Videos: 4 Essential Tips for Writing in Plain Language

Recently, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (ICE) produced a video series on plain language. Starring ICE Web Content Editor, Kathryn Catania, who also co-chairs the Plain Language Action and Information Network, the digital shorts are just what they should be: brief, catchy, and handy.

Since I couldn't find them on YouTube, I uploaded them there myself.

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Tables


Acronyms and Abbreviations

Restrictive Apposition

In 2000, I asked the Modern Language Association the following question. I received the following reply.

Q: The second example sentence in MLA 5.49 (Appositives) reads:

Jeanne DeLor dedicated the book to her only sister, Margaret.

But the third rule of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style says that “no comma . . . should sepa-rate a noun from a restrictive term of identification.” The examples given are Billy the Kid; the novelist Jane Austen; William the Conqueror; and the poet Sappho.

Why, then, do you put a comma before “Margaret”?

A: Because “sister” in that sentence is not restrictive, since Jeanne had only one sister. If Jeanne had several sisters, and the sentence read,

Jeanne DeLor dedicated the book to her sister Margaret.

then the appositive would be restrictive (that is, essential—rather than parenthetical—to the de-scription), and would not be set off by commas.

See MLA 5.50 for other examples of restrictive apposition.

Be careful where you place the word "either"

Which sentence is correct (my emphasis)?

1. You can either have a small keyboard, like that on a Blackberry Bold 9900, or a slide-out keyboard, which makes for a heavier and thicker phone, like the Samsung Epic.


2. You can have either a small keyboard, like that on a Blackberry Bold 9900, or a slide-out keyboard, which makes for a heavier and thicker phone, like the Samsung Epic.

As the New York Times's standards editor, Philip Corbett, pointed out yesterday, the latter is correct. The reason: Spelled-out, the first sentence means,

You can either have a small keyboard or you can a slide-out keyboard

Spelled-out, the second sentence means,

You can have either a small keyboard or you can have a slide-out keyboard.

In technical terms, as Corbett puts it, "The phrases aren’t parallel—after either we have verb plus object; after or there’s no verb, just the object."

Translated "from the Russian" or "from Russian"?

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Associate Editor, Peter A. Sokolowski, replied as follows.

Q: The byline for a recent op-ed in the New York Times says that Pavel Palazhchenko translated Mikhail Gorbachev’s text “from the Russian.” Why is the word “the” necessary? “From Russian” sounds more intuitive.

A: It’s true that the convention of referring to a translated passage as being “from the French” and so on is an oddly un-English pattern. But the best we can do is surmise that a convention is exactly what it is. Since Samuel Johnson used it in his dictionary, it has been traditional to express the idea in this very Latinate manner.

In French, for example, the phrase traduit du russe would literally be rendered as “translated from the Russian.” It may be that a literal translation from back when the modern languages of French and English were being codified has simply carried over and resulted in the phrase as we have it today.

It is possible that the pattern could have been established in English independent of the influence of another language, but I’m afraid that the specifics of when and why are lost to history from our perspective.

————Reply Separator————

Q: Are both “from the Russian” and “from Russian” correct? Which is more prevalent?

A: Both “from Russian” and “from the Russian” are perfectly correct. As near as I can tell from our citations, they are used with roughly equal frequency. This goes for such references to any language.

How does "paraphrasing" differ from "rephrasing" differ from "punning"?

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question.Emily A. Brewster from the editorial department replied as follows.

Q: I'd to rephrase the following quotes as follows:

1. “The haves have freedom, the have-nots have not freedom” (Ayn Rand).
2. “It’s the economy, stupid” (Bill Clinton).
3. “Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains” (Karl Marx).

1. The haves have capitalism; the have-nots have not capitalism.
2. It’s capitalism, stupid.
3. Workers of the world unite for capitalism; you have nothing to lose but your hunger.

According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, paraphrase means “a restatement of a text, passage, or work giving the meaning in another form.” So, if I “paraphrase” something, I must retain its original meaning?

If so, in the above example, do I paraphrase the first quote (since for Rand freedom meant capitalism) but not the second or third (since by “the economy” Clinton did not mean “capitalism” but jobs, and Marx condemned capitalism)? If so, am I “rephrasing” the second and third quotes?

A: You are correct in your understanding that a paraphrase must retain the original meaning of the text being paraphrased. This being the case, your proposed statements are not paraphrases. (If Ayn Rand always equated capitalism with freedom, then your rephrasing of her statement is a paraphrase. However, if she ever used the word “freedom” to mean something other than “capitalism,” your statement would not be an accurate paraphrase; there’s no way to know for certain which sense of “freedom” she was using in the sentence in question—unless, of course, contextual text clarifies which she meant.)

Similarly, I don’t think the word “rephrase” can be accurately used to describe the modifications you’ve made to the statements in question. To phrase something is, according to the definition at sense 1a of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, is to “to express in words or in appropriate or telling terms.” To rephrase something is to express it in words or in appropriate or telling terms again; what is expressed must be the same.

The changes you’ve made to the statements by Rand, Clinton, and Marx are nothing less than major changes, and I don’t think your versions can be accurately attributed to the people who made the original statements.

