Sounds

Posted on August 27, 2025 by Kathy
Gargoyle and heads, Chichester Cathedral
Gargoyle and heads, Chichester Cathedral by Rob Farrow is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

I learned two etymologies from my new favorite YouTube Channel, The Salisbury Organist, created by a young Brit named Ben Maton. Actually, one I was reminded of, and the other I learned from Ben.

Ben’s videos include a lot of organ explaining, which necessarily includes a lot about organ stops. If you know the expression “pull out all the stops,” you probably already know its origin. A pipe organ has as many as 150 stops, that is, mechanisms that admit or stop air from moving into a pipe to make a particular sound. If you pull them all out at once, allowing air into all the pipes, you create a blast of sound. In a figurative sense, pulling out stops means increasing effort, making use of all your resources. The English poet Matthew Arnold of “Dover Beach” fame may have been the first to use this expression non-literally:

Proud as I am of my connection with the University of Oxford, I can truly say, that knowing how unpopular a task one is undertaking when one tries to pull out a few more stops in that powerful but at present somewhat narrow-toned organ, the modern Englishman, I have always sought to stand by myself, and to compromise others as little as possible.
— Essays in Criticism, 1865

Nowadays, an athlete, a political party, or Bruce Springsteen might be pulling out all the stops at any given time.

Smarter than I, you may already know the other derivation that Ben shared.

In this recent video, when Ben gets caught in a thunderstorm on his way to a lovely English church, he points out a gargoyle channeling the water from on high, the etymology of which I had never considered. If I had noted that gargoyles have open mouths, the better to channel rain water down from roofs, I might have connected the term with gargle, an onomatopoetic borrowing from French. The sound of gargouiller and our word gargle is roughly the sound we make when we, you know, “hold a liquid in the mouth or throat and agitate it with air from the lungs.” I knew gargling was the sound we make, but I never associated it with gargoyles.

I was thinking that the creature pictured above might, more accurately, make the sound gurgling, rather than gargling. But that would be a a different etymology: gurguliare is Latin for making a gurgly sound. And that would make our monstrous creature a gurgoyle.

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Panning Dwight Garner’s Pan

Posted on August 21, 2025 by Kathy
Photo by Jack Anstey on Unsplash

Dwight Garner begins his recent New York Times review of Ron Chernow’s biography Mark Twain with this inelegant simile: the book “squats over Twain’s career like a McMansion.” McMansion typically connotes size, ostentation, and a lack of style. I’ll grant Garner’s merciless pan a few points here and there, but, overall, I’m left wondering exactly what his beef (pun intended) is. I have a theory, which I’ll get to at the end.

As to the book’s size, I have no argument. Chernow’s text runs to 1,033 pages, with over 100 additional pages of notes, acknowledgments, and index. For comparison, Twain’s autobiography is about 400 pages long, Justin Kaplan’s 1966 work Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography was a smidge over 400, and Ron Powers’s Mark Twain: A Life (2005) was roughly 700 pages. If you want a shorter read, pick one of those highly regarded predecessors.

Filling the thousand pages is a ton of detail, some of it repetitious. Chernow tells us over and over again that Twain was a flawed businessman–gullible and impulsive. In Chernow’s defense, Twain made the same mistakes over and over again, trusting in con men and flaky inventors, determined to get rich. In addition, Chernow returns frequently to the “Angelfish” of Twain’s later years, that is, the young girls and women he befriended and became obsessed with. Chernow is at pains to assure us, repeatedly, that no sexual accusations have ever surfaced about these relationships. But he avers, many times, that Twain’s predilections were at best unsettling. Many, many times, these tendencies and qualifiers are restated.

Could the book be shorter? Yes, it could.

