The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time (33 page)

Because it is a transliteration of the Arabic, the various local assemblages of what some of us call terrorists are spelled
mujahadeen/mujahadin/mujahideen/mujahadein/mujahedeen/mujahidin
. All are correct. The Library of Congress likes
mujahidin;
the
Times
prefers
mujahedeen
.

Mushy.
With Valentine’s Day bearing down on us, you need to know the difference between the pronunciation of
mushy
as
mooshy
(with the first syllable rhyming with
whoosh
) and
mushy
(with the first syllable rhyming with
hush
).

The
mooshy
locution does not concern lovers. In current usage, the adjective means “pulpy, mealy,” an onomatopoeic alteration of the noun
mash,
a thick, boiled cereal. Mark Twain, in his 1880
A Tramp Abroad,
used that
mooshy
sense in writing of “
mushy,
slushy early spring roads.”

That meaning, metaphorically extended, landed—plop!—in the middle of political terminology as a derogation of moderation. Theodore Roosevelt in 1900 derided “the
mushy
class” with its “wild and crude plans of social reformations.” Nearly a century later, Governor George W. Bush said, “I’m skeptical about a national test which the federal government could use to promote a feel-good curriculum or
mushy
curriculum.”

Senator Chuck (what kind of name is that for a serious senator?) Hagel said approvingly of Senator Joe Lieberman’s partisan oratory in the 2000 campaign that his was “not a faint-of-heart, kind of
mushy
middle role.” Afterward, Senator John Kyl predicted that the Bush cabinet would include “a lot of nominees from the
mushy
middle.”

That’s how
mushy
as
mooshy
developed from “a soft mass” to “soft on the masses”—undefined, imprecise, fuzzy-edged.

On the other hand,
mushy,
pronounced with an
uh,
is back in vogue among lovers. It means “romantic, sentimental, tender.” After an explosion that introduces potential lovers in the 1994 movie
Speed,
the female character says: “You’re not going to get
mushy
on me, are you? … Relationships that start under intense circumstances, they never last.” In 1998 grand jury testimony, Monica Lewinsky said that she gave an antique book to the president along with “an embarrassing,
mushy
note.” Last year, David Brooks of the
Weekly Standard
described the conclave that nominated George W. Bush as “a lovey-dovey,
mushy
convention.”
Time
magazine writes that in the current movie
What Women Want,
Mel Gibson, a star who often plays tough-guy roles, “learns to get
mushy
.”

The romantic sense of the word can cross the border into sloppy sentimentality. The novelist Henry Miller wrote in 1927 of “
mushing
it up in a corner,” and a character in Saul Bellow’s 1952
The Adventures of Augie March
spoke of “the kind who’d never … let you stick around till 1 a.m.
mushing
with them on the steps.” Rob Long, a screenwriter, reviewed a Fox Television “reality” series last month and asked, “How gooey-
mushy
could they really be, deep down, if they’re willing to head off to Temptation Island to test-drive their monogamy?”

One who overdoes tenderness is called a
mushball,
which has replaced the earlier
mushhead
. In the Arctic, husky sled dogs that hear their drivers urge them on with a shout of “
Mush!
” know that the command is not an endearment but a corruption of the French “
Marche!
”—meaning “Move on!”

Those poets and pundits tiring of the voguish
mushy
in its meaning of “excessively sentimental” might try the Briticism
soppy,
which means “dreamily silly” or “emotionally overboard,” as in this recent
Times of London
assessment of “canine and feline transition” in Washington: “Mr. Bush genuinely seems to be as
soppy
about animals as any of his predecessors.”

The synonymy of such lovesick sappiness:
mawkish
is unpleasantly insipid;
maudlin
is teary (an alteration of the weeping penitent Mary Magdalene);
gushy
is prone to pour out torrents of flattery;
schmaltzy
is cornball;
gooey
implies a substance or emotion both sticky and slithery;
squishy-soft
is moistly weak;
bathetic,
from the Greek
bathos
(“depth”), coined on the analogy of
pathos
to
pathetic,
connotes both triteness and insincerity.

Does this mean we should treat the sweetly sentimental
mushy
with scorn or cynicism? Of course not; we should never forget the gentle quality of romance long attached to the word, at least when pronounced with an
uh
. But let’s not overdo the sentiment; a touch of tartness helps the saccharine go down. As Al Capone’s men said to the members of Bugs Moran’s gang before lining them up and letting them have it in a Chicago garage, a Happy St. Valentine’s Day to all.

Another mush with political overtones is
polenta,
which is how Mario Cuomo described Walter Mondale. The
American Heritage Dictionary,
3rd edition notes the word
polenta
as being of Italian origin and defines it as “a thick mush made of cornmeal and boiled in water or stock.” Cuomo, as I recall, went to his ethnic roots to describe Mondale’s blandness.

