Ever since our family's horse Fonso was a Kentucky Derby winner in 1880 (time: 2:37.50, winnings: $3800), the family has paid close attention to the lineup on Derby Day. This year, as the good writer you are, you'll no doubt put your money on Comma to the Top, its nouveau riche Hollywood owners notwithstanding. Next year, maybe there'll be a horse named Dangling Participle running for the roses.ad hominem
Pronunciation: ad HAH ma nim Example:
"But because we often react more strongly to personalities than to the sometimes abstract and complex arguments they are making, ad hominem appeals are often very effective with someone who is not thinking critically."
Definition source: Merriam- Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary
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The Oxymoron, or the Pointedly Foolish |
The Greek and Latin writers liked the juxtaposition of contradictory terms for effect, and students who translate from the classics quickly learn not to be startled by expressions that have to be rendered "small to a great degree," "enormously little," "arrogantly modest," or what not. The classifying rhetoricians came to list this device among figures of speech as an oxymoron, which means pointed foolishness or dull acuity--itself an oxymoron.
Webster illustrates with cruel kindness and laborious idleness; the Oxford Universal Dictionary cites: Voltaire...we might call, by an oxymoron, an "Epicurean pessimist." Such expressions as politely insulting, sour pleasantry, and eloquent silence are not strange English, and no volume of quotations would be likely to overlook Tennyson's faultily faultless, ...splendidly dull. James Thurber has said that he once described a building as pretty ugly and a little big for its site, in order to confound an editor who fiercely hunted down all discrepancies, real or apparent. Pretty ugly is, of course, an oxymoron only by a sort of pun, the adverb being an accepted synonym of moderately. Nevertheless, the joining of the two words revives the literal meaning of pretty and makes the pairing undesirable.
The same may be said of even odd in this sentence from a New York Times editorial; Sometimes it requires devious and even odd ways to accomplish good purposes. In this common class of accidental oxymorons, the pointedly foolish becomes pointless. A spokesman of the British Foreign Office [in the 1960s] is reported to have said, The situation in Iraq is clearly very confused. A novelist writes they had found increasingly little to talk about. A broadcaster promising to make a long story short says that he will practice economy of verbiage; in other words, a shortage of excess. All these inadvertencies are to be deplored. The good oxymoron, to define it by self-illustrative phrase, must be a planned inadvertency.
There is a type of purely mental oxymoron in certain ambiguous statements of the kind favored by advertisers, e.g., We stand behind every gun we sell, or in the old catchphrase of the borrower, If you would help me I will be forever indebted to you. An official in the Treasury Department once tried to make his colleagues more aware of their diction by circulating a memorandum on economic ups and downs that paraphrased the usual jargon in a series of oxymorons: It should be noted that a slowing up of the slowdown is not as good as an upturn in the downcurve, but it is a good deal better than either a speedup of the slowdown or a deepening of the downcurve; and it does suggest that the climate is about right for an adjustment to the readjustment.
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Source: Modern American Usage: A Guide (1966), edited by Jacques Barzun.
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Try your hand at these words with Spanish etymology now common to the English language:
1. chipotle: (a) prepared or served with a generous amount of usually coarsely ground black pepper; (b) a thick sauce of meat and chilies; (c) a smoked and usually dried jalapeno pepper; (d) a sweet pepper used for making paprika.
2. mariachi: (a) a xylophone of southern Africa and Central America with resonators beneath each bar; (b) a rattle usually made from a gourd that is used as a percussion instrument; (c) things that impede; (d) a Mexican street band.
3. rebozo: (a) a slight offense; (b) a long scarf worn chiefly by Mexican women; (c) any of various beans used in Mexican-style cooking; (d) Spanish for "Play it again, Bozo."
4. rhumb: (a) a person or ship engaged in bringing prohibited liquor ashore or across a border; (b) the application of friction with pressure; (c) a line or course on a single bearing; (d) an alcoholic beverage distilled from a fermented cane product.
5. tequila: (a) a Mexican liquor distilled from the fermented sap of an agave; (b) a Mexican liquor distilled from the fermented sap of a mango; (c) a Mexican liquor distilled from the fermented sap of a cactus; (d) a sugared concoction of rum, lime juice, triple sec, and ice.
6. stevedore: (a) a person who likes, knows about, and appreciates a usually fervently pursued interest or activity; (b) one who works at or is responsible for loading and unloading ships in port; (c) a horseman in a bullfight who jabs the bull with a lance to weaken its neck and shoulder muscles; (d) a case or enclosure (as for storing cigars) in which the air is kept properly humidified.
7. luminaria: (a) Mexican movie stars; (b) a colorful woolen shawl worn over the shoulders especially by Mexican men; (c) a usually glazed printed cotton fabric; (d) a traditional Mexican Christmas lantern originally consisting of a candle set in sand inside a paper bag.
8. brocade: (a) a restrictive measure designed to obstruct the commerce and communications of an unfriendly nation; (b) a spit for roasting meat; (c) having ample extent from side to side or between limits; (d) a fabric characterized by raised designs.
9. bolero: (a) a long heavy single-edged knife of Philippine origin used to cut vegetation and as a weapon; (b) a loose waist-length jacket open at the front; (c) a cord fastened around the neck with an ornamental clasp and worn as a necktie; (d) a usually small grocery store in an urban neighborhood.
10. fandango: (a) the voice part next to the lowest in a 4-part chorus; (b) feeling of spiritual exaltation; (c) a lively Spanish or Spanish-American dance in triple time that is usually performed by a man and a woman to the accompaniment of guitar and castanets; (d) an instance of merrymaking, feasting, or masquerading.
Here are the answers to today's Vocabulary Test!
