I got into a little usage discussion with a commenter on Tracey Taylor's fine blog about East Bay real estate. (Tracey was riffing on a post I wrote about the meaning of Main Street, so yeah, this is what you might call logrolling.)
I knew I was right, but I wasn't sure why. So I did some research.
Commenter David used the word homogenous in his assertion that Berkeley and San Francisco lacked true demographic diversity. I responded that, regardless of whether the assertion is true, the correct word here is homogeneous. David apparently thought I was critiquing his spelling; he came back with a dictionary definition for homogenous and a boast that he was the Wisconsin State spelling bee runner-up.
Yes, homogenous is a dictionary word. David spelled it correctly. It just isn't the right word in this context.
Homogenous (emphasis on the second syllable) means "similar in makeup because similar in descent." The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993) gives this example: "These animals are homogenous, as their similar physiology makes clear." Words @Random, from dictionary publisher Random House, explains that homogenous is a technical term in biology ("The forelimbs of mammals and fishes are homogenous"). Or: homogenized milk, in which the fat globules are thoroughly emulsified throughout the liquid.
Homogeneous (emphasis on the third syllable, with a long e vowel) means "of the same kind or structure; of like composition." CGSAE's example: "It was a homogeneous community, its members holding remarkably similar values." That's what David meant, and why his word choice should have been homogeneous.
Both homogenous and homogeneous are composed of Greek word parts that mean "of the same kind." But, notes Words @ Random, "Homogenous is properly limited only to this biological use, so if you're not writing about this, the word you want is homogeneous."
The opposite of homogeneous is heterogeneous. The opposite of homogenous, rarely seen outside scientific literature, is heterogenous.
Hope I've cleared that up.
The October 13 New Yorker—the politics issue—just arrived, and it's full of articles I can't wait to read. (Plus: two cartoons by the magnificent Roz Chast. I could find only one online, though.)
I'm saving the longer articles for later. But a two-page essay by James Wood, who teaches at Harvard and is the author of How Fiction Works, wouldn't let me go. Its title is "Verbage"; the subtitle is "The Republican war on words." I urge you to read it, because it goes a long way toward explaining many of the bizarre campaign tactics we've been witnessing.
Wood suggests that the McCain campaign's attacks on Barack Obama as "just a person of words" reflect "a deep suspicion of language itself ... as if Republican practitioners saw words the way Captain Ahab saw 'all visible objects'—as 'pasteboard masks,' concealing acts and deeds and things—and, like Ahab, were bent on striking through those masks."
To those of us who "just work with words" in the service of commerce, this paragraph has special resonance:
Or take McCain’s slogan “The Original Maverick,” now attached to many of the campaign’s ads. It cynically stipulates that politics is just merchandise, by sounding as close to a logo or a brand name as possible. But it also understands that consumers trust brands that sound like “quality.” Thus “Original,” which has the reassuring solidity of something like “Serving Americans of discernment since 1851,” or, indeed, “Levi’s 501: Original Jeans.” In such formulations, “Original” means eccentric, strange, unusual, and also first, best, belatedly copied by others. Better still, the phrase sounds like the tagline from a movie poster; not for nothing has McCain taken to announcing that “change is coming soon, to a district near you.”
Read the entire essay, which takes its title from Sarah Palin's (deliberate?) mispronunciation of verbiage. Wood writes: "It would be hard to find a better example of the Republican disdain for words than that remarkable term, so close to garbage, so far from language."
While you're on the site, check out the magazine's endorsement of Barack Obama. It hardly comes as a surprise, but that doesn't make it any less eloquent and compelling.
This is the sort of trouble you're asking for when you go sliding down the all-initial-caps slope:
The Employee Freedom Action Committee (EFAC) continued its $30 million dollar¹ campaign with a new television advertisement premiering during tonight’s Presidential Debate coverage. EFAC is spending $2 million airing the ad which, in addition to running during tonight’s debate, will run heavily in seven states that EFAC has been targeting since May. The campaign has criticized Senators and candidates who support the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
Got that? The EFAC is criticizing the EFCA, getting all up in its FACE, you might say.
Still, it was nice to see 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern, now 86, taking a righteous stand in the ad. Even though I still have no idea who's on first.
Read the story and watch the ad at LaborPains.org.
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¹ Sic. You don't need "dollar" when you use the dollar symbol.
I've been using Twitter to post quick links to blogs and articles I find interesting. Here's a roundup of about a week's worth of my tweets about names, brands, and language (okay, and politics, too):
Convivium Brands, a California company specializing in "on-demand private-label wine and spirits brands," has introduced four varietals under a new wine brand: Lipstick on a Pig. Each bottle is available with a red (presumably Republican) and a blue (Democratic) label. According to the website: "Lipstick On A Pig Wines allow consumers to weigh in and voice their opinions with their palates!" (In case you missed it, you can read here about the political flap over the expression "lipstick on a pig.")