Regarding the word “rephrasing,” I did not find any evidence in our files of the verb “rephrase” being used as you suggest, that is, to create a version of someone else’s phrase with a word or two that affects the meaning being changed. In rephrasing, the emphasis of a statement may be shifted, but the core meaning is not changed. Most often when something is rephrased, even the emphasis remains the same as in the original.

What you are doing to the phrases by these people is using them as a kind of template for saying something other than what those people said. It’s an effective rhetorical device because the phrases will have a familiar ring to many people, but your phrases are so different in meaning from the originals, that they cannot be accurately attributed to the people who wrote the originals.

How does an "Islamist" differ from a "Muslim"?

In 2003, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Assistant Editor, Jennifer N. Cislo, replied as follows.

Q: My reading tells me that Islamism means a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, and that an Islamist is a practitioner of Islamism. Is this accurate? If not, how do Islam and Islamism differ?

A: No, an Islamist is not necessarily a Muslim fundamentalist. Islamist means simply “an adherent of Islam.” Thus, an Islamist is a person who follows or believes in Islam. Both Islam and Islamism describe the religious faith of Muslims (which is the practice of Islam). The terms are somewhat interchangeable.

The key here is fundamentalist. Not all Muslims are fundamentalist. Not all Islamists are fundamentalist. Rather, fundamentalist describes a smaller subset of a religious or political group. For instance, there are fundamentalist Christians as well as fundamentalist Muslims within the Christian and Muslim faiths respectively. Fundamentalism, defined in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, as “a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles,” describes a subgroup within a faith that is particularly strict and literal in its interpretations of and following of religious doctrine. Fundamentalists are generally a subgroup and, as such, do not represent the majority of those who practice their faith.

————Reply Separator————

Q: In “Fighting Militant Islam, Without Bias,” Daniel Pipes writes, “Islamism differs in many ways from traditional Islam. It is faith turned into ideology, and radical ideology at that.” We therefore, Pipes concludes, “should regularly and publicly distinguish between Islam, the religion of Muslims, and Islamism, the totalitarian ideology.”

A: All the meanings I refer to are based on definitions found in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, which cover nicely all the senses of Islamist I found in my research.

The first sense of Islamism refers to the practice of Islam. An Islamist can simply mean one who practices Islam. Muslims also practice Islam. When used in this context, the meaning of Islamist and Muslim is the same. Although there are instances in print in which a Muslim is referred to as radical or militant, primarily the term Muslim is applied to the broad population of believers in Islam and not any small or militant faction.

The second sense of Islamism refers to a reform movement promoting a government and society run by the laws prescribed by Islam. This sense refers to the more radical factions within the Islam faith and an Islamist, in this context, is an adherent of a radical faction of Islam. Some might call this fundamentalist Islam.

We do have evidence for this in our files. But it is noteworthy that the word is almost invariably modified by an adjective, like militant, radical, revolutionary, and fundamentalist. This suggests to me that there is an effort being made to distinguish between the Islamist as a general follower of Islam and the Islamist as radical.

Part of the reason I did not address this issue in my first correspondence is that I hesitate to in any way define or debate at this time in history what a radical, fundamentalist, or any other follower of Islam might or might not be. I can only tell you what our definitions say and reiterate that they reflect how these terms are used according to our research.

The connotation of "proletariat"

In 2003, I asked Al Kelly, at the time the Edgar B. Graves Professor of History at Hamilton College, the following question. He replied as follows.

Q: In The Death of Nature, Carolyn Merchant refers to the “lower orders of society.” Is the proletariat synonymous with these “lower orders,” or does the proletariat carry specifically Marxist connotations?

A: Proletariat usually refers to modern industrial workers. Most in the lower orders of society in the 17th century were peasants.

What does "revert to type" mean?

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Neil Serven of the editorial department replied as follows.

Q: In The War over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission, Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol write:

That this was the “message” that Saddam received from U.S. policy became particularly clear during Clinton’s second term. Rhetorically, the administration accepted the goal of régime change in Iraq, and n response to Saddam’s defiance of U.N. weapons inspectors, the White House ordered numerous ostentatious buildups of U.S. forces in the Gulf during 1997 and 1998, accompanies by leaked details about the ominous comings and goings of aircraft carriers and the movement of warplanes. As the pattern evolved, the administration would devise a fig leaf to allow it to back down from the real action these buildups seemed to portend. Then the process would begin anew. An early 1998 confrontation with Saddam exposed the true extent of the Clinton team’s confusion. When Saddam refused to submit to further weapons inspections in late 1997, Clinton vowed that if force was [sic] required this time, the United States would “eliminate” Iraq’s capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction. Yet even as the U.S. buildup proceeded, the administration reverted to type [my emphasis]. In order to insure the elimination of Iraq’s W.M.D. program, would the administration use ground forces? Absolutely not. Could air power destroy Saddam’s weapons? Not really, given that he had buried and hidden so much of his arsenal. So the White House argued itself into a “surgical campaign of only four or five days, which would at most “diminish” Iraqi capabilities.

What does "revert to type" mean?

