Comments on: Blog-Deprecating

By: Allan Ken

Allan Ken — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 03:33:06 +0000

I would agree with Rob. My initial impression was he is getting shorter, smaller or shrinking in size as time passes.

By: zizka

zizka — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 03:31:57 +0000

If you want to waste a bunch more time, I have calculated that the word “condone” is used somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times more often as a negative verb than as a positive one. Almost no condoning ever gets done. (Some may suspect my methodology.) I have it up on my front page.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 01:22:09 +0000

But specialized argot used by computer programmers (or any other technical subset of the population) is not “normal” usage. I still don’t “access” the milk out of the fridge, and I don’t “interface” with people, though I realize others do. So, the computer programming usage for the word ‘deprecate’ is not necessarily the same as the general population’s. And then, the dispute is over the word ‘deprecating’ where one would’ expect ‘self-deprecating,’ not the use of the verb ‘deprecate’ in general. One can certainly deprecate things other than self – that’s not in dispute. (I don’t think.)

By: Kragen Sitaker

Kragen Sitaker — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 23:07:08 +0000

But “deprecate” does still exist as a normal, productive word. Computer programmers use it all the time: “The current SMTP standard deprecates the SEND command,” which means that it says you shouldn’t use the SEND command. (I don’t remember if the quoted statement is factually true.)

By: Dave L

Dave L — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 22:01:08 +0000

I agree with Sidereal. In fact, it strikes me as completely wrong to read this as [self-]deprecating, with the “self” left unspoken but understood. “Self-deprecating” is one of those fossilized words that is no longer used except in this one formulation – think of the words that exist only as negatives, such as uncouth or unkempt. So, my assumption on reading this passage was that Malony was playing a trick by pretending that “deprecate” still existed as a normal, productive word. This is done so often in the case of “uncouth” that the half-joking “couth” has almost re-entered the language.

By: sidereal

sidereal — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 19:56:09 +0000

A number of people seem to be making the point that the meaning is obvious and it’s therefore a matter of familiarity or undefined rule intuitions that causes the ‘problem’. I disagree. When I first read the sentence, I actually assumed it to mean that Stephenson routinely deprecates other people. Synonymous with “Stephenson, who is sixty, is tall and scathing.” In other words, I was mapping directly from ‘tall and charming’. I found it a cool usage of deprecate in that context.

By: language hat

language hat — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 18:25:52 +0000

I’m a linguist, and snarl has it exactly right. It’s usage, not logic, that decides whether something is a word; “self-deprecating” is, and “deprecating” (tout court) isn’t—meaning that, unlike “charming” et al, it isn’t an adjective. (Actually, it’s hard to think of a sentence in which it would be normal even as a verbal form; we say “X deprecates Y,” not “X is deprecating Y.”)

By: Mandarin

Mandarin — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 06:06:04 +0000

Where’s a linguist when you need one?

By: Snarl

Snarl — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 05:20:02 +0000

To me it’s simpler than that. “Self-deprecating” is the English idiom, and the writer who uses “deprecating” to mean “self-deprecating” doesn’t know how to write English. But the real problem is, the New Yorker doesn’t have an editor.

By: nick

nick — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 03:48:13 +0000

I think there are a couple of issues here: the growing linguistic separation between the reflexive and non-reflexive forms of ‘to deprecate [oneself]’; and the relative unfamiliarity of ‘deprecating’ in an adjectival form. So you could say ‘Mr X. is tall and caring’, because ‘He is caring’ is no longer read as subject-copula-presenttenseverb but rather subject-copula-adjective. But ‘is… deprecating’ has yet to elide from verbishness to adjectiveness. Um.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 03:03:06 +0000

I think Ophelia is right that this is a matter of how ingrained habits are on the particular question. It’s perfectly fine to describe someone as loving, or caring, or boring, without specifying who they habitually love or care for or bore. So there’s no rule that whenever a gerund is generated from a transitive verb the object must be made explicit. It is worth noting however (as has been pointed out above) that it’s hard to find cases where the default object is the self. One would not normally describe a narcissist as loving.

