Author: Kirk

“aerosol art”

Euphemisms

My wife heard this a few days ago from a high-school student.

She noticed something that the student had just drawn, told him that he was very artistic, and asked him what else he had created.

He said that creating “aerosol art” was one of his favorite activities.

My wife had never heard this phrase but recognized it right away for what it was: a euphemism for graffiti.

Contrary to my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis, the student chose a four-syllable, ten-letter, two-word phrase over a three-syllable, eight-letter single word that says the same thing.

But that is a frequent characteristic of euphemisms: People go out of their way to avoid what they believe will be perceived negatively.

If you find yourself saying or writing a long phrase when you know that a shorter phrase or a single word will express the same thing, notice whether you are trying to hide a negative perception behind that long phrase.

“Disasters … often bring people closer to God.”

Common English Blunders, Verbs

I heard this four days ago on a History Channel television program.

Problem:
I frequently hear “bring” when the speaker means “take” instead.

Explanation:
I was watching a History Channel program when I heard, “Disasters … often bring people closer to God.”

The verb “bring” in the common expression “bring people closer to God” finally caught my ear — as wrong!

You see, one should use “bring” when one is telling the listener to transport something to a location where one currently resides, or when the subject of the sentence is telling another party in the sentence to transport something to the subject’s location.

“Bring” Examples:

  1. Please bring the package to me.
  2. Jim, who lives in Denver, asked Mary to bring the package to him from his friend in London.

In contrast, one should use “take” when one is telling the listener to transport something to a location other than where one currently resides, or when the subject of the sentence is telling another party in the sentence to transport something to a location other than the subject’s location.

“Take” Examples:

  1. Please take this package to my friend in London.
  2. Jim, who today is in Houston on business, asked Mary to take the package to his friend in London.

So, if someone says, “X brings Y closer to God.”, then “X” currently resides with God and is drawing or attracting “Y” to the location shared by “X” and God.

In contrast, if someone says, “X takes Y closer to God.”, then the current location of “X” is different than the current location of God, and “X” is transporting “Y” to God’s location.

Some — such as insurance-company policy writers! — might argue that disasters reside exactly where God resides, in which case “bring” is the correct verb.

However, I strongly suspect that most speakers of “Disasters … often bring people closer to God.” either assume that God resides somewhere other than where disasters reside or give no thought to it.

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

  • “bring people closer to God” — about 11,600 matches
  • “take people closer to God” — exactly 6 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the incorrect vs. correct expression by a ratio of 1933-to-1, which is dreadful on a Biblical scale.

Solution:
“Disasters … often take people closer to God.”

“Perogative” Revisited

Mispronunciations, Misspellings, Nouns

I got an interesting email message last Sunday from one of your fellow readers of this blog.

I will refer to him simply as “Ian” because I don’t have permission to use his surname.

Ian had read “Perogative” and wanted to share his own perspective from the United Kingdom.

When I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) for my original blog post, I 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 told me that Web authors had favored the incorrect word over the correct word by a ratio of 1.02-to-1, which is horrible!

When Ian tries to access Google.com in the UK, Google auto-redirects him to Google.co.uk, where he got these statistics:

  • “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 244,000 matches
  • “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 4,000,000 matches

I could not exactly reproduce Ian’s results, but I searched at Google.co.uk and got nearly the same ratio that he did.

The 16.4-to-1 dominance of the correct spelling at Google.co.uk puzzles Ian and his fiancée, given that they agree that the incorrect pronunciation and spelling of “prerogative” is very common in the UK.