At the same time, I chafed at some omissions. Why doesn’t Chernow tell us what year it is? Often, when I shared an anecdote from the book with my husband, he would ask, “When did that happen?” or “How old was Twain then?” I always answered, “Not sure.” In order to know what year, or even what decade I was reading about, I would have to refer to the endnotes to learn when the quoted letter was sent or when the Twain talk was delivered. Mostly, I muddled through and sometimes resorted to referencing Wikipedia on my phone to find out precisely when Pudd’nhead Wilson appeared. This bio is roughly chronological, but chapter headings, at least, should signify the years or decades they’re covering. I’d add to my own criticisms that occasionally Chernow’s prose is clumsy.

But back to Garner’s McMansion jibe. Maybe the heft of Chernow’s book makes it ostentatious, but I can’t think of any other pretensions. The style is straightforward and mostly readable. Maybe Garner finds readability boring, like a cookie-cutter McMansion? I don’t know.

And I can’t comprehend the need for the insulting verb “squats.” In what way could this thorough and interesting book be squatting over Twain’s career? What a mean sentence.

I’m frankly not sure what Garner’s major gripe actually is, but he asserts that Chernow “misses the man.” He assails the emphasis on Twain’s business failures: “his Twain is fundamentally a dupe, not a genius.” I could add also that Chernow dwells on Twain’s failures as a father and husband. He was loving but inept and often shockingly neglectful. He was vindictive and unforgiving to his perceived enemies. My guess, and it’s only that, is that Garner actually wanted less of the man. He wanted more hagiography and less clear-eyed scrutiny.

Chernow makes clear that Twain was, in fact, a genius. He commends his courage in adopting unpopular causes, such as opposing colonialism and providing reparations to African-Americans. He admires most of all Twain’s wit and energy–his astounding literary creativity. “What any biography of Mark Twain demands is his inimitable voice,” he writes, “which sparkled even in his darkest moments.” Chernow provides a satisfying helping of Twain’s brilliant humor. There’s wit on every page, even, as Chernow says, in Twain’s darkest moments. There were many of those, many of them self-inflicted. Garner says only hardy souls will make it through this “air-conditioned edifice” (whatever that means). This hardy soul made it through with a deeper appreciation of Twain’s gifts as well as his flaws. I accept Garner’s compliment.

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The Movie’s as Good as the Book! (And Vice Versa!)

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Kathy

Self-described grammar nerd Ellen Jovin came to town last week with her husband, Brandt Johnson, and their film Rebel with a Clause. A large, appreciative audience at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque enjoyed the movie and the Q & A that followed, and many attendees purchased Ellen’s book (with the subtitle Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian) afterwards.

In 2018, Ellen first set up the Grammar Table outside her Manhattan apartment with a sign inviting people to ask questions, vent,* and complain about grammar and grammar-adjacent* topics. Since 2018, the couple has* carted the Grammar Table to all fifty states, with Brandt filming hundreds of interactions with ordinary people on such pressing issues as the Oxford comma, the vagaries of lie vs. lay, and the proper use of the objective case pronoun (e.g., whom and me).

Ellen and Brandt are approachable and funny. In this they are similar to those visiting their table. Ordinary people in Toledo; Chicago; Decatur, Alabama; South Bend, Indiana; Red Cloud, Nebraska;* and many other cities are hilarious in their passion and argumentativeness, their insecurities and occasional over-confidence. Some people, for example, feel the urge to kill when they hear a sentence ending with a preposition. Ellen explains to them that this rule derives from Latin, and, because English is a Germanic language, not Latinate, prepositions are fine to end an English sentence with.

One should avoid, for instance, such constructions as, “Up to what are you?”*

The movie is traveling around the country as we speak, appearing in New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,* and Georgia in coming weeks. It’s not streaming yet, but, fingers crossed, it will be fairly soon. In the meantime, Ellen’s book is available wherever books are sold, and I recommend it. She and Brandt, their movie, and their book go way beyond grammar rules. They’re all about communication, and they make friends wherever they go, including here in Cleveland.

Note: Ellen’s book includes funny footnotes, so I decided to append footnotes here. Not necessarily funny.