By: Kragen Sitaker

Kragen Sitaker — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 03:02:03 +0000

I found the original sentence irritating, and I’m not sure why. I guess that because it uses ‘deprecate’ as an intransitive verb, it makes me suspect that the writer uses the word without understanding it—perhaps they’ve heard it only as part of the phrase “self-deprecating” and thought the “self-” was somehow redundant. However, if that’s the case, I have very little hope of puzzling out their actual meaning, because while I know (or suspect) that they aren’t familiar with the meaning of the word as I use it, they surely have some other meaning in mind for it, perhaps one they’ve gathered from contexts in which other people use it. Clearly, if they haven’t even gathered that it’s a transitive verb, they’ve only heard it a few times, and so they could have inferred almost any meaning at all for it. So I have to read the rest of the article I find that sentence in at about half-speed, trying to guess what meaning the author thinks each two-or-more-syllable word is supposed to have. I don’t have the same problem with “charming” or “mocking”; if I say that John is mocking, I mean that John tends to mock (anything, or nothing, or most things), and if I say John is charming, then I mean John tends to charm (and the usual object of “charm” is “people”, although his charming could plausibly extend to animals as well.) If someone says, “Stephenson is deprecating,” does that mean he tends to deprecate things? Maybe—but it’s close to the opposite of the meaning Brian inferred, which is that he tends to deprecate himself. It seems almost as plausible that Stephenson could tend to deprecate (unspecified) things as that he could tend to mock things. It’s clearly wrong in context; the article also describes Stephenson as “amiable”, and the quotes the reporter ascribes to him deprecate almost nothing, including himself. (He does deprecate the constant suggestions of new names for slime molds, but it sounds like almost anyone would.) This supports my suspicion that the reporter has an entirely different meaning in mind for “deprecate” than I do, but I can find no clue in the article as to what the word might mean to him. As background, I usually see “deprecate” used in standards documents and man pages, where its object is usually some language feature, API, or protocol element. (Given the subject of this post, I feel obliged to point out that the meanings of the words “language” and “protocol” in this sentence differ subtly from their normal English meanings, and actually, so does “deprecate” in standards documents. Maybe my irritation with people speaking jargon dialects other than my own is just a sort of ethnocentrism?) BTW, the original complaint is at http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000947.php—and the original article at http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?031103ta_talk_maloney—hope this helps. (Sorry for the obnoxious em dashes.)

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 02:48:09 +0000

Does it help to note that in other latin-derived languages (eg french) one would have to add in the reflexive if it were to mean self-deprecating? I can well imagine someone verbally describing one as being deprecating, but not writing it. It does seem though that normally one would put it not in the gerand but the adjective, “he’s hateful,” not “he’s hating.” So, if it really is a gerand, not a reflexive verb, and should be referring to a prepositional phrase, it would have been more correct (because of the dropped prep. phrase) to use deprecatory or deprecative. Though I’ll admit it does make for a peculiar sentance. And it still doesn’t solve the question of what was the intended usage, so I think Malony was right, the sentance is fundamentally ambiguous.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 00:56:50 +0000

Well except that that would apply to ‘charming’ too, and it doesn’t – because by long habit, ‘charming’ has become a familiar adjective that doesn’t need an object or a reflexive pronoun. But ‘deprecating’ decidedly has not. So I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.

By: language hat

language hat — Mon, 03 Nov 2003 00:03:35 +0000

I see your reasoning, but I don’t think this is a case where logic is much help. The fact is that “charming,” by itself, is a commonly used adjective; we all know what it means. “Deprecating” is not; minus the “self-” it carries no clear implication. This may have to do with the fact that “deprecate” is a transitive verb; we can’t say “John deprecates,” we have to say “John deprecates the new trend” (or whatever). It would seem to make sense that “deprecating” would also need a clear (expressed) object. No?