August 11: Presidential Gaffe Day

On this date in 1984, President Ronald Reagan, known as the "great communicator," made one of the rare gaffes of his political career. While warming up for a radio address, Reagan said:

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.

At the time Reagan was running for re-election against Democratic nominee Walter Mondale, and the President's faux pas resulted in a temporary dip in his poll numbers. However, Reagan won the November election and went on to continue his get-tough policy towards Russia. Ironically one of Reagan defining moments came in later comments about Russia; in 1987 he visited the Berlin Wall where he famously said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" (1).

Some might argue that the most glaring faux pas in presidential history was committed by President Warren Harding. Ignoring advisers who told him to wrap up against the cold, he proceeded to give the longest ever inaugural address and died from the resulting chill one month later of pneumonia.

Here at Word Daze, however, we will focus on the verbal faux pas of the presidents. Based on this criteria, Harding's gaffe doesn't quite qualify; his speech was long (10,000 words), but today no one quotes any of his slips of the tongue. Faux pas, by the way, is translated from the French as "false step."

Today's Challenge: Presidential Tongue Lashings

See if you can identify the president who uttered each the following gaffes:

1. Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

2. Depends on what your definition of "is" is.

3. I love sports. Whenever I can, I always watch the Detroit Tigers on the radio.

4. When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results.

5. Comment made on September 7th: Today is Pearl Harbor Day - 47 years ago from this very day we were hit and hit hard at Pearl Harbor.'

6. Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning? (2)

Quote of the Day: Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president's spouse. I wish him well. --Barbara Bush

Answers: 1. George W. Bush 2. Bill Clinton 3. Gerald Ford 4. Calvin Coolidge 5. George H. W. Bush 6. George W. Bush

1 - This Day In History - Presidential - August 11. The History Channelhttp://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?month=10272960&day=10272976&cat=presidential

2 - List of U.S. presidential faux-pas, gaffes, and unfortunate incidentshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._presidential_faux-pas,_gaffes,_and_unfortunate_incidents

August 10: State Motto Day

On this date in 1821, Missouri was admitted to the union as the 24th state. Originally a part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Missouri achieved statehood as a slave state. It was the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that settled the controversy about admitting Missouri as a slave state, by admitting Maine as a free state (1).

Known as the "Show Me" state, Missouri's unofficial slogan is the stuff of legend. The story goes that Missouri's U.S. Congressman Williard Duncan Vandiver coined the slogan at a 1899 naval banquet in Philadelphia where he said:

"I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me" (2).

The official state motto of Missouri is Latin: Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto ("Let the Welfare of the People Be the Supreme Law"). In fact, 'English Only' proponents might be surprised to learn that more than half of states in the union have mottos in languages other than English.

Here are the statistics on the polyglot mottos:

Latin: 22
French: 2
Greek: 1
Hawaiian: 1
Spanish: 1
Italian: 1
Native American - Chinook: 1

Six states feature one-word mottos. Only one state, Vermont, has its state's name in its motto, and Florida is the only state with the same motto as the United States of America: "In God We Trust." For a complete list of mottos with English translations visit Wikipedia (3).

Today's Challenge: Motto Mania
The geography pages at About.com include a humor section called "New State Mottos." See if you can match up the state with its "new" motto. When you finish, try creating some of your own mottos.

1. Please Don't Pronounce the "S"

2. As Seen on TV

3. Ask About Our State Motto Contest

4. 2 Billion Years Tidal Wave Free

5. We're Not REALLY An Island

6. Help! We're Overrun By Nerds and Slackers!

7. We Do Amazing Things With Corn

8. First Of The Rectangle States

9. "10,000 Lakes and 10,000,000,000,000 Mosquitoes"

Quote of the Day: I don't give a damn about "The Missouri Waltz" but I can't say it out loud because it's the song of Missouri. It's as bad as "The Star-Spangled Banner." --Harry S. Truman Sources:

1 - The Library of Congress. American Memory. "Today in History: August 10." http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/aug10.html

2 - Missouri Secretary of State's Office http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/history/slogan.asp

3 - U.S. State Mottos - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_mottos

4 - New State Mottos - http://geography.about.com/library/misc/blhumor11.htm

Answers:
1. Illinois 2. California 3. Nebraska 4. Indiana 5. Rhode Island 6. Washington 7. Iowa 8. Kansas 9. Minnesota

August 9: Walden Day

Today is the anniversary of the publication of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Two thousand copies were printed and put on sale for $1 each on August 9, 1854.

It took five years to sell those first thousand copies, but today Walden is one of the all-time best sellers in American literary history. It has also sold well overseas and has been translated into over 20 languages.

In his essay "Five Ways of Looking at Walden," Professor Walter Harding (1917-1996) talks about the different reasons that Walden has appealed to readers through the years. Below Harding's five points are summarized; to read his full essay, see the footnote at the end of this post.

1. Walden's first appeal was as a nature book. In an age of American progress and expansion, Thoreau left the city to live in the woods for two years and commune with nature. In today's modern age Thoreau reminds us that nature provides us with infinite metaphors for understanding our own existence. He reminds us to watch for signs of the changing of the season. In his own famous words from Walden, he explains why returning to nature is so important:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

2. The second appeal of Walden is its lessons on how to live life more simply. This aspect of Thoreau's work is especially relevant to the modern reader who is mired in possessions and the fast pace of the consumer culture.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as two or three , and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and refuse other things in proportion.
3. The third appeal of Walden is its satire. Thoreau doesn't just observe life in the woods; he reflects on the life he has left in the city, and his biting commentary pokes fun at progress. Here are samples of his views on the transatlantic telegraph cable and French fashion:

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.

4. The fourth appeal of Walden is simply the pleasure of reading great writing. Thoreau is a master the abstract and the particular. Think of how many time you have seen Thoreau quoted. The clarity of his sentences and the exactness of his word choice make Thoreau's prose eminently quotable.

Here is one example from Walden. It's a 351 word sentence from the "House-Warming" section. It would be considered long even by 19th century standards. With Thoreau at the pen though, even an average reader can follow the sentence's path from beginning to end:

I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head, — useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveler may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for housekeeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg that man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornament where the washing is not put out. nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trapdoor, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath without stamping.

Certainly not every sentence in Walden is this long, but whether writing a 2-word sentence or a 350-word sentence, Thoreau's syntax is precise and clear. Thoreau is a master of every tool of the writer's trade, including sentence variety.

5. The fifth appeal of Walden is its spiritual content. Here I'll quote Professor Harding's words:

It is a major thesis of Walden that the time has come for a spiritual rebirth — a renewal and
rededication of our lives to higher things. It is true that we have progressed a long way from the status of the caveman. But our progress has been for the most part material rather than spiritual. We have improved our means, but not our ends. We can unquestionably travel faster than our ancestors, but we continue to waste our time in trivial pursuits when we get there. We have cut down the number hours of labor required to keep ourselves alive, but we have not learned what to do with the time thus saved. We devote the major part of our national energy to devising new ways of blowing up the rest of the world and ignore attempts to make better men of ourselves.

Thoreau is sometimes mislabeled as a misanthrope. Although he does at times lament man's state, he nevertheless sees man's potential for better things. At the conclusion of Walden, for example, his words sound like a sermon from a pastor who is full of hope for his congregation:

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them (1).

