side-up. But my early image of Humpty sitting on the edge of that wall was absolutely correct. The verb “to egg” comes from an Old Norse verb, eggja, roughly meaning to push toward something.
The term nonplussed gets teased into utter perplexity by wordsmiths. Even though many have jokingly used the word plussed, even though there is no such word in the English language. Non-plussed is a loan-phrase from Latin, meaning simply “no more!” When a person is nonplussed, they are in a stake of utter perplexity, a state in which nothing more can be done.
I’m fascinated with the evolution of the word Gothic. It began life as the name of Germanic tribes, grew into forms of literature and architecture, and somehow ended up as a fashion statement involving white facepaint, body piercings, and black nail polish. Perhaps that topic deserves a column of its own.
Wordplay is a hobby horse of mine. When I get together with people like my comrades here at Criminal Brief (especially Grammar Guard James Lincoln Warren), some amount of verbal horseplay is bound to occur. But it’s time for me to get off my high horse and wait for your comments.
You stumbled across a grievance I have with the Oxford Dictionary (US editions) regarding nonplussed, which says,
I have never heard or read nonplussed used in this way and I’ve lived or spent extensive time in most parts of the continental US except ND-SD-MT-WY. It’s my unproven belief in this instance the dictionary is helping to shape the language rather than the language shape the dictionary.
I enjoyed your chocolate article, Steve.
If nonplussed now means unperturbed my entire knowledge of language, meager though it may be, lies in shambles.
Being a frugal person who believes in wearing things out, the crack about lime green leisure suits cut to the quick. Mine may remain in the closet from now on. I intend to go right on wearing the orange one, of course.
I’m fascinated with the evolution of the word Gothic. … Perhaps that topic deserves a column of its own.
I couldn’t agree more.
Nonplussed seems to have arrived seevral years ago. I don’t know if it is still sconsidered as non standard with so many publications using it.
Unkempt—back in the days of retail the employee handbooks always referred to it as having your shirt tail out, tie loosened, etc.
When I wrote today’s column, I completely blocked out the common usage of the nonplussed that goes contrary to its meaning. Unlike Leigh, I’ve heard it used this way quite a bit.
Dick, you can wear your lime green leisure suit any time you want, and I promise not to laugh. Do you also wear polyester plaid pants?
JLW, I’d love to hear how the CCWC is going. Feel free to dive in and give us a report. And I promise to go Goth in the near future.
Unkempt is an 18th century variant spelling of unkembed, the same way dreamt is a variation on dreamed. “Comb” was originally the noun, and “kemb” the verb— Chaucer writes, “Her combe to kembe her hed.”
This has nothing to do with today’s topic but might be called a public service bulletin.
Far be it from me to say an unkind word about JLW, the esteemed head honcho of Criminal Brief, but it seems he has become a bit devious. A month ago I, like everyone else, opened AHMM and found his picture among the short bios of writers. Leafing through the magazine did not reveal so much as a single word written by him.
Today I found his name on the cover of the September issue (my God, these people know how to dispose of summer in a hurry) and searched for his story. Again he has not written one. In fairness, he did write an introduction to a 1958 story by Fritz Leiber. The introduction has me once again wondering how a man can carry so much information around in his head. It has to rank among the finest of all introductions.
A hint was dropped by Linda Landrigan as to why JLW has his picture but no story in one issue, his name on the cover but no story in the next. She says, “James Lincoln Warren charmed us. . .”
So that’s what it takes, is it?
Dick, James has a special relationship. Magazines send him SASEs. When they pay him, they send a limousine with a giant check, giant in both meanings.
Steve, my question is: How much has the OED shaped our language with the spurious meaning of nonplussed? Granted, some words such as ‘doubt’ morphed into opposite meanings, but even if there is a regional misuse of the word, it should be noted as regional and not North American.
Wikipedia had a bullying and bitter debate over the spelling of a certain word. The result was that even though every dictionary, both English and North American, spelled the word one way, the Wikipedia ‘consensus’ was to use their own spelling because it was commonly found on the web– almost certainly because the spurious spellers were referring to Wikipedia’s incorrect spelling.
Fritz Leiber also wrote a wonderful and whimsical story involving a famous missing watch that belonged to the 19th century chess genius Paul Morphy, called “Midnight by the Morphy Watch”. My story “Cold Reason” (AHMM, April, 2008) involves the Morphy watch, and the corpse was named “Friedrich Lieber” — “Fritz” being the diminutive of “Friedrich”. (“Lieber” was deliberately misspelled because when the “i” comes before the “e”, it is the German word for “love”, and in a way, that story was a love letter to Fritz.)
My favorite line in “Cold Reason” comes at the end of the first paragraph:
“To me, a Sicilian defense is the Fifth Amendment.”
So in response to any accusations leveled at me with regard to guile, I humbly take the Sicilian defense.
. . . and speaking of AHMM, the new issue of EQMM just arrived in my mailbox today with a story by Robert Lopresti. With that story and the story in Seattle Noir, I may have to celebrate with a Lopresti-fest this weekend.
Leigh, the Oxford Dictionary (American Edition) is not remotely the same thing as the Oxford English Dictionary, although they are both published by Oxford University Press. They don’t even have the same editors.
The American Oxford is a college dictionary, a handy one-volume reference meant to compete with the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary in assisting college students in writing term papers and parsing reading assignments. The OED is the single greatest work of scholarship in history and maps the English language in twenty volumes.
The OED lists only one definition of nonplussed: “Brought to a nonplus or standstill; at a nonplus; perplexed, embarrassed.”
The root nonplus is listed as both a noun and a verb, and means “a state in which no more can be said or done; inability to proceed in speech or action; a state of perplexity or puzzle” (noun) and “to bring to a nonplus or standstill; to perplex”(verb).
It was derived from the French expression mettre à nonplus, literally “to put no more in”, and dates from the sixteenth century.
Oxford gives the appearance of supporting this version of the word.
James, I think we should organize an underground nonplussed resistance unit.
Our motto: Non! Non! et plus non!
You folks would love the radio show “Says You!” A quiz show all about words and meanings. Steve, I know how you feel being temporarily uh, mouseless. (Has Nate read Stephen King’s story “Word Processor of the Gods” all about a home-made w.p.?)
Looking back on the title of this extravaganza… Steve, you still have a desk, so is “Deskless” proper? Maybe you “Topless.” It would fit with Wednesday’s S&M.
I reread “Cold Reason” recently and enjoyed it. Looking forward to the new AHMM.
My column next week will explain, as best I can, how the story in EQMM came about.
I have heard nonplussed misused in the sense described a number of times, and I think it is accurately North American rather than regional. Leigh, what was the word that Wikipedia decided to misspell?
Anyone who’s interested in Jon’s question, eMail me.