Gary Muldoon

Rochester, New York

My …What?
How do you start a speech if you’re president?

My countrymen
was the standard opening of a presidential address for generations. But that was back in the days when
men
were men—that is, when
man
embraced womankind and before both mankind and womankind became
humankind
.

Some speakers chose
My fellow countrymen,
even though John Wither-spoon in 1781 denounced that as “an evident tautology” and advised, “You may say fellow citizens, fellow soldiers, fellow subjects, fellow Christians, but not
fellow countrymen
.” If a member of the Judson Welliver Society of former White House speechwriters were writing an opening for Mark Antony today, it would have to be “Friends, Romans, fellow citizens”—perhaps followed by the nonmetaphoric “lend me your auditory facility.”

My friends
was a salutation that got Horatio Seymour, governor of New York, into trouble when he used it to address draft rioters in 1863. But when Franklin D. Roosevelt began using it in 1910, in a campaign for the New York State Senate, it became his signature opening and is still closely associated with him as a verbal handshake at the start of his series of radio “fireside chats.” (FDR did not, as legend has it, use
My fellow immigrants
in addressing the Daughters of the American Revolution.)

Abraham Lincoln also used
My friends
in saying farewell to his neighbors in Springfield but used no salutation at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg; that decision was appropriate to the occasion’s solemnity. In his second Inaugural Address, Lincoln used
Fellow countrymen,
the anti-redundancy Witherspoon to the contrary notwithstanding.

In his farewell address, President Clinton saluted his audience with
My
fellow citizens,
his most frequently chosen salutation, consciously following the one chosen by Thomas Jefferson in his first Inaugural Address. Clinton also often used
My fellow Americans,
but that, like
fellow citizens,
seems to ignore the global audience. John Kennedy handled that problem nicely in his Inaugural Address with
“My fellow citizens of the world,
ask not what America will do for you….”

Moving past the salutation, the farewell addresser must pass two tests: first, to exhibit none of the bitterness he feels toward his carping critics, and second, to say good-bye. George Washington almost failed the first; Bill Clinton finessed the second.

In the first draft of his farewell in 1796, written in his own hand on May 15 and sent to Alexander Hamilton for his review, President Washington gave vent to his feelings about the Anti-Federalist press: “As some of the Gazettes of the United States have teemed with all the Invective that disappointment, ignorance of facts and malicious falsehoods could invent,” wrote our nation’s preeminent founding father, “to misrepresent my politics and affections; to wound my reputation and feelings; and to weaken, if not entirely to destroy the confidence you had been pleased to repose in me; it might be expected at the parting scene of my public life that I should take some notice of such virulent abuse. But, as heretofore, I shall pass them over in utter silence.”

That is an example of
paraleipsis,
the rhetorical technique of pointing something out by asserting you will not point it out, often preceded by the phrase “not to mention.” Critics like the pamphleteer James Thomson Cal-lender (secretly subsidized by the Anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson) evidently infuriated Washington.

Hamilton, who had been G.W.’s wartime aide-de-camp and later his treasury secretary, reacted as a faithful speechwriter should. He sent a fresh draft of a farewell address back to Washington, leaving out the anti-press diatribe. The president, with his true feelings off his chest, agreed to the excision and is not remembered for what he did not say.

Washington’s contribution to presidential inaugurals came after the oath itself: the emphatic “so help me God.” That is not in the oath prescribed in the Constitution; it was added by Washington. Ever since that first inauguration, the chief justice doing the swearing-in has had to ask the president-elect beforehand if he wanted to repeat Washington’s addition. All have, with the possible exception of Franklin Pierce.

Clinton’s farewell had none of G.W.’s first-draft bitterness, though the forty-second president surely felt that there were some vituperative right-wing columnists out, in the framer’s phrase, “to wound my reputation and feelings.” Even now, in the nostalgic glow of nonpartisanship, I am tempted to point out that, in his otherwise carefully composed self-encomium, Clinton’s “working together, America has done well” is a prime example of a dangling modifier. It could be corrected by changing the subject “America” to “Americans” or “the American people,” which would be a plural subject that could be “working together.” But in the father of our country’s paraleiptic tradition, I will pass over this grammatical lapse in utter silence.

In farewell, Washington’s draft took his leave with “I leave you with undefiled hands—an uncorrupted heart—and with ardent vows to heaven.” Lincoln, departing Springfield to take up leadership of a country coming apart, more personally noted: “Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed…. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.” Clinton did not say good-bye at all.

What phrase does a president use to best conclude any speech to the nation? “Good night and God bless you” now seems to be the preferred leave-taking, though some might take it as a response to the sneezing of an entire people. Lately, we have been hearing more “God bless you and God bless America,” which suggests to some a plug for an Irving Berlin song.