A: The phrase “revert to type” means to return to a position, habit, or pattern of behavior after temporarily deviating from that pattern. This sense of “type” might best be represented in our Collegiate Dictionary by sense 4a: “qualities common to a number of individuals that distinguish them as an identifiable class.”

A person who is trying to quit smoking, for example, might revert to type if he begins smoking again after laying off cigarettes for a brief time. The person goes back to displaying the qualities that are common to smokers.

In the excerpt you provide, the authors appear to be saying that the administration “reverted to type” by backing down from military action after temporarily increasing the number of forces in the Persian Gulf.

How does "theology" differ from "religion"?

In 2003, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Assistant Editor, Kory L. Stamper, replied as follows.

Q: How does theology differ from religion?

A: In general, “theology” refers to the theory and dogma shaping an overall belief system and metaphysical view of the universe, whereas “religion” refers to a body of sometimes ritualized religious practices as shaped by a particular theology. “Religion” is the earlier word, entering the written lexicon in the 13th century first to refer to the state of monasticism, then a member of a monastic community, then the community itself. It was not until the 14th century that “religion” came to be used of a particular system of worship and faith (as in the 14th century poem Cursor Mundi: In that siquar was in that tun Men of alkin religioun, or “at that time in that town [there] were men of all sorts of religion”).

“Theology” entered the written lexicon in the 14th century meaning “the study of God and of God’s relation to the world” and more broadly, “metaphysics.” The Oxford English Dictionary gives a fantastic explanation of the prehistory of the “metaphysics” sense of “theology” that has some bearing on the earlier senses of the word (with English transliterations of the Greek):

Note. Gr. theologia meant “an account of the gods, or of God (whether legendary or philosophical).” Varro, following the Stoics, distinguished three kinds of theologia, mythical, natural (rational), and civil, the last being the knowledge of the due rites and ceremonies of religion. This threefold division is referred to also by Tertullian and St. Augustine. In Christian Greek, the verb theologein was used = “to speak of as God, to attribute deity to,” whence theologia had the specific sense of “the ascription of a divine nature to Christ,” in contrast to oikonomia the doctrine of his incarnation and human nature. Another patristic Greek use, arising out of the primary sense, was “the account of God, or record of God’s ways, as given in the Bible,” whence the late Greek and medieval Latin use of theologia for the Scriptures themselves. In the 12th c. (1121-40) Abelard applied the term to a philosophical treatment of the doctrines of the Christian religion, which, though at first strongly condemned, became current, and, in this sense, “theologia” came to designate a department of academic study, the textbooks of which were the Bible and the Sentences (from the Fathers) of Peter Lombard. Hence the earliest English use. (The passage from Gower in sense 3 is derived ultimately from Aristotle’s division of the theoretic forms of philosophy into mathematike, physike, theologike the last being what we should call metaphysics, which included his doctrine of the divine nature.)

You can see that “theology,” then, was used in a much more “academic” plane than “religion” was. I believe this connotational distinction between the academic and the practical has carried through into more recent denotational senses of each word; “theology” is often used of a system of theoretical beliefs (senses 2a and b in the online dictionary) whereas “religion” refers to a set of practices and beliefs that theology (sense 2 in the online dictionary) influences. This has also affected later definitions: “religion” has gained the extended sense “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith” and “theology” has gained the sense “a usually four-year course of specialized religious training in a Roman Catholic major seminary.”

"The Ukraine" or "Ukraine"? "The Netherlands" or "Netherlands"? "The Sudan" or "Sudan"? "The Ayatollah" or "Ayatollah"? "The Reverend" or "Reverend"?

In 2005, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Associate Editor and Composition Manager, Thomas Pitoniak, replied as follows.

Q: According to historian Richard Pipes, “Ukraine is derived from the Slavic word for borderland, which explains why its name was traditionally—and in my opinion correctly—preceded by the, as is the case with ‘the Netherlands’ or ‘the Low Countries.’”

Does this rule, requiring “the” for Ukraine and Netherlands, hold for “ayatollah,” as in the Ayatollah Khomeini; “reverend,” as in the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr; or “Sudan”?

A: The use of “the” before terms like “reverend” is conventional in formal address.

“Reverend” started out as an adjective, and as is the case with “honorable” before a judge’s name, an article “the” before something like “the Reverend John Smith” is describing the whole person—title and name, not just the descriptive noun before the name. An example of the latter would be, “the quarterback Tom Brady.” In that case “quarterback” is a noun in attribution, and so “the” really belongs to that noun. If you want to think of articles and nouns as isolated binary pairs, then that pair, “the quarterback,” is indeed similar to “the Ukraine” in your account. But “the reverend” is not.

I wouldn’t use “the” before “Ayatollah,” but with “Sudan” it is common to do so.

How does "patriotism" differ from "nationalism"?

Patriotism means “love for or devotion to one’s country.”

Nationalism means “loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially: a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.”

Thus, a patriot need not be a nationalist, but a nationalist is necessarily a patriot.

How do “oppressive” and “repressive” differ?

In 2002, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Kory L. Stamper replied as follows.

Q: How do “oppressive” and “repressive” differ?

