Sunday 28 June 2020

Errant Balls and Arrant Knaves

A few years ago, as you drove around the very south-eastern tip of Vancouver Island between two of the holes of the Victoria Golf Club, you would pass a sign that warned:

 Beware of errant golf balls

The sign has gone now — perhaps because there was not much you could do to avoid a flying golf ball heading for your windscreen — to be replaced by a less alarming warning against parking your car at the side of the road next to the course.

It always struck me as an unusual word to describe a golf ball that comes out of nowhere and strikes you or your car. It's a word more appropriate for wandering adventurers in days of chivalry, as in knights errant. I mean, it would hardly be a wandering golf ball: its trajectory is straight, if not true. Besides, it is the golfer who errs, not the ball.

But no, this is not an unusual word to describe a ball that is not driven towards the green. It seems that every golf club in the land has regulations about the problem of errant golf balls: what to do about them and how to insure against liability for the damage they cause. Who is responsible? The golfer, the club, or the victim? (Note, in this instance, the use of the Oxford comma!)

Sadly, a word that once had such romantic connotations is now used, more often than not, to describe a ball hit by an incompetent or unfortunate golfer.

More fortunate is one of my friends, Paul, who does rather well out of errant golf balls. His house backs on to the golf course and he collects the errant balls that land in his yard. Occasionally, in an act of arrant errantry, a ball breaks one of his windows, but, to their credit, the golf club replaces it.

The related word, "arrant", comes from the same root, "to err". Both of the adjectives, "errant" and "arrant", describe something that has strayed from the straight and narrow, but in the latter case, very much so, to mean "utter" or "extreme". “We are arrant knaves, all,” says Hamlet, in one of his more misanthropic moments.

To my mind, the arrant knaves in this story are the members of the board of the Victoria Golf Club who reserve this magnificent piece of land for privileged golfers, but fail to provide a footpath around the edge of the course for commoners to re-create themselves on one of the most wonderful parts of the coastline, where the straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca meet. They would argue, of course, that walkers might be struck by errant golf balls, but I for one would take that chance.

Friday 26 June 2020

A Colonoscopy of Democrats

"The colonoscopy of the vetting is now occurring," said a Democratic official, referring to the Vice Presidential candidate selection process, and speaking on condition of anonymity (CNN, 26/06/2020). Presumably, he meant that the Joe Biden team was in the last stage of their search for a candidate. Insiders believe that four women (Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Val Demings, and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms) remain in strong contention. 

The purpose of a metaphor is to create an image to make the meaning more clear. I picture a colonoscopy. The candidates who didn’t make it to the shortlist must have been discarded as negative stool samples, and those remaining are the polyps deep in the bowel of the Democratic Party, to be probed, filmed, sliced and tested by the selection team. But what exactly are they looking for? A cancerous (or communist) cell?

Well might the Democratic official who created this image wish to remain anonymous! It may be the most inappropriate metaphor of the year. What a bummer!

For another inapt metaphor, see the Climate Action   Lens.

Thursday 25 June 2020

Re-Creation

Mount Douglas Park
To walk abroad and re-create yourselves

Moss, mist and mud. Winding trails through shady groves. Sunlight slanting through the trees. Giant cedars, Douglas firs, meadows of Gary oaks, maples, ferns and salal, miners’ lettuce in season. As I walked around Mount Douglas, marvelling at the majesty of this great park, I thought of the governor who set aside this tract of land for the people, and gave it his name. At six hundred and something feet it was only a hill, but they didn't want to insult him. I thought of Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, Stanley Park in Vancouver, Kings Park in Perth, and imagined the others that must have been set aside all over the Empire. It was good public policy.

It was not a new idea, of course. The Romans recognized the importance of “bread and circuses” to keep the masses under control. It was important to keep the people well fed and entertained so that they wouldn’t have rebellious thoughts. According to Shakespeare, Julius Caesar was afraid of one of the conspirators because,

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.

But there is another aspect to wellbeing. After Caesar’s assassination, Mark Antony, in his funeral oration, swayed the crowd to his side by alluding to a bequest to the people in Caesar’s will:

Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,
His private arbors and new-planted orchards,
On this side Tiber. He hath left them you
And to your heirs forever—common pleasures,
To walk abroad and re-create yourselves.
Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?