Today's Challenge: Words From Walden

Walden rewards the reader in many ways. One of these rewards is Thoreau's word choice. Professor Harding says the following about Thoreau's diction:

Perhaps the most noticeable characteristic of Thoreau's word choice is the size of his vocabulary. Walden is guaranteed to send the conscientious student to the dictionary. In a random sampling we find such words as integument, umbrageous, deliquium, aliment, fluviatile, and periplus. Yet Thoreau cannot be termed ostentatious in his word-usage. He simply searches for and uses the best possible word for each situation (1).

Below are 8 sentences from Walden. See if you can match up each of the 8 words in bold with its appropriate synonym listed below.

1. In the course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence at least.

2. It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future.

3. Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house, which were already impervious to rain.

4. I'd like to emulate my father's achievements in track and field and bring home a few trophies for display.

5. Why should our life be in any respect provincial?

6. I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another.

7. If we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near together.

8. It was particularly conspicuous when the grass was moist with dew.

The synonyms: abundant, closed, imitate, narrow, obvious, talkative, unnecessary, wisdom

Quote of the Day: I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. --Henry David Thoreau.

Answers:
1. wisdom 2. unnecessary 3. closed 4. imitate 5. narrow 6. abundant 7. talkative 8. obvious

1- Harding, Walter. Five Ways of Looking at Walden. Massachusetts Review (Autumn 1962) ca. 1986.http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/about2/H/WalterHarding/FiveWays.htm

Wordie: Amazing Site for Word Lovers

Today I discovered Wordie, a great place to discover new words, list your favorite words, and look at the lists of other logophiles. One of my favorite words, for example, is defenestrate. At Wordie, I see that there are 118 other people out there who share my interest in throwing things out of windows. One great feature of the site is that beside each word are links to multiple dictionaries, so you can immediately learn about an unfamiliar word.

August 8: Dollar and Cents Day

Today is the anniversary of the Continental Congress' establishment of the monetary system of the United States. The year was 1786, and the ordinance called for U.S. coins with the following names: mill, cent, dime, dollar, and eagle.

According to Bill Bryson in Made in America, bankers and businessmen wished to maintain the English system based on pounds and shillings, but Thomas Jefferson devised a distinctly new system based on dollars and cents.

The name dollar comes from a town in Bohemia called Joachimstal. A coin made there in the 1500s, the Joachimstaler, spead throughout Europe evolving from the taler, to the thaler, to the daler, and finally into the dollar.

The name dime comes from the French dixieme which means tenth. It was originally spelled disme and pronounced as deem.

The name cent comes from the Latin centum which means one hundred. The unofficial name penny comes from the Latin term pannus which means "a piece of cloth"; at one time these pieces of cloth were used for money.

The name mill comes from the Latin millesimus which means thousandth. A mill would have represented 1/1000 of a dollar; however, the federal government never minted the mill coin. The lowest denomination of coin ever created was a 1/2 cent piece.

The eagle was a $10 coin.

The missing coin from the 1786 ordinance, common today, is the demomination that represents 1/20 of a dollar: the nickel, named for the metal from which is was made (nickels never were made of wood) (1).

Today's Challenge: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
Dollars and cents are certainly important in America, so important that many expressions contain references to money, such as fast buck, more bang for the buck, and pass the buck. The term buck has been slang for dollar since the mid-1800s, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. See if you can find the English idioms that fit in the sentences below; they all have to do with dollars, dimes, or cents. The literal definition of each expression is also given as a clue.

1. A virtual certainty: It's _____ _____ _____ that the team will make the playoffs.

2. To be absolutely sure: You can _____ _____ _____ _____ that he will be at the party.

3. Unexpected good fortune. I didn't think I would get a $500 rebate on my new car. When I got the check, it was _____ _____ _____.

4. Stingy about small expenditures and extravagant with large ones. Dean clips all the coupons for supermarket bargains but insists on going to the best restaurants; he's ______ _____ _____ _____ _____.

5. So plentiful as to be valueless. Don't bother to buy one of these -- they're a _____ _____ _____.

6. To inform on or betray someone. No one can cheat in this class -- someone's bound to _____ _____ _____ and tell the teacher.

7. Take action and end delay. It's time this administration _____ _____ _____ _____ and came up with a viable budget (2)

Quote of the Day: There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either. ~Robert Graves

Answers: 1. dollars to doughnuts 2. bet your bottom dollar 3. pennies from heaven 4. penny wise and pound foolish 5. dime a dozen 6. drop a dime 7. got off the dime

1 - Bryson, Bill. Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States. New York: Perennial, 1994.

2 - Ammer, Christine. The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997

August 7: Syntax Day

Today is the anniversary of the Whiskey Rebellion.

In 1794 farmers in western Pennsylvania rebelled against a federal tax on liquor by tarring and feathering tax collectors and torching their homes. It was one of the first tests of federal authority for the young United States. In response to the uprising, President George Washington called in more than 12,000 Federal troops.The rebels put up little residence, fleeing to hide in the woods. Twenty were captured, and one man died while in prison. Only two of the rebels were convicted of treason, and both of these men where eventual pardoned by Washington (1).

There is a long tradition of sin taxes in America, and it may be a bad pun, but on what other day can you celebrate the syntax of English sentences?

Syntax is simply the way writers put together phrases and clauses to make sentences. Knowledge of syntax helps writers create more varied sentences. For example, variety in sentence openings is an important feature of good writing. Starting with the subject is a natural feature of English sentences, and there is nothing wrong with it. However, if every one of your sentences begins with the subject, your writing will sound monotonous and lifeless.

Three effective methods for adding variety to sentence openings are using prepositional phrases, participial phrases, and dependent clauses. Let's look at how you can manipulate a sentence's syntax to open in a variety of ways.

I. Open with a Prepositional Phrase: These phrases begin with a preposition and end with a noun, such as: on the roof, over the rainbow, in the garden, from the city, out the window.

Original Sentence: The students gathered in the cafeteria to watch the multimedia presentation on dental hygiene.

Revised sentence, opening with a prepositional phrase: In the cafeteria, the students gathered to watch the multimedia presentation on dental hygiene.

II. Open with a Participial Phrase: These phrases begin with a verb in the -ing form that describes the subject of the sentence, such as, eating a sandwich, mailing a letter, or singing a song.

Original Sentence: Bill killed time waiting for his dentist appointment by reading a magazine article on effective flossing techniques.

Revised Sentence, opening with a participial phrase: Reading a magazine article on effective flossing techniques, Bill killed time waiting for his dentist appointment.

III. Open with a Dependent Clause: These clauses contain both a subject and a verb and begin with a subordinating conjunction, such as: after he ate lunch, because she missed the quiz, or after she read the novel.Original Sentence: Max likes to play Ping-Pong, so he never leaves home without his paddle.Revised Sentence, opening with a dependent clause: Because Max likes to play Ping-Pong, he never leaves home without his paddle.

Today's Challenge: No Sin Syntax
Revise the sentences below so that they begin with the designated opening.1. Josh ran a record mile in his sweaty bowling shoes. (Open with a prepositional phrase).2. Mary thought about how to finish her project. She sat in the living room. (Open with a participial phrase)3. The teacher announced that the test was cancelled. The class cheered. (Open with a dependent clause)

Quote of the Day: Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds. --Dorothy L. Sayers

Answers:1. In his sweaty bowling shoes, Josh ran a record mile.