*An Oxford comma in the wild. It occurs in a list before the closing and. People feel strongly about this convention–both for and against. Ellen’s approach is nuanced. (Chapter 1)

*Grammar-adjacent combines two words into one modifier with a hyphen—not to be confused with variously-sized dashes. (Chapter 33)

*I’m pretty sure the singular verb has is correct with the collective noun couple, because Ellen and Brandt are acting as a unit, as it were. (Chapter 42)

* The semicolons here do more harm than good, but they’re intended to illustrate semicolons in a list when there are intervening commas, which help identify the locations of less famous cities. (Chapter 23)

*The question mark goes inside the quotation mark because the quote itself is a question. (Chapter 41)

*I’m a fan of, though not fanatical about, the Oxford comma!

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Sym and Em

Posted on June 25, 2025 by Kathy
March 31, 2025

Yiyun Li’s recent memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow, made it onto my book group’s (I should say, “one of my book groups’ lists”) 2025-2026 reading list, and I’ve been thinking about it in respect to a request to discuss the words empathy and sympathy here. I know Yiyun Li’s story, having read an excerpt from her book in the New Yorker, and she’ll serve as a good example of what I want to say about empathy and sympathy.

First, as to etymology, -pathy derives from the Greek word pathos, meaning “feeling, suffering, emotion.” Think pathology, pathogenic, and psychopath. Falling rain in a sad movie is called pathetic fallacy, because it pretends that the weather reflects the characters’ feelings. The sym- in sympathy, means “with” or “together.” When you’re sympathetic with a grieving friend, you’re feeling their grief along with them. This English word dates from the 16th century.

Empathy was created by an art critic in 1908. German philosopher Rudolf Lotze combined the Greek prefix em-, meaning “in,” with the Greek word for suffering, modeling his term after the German Einfuhling, literally, “feeling in.” The idea is that you enter into the feelings of the grieving friend; you feel what they’re feeling. You enter into a work of art, according to Rudolf, and feel the artist’s feelings.

You can see that based on their roots and word history, there’s little difference between the two words. But influencers have recently turned a so-called difference into a big deal. I always enjoy disagreeing, especially with pop culture and conventional wisdom (unless the conventional wisdom is mine). What follows here is mostly my opinion, so, as we say nowadays, do your own research.

In popular culture, sympathy has turned into a bad word. It’s equated with pity, with its connotations of condescension, distance, and superiority. This take is recent. Throughout its long history sympathy had to do with feeling right along with your friend, used in a similar way as compassion, yet another word whose roots mean “suffering with.” Laudable emotions. Now, sympathy is to be eschewed.

Let us use Brené Brown, author of Dare to Lead and other books, as an exemplar. She claims that empathy drives connection, whereas sympathy drives, you guessed it, disconnection. Sympathy sets you apart. From a distance, you call out, “Oh, gosh. Your dog died. That’s too bad.” An empathetic person, holding your hand, says, with tears in her eyes, “Oh, gosh. My dog died too. I feel your pain.”

Here’s where my opinion comes in. First, Brown and other influencers are making stuff up. No need to differentiate the words this way. We already had pity to fill the bill for condescension. Second, I don’t think empathy is such a great thing if it means you’re telling people you know exactly how they feel, you’re feeling their pain, you know how hard it is, I’m right there with you, honey.

Here’s why I bring up Things in Nature Merely Grow, a memoir about Yiyun Li’s grief: both of her adolescent sons committed suicide within a few years. I most definitely sympathize with this unfathomable loss, but note the unfathomable. I’m never going to know fully (if I’m lucky) what it’s like to be Yiyun. It’s good to try to empathize, to try to imagine her suffering, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to fall short. Saying, “Oh, Yiyun, I know exactly how you feel. I’ve lost people too. I’ve known three people in my life who’ve committed suicide,” strikes me as Insensitivity 101.

I suggest you go ahead and express sympathy and/or empathy if you want. The two words are virtually synonymous. But you possibly want to lean on empathy because some podcast junkies might jump on you for expressing mere sympathy.

(Thanks, Jewel)

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If Doggies Could Write

Posted on June 18, 2025 by Kathy
Photo by David Lezcano on Unsplash

I learned recently that the GED test has dropped its poetry section, which used to be included in the reading portion, called Reasoning Through Language Arts. Which reminds me that my parents were amused, back in the sixties, at the new term language arts. They found it overly fancy. As with a lot of polysyllabic neologisms, we all got used to it. Now it sounds normal.

I was both pleased and chagrined at this news. People getting their GED shouldn’t have to jump through unnecessary hoops (in my opinion). As I implied in my previous post, unnecessary hoops might include balancing equations and manipulating negative exponents. I fear the poetry test questions might have emphasized the distinctions among similes, metaphors, personification, and synecdoche, and not really explored the relevance and beauty of poetry. All trees and no forest. I used to annoy my grad school friends by alluding to “the eternal truths as they are expressed in literature.” Probably the GED never touched on those.

On the other hand, the culture at large is nibbling away at the humanities, and the GED decision is symptomatic. The university where I used to teach has dropped foreign language majors and some foreign languages altogether, including Latin, ancient Greek, and Chinese. The department has been decimated. Students at an urban state university don’t need those frills, I can imagine our state capital sages saying. They just need jobs! The GED students, then, are victims of similarly low expectations. They miss out, maybe forever, on reading some pretty great stuff.

In the meantime, I remain happily mired in language minutiae. No practical applications, no job qualifications necessary. A case in point: Someone passed me a few lines of verse the other day and cautioned me not to read it in public, lest it make me cry. I read it as soon as she turned away and didn’t cry. Instead, the word doggerel came to mind because, to me, the poem was sentimental and trite.

I bet you know where I’m going with this. What’s the history of doggerel, anyway? What do bad poems and dogs have in common?

Doggerel does, in fact, derive from dogs. The word dog has been used contemptuously in many contexts, including poetry, as in “Whoreson dog!” (King Lear) and “Egregious dog!” (Henry V). Shakespeare used the word as an insult almost exclusively. If a dog wrote poetry, I guess he or she would do so ineptly. A whoreson and egregious dog’s verses would not be very good.

It’s all in the eye (and ear) of the beholder, of course. My acquaintance was genuinely moved by the bit of verse she shared with me. Debating such questions–what makes a good poem?–is, or used to be, part of most people’s general education. Now? Maybe not so much.

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Success!

Posted on June 14, 2025 by Kathy

I’m very happy to report that the young man I called Andre (see previous post) has earned his GED by passing the science portion of the test. No doubt his success was due to my facility with the work-energy theorem and expertise in the various solubilities of substances in water.

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Laws of Motion

Posted on June 6, 2025 by Kathy
Photo by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu on Unsplash

To protect his privacy, I’ll call him Andre and just say that he hails from a French-speaking African country. I’d guess that Andre is in his mid to late twenties.

Last month, I worked with Andre in the GED tutoring program (General Educational Development) where I volunteer once a week. He was practicing computing compound interest. Earlier that day, I helped a woman with regrouping (i.e. borrowing) in subtraction problems, so compound interest was quite a leap for me, but I kept my head above water with Andre. He needed very little help anyway.

Yesterday I was assigned to tutor Andre once again. In the meantime, he had passed the math portion of the GED test and was now preparing for his last section, science. (Another of my great strengths.) The four sections of the GED are Social Studies, Mathematical Reasoning, Science, and Reasoning Through Language Arts. The language arts section includes an essay, called “an extended response,” in which you have 45 minutes to write a four-to-seven paragraph analysis and argument in response to a short reading. The GED is administered on the computer, so you have to be able to type your essay. Andre has already passed that test, in addition to social studies and math.

We set to work on Andre’s science packet. One lesson had to do with chemical reactions and involved terminology like coefficient, subscript, formula, equation, ionic and covalent bonding, and hydrocarbons , both saturated and unsaturated. I was not, shall we say, in my element. (Pun intended.)

After a bit of reading and answering questions, Andre commented that he had studied similar material four or five years earlier, but in French. I commented in reply that I had also studied this material, but not since 1968. He did a much better job balancing an equation for photosynthesis, for example, than I did. He was working in what I assume to be his third language.

Later on, working on Newton’s First Law of Motion, I really shone when we encountered the word snowshoes. It took me two drawings to explain snowshoes to Andre, who’d never encountered the word, but I eventually conveyed the idea. I imagined that few of the other GED students around us, English speakers all, would know what a snowshoe was.

We moved on to Newton’s Second Law concerning mass, force, and acceleration. We encountered the measurement of force called newtons. Andre turned to me and mentioned another measurement term, pascals. He asked me if Newton was British, and I answered yes. I assumed he was implying that in English-speaking countries, we say newtons, and in French-speaking countries, they say pascals. But some googling when I got home set me straight. They’re two different things, but don’t ask me to define them. I do know who Pascal was, but that has more to do with his famous wager than with measurements of mass and force.

We almost completed the packet, working past the normal two-hour session. Andre comes to GED class every day, always dressed in a suit and tie. He attracts some attention from some of the ladies in class based on his natty appearance. He works the entire two-hour session. He plans to take the science test next week. If he passes, I may never see him again. I wish him very well, as I’m sure you do too.

Andre’s country is not on the new travel ban list, but I don’t know his immigration status and am of course a little worried about it. He comes from a troubled country which has taken time to recover from its colonial past, like Haiti and Afghanistan and other countries on the list. Andre and the American students I see each week (who also come from a troubled country) deserve every break due to their diligence and courage. I learned from our science packet that applying effort force results in moving a load some distance. Some students have ahead of them an onerous load to move a long distance: some are still practicing, for example, their short a sound, but maybe eventually they’ll be working on newtons, joules (a measurement of energy), and solubility. Because everyone who’s graduated from high school knows all about them, right?

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Whose Right Is It, Anyway?

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Kathy
Photo by David Veksler on Unsplash

The weeds are my sweet spot, etymologically speaking, and so we’re wading in. The subject is a constitutional principle that came up in the news today.

In a Senate hearing, Kristi Noem, the head of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, was asked to define habeas corpus. She said, “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.” The former governor of South Dakota thinks the Constitution gives the President the right to deport people, and she thinks that right is called habeas corpus.

Kristi Noem was a governor of a state, and she does not know the meaning of habeas corpus. A phrase which the founders put into the Constitution of the United States.

You don’t have to know Latin to know that habeas corpus is a citizen’s right, not a President’s right. A version appeared in the Magna Carta, an English charter of rights from 1215. That’s the Magna Carta. In 1215.

AI explains the concept like this: “A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial order forcing law enforcement authorities to produce a prisoner they are holding, and to justify the prisoner’s continued confinement.” People, in other words, that is, humans (that is, not necessarily US citizens) have the right to a public hearing notifying them of charges against them. The Constitution decrees that if you’re arrested, you’re entitled to a timely hearing, so that the court can evaluate the legality of your imprisonment.

Here come the weeds. The phrase is Latin, and if you know anything about Latin, you know it’s all about the endings. The verb habere means “to have.” The form habes means “you have.” But in the legal phrase, it’s spelled habeas. That a makes the verb subjunctive, a particular kind of subjunctive called iussive, meaning “command” or “order.” Habeas translated literally means “may you have” or “let you have.” It’s a let that’s more than a suggestion, as when your teachers used to say, “Let’s be quiet now.” They meant, “Be quiet!”

The direct object corpus means “body,” with its obvious English derivatives such as corpse, incorporate, corporal, and so on. The Constitution is not messing around. It’s telling law enforcement and the justice system that if you arrest someone, you have to produce that someone in court. A writ of habeas corpus says, “Let you have the body” in the courtroom. You can’t arrest someone and leave them to rot in a cell indefinitely without charges, without letting them come into court and to hear what they’re up against. Then the court can decide further steps.

I remember looking this phrase up many years ago and being startled at its simplicity and bluntness. Habeas corpus. Let you have the body. You must produce the living body of the prisoner in a courtroom.

The colonial British government didn’t have to produce a body before a judge. It had no obligation to give American colonists the right to a hearing. Neither do the modern governments of Russia, Saudi Arabia, or North Korea. People get sent off to prisons there and are never heard from again. No court ever evaluates trumped-up charges.

We have an administration proposing that we formally suspend habeas corpus, saying that from now on, it’s up to the government whether someone gets a hearing or not. As of now, some 50,000 immigrants are in detention in the US, without hearings. No one knows for sure how many people have already been deported to prisons in El Salvador and other countries, with no hearings and no notice and no legal representation. Habeas corpus is already being suspended.

Thoughts?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/20/kristi-noem-habeas-corpus-definition-senate-hearing/83744183007/

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Fan Mail, Reversed

Posted on May 18, 2025 by Kathy

Circa September, 1976, I received an astonishing postcard in the mail. Its handwriting was unfamiliar, the postmark said “Bellingham, Washington,” and it was signed, apparently, by Annie Dillard, my favorite writer. Or certainly one of the top five. I knew she lived in Bellingham.

I would quote the text verbatim, but I can’t put my hands on it right now. It should be tucked into my battered 1974 copy of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but it’s not there, which I’m trying not to worry about right now. Anyway, the postcard wished me a happy birthday, and the writer added that her wishes frequently come true. A postscript read, “John Ewing loves you.”

I knew there was no way Annie Dillard would send me a birthday greeting at my home address in Canton, Ohio. I was painfully aware that Annie Dillard had no idea where I lived or who I was or how much I loved her. That P.S. was my only clue, so I immediately rang up my boyfriend, John Ewing.

I began by asking something like, “How did you manage to send me a postcard from Bellingham, Washington?” I was imagining John’s conniving with some WA acquaintance who could forge a signature and arrange for the appropriate postmark.

John replied, “Oh, she did it? I had given up!” This was happening a week or two after my birthday.

“C’mon,” I insisted. “How did you do this?”

John said, “Really. I wrote her a letter telling her how much you liked her and asking her to send you a birthday greeting. I can’t believe she did it.” He worked at a library and had contrived somehow to find her address.

Eventually, he convinced me that the missive had come to me from Annie Dillard’s actual hands. I kept it safe lo these many years, until now, when I don’t know what became of it. I treasured it because of Annie Dillard, of course, but even more because of John’s creative and sweet gesture.

A few years later, I wrote to Pauline Kael, John’s (then) favorite film critic, and made a similar request. I enclosed a stamped, self-addressed postcard, hoping to guarantee success. Like Annie, Pauline sent John a friendly greeting.

Some years after that, I attended some talks and workshops Annie Dillard presented at Oberlin, when her daughter was a student there. In a smallish group setting, I asked her if she remembered sending me that message. She responded that she didn’t remember, but that she received similar requests fairly often and tried to respond to them. She liked to encourage romance, she said.

Writing this, I was pleased to discover a David Remnick New Yorker interview with Annie Dillard from 2016. Even when she was young, she was cranky, and in her seventies she’s a little more cranky. A crank who encourages romance.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/segments/david-remnick-speaks-annie-dillard

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Arabic Words in the News!

Posted on May 17, 2025 by Kathy
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

The English word tariff dates from the late sixteenth century. It referred to an arithmetical table or an official list of custom duties and derived from the Italian tariffa, meaning “a price or assessment.” That word came from the Latin tarifa, a list of prices, which derived from the Arabic ta’rif, which also described an inventory of fees. That Arabic word stems from a verb meaning “to make known.”

Or. Tar’if ‘became tarifa when it named a medieval town on the southern tip of Spain where ships were paid to pass through. My research doesn’t definitively explain which came first, the payments or Tarifa, the town.

Hundreds of words with Arabic origins have entered English, such as albatross and Alcatraz from last week. Some others are kismet, lacquer, and magazine. Hence, my frequent correction of well-meaning people who tell me, “Latin is the root of all languages.” Sometimes I bite my tongue.

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