Some Notes on Diction

1. Enormous/Enormity. Fowler (2d edition) puts it rather nicely: “The two words have drifted so far apart that the use of either in connexion with the limited sense of the other is unadvisable. 'Enormous sin' [this use meaning, I believe, that sin and enormity are synonyms] and 'The impression of enormity produced by the building' are both etymologically possible expressions; but use of the first lays one open to the suspicion of pedantry, and of the second to the suspicion of ignorance.”

My Concise Oxford English Dictionary (11th edition) includes this note: “In its earliest sense ‘enormity’ meant ‘a crime’ and some argue that it should therefore continue to be used only of contexts in which a negative moral judgment is implied. Nevertheless, in modern English 'enormity' is often simply used as a synonym for hugeness . . . and this is now broadly accepted in standard English.”

Ah yes, to be sure. This, however, does not relieve those who use it in the “broadly accepted” way from “suspicion of ignorance” of that earliest sense. As for me, I would rather not lay my hearers under the burden of that suspicion.

2. Begging the Question. Another of the same. This is very commonly used to mean “provoking” or “eliciting” a question, as in, “Her removal of his head begs the question of whether Judith might not really have been in love with Holofernes.” But the same audience that knows what “enormity” used to mean will also be apt to know that question-begging refers to the fallacy of petitio principii, that is, putting forth a conclusion that only restates the original problem--which idea, I believe, one finds far less occasion to use than the former. Question-begging is an accusation of faulty reasoning, not an evocation of curiosity. At least so far.

I am not quick to accuse people who think professional grammarians and lexicologists seem all too willing to bow before the notion that current use establishes meaning of pedantry, elitism, or nit-picking. They are very often, and very rightly I think, haunted by the moral analogy--that if enough people sin often enough, it ceases to become sin. The argument against this is that language is categorically different in this regard from moral life, and that, I think, is also correct.

But people who suspect the Spirit of the Age encourages loose thinking in one area to put his subjects in practice for the same in another are, I think, on to something. Those who are concerned with getting their grammar right are not necessarily obsessives or antiquarians. They may intuit that the mind in love with virtue, so willing to name sin and error, is in some way related to that which is uncomfortable with barbarism. To equate the two is a mistake--but not to relate them. The trick is in understanding the nature of the relation.

Comments

[Post hole DIgger]

I nearly have a Ph.D. and I have little idea what the following comments in this post mean:

(1) Ah yes, to be sure. This, however, does not relieve those who use it in the “broadly accepted” way from “suspicion of ignorance” of that earliest sense. As for me, I would rather not lay my hearers under the burden of that suspicion.

(2) I am not quick to accuse people who think professional grammarians and lexicologists seem all too willing to bow before the notion that current use establishes meaning of pedantry, elitism, or nit-picking.

(3) But people who suspect the Spirit of the Age encourages loose thinking in one area to put his subjects in practice for the same in another are, I think, on to something.

Perhaps some more explanation would be helpful?

[DGP]

>>Perhaps some more explanation would be helpful?

These seem eminently clear to me. (1) Broadly accepted use is tragically consistent with ignorance of the history of words and language. Following the trend helps to propagate the ignorance. (2) Some professionals bow too quickly to current use. Others protest. Still others quickly accuse the second group of of pedantry, elitism, or nitpicking. Mr. Hutchens is not in the third group. (3) The Spirit of the Age has subjects. He encourages them to think loosely in matters of grammar. Some people suspect this prepares them for loose thinking in matters of morality. Mr. Hutchens acknowledges at least the partial truth of their suspicion.

[Ethan C.]

Well redacted, DGP. I must confess I found the second of the three statements difficult to parse. I think I've finally worked out the meaning of the sentence:

The first phrase ("I am not quick to accuse people...") relates to the last ("...of pedantry, elitism, or nit-picking"). The middle is a lengthy descriptive qualifier of "people."

Admitting that there is a difference between matters of diction and matters of syntax, might the difficulty some of us are having with Dr. Hutchens's prose speak somewhat to his point? While the sentence structure is surely a bit awkward (more punctuation might have helped), it's difficult to imagine a simpler rephrasing that would convey the sentiment in a similar way. The medium is the message, even when comparing prose styles of differing complexities. And there is something worrisome about the inability of contemporary readers to come to grips with the ornate structures that were taken for granted in, for example, the late 18th century. How many public high schoolers, do you suppose, could diagram the introduction to the Declaration of Independence? I have little doubt that a decline in the ability to analyze such statements correlates to an inability to understand them, and also (I hazard) an inability to formulate such sentiments as require such forms.

