A Jam of Tarts? An Assay of Trollope's? A Flourish of Strumpets?

It's a concept that is almost gone from common English, but there used to be nouns in our vocabulary that described collections or groups of birds, animals, even humans. Some of them were pretty descriptive -- a parliament of rooks, a murder of crows -- and some had a delightful flourish -- a spring of teals, an exaltation of larks.

Naturally something like that couldn't remain unsullied for long. Wags came up with such things as an addition of mathematicians, a clutch of mechanics, a tedium of golfers, an intrigue of politicians.

For a while during the 19th and early 20th Century even the hallowed halls of Oxford were not immune. Three dons discussing the concept were walking home one night from the pub when they saw a group of "ladies of the evening" going by.

"Okay. What would you call that particular group?" one of them asked the others.

"Obviously that is a jam of tarts," the first one said.

"No, that's an assay of Trollope's," the second one insisted.

"You're both wrong," the third disclaimed. "That is a flourish of strumpets."

A voice came up next to them from a gap in the hedge. "No, gentlemen," the voice said. "What we have here is an anthology of pro's."

That voice allegedly belonged to the poet Conrad Aiken.

Still it's a fun little story of language at play, showing the sheer pleasure that can be had with a little knowledge of the English language, and that anecdote became one of the cobblestones that formed the path of my steadily advancing intent to study English in college and work with words the rest of my life.

More reading:
See Precision of Lexicographers on the World Wide Words website

Basic Language Skills for International Travelers

I am an international traveler. I have visited some 22 different countries, and I can verify that there are just three phrases that the average person will need to get by in a foreign environment. The rest of your communication can be achieved by the "charades" method, or by the simple point-and-nod method.

These are the essential phrases that you need to know when you go to: 

• Germany: Ein bier bitte. Danke. Wo ist die Toilette?
• Italy: Una birra, per favore. Grazie. Dov'è il bagno?
• France: Une bière se il vous plaît. Merci. Où sont les toilettes?
• Spain & Latin America: Una cerveza por favor. Gracias. ¿Dónde está el baño?
• Kenya: Bia moja tafadhali. Asante. Ambapo ni choo?
• Vietnam: Xin cho một ly bia. Cảm ơn bạn. Nơi là nhà vệ sinh?
• Czech Republic: Jedno pivo, prosím. Děkuji. Kde jezáchod?
• Union of South Africa: 'N bier asseblief. Baie dankie. Waar is die toilet?
• Hungary: Egy sört kérek. Köszönöm. Hol van a WC?
• Amsterdam: Een biertje neem. Dankjewel. Waar is het toilet?
• Turkey: Bir bira lütfen. Teşekkür ederim. Tuvalet nerede?
• Poland: Jedno piwo proszę. Dziękuję. Gdzie jest toaleta ?
• United States, Britain, Australia, etc: One beer please. Thank you. Where is the toilet? 

This is the Rosetta Stone of Beer. As I say, this is all that is required if you need to get that beer, drink it down, and then piss it out in the bathroom. And you will. Travel is tiring, it is draining and it makes you super thirsty. Make sure you get the local beer. Chances are it will be far superior to your American favorite and it won't make you look like a Beer Imperialist demanding Budweiser.

Once you interact with the locals in their own language, you create an aura of good will surrounding you, and then you'll be able to request anything else you want just by pointing at it on the menu. You will find that most all of the native speakers do pretty much all speak a variety of English, and they will be glad to help you. Once you have shown them that modicum of respect by at least trying to speak their language.

Naturally it's a good idea to arm yourself with a Berlitz Phrasebook of the country you are going to, and then you will have very little difficulty at all.

If everyone did this, traveling abroad as an American would be a great pleasure. What are you waiting for? Grab that passport and take off! Make your getaway!

The Demise of "Niggardly"

According to Dictionary.com, the word "niggardly" is defined thusly:

niggardly
  Adjective:
  1. reluctant to give or spend; stingy; miserly.
  2. meanly or ungenerously small or scanty: -- "a niggardly tip to a waiter".
  Adverb:
  3. in the manner of a niggard.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, its etymology is thus:

niggard (n.) "mean person, miser," late 14c., nygart, of uncertain origin. The suffix suggests French origin (see -ard), but the root word is possibly from earlier nig "stingy" (c.1300), perhaps from a Scandinavian source related to Old Norse hnøggr "stingy," from Proto-Germanic *khnauwjaz (source of Swedish njugg "close, careful," German genau "precise, exact"), and to Old English hneaw "stingy, niggardly," which did not survive in Middle English.

Because it is so close in pronunciation -- or in hearing at least -- to the notorious "n-word", it has pretty much fallen out of polite conversation. I am language scholar enough to realize that words fall out of our vocabulary all the time. The "ruth" in "ruthless" for example, was in use just a hundred years ago or so. It's still a word that exists, but it might as well not since no one uses it except as the first part of its negative, ruthless. The "gruntled" in disgruntled is another that exists only in its negative. When was the last time you heard of anyone who was "gruntled" except in the form of some semi-clever wordplay?

All languages change and grow over time. New words are added, old words are cast aside and fall out. I really can't get exercised over the loss of "niggardly" -- if it is routinely heard by black people as a racist term, it ought to be retired.

Once I had a black woman on my staff come up to me completely pissed, livid, that our computer geek had used the word in her presence. I think I handled it pretty well, given the circumstances. I led her over to the office dictionary and together we looked it up, she found that there was nothing racist about it, neither in the word itself nor in its etymology. And that pretty much defused the situation, but it was a signal to me to watch my own language for these kinds of accidental racisms, words which are in context not racist at all but that sound racist to a hearer who was already attuned from birth to routinely hear the "N-word" coming out of a white person's mouth.

So it is good bye to "niggardly". It is, in fact, still a perfectly usable word, but it freights too much unintentional baggage to be used in a conversation. Probably not in written communications, either.

And it is of course even worse with the base of the word, "niggard", a noun for someone who is niggardly. That is even more likely to be misheard and misinterpreted.

Who the Hell Is Eatoin Shrdlu?

No that is not a Gaelic dancer or Lithuanian farmer. EATOIN SHRDLU -- those are, in order of frequency, the 12 most common letters of the alphabet in written English. This is why I never lose playing the Hangman game on my Nook. Once you go through those letters, you rarely find a Hangman word where you can't fill in the missing letters.

Unsurprisingly, it has its own Wikipedia page, which gives its history, going back to the linotype printing days. It even gives the updated frequency based on modern computer studies: ETAONI RSHDLC or ETAOIN SRHLDCU (13 letters!) -- take your pick; naturally there would be two competing schools of thought on this. But neither of those sounds very "name-y", unlike the original. Those two sound more like secret CIA cryptonymic code designations for Agency operations, as in ZRRIFLE (the Castro Assassination Plot) or JMWAVE (the Miami CIA station) rather than foreign names of people.

Naturally, the Oxford Dictionary also something to say on the whole topic.

So how does it end up? Predictably, again depending on the source, CMFWYGP BVKQJXZ. (That first group actually looks Welsh to me.)

So why does anyone even study this kind of thing? Well, based on my 40-year-old-experience in academia, the less something matters in the "real world", the more likely people are to heatedly argue over it. During the Clinton years, professors actually came to blows over the definition of "is" -- as in "That depends on what your definition of 'is' is"...