Randy Parker

Archive for the ‘vocabulary’ Category

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Going crazy over going verdant

In Advertising, copywriting, creative, ethics, vocabulary, writing on December 2, 2009 at 2:39 pm

If you ever listen to NPR, no doubt you hear how the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is “committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.”  That word “verdant” always makes me smile. Why? Because every company on the planet is talking about sustainability and going green. Believe me, I know. I’m writing environmental statements, composing sustainability reports, and naming green initiatives on a regular basis. Everyone is talking about it, and yet we are all looking for ways to communicate our sustainability in some original fashion. It seems everyone is looking for their own shade of green.

Unfortunately, that isn’t sustainable. I mean, we’ve already run out of words, haven’t we?  Take your pick: sustainability, green, eco-this or environmental-that.  Oh, and verdant. It’s like somebody at the MacArthur Foundation said, “whatever you do, don’t use the word GREEN!”

Recently I wrote a sustainability brochure for a major corporation. We wanted to talk about sustainability in three contexts: environmental stewardship, financial accountability and social responsibility.  So I came up with this snappy idea: People, Prosperity, Planet.  Nice, huh? My client thought so. In fact, she wanted to turn it into the name of their program. Just one problem.  Well, perhaps a half-dozen problems. My client Googled it and found those three words strung together all over the internet, sometimes in that exact order. In fact, one company had the nerve to trademark it.

So, my advice is this. Spend less time avoiding the word “green” and more time finding the real truth in your sustainability messaging. You are probably not “saving the planet.” So it isn’t wise to exaggerate. Don’t greenwash. Make sure your sustainability message is believable (because what you are saying is true) and substantial enough to be notable. Whether you think global warming is a hoax or a threat, it’s best to err on the side of environmental responsibility from a marketing standpoint, so don’t be afraid to address the needs of our environment in constructive ways. You may not be Al Gore green, but you can at least muster up a good chartreuse. And remember, it’s not so much what you are doing to ensure a sustainable future that’s important.  It’s what you can help your clients do that resonates most.

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A deep dive on office buzz words

In Advertising, copywriting, language, marketing, vocabulary, writing on September 20, 2009 at 10:09 am

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Officespeak, that constantly changing language of  buzz words and phrases heard around corporate conference tables, is an interesting paradox. It is universally deplored yet universally deployed. Remember facetime and interfacing with clients? Having to think outside the box and pushing the envelope? It was all about being on the same page.

Nowadays, someone is bound to ask how much bandwidth you’ve got. They’ll want to reach out, drill down and circle back. You might hear “value-add” as a noun and  “impact” as a verb (remember when only teeth got impacted?). And no-doubt there are times when, no matter what you are doing, you’ll be asked to take it offline.

To be successful, you’ve got to promise the right deliverables while staying within your core competencies. Optimize ROI. Look for a way to grab the low-hanging fruit. How? Well, you’ll need a roadmap going forward.  You’ll need to incent employees. You’ll need ideas that can piggyback on mine. Ideas that are actionable. You’ll need to add a new thread. Take ownership!

At the end of the day, what you are really looking for is a gamechanger, a paradigm shift, perhaps something viral. (I’m feeling a little viral, myself.)

In the marketing business, we hear folks talk about marketing concepts that are “channel-neutral,” meaning ideas that can work for a variety of media–direct mail, print advertising, web, and so on.  Just the other morning, I heard it called “channel-agnostic.”  What’s next?  Channel-atheistic?  If that’s the case, we can all just go home.

Got any others? Why not touch base? Leave a comment or shoot me an email.

Better yet, just shoot me.

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Wordcracker: Coo-pon or Cue-pon?

In Wordcracker, language, vocabulary on September 4, 2009 at 12:39 pm

Now for something fun and pertinent to our recent economic upheaval. If you live in the United States, please participate in the following poll. To aid us in our research even further, please leave a comment restating your answer and providing any explanatory information you might want to offer, especially what part of the country you are originally from and what part of the country you live in now. I’ll leave this poll active indefinitely in hopes of accumulating enough answers to draw reasonable conclusions. Thanks!

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Mad language

In language, vocabulary on April 29, 2009 at 5:17 am

Three segments and a short outtake from MadTV about language and perhaps the end of English as we know it. Too funny–and scary–not to pass along!

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Wordcracker: neologism

In Wordcracker, language, vocabulary on April 24, 2009 at 4:46 am

It means “new word.”  New words are added to the English language every day, and folks say we’re nearing our millionth word.  But I won’t go into a long dissertation about neologisms because Forbes recently hired linguists and others experts to do it.  Lots of interesting articles about WORDS in the current issue. Check it out!

