Month: February 2009

“Perogative”

Mispronunciations, Misspellings, Nouns

I hear or see this occasionally.

Problem:
This is a mispronunciation or misspelling of a valid noun.

Explanation:
The valid noun is “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E.

The definition of this noun as it is most commonly used is a privilege or right limited to persons of a particular category or to a specific person.

This noun dates back to a Latin adjective in the late 1300s that literally meant voting first.

The noun “prerogative” exemplifies the value of knowing the roots of words in the English language.

The “rogative” portion of the noun is related to the word “interrogative”, which as an adjective usually means conveying or pertaining to a question.

The “pre” portion of the noun means before.

Knowing these two roots makes it easy to understand how the noun “prerogative” refers to a privilege or right limited to a person or specific group of people — such as voting first!

So replacing “pre” with “pe” in “prerogative” produces the nonsense word “perogative”.

I believe that the mispronunciation of “prerogative” as “perogative” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis (and that this, in turns, leads to the misspelling of “prerogative”). It is simpler to say “perogative” — as if it were spelled P-U-H-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — than it is to say “prerogative”.

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:

  • “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,750,000 matches
  • “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,610,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have favored the incorrect word over the correct word by a ratio of 1.02-to-1, which is horrible!

Solution:
“Prerogative”

“… not affluent in that language …”

Foreign Languages, Outsider's Perspective

I heard this the other day while watching an instructional video.

Problem:
The speaker used the wrong adjective.

Explanation:
The instructional video was about Keyword Elite, a tool for generating keywords and optimizing the placement of advertisements on search engines.

I believe that the narrator of the video is Brad Callen, a genius when it comes to Internet marketing.

Brad was discussing how a non-native-English speaker very easily can misspell a keyword when searching for something.

He then picked on himself and said that he likely would misspell a keyword, too, if he were “not affluent in that language”.

I strongly suspect that Brad’s use of the adjective “affluent” where the adjective “fluent” was required was simply a slip of the tongue.

So I am not picking on Brad, who seems to be a native speaker of American English or perhaps Canadian English. I could not quite pinpoint the accent.

Instead, I believe that his gaffe teaches us two lessons:

  1. It teaches us to lighten up when it comes to language mistakes. Anyone can make them — even geniuses. And you have to admit that being “affluent in that language” is a humorous phrase!
  2. It teaches us to have patience with non-native speakers of our language. After all, if someone as smart as Brad can slip up with his own language, then imagine how easy it is for a non-native speaker to use the wrong word.

Solution:
“… not fluent in that language …”

“chilblain”

Nouns

My wife mentioned this a week ago to friends at dinner.

She asked our friends, who are from Texas, whether they had ever heard the word.

They said that they had not.

I was sure that I had heard the word. I cannot say whether I first heard it from her, but I probably did.

She said that she learned the noun when she lived in England.

I like the sound of the word, so I had to learn more about it.

The word dates back to the mid-1500s, is usually pluralized, and means an inflammation of the feet and hands due to exposure to moisture and cold.

My wife told us that it was a very common condition in England, where it is often cold and damp, and that the condition is extremely painful.

This noun comes from the combination of the noun “chill” and the noun “blain”.

The word “blain” — which confuses the spelling checker that I am using while I type this — comes from the Old English word blegen, which apparently originated before the year 1000. Now THAT is old!

The noun “blain” means an inflammatory sore or swelling, which makes it easy to remember what a “chilblain” is.

My wife remembers chilblains as the pain and blistering caused by rewarming oneself too quickly in front of a fire after being out in the cold and dampness of London, which describes the condition well.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica Online, “Tissue damage is less severe with chilblains than with frostbite, where the skin is actually frozen. Red, itching papules and patches of eroded tissue appear on the skin, which is cold and clammy to the touch; severe chilblains may blister and swell. The condition is aggravated by warmth, and sudden rewarming is not recommended. The preferred treatment is to elevate the affected part and allow it to warm gradually at room temperature.”

It is much more common in the U.S. to hear about frostbite than to hear about chilblains.

But now that you know — or have been reminded — about chilblains, consider yourself warned about them, too!

Happy thawing!