2. Sitting in the living room, Mary thought about how to finish her project.

3. When the teacher announced that the test was cancelled, the class cheered.

1 - Whiskey Rebellion Begins. This Day in History - Wall Street. The History Channel.http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?month=10272960&day=10272972&cat=wallstreet

2 - Backman, Brian. Thinking in Threes: The Power of Three in Writing. Fort Collins, Colorado: Cottonwood Press, Inc., 2005.

August 6: Interjection Day

Today is the anniversary of the British release of the Beatles album Help!, the soundtrack of their second film by the same title.

The title song, like most Beatles songs, is credited to the Lennon-McCartney song writing team, but it was primarily a Lennon composition. John Lennon explained that the song was written during the height of Beatlemania and was a literal cry for help.

The covers of both the British and the American albums show the Fab Four standing with their arms outstretched to signal semaphore letters. Strangely the letters do not spell out H - E - L -P; instead, they spell N - V - U - J.

The Beatles second film, a James Bond spoof, was not as well received as their critically acclaimed first film A Hard Day's Night. The music of the film, however, revealed the Beatles maturing songwriting talent with such songs as "I've Just Seen A Face," "Ticket to Ride," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," and "Yesterday." The varied tempos of the songs and the lyrics, more sophisticated than those on previous albums, showed that the Beatles were moving beyond "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah."

The words help and yeah are both interjections: words or phrases that express emotion but have no grammatical connection to the rest of a sentence. One of the most overlooked and underrated parts of speech, interjections are an important part of the way we communicate.

The book ZOUNDS! A Brower's Dictionary of Interjections is a catalog of over 500 interjections, their definitions and origins. Where else can you learn that there are a total of 109 two-letter words allowable for Scrabble, and that 23 of those two-letter words are interjections:

ah, aw, ay, bo, eh, er, fy, ha, hi, ho, io, lo, my, oh, oi, ow, sh, st, ta, um, ur, ou, yo

The book, written by Mark Dunn and illustrated by Sergio Aragones, gives fascinating and funny background explanations for each interjection.



Here is a small A-Z sample of some of the interjections featured. You can also watch the unforgettable School House Rock video.





aha


bravo


check


definitely


eureka


far-out

gadzooks

hi

I declare

jeepers

knock-knock

la-di-da

my bad

no soap

O.K.

please

quiet

rats

sorry

thanks

uff-da

very well

way to go

yadda-yadda

zounds (1)

Today's Challenge: Wow! The Interjection Hall of Fame!
Read each of the famous interjections below and see if you can identify the name of the person or character who made it famous.

1. "Eureka!"

2. "Badabing-badaboom"

3. "Stuff and nonsense!"

4. "Bah! Humbug!"

5. "Fiddle-dee-dee !"

6. Leapin' lizards!"

7. "Nanoo, nanoo"

8. "Dyn-O-Mite!"

9. "Bully!" (1)

Quote of the Day:

CLAUDIO. O! what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!

BENEDICK. How now! Interjections? Why then, some be of laughing, as ah! ha! he! --William Shakespeare, from Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV, Scene 1.

Answers: 1. Archimedes 2. Tony Soprano 3. Alice, in Alice in Wonderland 4. Scrooge 5. Scarlet O'Hara 6. Little Orphan Anne 7. Mork, from "Mork & Mindy" 8. Jimmy Walker from "Good Times" 9. President Theodore Roosevelt

1 - Dunn, Mark and Sergio Aragones. Zounds!: A Browser's Dictionary of Interjections. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005.

Potter-mania in Anacortes

It's a great time to be an English teacher! Here's a news story from the Skagit Valley Herald about the positive influence of Harry Potter. Some of my students are profiled and quoted in the story. I'm also quoted -- they misspelled my name though: it's "Backman" not "Bachman."

August 5: Brainstorming Day

Today is the birthday of Alex F. Osborn the father of brainstorming. Born in New York, New York in 1886, he pursued a career in journalism but eventually found himself working in business, first in sales and then in advertising.

In 1938 the advertising company that he founded (Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn) began using an organized method of generating ideas. Although Osborn is credited with coining the word for this technique, brainstorming, he never took full credit for the word; instead, he acknowledged his colleagues who along with Osborn used their brains to attack or storm a problem. Osborn also credited religious leaders in the East, saying that that Hindu teachers in India used a similar technique for more than 400 years. In India it was called Prai-Barshana: Prai for "outside yourself" and Barshana for "question."

Regardless of where the word came from, brainstorming is a vital technique for generating ideas in business, government, and especially for writing.

Typically brainstorming sessions work best in small groups, so that the individuals can join forces and build on the ideas of other in the group. The goals is to create a list of ideas that has flexibility and fluency. Fluency means the number of ideas generated, and flexibility means how different the ideas are from each other and how different they are from what most people think up.

In order to create a list of ideas that has flexibility and fluency, follow these rules:

1. Defer judgment. Don't edit, eliminate, or hold back any ideas. Criticism kills participation, and often an idea that looks bad at first turns out to be a good one in the long run. Osborn used the following analogy to illustrate the need to put criticism aside when brainstorming:

If you try to get hot and cold water out of the same faucet at the same time, you will get only tepid water. And if you try to criticize and create at the same time, you can’t turn on either the cold enough criticism or the hot enough ideas. So let’s stick solely to ideas-lets cut out all criticism during this session.

2. Go for quantity of ideas. The more ideas, the greater the likelihood that some of those ideas will be good. A good analogy for this is a professional photographer who takes hundreds of pictures, knowing that only a very small percentage of those pictures will be worth keeping.

3. Encourage wild, exaggerated ideas. Free from the criticism and logic of the left brain, the right side of the brain, the creative side, will have a higher likelihood of creating something new. Image how absurd the initial idea of selling bottled water must have been? Why would people pay for water when they can get it free from the tap? Alex Osborn believe in the power of the human imagination to generate new ideas that can change our lives for the better. His 1953 book Applied Imagination is a pioneering work in the field of creativity. In this book he outlines techniques like brainstorming that help us to enter into the creative mindset and stay there for a longer period of time.

Today's Challenge: The Forecast Calls for Brainstorming

Brainstorming is an important prewriting technique for writers. The more time you spend brainstorming, the higher the chances that you will find something that is really worth writing about. Below are 10 questions for brainstorming. Get a small group together, or practice on your own. Use the rules for brainstorming to generate a large list of ideas that has both fluency and flexibility.

1. What are some ways we might improve the #2 pencil?

2. What would be the best opening scene for a suspense film?

3. In the opening sentences of a novel, the main character takes off his shoes and socks and ties the two sock into a knot. Why is he doing this?

4. If we divided blogs into three or more different categories, what might those three categories be?

5. What are the similarities and differences between cats and dogs?

6. What are some examples of stupid things that otherwise intelligent people sometimes do by mistake?

7. What are the three most important steps in studying for a test?

8. What will you see on the Internet five year from now that you don't see today?

9. Imagine that next year, 8-track tapes make a big comeback. Why might this happen?

10. What would be an interesting question for brainstorming in a small group?

Quote of the Day: It's the miner's headlamp, not the eureka flash, that drives reliable innovation. The process of innovation is the sweaty work of digging through tons of information to find a few golden nuggets -- mainly unlikely knowledge combinations. \

--T George Harris

1 - Gurule, Jason. "Alex F. Osborn." The seminar on Theories of Persuasive Communication and Consumer Decision-Making for Dr. John Leckenby at the University of Texas at Austin. http://www.ciadvertising.org/student_account/spring_02/adv382j/jagurule/Osborn/osbornfront.html

August 4: Top 100 Day

Today is the the anniversary of the introduction of Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart. The first number one song on the chart was Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool."