A: “Oppressive” and “repressive” each can refer to keeping something from acting, but each word has a very different meaning. “Oppressive” in that sense implies a weighing down or a burdening of someone or something by an external force. “Repressive,” on the other hand, refers to subduing something using either external force or internal control.

Each word also has meanings that are not shared: “oppressive” also means “tyrannical” and “overpowering or depressing the spirits”; “repressive” has specialized applications in psychology and developmental studies that “oppressive” do not.

How does "nation-state" differ from "nation"?

A “nation-state” contains one nationality, whereas a “nation” contains multiple nationalities.

“Nationality” means a people having a “common origin, tradition, and language.”

So, given that America is, as JFK said, a nation “of immigrants,” or a melting pot, the United States is a “nation.”

How do “metaphysics” and “ontology” differ?

In 2001, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Emily Arsenault from the editorial department replied as follows.

Q: How do “metaphysics” and “ontology” differ?

A: Their entries from Collegiate Encyclopedia might help:

ontology: Theory of being as such. Ontology is synonymous with metaphysics as defined by Aristotle, but because metaphysics came to include other studies (including philosophical cosmology and rational psychology), ontology has become the preferred term for the study of being. In the eighteenth century, C. Wolff understood ontology as a deductive discipline leading to necessary truths about the essence of things. Wolff’s successor, I. Kant, presented influential refutations of ontology as a purported system of knowledge. Ontology against became important in the twentieth century, notably among students of phenomenology and existentialism, particularly M. Heidegger.

metaphysics: Branch of philosophy whose object is to determine the real nature of things, to determine the meaning, structure, and principles of whatever is insofar as it is. In the history of Western philosophy, metaphysics has been understood as:

1. an inquiry into what sorts or basic kinds of things (e.g., the mental and physical) exist
2. the science of reality as opposed to appearance
3. the study of the world as a whole
4. a theory of first principles

The term means literally “what comes after physics,” and was used to refer to the contents of Aristotle’s treatise on what he himself called “first philosophy.” Aristotle had distinguished two tasks for the philosopher: to investigate the nature of the properties of what exists in the natural, or sensible, world, and to explore the characteristics of “being as such’ and inquire into the character of “the substance that is free from movement,” the unmoved mover. The first constituted “second philosophy” and was carried out primarily in his Physics; the second, which he also called “theology” (because God was the unmoved mover), is discussed in his Metaphysics.

Is "Londonistan" pejorative?

In 2005, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Associate Editor, Kory Stamper, replied as follows.

Q: In 2003, Daniel Pipes, an American expert on the Middle East, titled a post on his blog, “Londonistan Follies.” In 2005, Time magazine wrote, “In the years before Sept. 11, 2001, French authorities despaired at what they claimed was the tendency of the British authorities to turn a blind eye to events in ‘Londonistan.’” Also in 2005, historian Victor Davis Hanson wrote in National Review Online, “Its capital was dubbed Londonistan for its hospitality to Muslims across the globe.”

From these examples, it seems that Londonistan is pejorative, meaning that Britain is too hospitable to militant Muslims. Is this accurate, and do you plan to include the word, or perhaps the “-istan” suffix, in the next edition of your dictionary?

A: “Londonistan” is a relatively new coinage that still looks to be predominantly British. According to the evidence I have on hand, it dates back to 2001 and was supposedly coined by French counterterrorism officials who sneered at the British claim that human rights laws prohibited them from arresting suspected militants and al Qaeda lieutenants without evidence of a crime having been committed.

At this point, we don’t have enough evidence of either “Londonistan” or the suffixal “-istan” to merit entry into any of our dictionaries. Given more time and sustained usage, it may be a good candidate for future entry.

anti-Semitism

In 2002, I asked Merriam-Webster about the history of the word “anti-Semitism.” I received the following reply.

Though no English dictionary I have looked in attributes this word to another language, a little investigation makes it clear that English anti–Semitism, anti–Semite, anti–Semitic, etc., as well as corresponding terms in other European languages (French anti-sémitisme, Russian antisemitizm, etc.), are all borrowings from German Antisemitismus, Antisemit, and antisemitisch, which first became widely current in Germany in the fall of 1879.

To understand how this word arose we have to look more generally at the history of prejudice against Jews in Western Europe. Up until the late 18th century anti–Jewish feeling was grounded mainly on perceptions of Jews as an unconvertible religious minority, the only non- Christians in a monochromatically Christian society. A number of developments led to fundamental changes in this view. The German historian A.L. Schlözer and the Biblical scholar J.G. Eichhorn began to use Semit “Semite” and semitisch “Semitic,” based on Biblical references to the progeny of Shem, as precise terms defining Semites as a group of ancient and modern peoples, and Semitic as a family of languages that included Hebrew and Arabic. Later, scholars drew a sharp distinction between the Semites and the Arians (German Arier), who were thought to be the ancestors of the Indo-European-speaking peoples of Europe. The Jews came to be regarded as descendants of one branch of the Semites, and hence a people or nation rather than a religious minority. It was typical of nineteenth-century Romantic conceptualizations of world history to attribute a Geist, or intellectual and cultural essence, to every nation. Not surprisingly, the pre-modern stereotype of the Jew as a usurer preoccupied with financial gain was assigned to Jews as a national characteristic. Jewishness as perceived by non–Jews in Western Europe was defined in a completely secular way, and early socialists, in particular Karl Marx—himself of Jewish heritage—identified Jewry with the rise of capitalism. Of course, the culmination of this reevaluation was the notion that someone born of Jewish parents was by definition a Jew, in other words, that Jews constituted not just a nation but a physical race.