And for more from Wordnut on coining words, go here.

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Can economic euphemisms be bubblewrap for society?

In ethics, euphemism, vocabulary, writing on April 1, 2009 at 2:26 pm

As a follow-up to my earlier post on euphemism, I want to direct you to an excellent Slate article by Daniel Gross called “Bubblespeak.” While the burst bubble that was our economy has brought an abundance of terms to the forefront––TARP, toxic assets, securitization–it has also created an environment in which Orwellian doublespeak can flourish.

In his humorous but unfortunately serious article, Gross demonstrates how “toxic assets” became “troubled assets,” as if we could send them to reform school and they’d be all right. Just calling them assets seems to be overpromising. He writes about past mistakes becoming “legacy debt,” trouble that executives inherited but seemed to have had no hand in.  And so on.

I wonder if this softening and twisting of reality is simply a manipulative tool of the powerful, or if we as Americans or even as human beings actually prefer it. I guess it’s a little of both. When we call junk bonds “high yield bonds” or call the widespread infection of debt “securitization,” or call subprime loans “nonprime,” we are lying to others, for sure. But aren’t we also telling people what they want to hear? Is there not some complicity among those who want to feel better about themselves and their decisions?

Certainly, when we (or our government) call worthless mortgages “troubled assets,” we are lying to ourselves. But now that all has been revealed, maybe it’s not so bad. Perhaps we are merely softening the blow, protecting ourselves with a kind of verbal bubblewrap, and, out of necessity, making our challenges seem surmountable and our darker days a little lighter.

Senator JFK once made fun of Eisenhower by attributing this false quote to him:  “We are now at the end of the beginning of the upturn of the downturn.” These days, that actually sounds pretty good.

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More expressions than you can shake a stick at

In Southern words, language, tradition, vocabulary, writing on March 31, 2009 at 4:53 am

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I grew up in a house where things were rough as a cob, the sky was clear as a bell, and there were more expressions than you could shake a stick at. But don’t call them cliches. When my dad speaks, he uses the expressions he got from his father as naturally as breathing.  They never sound tired or worn out.  In fact, when I was young I didn’t even think of them as expressions.  It was as if there were no other way to say it.

For fun, I thought I would explore a few of these, most of which seem to be American in origin.

ROUGH AS A COB

Traditionally, this is used to describe people or circumstances that affect you personally.  “That guy was rough as a cob” would mean he was abrasive, someone who rubbed you the wrong way. As far as I can remember, My dad never used it that way.  In fact, being a boater and a sailor,  he would say,  “The bay is as rough as a cob out there.” I wonder if he even knows that the expression refers to the use of corn cobs in the outhouse for personal hygiene.

FORTY-ELEVEN

If there is more of something than you care to count–say, varieties of candy at the store–then you might conclude that there are forty-eleven different kinds. George Thompson of the American Dialect Society traces the word back as far as 1836. He speculates that it might be a Black expression, but my guess is it is merely Southern.

[Cornelia Latting, a young colored woman, sentenced to 2 years, months; she tells the court] that she did not care a d–n if they had sent her up for forty-eleven years.

New York Transcript, February 15, 1836, p. 2, col. 4.

Another reference he found:

I never go into one [a toy store] without wishin’ it was Christmas once a week, and I had forty-eleven children to buy toys for.

S. Annie Frost, “The Daffodils Prepare fot a Fancy Fair,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, July, 1866, p. 52, col. 2 (Proquest’s Amer Periodicals)

It’s a little like “umpteen,” I suppose.

A BUCK THREE-EIGHTY

If your wife asks you how much that gleaming new piece of hardware for your boat cost, you might not want to tell her, so you downplay the cost as if it is inconsequential and you say, “oh, about a buck three-eighty.”

COULDN’T STIR ‘EM WITH A STICK

This is a simple one used to describe a crowd.  In other words, “thick.”  There were so many people, you couldn’t stir ‘em with a stick.  It might be people, but it could also be boats in the harbor or roaches in the motel room. Which brings us to another similar stick-related expression:

MORE THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A STICK AT

This one could just be a simple variant of “more than you can count” or more than you can point out.”  However, something about that stick shaking seems to hint at something else. Nobody knows for sure.  The best explanation I have found is in World Wide Words, an online newsletter by Michael Quinion:

Its recorded history began — at least, so far as the Oxford English Dictionary knows — in the issue of the Lancaster Journal of Pennsylvania dated 5 August 1818: “We have in Lancaster as many Taverns as you can shake a stick at”. Another early example is from Davy Crockett’s Tour to the North and Down East of 1835: “This was a temperance house, and there was nothing to treat a friend that was worth shaking a stick at”. A little later, in A Book of Vagaries by James K Paulding of 1868, this appears: “The roistering barbecue fellow swore he was equal to any man you could shake a stick at”.