Prior to August 4, 1958, Billboard had separate charts for Most Played By Jockeys, Best Sellers in Stores, and Most Played in Juke Boxes. The new Hot 100 list combined the Best Sellers and the Most Played By Jockeys lists into a single chart. Because Juke Boxes were becoming less popular, their numbers were not included.

The linguistic equivalent of Billboard's Hot 100 would have to be Word Spy's Top 100 Words . Created by technical writer Paul McFedries, Word Spy is a web site devoted to neologisms. Neologisms are new words -- words that have appeared in print multiple times, but that are not in the dictionary.

Word Spy gives the arm chair linguist a peek behind the lexical curtain. Visiting this web site is a little like watching a preseason football practice: you get to see all the players (words) on the field, but you're not sure which ones will make the final cut. In the case of neologisms, the final cut is making it into the dictionary. The lexicographers at the Oxford English Dictionary do their work behind the scenes, and most neologisms have the life span of the common house fly. In contrast, Word Spy makes lexicography democratic: you get to see all the words, it's free, and McFedries even accepts reader submissions.

Here are a couple of examples for neologisms from Word Spy:

aireoke (air.ee.OH.kee) n. Playing air guitar and singing to prerecorded music; playing air guitar in a public performance. Also: air-eoke. [Blend of air guitar and karaoke.]

Manilow method n. The discouragement of loitering in public places by broadcasting music that is offensive to young people, particularly the songs of singer Barry Manilow.

In addition to words and definitions, Word Spy also provides pronunciations, citations, and notes on each word. WARNING: Reading this site can become addictive! (2)

Today's Challenge: Brave New Words
See if you can match up the 8 neologisms from Word Spy with the 8 definitions numbered below.

freegan
buzzword bingo
godcasting
NOPE
Google bombing
Drink the Kool-Aid
fauxhawk
male answer syndrome

1. n. A person or attitude that opposes all real estate development or other projects that would harm the environment or reduce property values.

2. n. A hairstyle in which a strip of hair across the top of the head is longer and higher than the hair on the remainder of the head.

3. n. A person, usually a vegan, who consumes only food that is obtained by foraging, most often in the garbage of restaurants, grocery stores, and other retailers.

4. v. To become a firm believer in something; to accept an argument or philosophy wholeheartedly or blindly.

5. n. Setting up a large number of Web pages with links that point to a specific Web site so that the site will appear near the top of a Google search when users enter the link text.

6. n. The tendency for some men to answer a question even when they don't know the answer.

7. n. A word game played during corporate meetings. Players are issued bingo-like cards with lists of buzzwords such as paradigm and proactive. Players check off these words as they come up in the meeting, and the first to fill in a "line" of words is the winner.

8. pp. Podcasting an audio feed with a religious message (2).

Quote of the Day: The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express. --Alexis de Tocqueville

Answers: 1. NOPE: (Not On Planet Earth) 2. fauxhawk 3. freegan 4. Drink the Kool-Aid5. Google bombing 6. male answer syndrome 7. buzzword bingo 8. godcasting

1 - This Day in History - Entertainment - August 4. The History Channel
http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?month=10272960&day=10272969&cat=entertainment

2. wordspy.com
http://www.wordspy.com/topwords.asp

August 3: Idiot Letter Day

On this date in 1993, one of the most hilarious missives in the history of letter writing was sent to an American corporation. Before we look at the letter, let's look at the history of how it came to be written.

In July of 1993 Paul Rosa received a piece of junk mail that changed his life. It was a brief letter from Pizza Hut's delivery unit saying that they had not received an order from Rosa's address in a long time. The letter from the Vice-president of Pizza Hut marketing reminded Rosa of the quality, variety, and value of Pizza Hut pizza. It might have been just another piece of junk mail, but one line in the letter resonated with Rosa. It said: "You see, you're the kind of customer we'd like to see more often." Rosa wrote back a letter to Pizza Hut asking "What kind of customer wouldn't you like to see more often?"

This first letter started a letter-writing campaign that went on for months, covering more than 100 different corporations. Rosa's mission statement was: Since American corporations are treating their customers like idiots, "while reaching for their wallets," I am going to get even by writing them letters in which I act like an idiot.

The letters from Rosa's "kamikaze consumer crusade" were published in 1995 in the book Idiot Letters: One Man's Relentless Assault on Corporate America.

The following is the letter that Rosa sent to Oil-Dri Corporation of America the makers of Cat's Pride Premium Cat Litter on August 3, 1993.

Dear Cat Lovers,

For the first ten years of my cat's life, it was a living hell trying to get her to use her litter box! Whenever she would get the call from nature (night or day), she would howl until someone would let her out. Needless to say, this made my wife (Vicki) and I extremely angry, as we were often woken from a sound slumber, or interrupted during...Matlock. We tried many litter boxes (circular, octagonal, etc.) and brands of cat litter, but she simply refused to cooperate. We were actually tempted to give her away, but simply love her too much -- she was a gift from my mother (Irene).

This all changed a few months ago when, at wits' end, we tried Cat's Pride on the suggestion of a friend (Max). Well, we were delighted, nay ecstatic, when Jesse - without hesitation - stepped into the litter box and "unloaded." After ten years of treating her box like it was filled with glass chips, we finally found something she likes! And her attitude hasn't changed! Since that day she has ventured to the basement on a daily basis to fulfill her duty. The increased cleaning chores on our part are quite acceptable, considering the time now saved from letting her in and out and in and out and .... I don't know what's in that stuff, but it has done the impossible: changed the lifestyle of a ten year old cat (70 to you and me)! Yippee!

The only thing I thought was a bit odd was the name "CAT'S PRIDE." I can understand that your corporation would be proud of this cat litter, but a cat? When Jesse is heaving and straining in her box, I don't thing pride is one of her sentiments. In fact I don't think cats are proud of anything at all, ever! So, why did you choose this name? It seems wrong to suggest what cats are "feeling" without offering any proof. Isn't that dishonest?

In conclusion, I am thrilled with your product - it's a godsend - but must take exception to the misleading name. Would you be so kind as to get back to me on this subject matter? In the meantime, I'd be honored to recommend "Cat's Pride" to my friends!

Feline Fine,

Paul C. Rosa

To their credit, the makers of Cat's Pride answered Rosa's letter and even sent along some money saving coupons.

Today's Challenge: Going Postal
Letter writing is a lost art in an age of telephones and email, but there are few more thoughtful ways to communicate with another person. Paul Rosa wrote to get his questions answered. What question would you like to have answered? Look around you, ask questions, and then write a letter to someone who might be able to answer your question. Write a idiot letter like Paul Rosa or a serious letter.