It was in this context in the 1870s in Germany that Semit, Semitismus, and Semitentum began to be used as catchwords more or less synonymous with Jude (“Jew”) and Judentum (“Jewry” or “Jewishness”), as a fashionable if inexact way to characterize Jews as a supposed ethnic and racial group. Of course, in the discourse of politicians and publicists within German society ein Semit was unambiguously ein Jude, as Arabs and other Semitic peoples were hardly at issue.

What called forth the term Antisemitismus was a fairly specific set of historical circumstances. With the abolishment of all anti-Jewish legal restrictions in Prussia in 1869, Jews became increasingly prominent in civil society and the target of conservative hostility, as the putative prime exponents of everything considered “modern.” This hostility became more focused after the financial crash of 1873 and the general decline of German liberalism in the early years of the Second Reich. The actual first appearance of antisemitisch and Antisemit is datable to September, 1879, when the Berlin publicist Wilhelm Marr announced a new weekly newspaper with overtly anti-Jewish tendencies. Marr has been credited with coining the terms, but in his own writing he used only antijüdisch “anti–Jewish” until 1880; antisemitisch actually first appears in a Jewish newspaper commenting on the advertisements for Marr’s weekly. In any event, antisemitisch and Antisemit gained rapid currency in the ensuing months. Of course, Antisemitismus was not a term of opprobrium for those German conservatives who wanted to roll back Jewish emancipation, but simply defined a cultural and political movement. The word was quickly picked up by British and French journalists writing about Germany and extended more generally to anti–Jewish ideology. The perception of anti-Semitism as a word denoting something by its very nature reprehensible really only dates from the twentieth century. In English, at least, anti-Semitism works better than anti-Judaism, which seems to imply mere hostility toward a religion.

The entry for Antisemitismus in Paul’s Deutsches Wörterbuch (ninth edition, 1992) cites a much earlier use of German Antisemit, in 1822, with a reference to an article in Zeitschrift für deutsche Wortforschung (volume 8, page 2). Deutsches Wörterbuch also alludes to an occurrence of English anti-Semitic in the work of Thomas Carlyle in 1851 (“anti-Semitic street riots”), with a reference to an article in Zeitschrift für den deutschen Unterricht (volume 24, page 474). Unfortunately, I do not have access to either of these journals here in western Massachusetts, so I am unable to see in what context the words were used. At any rate, even if Antisemit and antisemitisch, with their correspondents in other languages, were not actually first coined in 1879, there is no question that their widespread use began in this year.

Curiously, in 1935 the Reichspropagandaministerum of the National Socialists who put into practice anti-Jewish measures surpassing even the wildest dreams of German conservatives in 1879 attempted to officially phase out antisemitisch in favor of antijüdisch. External political considerations most likely provided some of the motivation for this shift: the foreign policy planners of the Third Reich must have realized that the Arabs of North Africa and the Middle East, chafing under French and British rule, could have been potential allies of Germany in the event of conflict with France and Britain. The continued use of a policy label that seemed to imply hostility toward all Semitic-speaking peoples would not have won the Arabs’ favor.

How does "self-contradictory" differ from "contradiction in terms"?

Sometime in college, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Emily Brewster replied as follows.

Q: In a recent op-ed from the Ayn Rand Institute, Onkar Ghate uses the word “self-contradictory.” In another A.R.I. op-ed, Amy Peikoff uses the phrase “contradiction in terms.”

But don’t both “self-contradictory” and “contradiction in terms” simply mean “contradictory” and “contradiction”? In other words, aren’t “self-contradictory” and “contradiction in terms” tautologous? After all, how can a contradiction be anything other than self-contradictory? And how can a contradiction be anything other than a contradiction “in terms,” i.e., if not in “terms,” then in what?

A: The terms “contradictory” and “self-contradictory” overlap in meaning. While “self-contradictory” applies only when some member or part of something contradicts some other member or part of that thing, “contradictory” applies to such conflicts both inside and outside the single item. Statements, in the plural, for example, cannot be self-contradictory, but they can be contradictory. For this reason, the term “contradictory” usually modifies plural nouns.

The words “in terms” as used in the phrase “contradiction in terms” stress that the discrepancy exists in the words being used. While I won’t rule out greater substance in some instances of the full phrase, I think “contradiction in terms” is generally equivalent to “contradiction.”

How does "selfsame" differ from "same"?

In 2002, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Editorial Assistant, Ben Korzec, replied as follows.

Q: How does “selfsame” differ from “same”?

A: Our dictionary lists “same” and “selfsame” as synonyms, so you can use them interchangeably. Not only do they have the same defining cross-reference to “identical,” but they also have similar senses.

“Same” means “being the one under discussion or already referred to,” and “selfsame” means “being the one mentioned or in question.”

The verbal illustration “left the same day” also illustrates selfsame: “left the selfsame day.”