In sum: the IM generation is teh sux0rz, lol.

O tempora, O mores, and all that.

[smh]

I thought I expressed myself clearly, too, but will keep your comments, Post Hole Digger, in mind. While I wish to write economically, and find density necessary to say what I wish to say in few words, I also wish to be understood.

DGP, thank you for accurate exposition of the identified passages.

[Beth]

So, Steve, as a professional in word-smithing myself, I would love to hear more of how you characterize that relationship. I struggle every year, in teaching students about grammar and writing, to find ways of not equating, yet warning that these are not independent of one another.

[smh]

Oh yes, and Ethan, I thank you for this, which is also exactly correct:

" . . . it's difficult to imagine a simpler rephrasing that would convey the sentiment in a similar way."

The way I would say this is that I came very, very near--lack of punctuation included--to writing exactly what was in my mind. This is why I remain satisfied, at least here, with what has given others difficulty.

Those who edit my work find that in many places I am open to their suggestions for improvement, but in others adamantly opposed: if they wish to change that, I will withdraw the piece, for the way I am putting it there is not open to negotiation. Their attempts to "clarify" the prose by making "very small" changes here or there, alter the meaning from my intention, even if they cannot see how.

[smh]

Beth, all I can say is that if, over the course of your students' time with you, you are able to put the idea into their minds, you have done what you can. What they do with it after that is up to them.

I find that once a thought is clearly in my own grasp, examples which others can understand and appreciate begin to present themselves spontaneously. One might even find that Goethe or Shakespeare or Santayana said it before you did, thus providing the double relief of (1) a non-religious source for truth that people won't take from religion, and (2) and exemption of yourself from blame for believing it.

I say "can appreciate," because sometimes those examples, especially if they are very good ones, just make people mad. Achieve pristine clarity, in the active voice, and expect somebody to start picking up rocks.

[Judy K. Warner]

>>>Ah yes, to be sure. This, however, does not relieve those who use it in the “broadly accepted” way from “suspicion of ignorance” of that earliest sense. As for me, I would rather not lay my hearers under the burden of that suspicion.<<<

I agree; it is important to continue to use these words and expressions in their original meaning; otherwise they will be lost. There are already other ways of expressing the new meanings -- "hugeness" and "evoking a question" as SMH said. If the old meaning is lost we have not only lost useful expressions and words for today, but also a link to all the past uses of them. This has already happened with words in the King James Bible, as well as sentence structure, so that parts of it cannot be readily understood by many people.

It used to be that most people had a speaking vocabulary and a reading vocabulary, so that they could understand words read in context that they would never use themselves. Now that so much communication is either oral or primitive (as in text messaging), I wonder how true that is today.

[Beth]

Judy, I would guess it is not very much the case. Of course there are exceptions, but my students on the whole seem to lack much passive vocabulary -- and their active vocabulary is very small compared to most people I recall from my own college days, and not just English majors. As it has always been, the ones who read the most, and the most eclectically, both have the largest vocabularies and manage to express their ideas most articulately. But so few now, even of our English majors, tend to read all that much of anything.

[Seraphima]

Facebook has been the death of reading, Beth. And I say this as an avid reader from childhood (now in college). It's so... so... addicting. You can spend two or three hours going through pictures, notes, groups, etc., and be entirely unaware of what you are doing.

I found with some dismay a few months ago that I now very rarely read a substantial, classic novel for pleasure. The Idiot, despite my ardent love for its main character, Prince Mishkin, and its author, Dostoyevsky, lies unfinished on my shelf, along with various religious tomes and other books.

My facebook account, on the other hand, is accessed several times daily.

What is truly frightening is the number of clergy and monastics with whom I am 'friends' on facebook....

[Beth]

Several students in one of my classes did some research on virtual communities/social networking sites this semester. It really can be a disastrous waste of time for many people . . . I don't have any accounts at any of them because I know it's so easy to get pulled into looking here, there, and all about, and one can spend far more time than it seems just following links, etc. And while I have no problem with folks wanting to keep up with friends, I do see a difference in those who use primarily virtual means and those who are more "traditional" -- call, get together, write real letters . . .

