Word of the Week: Anarthrous

Anarthrous: Linguistics term meaning "occurring without an article" (a or the). From Greek words meaning "without joints." The second syllable is the same arth- found in arthritis and arthroscopy, and is the root of articulate.

I discovered anarthrous in a Language Log post by Mark Liberman, "Anarthrous Irony," about what Vice President Joe Biden did or didn't say to President Obama at last Tuesday's signing ceremony for the health-care law.* Did Biden say, as some accounts have it, "This is a big fucking deal"? Or did he omit the article and say, anarthrously, "Big fucking deal"?

The second utterance carries a distinctly different meaning from the first, says Liberman:

As the OED tells us, "a big deal" (with or without the taboo intensifier) is an American expression for "Something considered important; a cause for excitement or concern."  But the phrase is also "Used as an ironical exclamation to express one's contempt for something regarded as impressive or  important by another person."

However, the contemptuous sense seems to be associated specifically with the exclamatory fragment "big deal", where the determiner is omitted.  That version can't be used predicatively: "This is big deal" might be the boast of a Russian who never mastered the English determiner system,  but it's not something that a native speaker would say "to express contempt for something regarded as impressive by another person". . . .

Thus vice-president Biden said "((that's)) a big fucking deal", and, I imagine, meant it sincerely.  But if he'd said just "big fucking deal" it would have been a deflating attempt to subvert the moment.

Commenter Dan Bloom notes that the Wall Street Journal ran a photo of the signing with the anarthrous caption "Big Deal."

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* The Language Log post is not about the propriety of the F-word. Neither is my own post. (For the record, I do think HCR is a BFD.) However, McKay Hatch, a California teenager who is president of the No Cussing Club, got himself on the national news for sending Biden a T-shirt and a "cuss jar" into which the vice president can make a monetary deposit for every taboo word he says.

Comments

[Jed Waverly]

I agree it IS a big deal, profanity eliminated or not. But I think the dynamic between the VP and President Obama is hilarious. This is the second time I have seen VP Biden do a "foot in mouth" thing in front of the public. Both times the President just turns away with a pained look on his face and launches into his speech. There is no question in my mind that President Obama respects Joe Biden and values the gifts he brings to the VP role. But I think he'd like to "hit him up aside the head" every now and then. That's what makes them human...and lovable.

[Nick]

FDR was reponsible for the "New Deal". I wonder if Biden's remark will stick so that in the future Obama's presidency will be know as the "Big Deal"?