How does "productivity" differ from "productiveness"?

In 2002, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Kory L. Stamper replied as follows.
Q: How do “productivity” and “productiveness” differ?

A: “Productiveness” is used specifically of the quality or state of being productive, while “productivity” means “the ability or capacity to produce.”

While “productivity” is a synonym of “productiveness,” there is a subtle distinction. “Productiveness” suggests a state already in place or a quality already present, whereas “productivity” suggests the possibility of such a state or quality coming into being.

“Productivity” also tends to have specific business applications that “productiveness” does not. The remainder of the definition in our unabridged dictionary for “productivity” reads:

a: abundance or richness in output

b: the physical output per unit of productive effort

c: the ability of land to produce a given yield of a particular crop

d: the degree of effectiveness of industrial management in utilizing the facilities for production; especially: the effectiveness in utilizing labor and equipment

I also asked this question to my friend, Chris Matthew Sciabarra. He replied as follows.
Productivity is a technical economics term; it usually means, roughly, producing goods that have exchange value. When people talk of maximizing productivity, it usually means producing lots of good quality goods and/or services.

Productiveness is broader. Ayn Rand defined it as “recognition of the fact that productive work is the process by which man’s mind sustains his life.”

How does "prison" differ from "jail" differ from "penitentiary"?

A prison is “a place of confinement especially for lawbreakers; specifically: an institution (as one under state jurisdiction) for confinement of persons convicted of serious crimes.”

A jail is “a place of confinement for persons held in lawful custody; specifically: such a place under the jurisdiction of a local government (as a county) for the confinement of persons awaiting trial or those convicted of minor crimes.”

A penitentiary is “a public institution in which offenders against the law are confined for detention or punishment; specifically: a state or federal prison in the United States.”

Is "Obamacare" pejorative?

A cogent answer from Cato Institute scholar, Ilya Shapiro (from a footnote in his recent law review article, "A Long, Strange Trip: My First Year Challenging the Constitutionality of Obamacare"):

“I use the term because most people colloquially refer to it that way—though those who support it use quotation marks—in large part because it’s much easier to say than ‘PPACA,’ ‘Affordable Care Act,’ or any other more technical term. While thought in some quarters to be pejorative, I’ve never understood how that’s the case (unless said with a sneer, but by that standard anything can be pejorative). Even the leading academic supporters of Obamacare’s constitutionality, such as Yale law professors Akhil Amar and Jack Balkin (who both make cameo appearances toward the end of this article), say ‘Obamacare.’ The one semi-accurate criticism I’ve heard is that the law was mostly written by Congress, not the White House—for which the president got plenty of heat from the Left. But that just means it would be better to call it Pelosi-Reid-care, which presumably is no more or less pejorative. In any event, that ship has sailed.”

Should "janjaweed" be listed in the dictionary?

In 2004, I wrote Merriam-Webster the following comment. Associate Editor, Kory L. Stamper, replied as follows.

Q: I’d like to suggest Merriam-Webster include “janjaweed” in its collegiate dictionary.

A: We only enter general vocabulary words, and at this point “janjaweed” is too specific to be entered as a general vocabulary word. Though I have run across it quite often in my reading and marking, it always refers to the government-backed Sudanese militias that are slaughtering and raping their way across Darfur. In this sense, it is like the word “Hizzbolah” or “al Qaeda”—it refers to a specific group of people acting within a specific time-frame and conflict.

Another lexicographical clue that “janjaweed” is not considered a general vocabulary term is that it is almost always glossed within the text. If “janjaweed,” like the word “Nazi,” gains an extended sense that lifts it from its very specific context, then we will consider that extended sense for entry.

How does "instantiate" differ from "reify"?

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Emily Brewster from the editorial department replied as follows.

Q: Instantiate means “to represent (an abstraction) by a concrete instance”; heroes instantiate ideals. Reify means “to regard (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing.” How do the two terms differ?

A: The genus terms in the two definitions in question differ significantly; the answer to question lies in that difference.

Note the first definitions of “regard” and “represent”:

regard: to consider and appraise usually from a particular point of view

represent: to bring clearly before the mind: present

Using these definitions, we can redefine reify as “to consider and appraise (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing,” and redefine instantiate as to “bring clearly before the mind (an abstraction) by a concrete instance.”

In this way, trees at various stages of development instantiate growth, but if you reify growth, you imagine or consider it as something that can be held or touched.

How does "denotation" differ from "connotation"?

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Assistant Editor, Daniel Brandon, replied as follows.

Q: Denotation means “the totality of things to which a term is applicable especially in logic.” Connotation means “an essential property or group of properties of a thing named by a term in logic.”

So, whereas denotation refers to a word's dictionary definition, connotation means what the word means when people use it?

A: Your analysis is essentially correct, at least enough so for casual use.

The “denotation” of a word is its intrinsic meaning; the meaning that is attached to the word itself outside of any context or environment.

The “connotation” of a word is the meaning that is layered in when the context is taken into account; it presupposes a certain commonality of experience between the user and he interpreter of the word.