[Ethan C.]

The "Facebook phenomenon" has baffled me thus far. I find myself so easily addicted to other things--computer games, most notably--yet I quite easily escaped that particular siren song without any lashing to the mast. Maybe Facebook is Civilization for extroverts...

[Bill R]

A couple of years ago my son gave me an Ipod. For a while I couldn't find a use for it. (I didn't use a Walkman, so I was unlikely to use the digital equivalent for music.) Then I discovered downloadable books and I now listen to 18-20 per year while commuting. It is a different experience from reading a book, although I find it nearly as useful. I listen to novels that I might otherwise never get around to reading. Since I tend to pick books read by British readers, I also to find my own pronunciation and diction improving. (No chance, though, that anyone will confuse me with a Brit!)

[labrialumn]

Words are not platonic forms. Their semantic domains shift over time. If not, I suppose we'd all be speaking Nostratic, or whatever that came from.

[DGP]

>>Words are not platonic forms. Their semantic domains shift over time. If not, I suppose we'd all be speaking Nostratic, or whatever that came from.

Of course. But words also have pedigrees, cumulative histories that introduce new depth and subtlety. One of the maddeningly beautiful features of Chinese is the long history of every syllable. Knowledge of that history enriches the poetry even of relatively routine communications in ways that only the best Western writers achieve.

[Tony Esolen]

Agreed, DGP. I cringe when I hear the word "realize" lazily used to mean "recognized" rather than "made real." The former definition, though, has a pretty long history to it, even though it is illogical and unnecessary.

Beth, you've got it. Our students have very poor vocabularies, passive or active. I'm always surprised when my better students ask me the meaning of a word like "eradicate" or "flay" or "pernicious" -- those are the examples I can think of, from recent readings.

[Wonders for Oyarsa]

DGP,

Do you know Chinese, then?

[Beth]

Yes, indeed -- One of my current pet peeves is the conflation of "impact" and "influence." I have taken to slamming a book on the desk when I use the word "impact" to show them what it actually means, and then suggesting that "impacting" people for Christ is perhaps not the most winsome way to win souls. They are beginning to remember it, and tell me stories of hearing the word used infelicitously, or correcting themselves mid-sentence and noticing that others who have had me in class start laughing . . .

Another misuse that bothers me is "disinterested" to mean "uninterested" -- I think that one's probably a hopeless cause, as I see it more and more in edited professional writing, but at least I try to convince my students not to use "disinterested" at all rather than use it to mean "uninterested." This is not such a small thing, either, as of course many even just slightly older than contemporary writings use the word in its denotative meaning -- and then those who have no idea that it means "impartial" find themselves entirely misunderstanding . . .

Labrialumn is right that language changes over time. But I think it's worth fighting some of the changes. "Disinterested," for example, is just enough different from "impartial" to be more precise and thus better for some contexts -- but now I'm reduced to only "impartial" or risking total misunderstanding; that's reducing my ability to write precisely. And using "impact" to mean "influence" carries connotations that do, I believe, begin to subtly influence the way we understand the task being referred to. I really don't want to "impact" my students (except in some rare dire cases, I must admit) -- I want to "influence" them towards the good and the beautiful and the true, as they seek these things without coercion.

Meanwhile freshman research essays await me . . . here's hoping that my small attempts have had some effect this semester!

[Bobby Winters]

>>One of my current pet peeves is the conflation of "impact" and "influence."<<

Preach it, Sister, preach it!!!

[labrialumn]

DGP, I agree, one of the pleasures of reading Tolkien, and Tolkien criticism is beginning to grasp those histories. I would have found philology a fascinating field, if it were still a living field.

I have been finding college professors who are apparently stuck at the concrete-operational phase of mental development. They cannot understand when someone "puts things in their own words" which we were taught to do when I did my undergrad in olden days of yore. And don't get me started on the new definition of plagiarism - using three words together that someone, somewhere, somewhen, has also used. College education has become rote memorization and recitation. Professors are not to be questioned. Thinking is -dangerous-.

If you want to see truly mind-bogglingly corrupt English, read Education texts and papers. They are constantly coining redundant constructions in the mad attempt to be seen as a 'science'. If I didn't know how bad the government schools were, that alone would be proof enough. You talk about 'impact' How about impactfulizationness?