Everywhere we go we see people walking in the woods, strolling in a garden, sitting on a rock gazing out to sea. To be contented, we need more than bread and circuses: we need to walk abroad and re-create ourselves, as we do in Mount Douglas Park.

Monday 22 June 2020

Laid and Lain

When the New York Times makes a grammatical mistake, it’s a subtle one.

When Mr. Ashe died in 1993, he was lain in state at the Executive Mansion in Richmond.

Now the Globe and Mail has been known to confuse the verbs “to lie" and "to lay", but more blatantly:

She (a tiger) was tranquillized, placed in a snare and forced to lay in wait as the famously tardy leader (Vladimir Putin) got to the site.

The tiger, had she not been tranquillized, would have protested that she had been forced to lie in wait.

And even the BBC, in a blazing headline:

Hong Kong protesters laying low following mass arrests

No, the protesters were lying low.

Just to remind you of the difference between the two verbs: “to lie” is intransitive, i.e., it can’t take an object, you can lie down, but you can’t lie something down. For that you need the transitive verb “to lay”. (Hens lay, course, seemingly intransitively, but they lay an egg. “Egg” is always understood.)

I lay my towel on the beach, and I lie on the towel.

And the principal parts can be laid out as follows:

Today, I lie on the beach; yesterday, I lay on the beach; in the past I have lain on the beach.

Today I lay my towel on the beach; yesterday I laid my towel on the beach; in the past I have laid my towel on the beach.

Now, to return to that great American tennis player, Arthur Ashe: the verb is “to lie” (in state), and the past participle is “lain”. We could say that he has lain in state, but not was lain in state, because the verb is Intransitive, and cannot exist in the passive voice. Nor could we say that he was laid in state, because lying in state is something you do but you can’t have done to you. He could be laid to rest, but not laid in state. It’s a very complicated explanation, but with a very simple solution:

When Mr. Ashe died in 1993, he lay in state at the Executive Mansion in Richmond.

P.S.

And in case you need an explanation of the active and passive voice: 

With the verb in the active voice, the subject does something to the object: 

The boy kicks the ball.

In the passive voice, the object becomes the subject and has something done to it:

The ball is kicked by the boy.

The passive voice is to be avoided. Avoid the passive voice, where possible. But that’s another story.

Friday 19 June 2020

The Oxford Comma

The Oxford comma is the most controversial punctuation mark of all. It is the comma before “and” in a series of items, and for that reason is also called the “serial” comma. It became known as the Oxford comma because it was prescribed by the Oxford University Press. When it was rumoured that the OUP was dropping the Oxford comma, one punctuation fanatic tweeted, “Are you people insane? The Oxford comma is what separates us from the animals.”

A Google search reveals just how controversial it is. See for yourself. Some institutes and style sheets advocate its use; others oppose it. It’s the one punctuation mark grammarians would go to war over. It’s a simmering dispute, and every so often it boils over.

One of the most recent disputes was over the wording of the slogan on the new British 50p coin. 

Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations

Never mind the absurdity of the slogan itself: Brexit has hardly encouraged peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations. Quite the contrary! But critics were as opposed to the punctuation as much as the message. It should have read, say the proponents of the Oxford comma,

Peace, prosperity, and friendship with all nations

The author, Philip Pullman, was particularly vexed: "The 'Brexit' 50p coin is missing an Oxford comma, and should be boycotted by all literate people," he tweeted.

Some style books insist on the comma before the “and”; others say Never! Some students were taught at school always to apply the Oxford comma; others, the opposite.

Who is correct? Well, there is one rule for commas that prevails over all others: use a comma (or not) to make your meaning clear. Let’s apply that common-sense rule.

What the slogan is advocating is peace with all nations, and prosperity with all nations, and friendship with all nations, equal weight being given to peace and prosperity and friendship. But with the Oxford comma the slogan might seem to advocate peace [pause], and prosperity [pause], and friendship with all nations. The meaning is skewed, and the use of the Oxford comma is not only unnecessary, but wrong, to my mind.

Take an even simpler example:

Tom, Dick and Harry

or

Tom, Dick, and Harry

Adding the Oxford comma places unnecessary emphasis on Harry. It is wrong. We might wonder, why Harry?