As a reminder, even humorous letters like Rosa's follow a format. Here are the key parts of a letter:

1. Heading with your name and address
2. Date
3. Inside Address: name and address of the recipient of the letter
4. Salutation ("Dear Mr. Smith")
5. Body of Letter
6. Complimentary Closing ("Sincerely")
7. Your Signature

Quotes of the Day:

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. - Mark Twain

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. -- Albert Einstein

1 - Rosa, Paul. Idiot Letters: One Man's Relentless Assault on Corporate America. New York: Doubleday, 1995

August 2: Urgent Letter Day

Today is the anniversary of a letter that changed history. The letter, dated August 2, 1939, was written by physicists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard; it was addressed to the President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The letter's content warned the president of the Nazi's possible use of uranium for the development of atomic weapons.

The story behind this historic letter that led to the Manhattan Project, begins in Germany, which prior to 1933 was a hotbed of scientific inquiry: Germany had been awarded 99 Nobel Prizes in science compared to the United States' 6 Nobel Prizes. The rise of anti-semitism and of Adolf Hitler, however, caused many Jewish scientists to flee Germany.

One of those who fled was physicist Leo Szilard who relocated to England. While sitting at a London traffic light in 1933 he had an epiphany: theoretically the atom could be split, creating a chain reaction of enormous power.

Szilard's idea moved from theory to fact in 1939 when German scientists successfully split an atom. The fact that German scientists now had the knowledge of the potentially destructive power of the atom in their hands alarmed Szilard.

Traditionally scientists around the world published their breakthroughs for all to see. Szilard was afraid that the German scientists were using this information to develop a bomb. His fears were heightened when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939 and stopped all exports of uranium ore from the occupied country.

He urged scientists outside of Germany to delay publication of their findings in fission-related areas, and he initiated a meeting with his former teacher Albert Einstein.

Einstein, like Szilard, was a Jew and had fled Germany during the rise of Hitler. By 1939 Einstein's theory of relativity had made him an international celebrity -- just the kind of name recognition that Szilard needed to get his alarm bell heard by world leaders.

Szilard met with Einstein in New York on July 30. Einstein dictated the letter to Szilard in German, and Szilard later translated it into a typed final draft for Einstein's signature.

The letter's opening read as follows:

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations.

To see the entire letter visit http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Begin/Einstein.shtml

Even Einstein's signature, however, did not guarantee that the letter would get the attention it deserved. Einstein and Szilard entrusted the letter to Alexander Sachs, an unofficial advisor to F.D.R., but Roosevelt was preoccupied with the growing war in Europe, and Sachs was unable to get an appointment with him until October 1939.

To persuade Roosevelt, Sachs used a historical analogy. He told Roosevelt about an American inventor who met with the French emperor during the Napoleonic Wars. The inventor offered to build a fleet of steamships that could invade England regardless of the weather. Napoleon was incredulous, unable to think beyond ships with sails. He sent the American away. The shortsightedness, arrogance, and lack of imagination of Napoleon saved England and sealed Napoleon's fate. It was a powerful analogy, and despite the fact that it took time for the Manhattan Project to get off the ground, it was the letter and Sach's persuasiveness that led to the development of the atomic bomb that Harry Truman had dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Ironically, near the end of the war the Allies discovered that the Germans were at least two years away from developing the bomb. Furthermore, both Szilard and Einstein objected to the United States' use of the bomb. Even though Einstein did not work directly on the Manhattan Project, he called his decision to sign the letter to President Roosevelt the "one great mistake in my life" (1).

For a more detailed account of the letter and its impact on history, read the chapter on "Einstein's Letter" in Ten Days that Unexpectedly Changed America.

Today's Challenge: Notes, Missives, and Epistles

Below are excerpts from 6 letters by famous people from Rosalie Maggio's book How They Said It:

Beethoven
E.B. White
Dylan Thomas
Abraham Lincoln
Groucho Marx
Samuel Johnson

See if you can guess which man wrote which letter:

1. I am, by accident, not by nature, so abominably rude and unreliable that I have to spend the best part of the first week after my regular short visits to town in writing frantic letters of apology.

2. Never come near me again! You are a faithless cur, and may the hangman take all faithless curs.

3. . . . . I had to tell someone (and it might as well be you since you're the author) how much I enjoyed "The Dud Avocado." It made me laugh, scream, and guffaw (which, incidentally, is a great name for a law firm) . . . .

4. I have been hindered from writing to you by an imagination that it was necessary to write more than I had time for . . . .

5. I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears so much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. . . . I can only assume that your editorial writer, in a hurry to get home for Thanksgiving, tripped over the Fifth Amendment and thought it was the office cat . . . .

6. The bearer of this is a young man who thinks he can be a lawyer. Examine him if you want to. I have done so and am satisfied. He's a good deal smarter than he looks to be.

Quote of the Day: We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Answers: 1. Dylan Thomas 2. Beethoven 3. Groucho Marx 4. Samuel Johnson 5. E.B. White 6. Abraham Lincoln

1 - Gillon, Steven M. Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006.

2 - Maggio, Rosalie. How They Said It: Wise and Witty Letters From the Famous and Infamous. New York: Prentice Hall, 2000.

August 1: Capitonym Day

August First is one of the most august days on the calendar.

August is the month named for the first Roman emperor Octavian Augustus Caesar, whose uncle was Julius Caesar. Emulating his Uncle Julius, for whom July is name, Augustus wanted his own month. August was created in his honor, based on the official title Augustus that the Roman Senate gave Octavian (1).

The opening sentence of this post demonstrates that August/august is a capitonym.

A capitonym is a word that changes pronunciation and meaning depending on whether or not it is capitalized; therefore, an August dinner party is quite different from an august dinner party.

Here's a short poem from Richard Lederer's Word Circus containing four examples of capitonyms:

Job's Job

In August, an august patriarch

Was reading an ad in Reading, Mass.

Long-suffering Job secured a job

To polish piles of Polish brass (2)

Today's Challenge: Begin August with an August Word Challenge

Fill in the blanks below with the appropriate capitonyms.

1. We had a ______ two-week vacation in _____, France.

2. Yesterday was a ________ day than today on Mount __________.

3. We walked all over _____, Peru looking for a place to buy some ______ beans.

4. Don't ________ Ron by asking him to correctly pronounce the name of the _______ River.

5. As a child Mark _________'s hockey gear always made his room much _________ than his sister's room.

Quote of the Day: Smell brings to mind... a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. --Diane Ackerman

Answers: 1. nice (NICE - NEECE) 2. rainier - (RANE-ee-er, ray-NEER)3. lima (LEE-ma, LIE-ma) embarras (em-BAR-rass, AUM-bro) 5. messier (mess-ee-AYE, mess-ee-ER)

1- Funk, Wilfred. Word Origins and Their Romantic Stories. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1950.

2 - Lederer, Richard. The Word Circus. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 1998.

July 31: Harry Potter Day

Today is the birthday of the literary character Harry Potter and Harry's creator: J.K. (Joanne Kathleen) Rowling. The British author was born on July 31, 1965.

The idea of a story about boy wizard came to Rowling one day on a long train ride from Manchester to London in the Summer of 1990. It took seven years, however, to bring Harry Potter to life in a published book. After rejections from several publishers, Bloomsbury Children's Books published Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in June 1997.

After the publication of Philospher's Stone, success and awards came fast for Rowling. She sold the American rights to her books to Scholastic Books, and quit her job teaching French to write full time.

Sales of the seven books in Harry Potter saga have reached unprecedented numbers. Unbelievably, Harry Potter titles are number one, two, and three on the Amazon.com bestseller list for the decade (2000-2005). Potter books have sold more than 300 million copies and have been translated into more than 30 languages (1).