I got a kick out of Newsweek columnist Joe Klein's nickname for Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: "Embarracuda." Other nifty words in the column: "nothingburger" and "empretzeled."
Anyone else catch the name of the Treasury Department guy who'll be overseeing the $700 million financial bailout? It's Neel Kashkari. Yeah. Cash and carry. That's going to be everyone's motto pretty soon.
Writer Anne Lamott misses the late, great newspaper columnist Molly Ivins this campaign season. Me too. (Never heard of Ivins? Read my tribute to her.)
John McCain and Sarah Palin are fond of calling themselves mavericks. But a descendant of 19th-century Texas rancher Samuel Maverick--whose unbranded cattle were known as Maverick's--warns them to put a lid on it. Terellita Maverick, 82, a member emeritus of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, says McCain "is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase." "He's a Republican," she said. "He's branded."
Jay Rosen, who's on the journalism faculty at NYU and whom I follow on Twitter, suggests that Gov. Palin's speech patterns were influenced by her brief stint on a television news program, and directs us to Michael Kinsley's 2001 essay for Slate about "what TV news is doing to our precious verbs." Answer: they've been reduced to "universal gerundiciples." Judge for yourself. Here's Kinsley, in full parody mode:
I suspecting the trend of TV news talking in headline-ese traceable to Rupert Murdoch, who buys the New York Post many years ago and founding Fox TV News more recently. The Post famous for its brilliant headlines. Fox News, though hypocritical about denying its brazen right-wing politics, the most creative of the TV news networks.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on Sarah Palin's "pompom patois and sing-songy jingoism."
Language Log's Mark Liberman takes issue with Dowd's assertion that one of Palin's spoken sentences--“It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there"--defies diagramming. He manages to wrangle it into shape. Other Palin sentences don't fare so well.
Two more Language Log posts on Palinesque predilictions: one on the governor's affection for affective demonstratives--the point words "this" and "that"--without referents ("loaning us these dollars," "trying to forge that peace," "craving that straight talk"), and one on her curious use of also as semantic glue, especially at the end of sentences.
And while we're in LanguageLogLand, here's Geoff Nunberg commenting on Steven Pinker commenting on Ms. Palin's pronunciation of nuclear:
Palin has to be aware that many people consider her pronunciation nonstandard, and she (or her handlers) seems to have made some effort at correction, which is presumably why she pronounced the word as "new clear" when reading off the teleprompter in her convention speech. Since then, though, it's been "nucular" all the way, which may be part of the "let Palin be Palin" strategy.
I'm learning the most interesting things from fashion blogs. For example, The Thoughtful Dresser (in the UK!) led me to www.270toWin.com, an interactive Electoral College map with current projections and actual results going back to 1789. And Je Ne Sais Quoi posted a nice graphic that compares the presidential candidates' tangible assets.
One more, then back to work: Critic Roger Ebert watched last week's vice-presidential debate and was reminded of Fargo. But he couldn't decide whether Sarah Palin was channeling Marge Gunderson or Jerry Lundegaard.
Petrichor: The smell of rain on dry earth.
Petrichor (pronounced PET-rih-core) was coined by two Australian geologists, I.J. Bear and R.G. Thomas, for an article they published in the journal Nature in 1964, "Nature of Agrilaceous Odour." They created the word from two Greek stems: petros (stone) and ichor (in Greek mythology, the substance that flowed through the veins of the gods). The scent, they proposed, comes from an oily essence released from rocks and soil. According to World Wide Words:
The oil is a complicated set of at least fifty different compounds, rather like a perfume. It turned out that the oils are given off by vegetation during dry spells and are adsorbed on to the surface of rocks and soil particles, to be released into the air again by the next rains.
I smelled petrichor Friday night, when it rained for the first time in six months, a teasing prelude to the real wet season that will get under way in November. The smell I detected was more petrol than petros: the aroma of half a year's worth of gasoline and motor oil being released from pavement. The first rain inevitably causes accident rates to rise as California drivers relearn how to negotiate suddenly slick roads.
I've never lived in a place where it rained year round; the very concept is alien. The first time I experienced summer rain I was 30 years old and passing through Pittsburgh, which appeared unseasonably (to my eyes) green for July. Although I was prepared for the weather, to the extent that I'd remembered to pack an umbrella, I couldn't quite believe it. I'm a California native: to me summer means dry, golden hills dampened only by fog; in my world, rain is always accompanied by cold temperatures and dark days. And petrichor is as intoxicating and autumn-evocative as the scent of burning leaves must be to people in other parts of the country.