“Some regard unwieldy nominalizations as alarming evidence of the depraved zeitgeist” and some regard the use of “zeitgeist” as a pretentious display of intellectualized hauteur. If your first instinct is to slap the mouth that utters “jejune,” then you know what I am talking about. We don’t want to be dazzled by your extensive vocabulary; we want to understand what you are saying. When I tell you that something was an “epic fail” rather than an “epic failure,” I am not bastardizing ordinary usage for the giggles. I am emphasizing the degree, nay the completeness, of the failure in question. I am saying that this was no ordinary mistake. Anyone can lose, but not everyone is a loser. Shall I treat all losers the same? What shall I say about losses that are epic? Al Gore and Mitt Romney both thought the polls were predicting a win for them. Only one of them was an Epic Fail. The other got the refuse from the Supreme Court.
I’ll write what I want to write, and you will read it and like it.
Okay boss!
A’int that the truth!
“Refuse” is a fail (not epic), because of ambiguity with refuse of the “wretched refuse” type. I’d say Gore got the shaft, which is double (it was verbed before it was re-nouned).
“Refuse” is the ideal word choice here because of the immediate association you reject. Gore was degraded in status as he was refused/rejected by the Supreme Court AND they generated garbage (a third type of refuse). Altho, I do admit “shaft” does nicely conjure the imagery of Gore being screwed.
The double entendre was intentional. Don’t slap my mouth.
That’s the trouble–not a double entendre but only a double voir or eye pun: réfuse and refúse sound too different. I hope I’m not slapping anybody’s mouth, least of all someone I admire a lot. In my dreams I’m occasionally almost as cool as you. But I’m an ill-tempered editor and theoretical linguist by training and sometimes may step over the line.
Look at the bright side: at least William Safire is not around to crank out stuff like this for the Times.
Safire immediately came to mind here too. Writing to improve written English is a lost cause, IMO, but books like “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_%26_Leaves are good reads.
Awesome book. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/dec/30/featuresreviews.guardianreview1
I liked this piece very much, but for some reason I rarely enjoyed Safire’s language articles. No one who could manufacture such rhinestones of eloquence as “nattering nabobs of negativism” or “effete corps of impudent snobs” can claim a full mastery of the English language, unless they are W.C. Fields or Major Hoople. Safire’s style too often puts me in mind of nothing more than a man feverishly flipping through his well-thumbed Roget.
I thought it was an excellent article. It had a positive word to say about nominalizations like “epic fail” and “the magician’s reveal”. It talks about how nominalizations can sometimes be irritating but also pointed out the benefits and uses of them.
And Woody Allen made the word “jejune” pretentious beyond redemption. But I happen to rely on “zeitgeist” from time to time and think it is a perfectly fine word. Many words from other languages creep into our English – and often for good reasons.
I enjoyed the column a lot too.
There’s an old “Calvin and Hobbes” strip that deals with the same topic. Something about “verbing”, when you use a noun a a verb and vice versa.
You may also find the column linked in the second paragraph interesting, which directs us here:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/zombie-nouns/
And the second article links to a fun tool I’ve been playing with for the last few minutes. It turns out my verbs are flabby (that doesn’t surprise me):
http://www.writersdiet.com/WT.php
Personally I think we should renounce verbing as it reverberates with an obnoxious superfluity..
On the other hand having resolve often leads to a solution…
Zeitgeist is pretty normal. While these types of pieces are pretty annoying and wrong, pushing too far the other way can lead to anti-intellectualism. And yeah, when someone says epic fail I read it as bastardizing ordinary usage for humor to drive home the absurdity of the failure.
Anyhow, more interestingly, did the Dem establishment bury a hatchet in Ashley Judd’s back?
I automatically punch anyone who says, “Raison d’être.” Fortunately (or perhaps not) I’ve only seen it in text rather than uttered out loud. If anyone says it to my face, though, they’re finding out what 14 years of martial arts feels like on the receiving end.
My whole Raison d’être is to be out of tune with the Zeitgeist because the French and Germans never did get on anyway and I find this whole topic ineffably jejune. Now jiu-jitsu that…
Confused am I. -Yoda
How about hearing “how do you say that in English?” coming from a person whose first language is English?
Very cool, Booman.
By writing the mellifluous “I type B nominalized that”, which verbalizes the noun phrase “type B nominalization”, you have gone “back to the source” as it were, the verbal root of “type B nominalization”.
what makes this a bit confusing, perhaps, is that the the term “type B nominalization” is not itself a type B nominalization, but a type A (from your verb “nominalize”, derived from the adjective “nominal”, derived from the Latin noun “nomen”). As such, it may be fine for mere bureaucrats and academic scribblers but i think we need a REAL type B nominalization here. To achieve that worthy goal we should have to call it a “type B nominalize”.
I too appreciate a truly expressive “type B nominalize” like “epic fail” now and then.