Thus, while the word “war” by itself may just denote a fight between large groups of people, its use by a European author in the late 1940s was undoubtedly influenced by images of World War Two, and readers of the same era would have immediately understood this.

On a lighter subject, one example I found was that while “rabbit” and “bunny” share the same denotative meaning, “bunny” has the connotations of a pet rather than a pest. A hunting license for “bunny season” would sound rather silly.

How does "proffer" differ from "offer"?

In 2005, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Neil S. Serven, of the editorial department, replied as follows.

Q: Proffer means “to present for acceptance: tender, offer.” Offer means “to present for acceptance or rejection: tender,” as in “was offered a job.” What's the difference?

A: The slight discrepancy in their usage is explained in the following excerpt from the article at “offer” that appears in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms:

“Offer,” “proffer,” “tender,” “present,” “prefer” can all mean to lay, set, or put something before another for acceptance. “Offer,” the most common of these words, frequently implies a putting before one something which may be accepted or rejected:

• There was a crown offered him: and being offered him, he put it by.

• Had he succeeded, he told me, he would have offered me the post of subeditor.

• Offer a suggestion.

• The dress department offers several new models this week.

• He offered $10,000 for the house.

• We must ask in the end what they have to offer in place of what they denounce.

“Proffer” differs from “offer” chiefly in more consistently implying a putting or setting before one something that one is at liberty to accept or reject and in usually stressing voluntariness, spontaneity, or courtesy on the part of the agent:

• Proffered his arm to a lady having difficulty crossing the street.

• Felt that it would be indelicate just then to ask for any information which Casaubon did not proffer.

• Rejected the proffered assistance of a couple of officious friends.

• The flavor of social success is delicious, though it is scorned by those to whose lips the cup has not been proffered.

In general, “proffer” emphasizes the active will and deliberation on the part of the person behind it, while “offer” is used in more casual contexts. A mechanic who offers to check your car’s oil level would probably not be “proffering” this service, since presumably he offers it to everyone as part of his job. A person who pulls over to help a stranded motorist, on the other hand, might be said to be "proffering" assistance, since it is being done out of courtesy, not obligation.

breastaurant

breastaurant [breast + restaurant]: a restaurant where the scantily clad waitresses aren't on the menu, but they're the reason the patrons keep returning

I only eat at breastaurants like Hooters, Twin Peaks and Tilted Kilt for the food.

"Breastaurants" Ring up Big Profits [Entrepreneur]

How "Breastaurants" Took Over the Casual Dining Industry [Business Insider]

obviate the need for

In 2006, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Associate Editor, Jennifer N. Cislo, replied as follows.

Q: In June, former Time Inc. editor in chief Norman Pearlstine told CNN, “By turning over this information, we obviate the need for Matt to even testify.” In reporting the interview, the Washington Post wrote, “Pearlstine said he believes the documents will ‘obviate the need’ for any testimony from Cooper.”

But if “obviate” means to “make unnecessary,” isn’t “obviate the need for” redundant?

Perhaps many people are unfamiliar with “obviate,” so pairing it with “need” clarifies its meaning?

A: The phrase “obviate the need for” is idiomatic and in common use.

sext

sext [sex + text] (v): sending sexually explicit messages or photographs via a mobile phone

Between Congressmen Foley (R-FL) and Weiner (D-NY), sexting seems to be the one thing that the House of Representatives can agree on these days.

solid

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Neil S. Serven replied as follows.

Q: Whenever I heard the word solid, meaning “big favor”—as on Seinfeld, when Kramer would say, “Do me a solid”—I chalked it up as slang. But when one of my professors recently used the word as such, I consulted your collegiate dictionary, but to no avail. Is “solid” colloquial, slang, or Standard English? Also, is my definition correct?

A: The phrase “do me a solid” (meaning “do me a favor”) appears to be quite new to English, and we can find very few sources employing this sense of “solid” outside of the Internet. As far as we can tell, the phrase may have originated (at least in the popular consciousness) with Seinfeld, since we can find no examples of usage that predate that series.

The 1996 book, Flappers 2 Rappers: American Youth Slang, by Tom Dalzell, gives the definition “favor” for “solid” in its chapter on slang influenced by hip-hop and rap culture, but gives no further information or speculation about its origin. None of the other slang dictionaries that we consulted carry the term.

How does "tolerance" from "toleration"?

In 2003, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Neil S. Serven replied as follows.

Q: How do “tolerance” and “toleration” differ?

A: The words “toleration” and “tolerance” are quite similar in meaning. Both can be used to refer to an act of enduring, allowing, or putting up with something, as in a firefighter’s toleration of high temperatures or a teacher’s tolerance of certain behavior.

Both words, however, also have specific applications. “Tolerance” tends to be the preferred choice in scientific contexts, as when referring to the capacity of the body to resist the effects of something (such as a virus, drug, or environmental factor).

“Toleration” is the preferred term to refer to a government policy of permitting forms of religious belief and worship that are not officially established.

Unless you are referring specifically to one of these two specific meanings, either word is acceptable.

Addendum (11/15/2004): Andrew Sullivan draws the distinction nicely: “Tolerance is the eradication of hate; toleration is coexistence despite it.”

war-fighting

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Associate Editor and Composition Manager, Thomas Pitoniak, replied as follows.

