More on transatlantic variations of the English language. I’m reading my way through Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin series at the moment, and was intrigued to discover that a “scuttle butt” is some class of a naval water barrel. I presume that this means that the historical origins of the term “scuttlebutt” (rumours, especially of the vexatious variety) are closely analogous with those of the contemporary American term, “water cooler gossip.”
From the category archives:
Just broke the Water Pitcher
Commenter ‘giles’ “says:”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002063.html
bq. The most interesting revelation of the night – that Bill thought kerry would make “quite” a good president – was I thought the revelation of the night. The parochial BBC pr department seems to have missed it entirely.
The BBC was probably right not to pick up on it, thanks to a very important difference between British English and American English. “Quite” in British-English, and indeed in its Hibernian variant (which is of course the purest and most supple form of the language) means “reasonably, but not very.” Thus, if Bill Clinton were British, his comment would be an unsubtle put-down. However, in American English, “quite” means “very” or “extremely” – so it’s a considerable compliment. One of my friends experienced this ambiguity at first hand a few years ago, when she invited her (American) boyfriend back to Dublin to meet the family. After eating dinner at my friend’s family home, the boyfriend remarked that the food was “quite good.” He thought he was passing a compliment; my friend’s mother thought he was a snotty Yank making disparaging remarks about her cooking, with predictably unfortunate consequences for familial relationships until it was all explained. So, the odds are that Clinton’s comment was entirely unexceptionable. You could probably still advance a malign interpretation: since Clinton has spent a considerable amount of time in the UK, he might have been aware of this ambiguity, and playing it cute by speaking out of both sides of his mouth at once. Still, an interpretation of this sort would seem a bit forced for what was, after all, one brief comment in a rather long interview.
Update: I’d quite forgotten that Chris has already “addressed this point”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001077.html in a post last December.
Apparently, Coke has nicked its “business plan”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1174127,00.html for _Dasani_ from Trotter’s Independent Trading – “bottled tap water with added contaminants”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/onlyfools/christmas/1992.shtml. Does it glow in the dark too?
Some of the most charmingly pointless controversies on “my other blog”:http://brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/tar/ have been about just what region is denoted by ‘Midwest’. (For prior installments, see “here”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/tar/Archives/001580.html, “here”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/tar/Archives/001568.html and “here”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/tar/Archives/002519.html.) I think those are fun, but we seem to have run out of things to say on that word. So it’s time for something new. Just which parts of New York State are denoted by ‘upstate’?
I was rereading Adam Elga’s paper on On overrating oneself… and knowing it, and it gave me a thought about some possible challenge trades in the NFL.
So I’m sitting in the library today when the shelves around me start to shake. And I’m thinking to myself: death by books? There must be better ways to go. “4.5”:http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/cus/ on the Richter scale. Not bad for “Virginia”:http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/cus/STORE/Xcdbf_03/ciim_display.html.
bq. UPDATE: the “Roanoke Times”:http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/news/story159584.html reports that this “was the strongest earthquake in central Virginia since 1875 . . . Central Virginia’s strongest earthquake in the past century took place in August 1984 and was centered near Charlottesville . . . It was a magnitude 4.1.”
Josh Parsons has found a hangover cure hidden in Zeno’s writings. It’s a rather clever variant on the “drink more suffer later” cure. If anyone actually tries it I’d be interested to see the results. As a rule taking medical advice from a philosopher is about as wise as getting involved in a land war in Asia, so I have my doubts about this ‘cure’, but I’d be very happy if it was to work.
When I’m swamped with work, as I am at the moment, I like to have a book that I can dip into for quick five minute breaks – thousand page behemoths like Quicksilver get put to one side until normal conditions reassert themselves. And at the moment, I’m very much enjoying Hazel K. Bell’s Indexers and Indexes in Fact and Fiction (University of Toronto Press, 2001). A surprising choice for leisure reading? Not really. It’s light (broken up into 74 bite-sized chapters, refreshing, and very, very funny.
From the front page of yesterday’s Boston Metro:
Rice to get bigger hand in Iraq
Didn’t someone tell this guy that things can go badly wrong if you try mailing yourself across the country?
Michael Rea, a philosopher at Notre Dame, has posted a reply to Daniel Dennett’s ‘brights’ Op-Ed, complete with a reply from Dennett and a counter-reply from Rea.