Most Americans take a presidential blessing in stride, but some wonder, What credentials does a secular figure have to give a benediction? Contrariwise, in any absence of an evocation of the deity at the speech’s conclusion, the more reverent members of the audience may wonder, Why was the blessing left out? What’s next—will he strike “In God We Trust” from the nation’s coinage?

“Thanks for listening” is not quite right for viewers, and “Thanks for watching” leaves out the radio audience. “Keep those cards and letters coming” is outmoded in an e-mail generation.

How best for a president to wrap up and let the screens go to black? I don’t have that answer. Thank you and good night.

N

Name That Enemy.
“Osama bin Laden’s organization is called Al Quaeda,” e-mails Michael Klein of New York, “also spelled as Al-Quaida. President Bush pronounces it ‘al-KYDE-a’; others pronounce it ‘al-KADE-a’; still others pronounce it in four syllables: ‘al-ka-EE-da.’ Which is cor-rect?” Al Qaeda (no hyphen, and meaning “the base,” or of late, “the head-quarters”) should be spelled without the
u
after the
q,
thereby giving it a fricative
kh
sound. (We went through this with Ayatollah Khomeini.) The pronunciation bruited about the
New York Times
is “al CAW-id-ah,” with a
k
sound, though correspondents who have worked in Arabic-speaking countries use the palate-clearing sound of
kh
.

And while we’re at it, the Persian suffix -
stan
in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and de facto Kurdistan means “country,” from the Indo-Iranian
stanam,
“place” or “where one stands.”

A person from Pakistan is called a
Pakistani
and takes umbrage at being called a
Pak
or
Paki
. A person from Afghanistan, however, is called an
Afghan
and would look at you funny if called an
Afghani
or
Afghanistani.

That is partly because
afghani
is the name of the currency: about 5,000
afghanis
are worth one dollar, while
Afghan
has the high value placed on any human being (unless you are referring to the rug or the hound). The same shortening—no
i
or
istani
—is OK with Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kurds. The Pakistanis prefer the long form for the reason usually expressed in the punch line of a joke as “that’s the Middle East.”

Nameless Event.
The surprise attack on the U.S. fleet in 1941 is remembered by the name of the place where it happened: Pearl Harbor. The bloodiest day in all our wars is also identified by its locale: Antietam creek (though southerners often identify that battle by the nearby town, Sharpsburg, Maryland). The shocking murder of a president is known by its victim: the
Kennedy assassination
.

But what label is applied to the horrific (more horrid than
horrible,
perhaps because of its less frequent use and similarity in emphasis to
terrific
) events of Sept. 11, 2001?

Because the calamities occurred almost simultaneously in two cities, they could not adopt the name of one locality or single structure: taken together, they are not written about in shorthand as the
twin towers destruction
or the
bombing of the Pentagon
. (And
bombing
is a misnomer, since no bomb was dropped.)
Attack
(or
Assault
)
on America
has been a frequent usage, but it seems too general, since Pearl Harbor was also an attack on the United States.

Terrorist massacre
is accurate, since
massacre
means “indiscriminate killing of large numbers,” but that phrase has not been widely adopted. The
recent tragic events
is euphemistic and antiseptic, and the
catastrophe in New York and Washington
too long.

We may settle on using the date. Just as FDR vividly identified Dec. 7, 1941, as “a date which will live in infamy,” many journalists use “ever since Sept. 11” as shorthand for this new date of infamy. (A further shortening is
9/11,
as in “The
New York Times
9/11 Neediest Fund,” which is also a play on the number punched on a telephone keyboard for emergencies.) In time, however, the nation’s choice of the date of December 7 was replaced by the location of the disaster, as Americans “remember Pearl Harbor.” On that analogy, perhaps a new designation will appear for the disaster that struck an unsuspecting nation now seeking a return to normalcy.

Needing To.
“You
need to
shut up and follow when an order is lawful,” said Lt. Col. Martha McSally as she sued the Defense Department for requiring a female fighter pilot to wear a head-to-toe gown off-base in Saudi Arabia. “You
need to
step out when it’s unlawful.”

Washington’s health commissioner felt strongly that it was time to let the public know the degree of ignorance about anthrax: “It’s time for us to stop
needing to
say we know,” said Dr. Ivan Walker, “and let the people know what we don’t know.”

And President Bush made official the growing use of this semimodal auxiliary verb with his answer in a news conference: “Anybody who harbors terrorists
needs to
fear the United States.”