In 2003, Rowling achieved the rare distinction of having one of her coined words added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) -- a very rare achievement for a living author.

The word is muggle, defined as:

a person who possesses no magical powers. Hence in allusive and extended uses: a person who lacks a particular skill or skills, or who is regarded as inferior in some way.

The editors of the OED had little choice but to include the word in the dictionary after considering the seemingly universal popularity of Rowling's books and the fact that the word was being used everyday by people all over the world. A similar feat was accomplished by JRR Tolkien when the OED included his word "hobbit" in the 1976 edition of the OED. Tolkien, however, had died before seeing his word in the dictionary.

Today's Challenge: I Put a Spell on You

The made-up language of spells in J. K. Rowling's books is not a totally random creation. Hidden in the spells are word parts that resemble Latin and Greek roots. Given 7 roots below, along with the Potter spell, and common English words with the same root, see if you can identify the English translation of each root.

1. Root: LEV Wingardium Leviosa! Common Words: lever, elevator, levee, elevate

2. Root: LOCO Locomotor Mortis! Common Words: locomotive, locate, dislocate, allocate

3. Root: PEL Expelliarmus! Common Words: propel, expel, repel, compel

4. Root: LUM Lumos! Common Words: illuminate, lucid, bioluminescence, elucidate

5. Root: FID Fidelus! Common Words: confide, confidence, fidelity, infidel

6. Root: PATR Expecto Patronus! Common Words: paternal, patron, patronize, patriot

7. Root: FIN Finite incantatem! Common Words: infinite, define, affinity, infinitesimal

A. To Push

B. To Raise Up, Make Lighter

C. Trust

D. Father

E. Place

F. End or Limit

G. Light (3)

Quote of the Day: The book is really about the power of the imagination. What Harry is learning to do is to develop his full potential. Wizardry is just the analogy I use. --J. K. Rowling

Answers: 1. B. To Raise Up, Make Lighter 2. E Place 3. A To Push 4. G Light 5. C Trust 6. D Father 7. F End or Limit

1 - http://www.edupaperback.org/showauth.cfm?authid=70

2 - 'Muggle' Goes Into Oxford English Dictionary. BBC Newsround 24 March 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_2882000/2882895.stm

3 - Resource Room: Free-spirited Structured Multisensory Learning. Reading Comprehension. Vocabulary words parts index (Greek and Latin Roots) http://www.resourceroom.net/comprehension/wordparts/index.asp

July 30: Paperback Day

Today is the anniversary of the publication of the first modern paperback books. On July 30, 1935, Penguin Books issued its first 10 paperback titles.

Penguin owes its success to a German publisher, Tachnitz, which had been publishing paperbound books in a variety of languages, including English, as early as 1845. In 1931 an English language offshoot of Tachnitz was established in London. Wanting a name for the company that could be understood in a variety of languages, the German company selected the name Albatross Books.

Albatross had early success in selling English books, but when the Nazis seized the company's presses in Germany, the company failed.

The brief success of Albatross was noted by Allan Lane, the president of England's Bodley Head Publishing House. Lane approached the head buyers of F.W. Woolworth, a chain of retail stores, with the idea of publishing ten literary titles in paperback in the Woolworth stores at a cost of sixpence each, about the same price as a pack of cigarettes. Imitating the Albatross model, Allan called his company Penguin Books.

Lane's plan doesn't sound very radical today, but in the 1930s books were sold in bookstores, not retails stores. In addition, the ten titles Lane proposed were considered too highbrow for the lower classes, the main buyers of paperbacks.

Here are the titles and authors of the first Penguin paperbacks:

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie

2. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy L Sayers

3. Gone to Earth, Mary Webb

4. William, E. H. Young

5. Carnival, Compton Mackenzie

6. Poet's Pub, Eric Linklater

7. Madame Claire, Susan Ertz

8. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway

9. Twenty-five, Beverley Nichols

10. Ariel, Andre Maurois

The conventional wisdom of the publishing world was wrong, however, and Lane's plan was a rousing success. Paperbacks became all the rage in England. By the end of the year over 3 million books had been sold and by 1937, Penguin paperbacks were being sold from vending machines at train stations.

Today's Challenge: Paperback Writers Try to match up the first sentences below with the list of first 10 titles release by Penguin Books.

1. Small feckless clouds were hurried across the vast untroubled sky - shepherdless, futile, imponderable - and were torn to fragments on the fangs of the mountains, so ending their ephemeral adventures with nothing of their fugitive existence left but a few tears.

2. The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as "The Styles Case" has now somewhat subsided.

3. What in the world, Wimsey, are you doing in this Morgue?" demanded Captain Fentiman, flinging aside the "Evening Banner" with air of a man released from an irksome duty.

4. If you wish to be relieved from the worries of housekeeping; if you wish to cultivate the society of retired army folk, or that of blameless spinsterhood, ask for a room (inclusive terms) at the Kensington Park Hotel, Kensington.

5. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

Quote of the Day: Paperbacks blink in and out of print like fireflies. They also, as older collectors have ruefully discovered, fade and fall apart even more rapidly than their owners. --Paul Gray

Answers: 1. Gone to Earth 2. The Mysterious Affair at Styles 3. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club4. Madame Claire 5. A Farewell to Arms

1 - http://paperbarn.www1.50megs.com/Paperbacks/msg6.htm

July 29: Defeat of the Spanish Armada Day

Today is the anniversary of Britain's victorious sea battle against Spain's "Invincible Armada" in 1588. At the time England was a small, insignificant island nation while Spain was the richest, most powerful empire in the world.

The conflict between the two countries was political as well as religious. Elizabeth, the Protestant Queen of England, had encouraged the activities of British pirates who plundered Spanish ships returning from the New World. The Catholic king of Spain, Phillip II, had had enough of the Protestant upstarts of England and dispatched his fleet of more than 100 ships to invade the British.

On July 29, 1588 the Armada reached sight of the English shore and confronted the much smaller British fleet. Sea battles raged on and off until August. Although the English were the smaller force, they used superior tactics to outmaneuver the Spanish; in addition, terrible rain and wind prevented the Spanish from reaching the English shore. By the time the Armada turned around to return to Spain, nearly half of its ships had been destroyed (1).

Before the British victory over the Spanish Armada had been sealed, Elizabeth courageously left her palace to travel to Tilbury (Essex) to address her assembled troops. Her tenacious refusal to be defeated by the Spanish foreshadows Winston Churchill's similar refusal to yield to the Germans more than 350 years later:

My loving people,

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people (2)

The astonishing and decisive victory by the British over the Spanish Armada is one of the key turning points in history. It prevented the extinction of Protestantism in England and also prevented the end of the Reformation in Europe. It gave birth to the nationalism of the British Empire and opened the door to British exploration of the world, especially North America. Linguistically it meant that English, not Spanish, would survive on the British Isles and eventually become the global language it is today (3).

Imagine how different it would have been if Shakespeare, who began writing his plays in London in 1589, would have written in Spanish rather than English.

Today's Challenge: From Armadillos to Tornados

Despite the fact that the British defeat of the Spanish Armada preserved an English speaking people, it did not prevent those same people from assimilating various Spanish words into English -- words such as armada, armadillo, and tornado. Given the definitions below from Success with Words and the number of letters, see if you can identify the common English words borrowed from Spanish in the 16th to the 18th centuries.