I agree with fighting harmful linguistic changes, such as the lost of the adverbial ending, taking place in my lifetime, and of course the femspeak alteration of English, which my Ph.D. tenured English Prof sister insists is natural, proper linguistic change (and marks male pronouns wrong in freshman papers)

[Josiah A. Roelfsema]

Ethan -
So good to find a fellow Civilization lover (Do you fight to get the Great Library too?). I opened a facebook account last summer, but have quickly faded from the scene, particularly after it hit me that no one really reads your quotes or favorite books or anything like that. Maybe I was naive... Either way, addicted is correct term.

[Ethan C.]

Josiah, in Civ II, it's the Pyramids that are my sine qua non, and fortunately they get built early enough in the game that if someone else gets them I can just start over. Then it's all-out exploration to find my nearest neighbors, then declare war as soon as I have crusaders. Then tech to gunpowder and Leonardo's Workshop (essential wonder #2), continue expanding with advanced cavalry units, then work toward railroads and democracy. Hit democracy, build the Statue of Liberty, and immediately switch governments to fundamentalism (while wishing there were bonus points for irony), then sweep across the globe with my jihadi hordes. World conquest every time so far. Never tried deity level, though...

But anyway...back on topic...grammar. Yes, something about grammar...

[labrialumn]

Bill R,
URL?

[Bill R]

"Bill R,
URL?"

Audible.com

[Judy K. Warner]

Audible.com says: "A very small amount of audiobooks and programs valued at more than one audio credit will not be eligible for this offer." They mean a very small number, not amount.

[Bobby Neal Winters]

>>>And don't get me started on the new definition of plagiarism - using three words together that someone, somewhere, somewhen, has also used. College education has become rote memorization and recitation. Professors are not to be questioned. Thinking is -dangerous-. <<<

I totally agree with you here. There are folks who will define plagiarism as 3 words or 5 words together. There are invariably the same ones who believe there is exactly one proper way to footnote, etc. And you can tell them they are idiots, but they just don't believe you. (Trust me on this one.)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>There are folks who will define plagiarism as 3 words or 5 words together. <<<

But as the great Lobachevskiy said, "Always be sure to call it 'research'".

Actually, what bugs me more is the compulsive need of modern speakers to always identify the source of their quotes or allusions in the midst of their speech. Doing so breaks the flow of the rhetoric and smack of the pedantic. Worse, it reflects the fact that the audience is abysmally ignorant and lacks a common cultural frame of reference, so that, unless they are smacked in the face with the source of the material, they just won't "get it". I for my part never bother to include citations while delivering material orally. I assume that everyone ought to know where I get my stuff, and if they don't they can always ask me afterwards.

[Susan Peterson]

I didn't even know that "enormity" could be used in any sense but that of "greatly evil act," and if I encountered it used to mean "hugeness" I would not only suspect but convict the writer of ignorance.

I found the original post understandable on the first reading without difficulty. I did have to read closely the explanation of the correct meaning of "begs the question" and check myself mentally to see if I misuse this. Other than that, the intended meaning emerged instantly at a level of reading little closer than skimming.

Susan Peterson

[Susan Peterson]

On rereading I think a few well placed commas would help. For instance, after "meaning" in the second example given of a sentence which gave difficulty, and possibly after "area" in the third.

Susan Peterson

[Matthias]

"Actually, what bugs me more is the compulsive need of modern speakers to always identify the source of their quotes or allusions in the midst of their speech."

Me too - like when I heard on NPR, "Martin Luther King once said, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

[smh]

On commas: I am of the school that conserves them, using them only in places (1) where a strong convention makes the reader anticipate them, (2) where they are necessary to establish meaning, and (3) where they are required for courtesy. My judgment on instances of the two latter causes has more than once been at odds with those of my editors.

[Stuart Koehl]

I use commas in different ways, depending upon the type of writing I am doing. I always try to remember that punctuation marks were invented to aid the reader in reading aloud, so a comma is, among other things, a cue to insert a pause here. At the same time, punctuations have evolved into markers that define operations within a sentence, fencing off dependent and independent clauses in order to clarify the meaning. In this regard, they fulfill a similar function to the parentheses in a mathematical equation.