(Now proponents of the Oxford comma will disagree with every thing I have written so far. To their ear, the comma is necessary. But they will agree with what follows.)

On the other hand, in a longer sentence with a series of groups of words, the Oxford comma is often neccesary to ensure all the items are given equal weight and the last two do not lump together:

For breakfast, I had juice, bacon and eggs, and coffee.

That example is clear cut, but even in this sentence from the Globe

Indeed, the organization’s mandate is one of coordination, policy articulation, technical leadership and research and monitoring.

 Isn’t a comma necessary after “leadership”?

In brief, usually, in a series of words the Oxford comma is unnecessary, and often wrong; and in a series of groups of words, the Oxford comma is correct, and often necessary. But there are always exceptions, and only a careful reading aloud will tell you whether to apply the comma or not.

But you can be sure that within the next year or so you will read of a new controversy over the use of the Oxford comma.

Wednesday 17 June 2020

Who and Whom

Two very different, but significant, stories in the news had something in common today: a minor grammatical transgression, one that would escape the notice of many, but to my ear didn’t sound quite right.

Both were good-news stories: the one about the footballer, Marcus Rashford, who shamed the British PM into extending free school lunch vouchers through the summer; the other about the American Supreme Court decision to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

In the former, the Guardian was alluding to a bit of dirt dug up by the Independent about Boris Johnson:

As for the prime minister … shortly before Marcus Rashford was born to a single mother who he idolises for her tireless work and sacrifices, Boris Johnson was writing that single mothers were producing a generation of “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate children”. 

In the latter, widely reported, Senator Bernie Sanders was expressing his approval of the Supreme Court decision:

Fantastic news. No one in America should face discrimination for being who they are or for who they love," Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted. 

Did you read through those two sentences without hesitating, or did you pause for a moment, thinking something was a little off?

Now only the very scholarly will say, “Whom are you calling?” instead of “Who are you calling? or “To whom are you speaking? “ rather than “Who are you speaking to?”

But surely, “whom”, as the accusative or “objective” form of the pronoun “who”, is not quite dead yet. Of course, it survives in such formal statements as “To whom it may concern”, as the object of the preposition “to”, but even in everyday writing or speech, is there not a place for “whom” in sentences such as those I’ve quoted above, as the object of the verbs “idolize” and “love”?

...Marcus Rashford was born to a single mother whom he idolises for her tireless work and sacrifices...

and

No one in America should face discrimination for being who they are or for whom they love.

Friday 12 June 2020

Roads, Moles and Groynes



A groyne at Ross Bay
As I walked along the groyne, or was it a mole, at the little harbour west of MacCauley Point, I looked out to sea at Royal Roads. The latter gave its name to the Royal Roads Military College, which became Royal Roads University, one of Victoria BC’s higher institutes of learning.

But why was it named Royal Roads? Royal after an early ship in the bay, but why Roads? Very few people in Victoria know, I suspect, but I do, not from any superior knowledge, but mere accident of birth. 

I grew up in a city suburb, midway between the capital, Perth, and the port, Fremantle, in Western Australia. Each day the local paper would publish the shipping news: which ships were berthed at the North and South Wharves, and which were waiting out to sea at Gage Roads. The roads, or roadstead, was the fairly sheltered area outside a harbour where ships would wait until a berth was free.

Seven or eight ships would be berthed at the wharves on each side of the harbour. There was no security in those days and I would wander down the wharf, looking at the ships and dreaming of one day sailing away on one. Eventually, I did, on a P&O liner, the Orcades, to England: £196 for the passage and sixpence a pint for the beer.

At the end of the wharves, at the entrance to the harbour, a breakwater, wide enough for a path on top, extended out to sea on each side, sheltering the harbour from rough weather. These  were known as the North and South Mole, popular spots for fishermen, or young people like me who would walk out to the end to experience the full force of a storm.

A few miles to the north at a popular beach was the Cottesloe Groyne, another breakwater, shorter and narrower this time, and perpendicular to the beach, intended not so much to provide shelter but to prevent erosion.