What’s with the new
need
for
need
? We’re not talking about the noun, of Teutonic origin associated in Welsh with “starvation”; today, the noun
need
means “a lack of something essential, a desire for a missing necessity.” Nor is it the simple transitive verb
need,
as in “I
need
help,” that concerns us—that meaning of “have the desire to get what is urgently lacking” is clear enough.

It’s the semimodal verb that’s on the rise in usage and requires our help. The language has a bunch of short verbs that help determine the timing or character of the action-oriented verbs that follow. These affect the “mode,” sometimes confusingly called “mood,” of the verb that follows—coloring it as a fact, a possibility or a command. These auxiliary verbs that extend the meaning of the main verbs include
can, may, must, shall
and
will
. (In “I
may
bollix up this explanation,”
may
is the modal auxiliary that sets the conditional mode, sometimes called “subjunctive mood,” of the verb
bollix,
a verb whose ancient nautical coinage has its genesis in genitals. The other moods are “indicative” for a statement of fact and “imperative” for an order. In grammar, “melancholy” is not a mood.)

But sometimes those out-and-out modals don’t quite do the job to clarify or color the meaning of the verb that follows. In “I can see,” the modal
can
is ambiguous: it doesn’t mean the same in “I
can
see a steeple” as in “I
can
see deficits as far as the eye can see.” That’s why speakers who want to emphasize
can
’s sense of “ability” choose to substitute the semimodal verb phrase
am able to
. It won’t be confused with “know how to” or “is likely to” or “is permitted to”—all different senses in “
Can
I?”

Same with
must,
a modal verb that doesn’t always do for
do
what it used to do when bosses were tough: “I must do my homework.” In written form, it can be ambiguous: either a firm decision or a wishy-washy “if I don’t, I could flunk.” That possible misinterpretation of emphasis led to the semi-modal
have got to:
there is no mistaking the meaning of “I
have got to
do my homework” (or be expelled, ruined, spat upon and subsequently spend my life miserably flipping burgers).

We’re now ready to deal with the semimodal
need to
. “This
need to
is felt to be a stronger, more literal expression of necessity than
must,
which is felt to express less need than strict obligation,” says Sol Steinmetz, the great lexicographer and my modal mentor.

But what do people mean when they use the semimodal
need to
today? “Be required to, obligated to”? Or something quite different—“want to, desire to”? Sol says, “One could indeed say ‘I
need
to mail this letter’ instead of ‘I
want
to mail this letter’ when the emphasis is on necessity rather than desire.”

What with the explosion of semimodal usage, I needed to get this off my chest (in the sense of “wanted to,” because I like to flush out vogue uses). Now I need to turn to another subject (in the sense of “am required to,” as in “or else this will be followed by white space, apoplectic editors and a new career flipping burgers”).

This usage of “need” has long irritated me. It seemed to have flourished in Washington during the Clinton years. Remember him telling the country, after distancing himself from “that woman,” “I need to get back to work”?

John J. Sheehy

New York, New York

I wish you had included an analysis of the neologism
I need you to
(as in
“I need you to
sign your name, or roll up your sleeve, or take off your bra”), a recent successor to the equally inane
for me
(as in
“make a tight fist for me”
). Where do these (faintly belittling) locutions come from—and how do they spread so fast?

Maria Pelikan

New York, New York

Negative Pregnant.
One advantage of being a card-carrying language maven is that you suffer no compunctions about asking, “What does that mean?” (Or, in colloquial conversation, “Whassat?”) Your interlocutor rejects the possibility of your being ignorant, which you may well be, and instead thinks: “This is a test. He knows and is trying to trap me.”

In an interview with Richard Danzig, a former secretary of the navy, about the bioterrorism threat, we came to an arcane point of military strategy. When he said, “That’s an example of the
negative pregnant,
” I perked up with my usual shucks-that’s-beyond-me question, which he countered with “You’d better look it up. It’s a fascinating legal term.”

I have and it is. It means “a negative implying an affirmative,” and understanding it is a way of stopping the slippery.

Pregnant
(from the Latin
præ,
“before,” and
nasci,
“to be born”) is most commonly taken to mean “with child in the womb.” But there is a figurative sense of “filled with,” “fertile,” “big with consequences,” which appears in our
pregnant pause
. Grammarians have the phrase “pregnant construction” to denote a phrase that implies more than it expresses and is thus a favorite with poets. The
Century Dictionary
’s example is “The beasts trembled forth [that is, came forth trembling] from their dens.”

It was the Augustinian logicians who adopted the
negative pregnant
. Paul of Venice, working in the 14th century, came up with
propositio categorica negativa prægnans
. The lexicographer John Cowell in 1607 gave an example of a negative implying also an affirmative, which I will put in updated English: “As if a man, asked if he did a thing upon such a day, or in such a place, deny that he did it in some specific manner, he implies an admission that nevertheless in some form or other he did it.”