Month: January 2009

“All living U.S. presidents will convene …”

General

I heard this yesterday on the radio.

The complete sentence was something along the lines of “All living U.S. presidents will convene with President-Elect Barack Obama for lunch today.”

The adjective “living” struck me as humorous because I wondered how dead U.S. presidents could convene and therefore why the adjective “living” was necessary.

On the other had, “All U.S. presidents will convene …” would not make sense.

Nearly anyone who heard that would then ask, “All U.S. presidents? You mean, even the dead ones?”

One possible way out of this damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-do-not situation would have been to replace “All living U.S. presidents” with the name of each one.

“shuddered windows”

Adjectives, Mispronunciations, Misspellings

I occasionally see or hear this phrase.

Problem:
The word “shuddered” is incorrect here.

Explanation:
I see or hear the phrase as part of a full sentence such as “The shuddered windows protected the glass from the hurricane.”

The intransitive verb “shudder” — with two “d”s and from which the word “shuddered” is derived — means to tremble or shake convulsively, as from cold, fear, or horror.

So the past participle “shuddered” cannot be used as an adjective to modify “windows” for two reasons:

  1. The verb “shudder” is intransitive and therefore its past participle cannot be used as an adjective.
  2. Even if “shuddered” could be used as an adjective, it would make no sense to use it to modify the noun “windows”.

The solution comes from realizing that Americans often mispronounce “t”s (as in “tango”) as “d”s (as in “David”).

So the word “shudder” — with two “d”s — is a typical mispronunciation, at least by Americans, of the word “shutter” — with two “t”s.

And given that the transitive verb “shutter” means to close with shutters, we have the solution.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “shuttered windows” — with two middle “t”s as in “tango” — 98,800 matches
  • “shuddered windows” — with two middle “d”s as in “David” — 97,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the meaningful “shuttered windows” versus the meaningless “shuddered windows” by a ratio of 1.01-to-1, which is absolutely dreadful.

Solution:
“shuttered windows”

“Calorie” vs. “calorie”

Common English Blunders, Nouns, Versus

I often see these two words used interchangeably.

Problem:
These two nouns are not synonyms.

Explanation:
Identical pronunciation of these two nouns makes them homophones, as noted at Wikipedia.

The word “calorie” — with a lowercase “c” — means an amount of heat equal to 4.184 joules.

In case you do not remember your basic physics, one “joule” refers to the work done by a force of one newton acts through a distance of one meter or to the current of one ampere passed for one second through a resistance of one ohm.

The word “Calorie” — with a capital “C” — means 1000 calories (with a lowercase “c”), also known as a “kilocalorie” (also with a lowercase “c”).

The common English blunder is to write “Calorie” — with a capital “C” — as “calorie” — with a lowercase “c” — when referring to the energy value of a food item.

For example, a “2000-calories-per-day diet” — with a lowercase “c” — would provide almost no energy and might have been suitable for Mahatma Gandhi when he was on a hunger strike.

Aside: I recently saw a beautifully shot movie titled “Water” that weaves Gandhi into a story set in India. The story was fascinating and touching, and the acting was excellent. I highly recommend it!

In contrast, a “2000-Calories-per-day diet” — with a capital “C” — would be on the order of magnitude of what many adults require to maintain their body weights.

Solution:
Remember that capital “C” is larger than lowercase “c”, just as “Calorie” with a capital “C” is larger — in fact, one thousand times larger — than “calorie” with a lowercase or small “c”. When referring to the energy value of food, use “Calorie” with a capital “C”.