Both the groyne and the mole are breakwaters, lines of rocks extending out to sea.  But they differ in size and purpose. Their etymology gives a clue. A groyne, from the Latin grunium, a pig’s snout, protrudes a short distance and prevents erosion; the mole, from the Latin moles, mass, is a massive stucture protecting a harbour.

In Victoria, I would consider the Ogden Point breakwater a mole, since it's a massive structure providing shelter for the cruise ship harbour. But it has never been given that name. The breakwater at MacCauley Point is certainly protecting the little harbour, but is hardly massive enough to be called  a mole. It shall remain a breakwater. But we do have three groynes, so named, at Ross Bay, to prevent erosion and protect the sea wall. And just outside Esquimalt Harbour, ships would wait at Royal Roads.

Words are memories. I swam at Cottesloe beach beside the groyne, I walked out along the North Mole, and I looked out to Gage Roads.

Sunday 7 June 2020

It's Not Cricket



There’s a breathless hush in the Close tonight —
Ten to make and the match to win —
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his captain’s hand on his shoulder smote
‘Play up, play up, and play the game!’ (Henry Newbolt)

As I walked past the Sticky Wicket pub in Victoria, I thought about the contribution of cricket to the English language. Nothing, of course, compared to Shakespeare, the King James Bible, or the sea ( I wrote about nautical allusions in an earlier post), but a significant contribution, nonetheless.

I recently celebrated my seventy-ninth birthday. I hope that it’s not yet time to call stumps, but I’ve had a good innings. I’ve been bowled the odd bouncer or googlie, but I’ve tried to keep my end up while playing a straight bat. Not that I can claim to be a safe pair of hands for I’ve dropped the ball on occasion. I’ve never really been a team player: I often do things off my own bat. However, I don’t bat for the other side, and I’ve never played away from home. If you don’t understand what any of this means, I’m happy to field questions. That’s the state of play for now.

Cricket is something you have to grow up with to understand. I remember listening as a boy, late at night in Perth, to the commentaries on the test matches (the Ashes) coming to us from England on the wireless, so far away, and sounding like a man “speaking through a tube”, I used to think. They must have been transmitted to Australia by short wave radio to be broadcast by the ABC on 6WF. These test matches, five games of cricket between England and Australia, four of them lasting five days each, and the fifth one, six, were known as the Ashes. 

Elizabeth George, American author of the Inspector Lynley series, has written twenty of these books, all set in England, with a good eye for British manners and ear for the English idiom. Only once did she give herself away, when in a novel called “Playing for the Ashes” she wrote of the second “inning”, not “innings”, a mistake that no one from England (or Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India Pakistan, or the West Indies) would make. She had grown up with baseball. That’s not cricket.

Saturday 6 June 2020

A Fulsome Consultation

Government Street
On Monday the the Victoria Council is going to close Government Street to vehicular traffic from View to Fort. Good news, for commerce will be able to spill out into the street, and patrons of bars and coffee shops will be able to sit outside in safety away from the noxious virus that may be circulating within. The bad news is that this was a sudden decision, made without “fulsome consultation with stakeholders or the wider public”.

I was rankled, of course, not by the lack of due process, but by the misuse of that ugly word, “fulsome”. It is an ugly word, isn’t it? Say it. Go on, say it, “fulsome”. It sounds rather sickening, doesn’t it, redolent of swamp miasma, with bubbles rising from the murky depths to an oily surface. Even as I say the word, I feel queasy in the stomach.

Currently, the word means “excessively complimentary or flattering, effusive, overdone”, a meaning to my mind, not unlike the sickening feeling I experience when I hear it, as if I’m about to throw up. Indeed, one dictionary quotes as an example of its usage, “With the stink of decaying corpses so near her cave ... suddenly she felt overpowered by the fulsome reek" (Jean Auel)”.

Unfortunately, the word has been misused to mean “full”, to such an extent that its misusage has become common usage, and this second meaning has found its way into the dictionary. Unfortunately, because in a sentence such as “Fulsome praise was heaped upon the author,” we don’t know whether the praise was genuine or not. Was it sickening and excessive flattery, or was it merely full? For that reason, it's probably better not to use the word at all.

But what kind of person would speak of a fulsome discussion rather than a full discussion. Someone who wants to elevate his importance by using a bigger word? Perhaps it was the councillor who likes to keep the climate action lens front and centre.