1. 7 letters: plant whose leaves are used for smoking.

2. 7 letters: swaggering show of courage.

3. 9 letters: drink or candy made from a ground bean.

4. 6 letters: fruit of a tropical tree.

5. 6 letters: plant bearing edible red fruit.

6. 9 letters: large reptile of the crocodile family.

7. 8 letters: human who eats human flesh.

8. 6 letters: tuberous plant.

Quote of the Day: Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. --Sun-tzu

Answers: 1. tobacco 2. bravado 3. chocolate 4. banana 5. tomato 6. alligator 7. cannibal 8. potato

1 - Coffin, Judith G., Robert C. Stacey, Robert E. Lerner, and Standish Meacham. Western Civilization, Volume 2. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002.

2 - The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th Edition. Vol 1, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993. ISBN. 0393962873

3 - http://www.microsoft.com/uk/homepc/articles/battles.asp

4 - Reader's Digest Success with Words: A Guide to the American Language. Pleasantville, New York: The Reader's Digest Association, Inc., 1983.

July 28: Near-synonym Day

Today is the anniversary of the debut of the first cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny. On July 28, 1940, Warner Brothers released the animated short A Wild Hare in technicolor. The cartoon did not identify Bugs by name -- that would come later -- but it did premier his catchphrase "What's up Doc?" and his nemesis Elmer Fudd (1).

Coincidentally, it is also the birthday of Beatrix Potter, born in London in 1866.

Potter had few playmates as a child, but she did have a menagerie of pets that included a tortoise, a frog, a snake, and a rabbit. A shy, quiet girl, Potter sketched, painted, and kept a journal in which she wrote in a secret code she invented. The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published in 1902. She published numerous other animal tales, but Peter Rabbit remains the most popular (2).

All this talk about rabbits begs the question: what is the difference between a rabbit and a hare? Well, according to Bernice Randall's book When is a Pig a Hog?, a hare is larger than a rabbit, with longer ears and legs; another difference is that hares live in the open, among rocks and thickets, while rabbits live in burrows. Many words in English feature these kinds of fine distinctions, especially since English has more synonyms than any other language. This expansive lexicon is a blessing for writers, but it also demands attention to detail, since there are very few truly synonymous words -- that is words that can be used interchangeably regardless of context.

For example, the words lectern and podium appear to have no significant difference in meaning, but subtle distinctions in each word's definition make them near-synonyms rather than true synonyms. A lectern refers to a stand that a speaker might use for holding notes, but it also refers to a slanted-top reading desk in a church from which the scriptures are read. Like lectern, podium is used for a speaker's stand, but it also refers to a low platform upon which a speaker or conductor might stand.

Today's Challenge: The Tortoise and the Hare or The Turtle and the Rabbit?
In English there is a literal menagerie of near-synonyms. Read the definitions below from When Is a Pig a Hog? See if you can identify which of the two animals listed fits the definition most closely.

1. This domesticated member of the camel family is prized for its long, silky brown or black wool. Llama or Alpaca?

2. A domesticated ass. Donkey or Mule?

3. An immature swine weighing less than 120 pounds. Pig or Hog?

4. A torpedo-shaped, small-toothed whale with a blunt snout. Dolphin or Porpoise?

5. A leaping amphibian with smooth and moist skin, able to live on either land or water. Frog or Toad?

6. A reptile with a soft body and hard shell that lives in the water, especially the sea. Turtle or Tortoise?

7. A large, flesh-eating lizard-like reptile that is more aggressive than its counterpart; it also has
a longer and more pointed snout, and its closed mouth shows teeth. Alligator or Crocodile?

8. An amphibian, not a reptile, with soft, moist skin and no claws. Lizard or Salamander? (3)

Quote of the Day: Q: What’s the difference between a fanatic and a zealot? A: A zealot can’t change his mind. A fanatic can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. --Winston Churchill

Answers: 1. Alpaca 2. Donkey 3. Pig 4. Porpoise 5. Frog 6. Turtle 7. Crocodile 8. Salamander

1 - Hunter, Matthew. "The Old Grey Hare: A History of Bugs Bunny." http://toolooney.goldenagecartoons.com/bugs.htm

2- http://www.peterrabbit.com/

3 - Randall, Bernice. When Is a Pig a Hog?: A Guide to Confoundingly Related English Words. New York: Galahad Books, 1991.

July 27: SMOG Day

Today is the anniversary of the coinage of the word smog. On July 27, 1905 the London Globe reported: "At a meeting of the Public Health Congress Dr. Des Voeux did a public service in coining a new word for the London fog, which was referred to as smog, a compound of smoke and fog" (1). Smog is just one example of a class of English words know as blends (a.k.a. portmanteau words).

The London fog of Dickens and Hollywood was certainly less romantic than it appeared. The major culprit of the city's dark fog was coal burning; it seems appropriate that a physician would be the one to appear on the scene to name the culprit and to try to clear it up.

When it comes to writing, there is another kind of SMOG know as the Simple Measure Of Gobbledygook. This type of SMOG is a test of a text's readability, based on a formula devised by reading researcher G. Harry McLaughlin. McLaughlin says he designed his formula in 1969 BC [Before Computers], to give educators an easy method of calculating the grade level of a given text.

The readability formula works like this: First, select three, 10-sentence samples from the text. Second, count the words in the text that are 3 or more syllables. Third, estimate the count's square root, and add 3. The resulting number will correspond to the estimated grade-level of the text.

The list below shows the SMOG levels followed by examples of periodicals that have text at the different grade levels:

-0 - 6 low-literate: Soap Opera Weekly

-7 junior high school: True Confessions

-8 junior high school: Ladies Home Journal

-9 some high school: Reader's Digest

-10 some high school: Newsweek

-11 some high school: Sports Illustrated

-12 high school graduate: Time Magazine

-13 - 15 some college: New York Times

-16 university degree: Atlantic Monthly

-17 - 18 post-graduate studies: Harvard Business Review

-19+ post-graduate degree: IRS Code (2).

Today, in the age of computers, you can use the SMOG Formula online by simply cutting and pasting your text. This post, for example, comes in at 11.02 on the SMOG Index.

The word gobbledygook, however, refers to more than just multisyllabic words. It means unintelligible language, especially jargon or bureaucratese.

The word was coined by Texas lawyer and Democratic Congressman Maury Maverick. He created the word in 1944 when referring to the obscure, smoggy language used by his colleagues. The used the turkey as a metaphor, since the bird is “always gobbledy gobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity.”

It should be noted that word origins ran in the Maverick family. Maury's grandfather was Samuel Maverick, the Texas rancher who became famous and eponymous for his unconventional practice of not branding his cattle. Of course today a maverick is anyone who stands outside the crowd, or herd, defying the status quo (3).

One organization defying SMOG is the Plain English Campaign based in New Mills, Derbyshire, England. Their stated mission is to fight "for crystal-clear language and against jargon, gobbledygook and other confusing language."

Each year the Plain English Campaign presents The Golden Bull Awards for the year's worst examples of gobbledygook. Here is one example of a 2004 winner:

British Airways for terms and conditions

CHARGES FOR CHANGES AND CANCELLATIONS NOTE – CANCELLATIONS – BEFORE DEPARTURE FARE IS REFUNDABLE. IF COMBINING A NON-REFUNDABLE FARE WITH A REFUNDABLE FARE ONLY THE Y/C/J-CLASS HALF RETURN AMOUNT CAN BE REFUNDED. AFTER DEPARTURE FARE IS REFUNDABLE. IF COMBINING A NON-REFUNDABLE FARE WITH A REFUNDABLE FARE REFUND THE DIFFERENCE /IF ANY/BETWEEN THE FARE PAID AND THE APPLICABLE NORMAL BA ONEWAY FARE. CHANGES/UPGRADES- PERMITTED ANYTIME (4).

Today's Challenge: Clear the SMOG

Below are examples given by the Plain English Campaign of sentences containing gobbledygook. Rewrite each sentence, eliminating the gobbledygook and replacing it with clear English.

1. High-quality learning environments are a necessary precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing learning process.

2. If there are any points on which you require explanation or further particulars we shall be glad to furnish such additional details as may be required by telephone.

3. It is important that you shall read the notes, advice and information detailed opposite then complete the form overleaf (all sections) prior to its immediate return to the Council by way of the envelope provided.

Quote of the Day: The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. --George Orwell Suggested

Answers: 1. Children need good schools if they are to learn properly. 2. If you have any questions, please ring. 3. Please read the notes opposite before you fill in the form. Then send it back to us as soon as possible in the envelope provided.

1 - Funk, Charles Earle. Thereby Hangs a Tale: Stories of Curious Word Origins. New York: HarperPerennial, 1950.

2 - McLaughlin, G. Harry. SMOG: SImple Measure of Gobbledygook. http://www.harrymclaughlin.com/SMOG.htm

3 - Quinion, Michael. "GOBBLEDYGOOK OR GOBBLEDEGOOK." World Wide Words. http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-gob1.htm 4 - http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/index.html

July 26: GHOTI Day

Today is the birthday of English playwright George Bernard Shaw. He was born in Dublin in 1856 and began his writing career as a journalist and theater critic in London. Eventually he began writing plays of his own, his most famous being Pygmalion (1912) -- the play upon which the musical My Fair Lady is based. In 1925, Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

What does all this have to do with the word "Ghoti"? To find out read on.

July 25: Retronym Day

Two seemingly unrelated events that happened on this date, 151 years apart, merge to illuminate the endless vitality of the English language.

The first event took place on July 25, 1814. British engineer George Stephenson demonstrated the first steam locomotive. The second event took place on July 25, 1965 at the Newport, Rhode Island Folk Music Festival. For the first time ever, Bob Dylan performed with an electric guitar.

Besides the date, these two events both deal with inventions that were later improved upon or at least altered in some significant way. The alteration was such that the name also changed. For example, the word guitar was a fairly straight forward term for a stringed instrument, but the invention of the electric guitar required that a new adjective be attached to guitar to distinguish the plugged version from the unplugged version. The word used is acoustic, and it's an example of a class of words called retronyms. The word locomotive lead to the retronym steam locomotive when the electric and diesel locomotives came on the scene.

A retronym, as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary is: "A word or phrase created because an existing term that was once used alone needs to be distinguished from a term referring to a new development, as snail mail in contrast to e-mail.

The word was coined by Frank Mankiewicz, one-time press secretary for Robert F. Kennedy. He used existing Greek roots to create: retro (Greek, backwards) + nym (Greek, name).

Probably the largest collection of retronyms can be found at the web site of Barry Stiefel who has catalogued 112 examples. Here are a few examples that show the variety of categories that retronyms can fall under:

politics: absolute monarchy

communications: AM radio

family: biological parent

warfare: conventional weapons

computers: corded mouse

sports: natural turf (1)

Today's Challenge: A Retro By Any Other Nym
Given the name of the new idea or invention, see if you can name the retronym.

Example: Color television. Retronym: black and white television

1. surrogate mother
2. online journalism
3. New Coke
4. disposable diapers
5. microwave oven
6. digital camera
7. paperback book
8. nuclear warfare
9. New Testament
10. World War II

Quote of the Day: This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.--Alfred Hitchcock

Answers: 1. birth mother 2. print journalism 3. Classic Coke 4. cloth diapers 5. conventional over 6. film camera 7. hardcover book 8. conventional warfare 9. Old Testament 10. World War I

1 - Stiefel, Barry. Retronym: Aspiring To Be The World's Largest Collection Of English Language Retronyms (112 And Counting!)
http://www.barrystiefel.com/retronym.htm

July 24: Freeze Day

Today is the anniversary of the final performance of one of the most famous comedy duos of all time: Martin and Lewis.

Read more about what this historical event has to do with the English language.

July 23: Grand Slam Day

Today is the anniversary of Tiger Woods' victory at the 2000 British Open. Woods won by shooting a record 19 under par at the course in St. Andrews, Scotland.

Read more about what this historical event has to do with the English language.

July 22: Spoonerism Day

Today is the birthday of the Reverend William Archibald Spooner, born in London in 1844.

To read more go to the following link: http://worddaze.blogspot.com/2006/07/july-22-spoonerism-day.html

May 30: Memorial Day

Today is the anniversary of the celebration of the first Memorial Day in 1868. American General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, proclaimed May 30th a day "designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land."

It wasn’t until after World War I that the holiday became a national day, honoring not just the Civil War dead, but also those who served in any war.

On this day of remembrance a few mnemonic devices might be helpful. No, you can’t buy them in stores. A mnemonic device is a method of remembering something that is difficult to remember by remembering something that is easy to remember.

The word mnemonic is from the Greek goddess of memory and mother of the Muses, Mnemosyne.

In his book WASPLEG and Other Mnemonics, Bart Benne catalogs hundreds of mnemonic devices. To make things easy to remember, these mnemonic devices use different methods such as rhyme, acrostics, or acronyms. Another method is the nonsense sentence made up from the initial letters of what it is you are trying to remember. Here’s an example of a sentence that was created to remember the most important battles of Julius Caesar’s career:

Is Perpetual Zeal The Means?

I Ilerda
P Pharsalus
Z Zeta
T Thapsus
M Munda

Generations of school children have used the rhyme from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" to remember the start date of the American Revolution:

Listen my children and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Rhyming couplets are helpful in remembering key dates in English history:

William the Conqueror, Ten Sixty-Six
Played on the Saxons oft-cruel tricks.

The Spanish Armada met its fate
In Fifteen Hundred and Eighty-Eight

The acronym "BIGOT" helps in remembering the Marine campaigns in the Pacific in World War II:

Bougainville
Iwo Jima
Guadalcanal
Okinawa
Tarawa

Another mnemonic device helps both soldiers and civilians remember the order of the major rank structures in the U.S. Army from lowest to highest ranking.

Privates Can’t Salute Without Learning Correct Military Command Grades:

Private,
Corporal,
Sergeant,
Warrant Officer,
Lieutenant,
Captain,
Major,
Colonel,
and General (2).

Today’s Challenge: Rhyme, Acrostics, and Acronyms Oh My!
Think of something you need to remember, or something that everyone should remember, and create your own mnemonic device.

Quote of the Day: Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good. --Friedrich Nietzsche

Sources:

1 - http://www.usmemorialday.org/order11.html

2 - Benne, Bart. WASPLEG and Other Mnemonics. Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1988.