The modern use of the phrase always exists as part of the extended and fixed phrase “more … than you can shake a stick at”, meaning an abundance, plenty. The phrase without the “more than” element is rather older, but not by much.

Shaking a stick at somebody, of course, is a threatening gesture, or at least one of defiance. So to say that you have shaken a stick at somebody is to suggest that person is an opponent, perhaps a worthy one. The sense in the second and third quotations above seem to fit this idea: “nothing worth shaking a stick at” means nothing of value; “equal to any man you could shake a stick at” means that the speaker is equal to any man of consequence.

Where it comes from can only be conjecture. One possibility that has been put forward is that it derives from the counting of farm animals, which one might do by pointing one’s stick at each in turn. So having more than one can shake one’s stick at, or tally, would imply a great number. This doesn’t fit the early examples, though, which don’t have any idea of counting about them. Another idea is that it comes from battle, in which one might shake a stick at one’s vanquished enemy. This could possibly have led into the early usages.

Following publication of this piece in the World Wide Words newsletter, Suzan Hendren and Sherwin Cogan suggested that it might have come from the Native American practice of counting coup, in which merit was gained by touching a vanquished enemy in battle. In that case, “too many to shake a stick at” might indicate a surplus of fallen enemies, and “not worth shaking a stick at” would equate a person with “an enemy who is so cowardly or worthless that there is no merit to be gained from counting coup on him”, as Sherwin Cogan put it. An intriguing idea, but there’s no evidence that I know of.

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FAIR TO MIDDLIN’

Both “fair” and “middling” are cotton classing terms.  Cotton has to be classed according to quality, and these classes are rather average. So if somebody asks, “How are you,” and you say “fair to middlin’” (the “g” is dropped in the South), you are basically saying “could be better, could be worse.”

CLEAR AS A BELL

No doubt, this simile originally would have been used to describe a pure, resonating sound.  The radio station came in clear as a bell. That makes sense. But somewhere along the line, someone decided that the sky was clear as a bell.  For me, this is no longer a simple comparison; it is poetry. Describing how something looks by comparing it to to how something else sounds–that’s awesome.

Sure you’ve heard it over and over.  Believe me, I’ve heard it at least 100,000 times. “It’s clear as a bell, not a cloud in the sky.”  But it still resonates for me, makes the sky seem deeper somehow. And I think that the idea of the sky as a dome helps with the bell analogy. If God were to flick it with his finger it would ring mighty and true.  I wonder who first used the phrase in this way.

The O.E.D. devotes almost four pages to the word “clear.” There I found a line of Dickens (from Oliver Twist): “Real, fresh, genuine port-wine . . . clear as a bell, and no sediment.”  Not about the sky, of course, but the same wonderful mixing of the senses.

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Families have languages of their own

In language, vocabulary on March 27, 2009 at 5:11 am

Years ago, when she was very young, my daughter came down the stairs and into the den and asked, “how do you spell stew?”  S-T-E-W, my wife said, and she disappeared.  A little while later, she came in again and asked, “how do you spell pit?” “You mean like a hole?” I asked her, wondering what in the world she was up to.  “Yes,” she replied. So I told her.  Satisfied, she ran back up stairs.  A while later her older brother came down with a disgusted look on his face and a sign he took off his door, which said, WILL IS STEWPIT. When we confronted our daughter (trying not to laugh at the irony of misspelling that particular word)  she explained that if she had asked how to spell stupid, we would have demanded to know why, and so she thought this was a pretty good roundabout. And to this day, when something is really dumb, I’ll say it’s stewww-pit.  It’s a family word, and most families have a few. I figure some offices might too.

The best thing about a family word is that there’s usually some sort of story behind it that only the family knows and appreciates, a rich association which makes it like a secret code that bonds family members and deepens their appreciation for being a member of the group.  If you enjoy this sort of thing, check out Family Words by Paul Dickson. He collected words from families across the country, some of which are pretty funny. And some of which are kinda stewpit. Does your family have its own words or unique expressions? Care to share?

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Scholars fixin’ to publish regional dictionary

In Publishing, Southern words, language, vocabulary, writing on March 24, 2009 at 4:25 am

The final volume of the Dictionary of Regional English (S-Z)  is almost ready for publication. Check out the story here. I’ll be interested in what it says about “tump.”

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Wordcracker: Solutions

In Advertising, Wordcracker, copywriting, language, marketing, vocabulary, writing on March 5, 2009 at 6:24 am

It’s everywhere, this word solutions, especially in business, advertising and marketing. And although folks are pretty fed up with it and there is discussion all over the internet about how it is overused, I’m here to tell you that solutions will remain a part of advertising communication. After all, the best answer to a customer’s problem is always going to be the solution.

