Editorland has been resolutely non-political---so far, anyway. No promises for the future. But now and then, I intend to take a balanced look at candidate language, when something interesting comes up.
Most interesting thing this week was said by a Clinton operative, responding to criticism from the Obama camp---criticism that was termed "a deliberately pathetic misreading" of a Bill comment. "Deliberately pathetic"? Being pathetic on purpose is a little like having your leg broken; sane people don't do such things. What was meant, presumably, was "a deliberate and pathetic misreading."
No syntax sinners at the moment from the other side, but Obama caught my ear by saying it would probably be possible to "gin up" something. That's a term I know, but don't hear often. A dictionary of regionalisms defines it as "to stir up, get something going," and there's also a sense of contriving or improvising. The Urban Dictionary (wwww.urbandictionary.com) offers an example that fits right in with my daily work as a development editor for computer manuals: "I'll get one of our code wonks to gin up something to convert the data over to the new format."
Obama's comment that the Reverend Wright was "obsessing" somewhat about race also sent me to the dictionary to see if "obsess about" had really achieved respectability. It has.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment