In less than three weeks, the virus has overloaded hospitals in northern Italy, offering a glimpse of what countries face if they cannot slow the contagion.
Guest room Wi-Fi networks that most hotels thought they had brought up to standard just a few years ago are now often groaning under user demands. BRINGING UP THE REAR
When President Ronald Reagan shocked the fainthearted by saying, "I've had it up to my keister," a lawyer in Seattle wrote to him in the White House enclosing a column on the etymology of the word by my fellow word maven, James Kilpatrick.
John G. Roberts, as a 28-year-old aide in the presidential counsel's office, decided against forwarding it to the leader of the free world, explaining to the chief counsel, "Frankly, I've had it up to my keister with newspaper columns about an expression fairly common to those of us reared in the Midwest." He went on to observe: "It is interesting how familiarity with slang phrases often varies among different parts of our country. In this case, excuse the bad pun, but I suppose it may depend on where one was reared."
I, too, wrote a column at that time about the derivation of keister - a borrowing, through Yiddish, of the German Kiste, "chest" - with its original meaning of "satchel, handbag" and its current meaning of "fanny, rump, bottom, tush, can, buttocks, backside" as well as the British "bum" and the French "derrière." (The bureaucratic cognoscenti prefer "posterior," as in the initialese slogan C.Y.A., meaning "cover your posterior." The "a" stands for a synonym not permitted in The Times, as an admiring salute to a diktat by the former executive editor, A.M. Rosenthal, who thought it was in bad taste and boldly asserted his stylistic prerogative. But I divagate.)
The Roberts rear-ending memo was unearthed by a Times reporter, Ann Kornblut, in the run-up to the Senate confirmation hearings regarding his nomination to the Supreme Court.
A word of advice to the putative chief justice: when using a pun in a judicial opinion, do not write "excuse the bad pun." Remember, there are no "bad" puns - all plays on words are good, and the louder the groans they elicit, the better. And never forget, do not insult your audience by calling attention to the coming wordplay.
The pardon-my-pun flag says to the listener or reader, "You're probably too dim-witted to catch this, so I'm pointing it out to you beforehand."
I do, however, commend the grammatically sensitive nominee for his choice of rear rather than raise, following the strict admonition that "you raise cattle but you rear children." Sad to say, that manner-born rule is now more honored in the breeches than the observance.
Word fun in Nabokov's Lolita by David K. Israel - June 2, 2009 - 7:38 AM. Lolita1.jpg If you're a fan of word play, you probably already know how much fun ...
9 Nov 2009 – In these pages readers will find bright flashes of Nabokovian wordplay (“The potentate had been potent till the absurd age of 80”) and surreal, ...
calling
noun
1.
the action or sound of calling.
"the calling of a cuckoo"
2.
a strong urge towards a particular way of life or career; a vocation.
"those who have a special calling to minister to others' needs"
沒有留言:
張貼留言