The problem–and it is such a big problem that I actually had a client tell me to avoid the word entirely–isn’t so much that the word is overused. It’s that the word is misused. Too often we see the word as an end-all, as if it means something or everything all on its own:

We sell solutions!

Used in this way, the word is empty. Who doesn’t sell solutions? But more importantly, solutions to what? This is akin to saying, “We provide services!” The only difference is that a solution sounds like a service that actually works.  Still, the hollowness rings.

We also see the word in a lot of company slogans and descriptive taglines:

Advanced software solutions

Okay, a little more specific.  But is software the problem and you have the solution?  Or do you have solutions in the form of software?  If the latter, we still don’t know what problems are being solved or how anybody benefits. There’s just too much dependence on the word solutions as a substitute for more specific, concrete language.

While the examples above cry out for a ban on the word, writer’s like myself in the trenches of persuasive writing still depend on it, and I won’t give it up without a fight. Here is an example that shows what, in my opinion, is an acceptable and even advantageous use of the word:

We create crime-fighting software applications that prevent check fraud and eliminate identity theft, real solutions that can protect your bank and your customers.

Now the word solutions is out of the limelight but still helps us position the software as a product that fully solves specific problems.

Solution will always serve nicely as an alternative for other much-used words, such as service and product. But it can’t be used as substitute for substance or for the language necessary to communicate a benefit to the prospect.

Only in the presence of the problem is solution the solution.

What’s your take?

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Wordcracker: Tump

In Southern words, Wordcracker, language, vocabulary on February 21, 2009 at 4:37 pm

If you are from the southern U.S., you may know of or actually use the verb tump. Perhaps your children use it. You won’t find it in all dictionaries, but it is a word all the same. I grew up using the word. Heck, I still use it. What does it mean? First of all, don’t waste your time with the Oxford English Dictionary. There, a tump is a clump or mound and a tump-line is a strap used by people carrying large loads on their back. It goes across the forehead to help them better manage the load. (My O.E.D. is old; perhaps it has been amended.)

On the web, you’ll find a lot of incomplete answers. A site I like, Word Detective, has an entry about it, and although the writer finally touches on the actual meaning, he still seems to be scratching his head. The online dictionary Encarta says it means to overturn; to knock over. This is an unacceptable oversimplification.

Although a bit of a mystery for even the experts, it’s clear to me that tump is a combination of the words tip and dump. I have also seen theories that it is a combination of turn and dump. If I were writing my own dictionary, my definition would be something along the lines of:

Tumping is a violent or consequential tipping over of something.

That consequence is usually something being spilled or dumped. So although a kid might merely tip over his empty glass, he would tump it over if it had milk in it. You might tip over an upright domino, but you would tump over a kid on his tricycle.

You could tip over a kid on his bike or even knock him over, but there’s the chance that he could catch himself with his foot. Tump him over and can’t you just hear his little body thump against the sidewalk?

You might also tump over anything that is big or heavy, whether anything is actually spilled or not. For example, you might tip over a toy, but you would tump over the wheelbarrow to check a tire.

Sure you can turn over a wheelbarrow. But to me that requires a certain amount of control. A more careful deliberate action. Tump over a wheel barrow and you get the gravity of it. Less control, more weight. When you put down anything particularly heavy or big, there is a certain amount of dumping going on, isn’t there, the not-so-careful placing of the object because, well, because it is big and heavy. Dump those boxes over there, we might say.

What self-respecting, high-flying Southerner hasn’t tumped a swing set over?

Also, tumping can just happen. A wheelbarrow can suddenly tump over because it is loaded poorly. Nobody actually has to knock it over.

I love words and phrases like tump over and fixing to because they seem to fill a void left by our “proper” vocabulary. They uniquely express something that no other word or phrase quite gets right.

Although I love the word, I could never use “tump” in my professional writing. Not because it is slang. I’m not so sure it is. But, obviously, it is not universal enough and, as a result, sounds uneducated, even rednecked.

I come by it honestly, though. When I was little, my mother, who is of Scottish stock, called a thing with stripes on it “stri-ped.” She has since reformed. But this is an Elizabethan pronunciation that still lives in parts of Appalachia where many Scotch-Irish settled, and apparently to some extent in other parts of the South (my mom is from Memphis). For years I said stri-ped, too. As in, “Mama, can I have s’more ice-tea and a paper tow’l; I just tumped over my strip-ed Dixie cup.”

Man, have I come a long way. Now I tump over my Chardonnay.