Q: In his recent op-ed, “Kerry, Newest Neocon,” Bill Safire refers to “war-fighting in Iraq.” Likewise, Anthony Cordesman titled his most recent book, The Lessons of Afghanistan: War Fighting, Intelligence, and Force Transformation.

Unfortunately, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary doesn't list war-fighting. What does this compound word mean? A state of armed conflict between "war" and "fighting"?

A: I believe the reason “war-fighting” is not entered in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, is not that it denotes some intermediate stage between war and fighting, but that is self-explanatory. I believe it simply means “fighting a war.” We do not enter such self-explanatory compounds, which are almost infinite in number.

"data" as a verb

Another businessman turns a noun into a verb:

"There's no way to data your way to an answer."

Can Todd Park Revolutionize the Health Care Industry? [The Atlantic]

How does "medical" differ from "medicinal"?

In 2005, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Life Sciences Assistant Editor, Chris Connor, replied as follows.

Q: Medical means “requiring or devoted to medical treatment.” Medicinal means “tending or used to cure disease or relieve pain.”

But doesn’t “medical treatment” necessarily mean “tending or used to cure disease or relieve pain.” In other words, how do medical and medicinal differ? The specific example I’m thinking of is medical vs. medicinal marijuana.

A: The difference in meaning between “medicinal” and “medical” is slight, although their use is not synonymous. The main difference in their use, in my opinion, is that “medical” denotes inclusion (“devoted to…”) in the practice of medicine, which is not necessarily the case with “medicinal.” The use of “medical” in the compound “medical marijuana” therefore indicates an acceptance of marijuana in “mainstream” medical practice.

This is not the case with “medicinal marijuana,” which only indicates that marijuana has positive health effects. A similar case can be seen with “medicinal herbs,” which is a much more common compound than “medical herbs.” Though used to cure disease and relieve pain, herbs are not typically a part of traditional Western medicine. They are medicinal but not medical. I sense that this is the slight difference that distinguishes “medical” from “medicinal.”

Is it spelled "Mideast" or "Mid-east"?

In 2002, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Emily Vezina replied as follows.

Q: Is it spelled "Mideast" or "Mid-east"?

A: While both “Mid East” and “Mid-East” are used, by far the most common way of writing this is “Mideast.”

How does "suasion" differ from "persuasion"?

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Assistant Editor, Jennifer N. Cislo, replied as follows.

Q: “Suasion” means “the act of influencing or persuading.” “Persuasion” means, inter alia, “the act or process or an instance of persuading.” How do “suasion” and “persuasion” differ?

A: Apart from their spelling, there is only niggling if any difference between suasion and persuasion. The only notable difference is that persuasion is a far more commonly used word for describing any act, instance, or process of influencing another.

How does "racialist" differ from "racist"?

In 2003, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Assistant Editor, Jennifer N. Cislo, replied as follows.

Q: In The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Progress in America (Chicago, 1999), Philip A. Klinkner and Rogers M. Smith use the word racialist when in my opinion racist would suffice. How do the two differ?

A: These kinds of word pairings (racialist and racist) often have overlapping meanings. And sometimes they differ in meaning. It depends a great deal on the context in which the word is used and on the connotations the word carries. Without the context, I could not suggest what the author means or why he chose one word over another.

If you look at the definitions in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, for “racialism” and “racism,” you’ll get a sense of the overlapping as well as the diverging senses of racialist and racist. Both adjectives and their meanings derive from these two nouns.

racialism
1. a theory that race determines human traits and capacities; also: RACISM

racism
1. a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2. racial prejudice or discrimination.

Both adjectives refer to theories or beliefs that hold race to be the determinant of human traits. The broader cross-reference at racialism to racism suggests that racialist is often used as a synonym for racist.

Racism, however, is distinguished as a belief that “racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” That meaning is strongly associated with the word racist but less so associated with racialist.

Addendum: It seems that racism also differs from racialism in that where racism holds that race is one of the determinants of human traits, racialism holds that race is the determinant of human traits. So, whereas racist speech refers to the ideas, say, of the Ku Klux Klan, racialist speech refers to, say, a misinformed social scientist.

QED

In 2005, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Assistant Editor, Emily A. Vezina, replied as follows.

Q: Your dictionary defines “QED” as “which was to be demonstrated.” I don’t know what this means, so I found two examples. Unfortunately, neither helped; both seem to imply different meanings of the term. Can you clarify?

1. “Ann Coulter is a vitriolic right-wing pundit. . . . Tom Frank is a vitriolic left-wing pundit. QED: Tom Frank must be like Ann Coulter.”


2. “Resolution 1441, unanimously passed by the Security Council, ordered Saddam to make full accounting of his W.M.D. program and to cooperate with inspectors, and warned that there would be no more tolerance for concealment or obstruction. Kay’s finding of ‘dozens of W.M.D.-related program activities,’ concealed from U.N. inspectors, constitutes an irrefutable material breach of 1441—and open-and-shut vindication of the U.S. decision to disarm Saddam by force. QED.”

A: “QED” is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase that literally means “which was to be demonstrated” or “which was to be proved.” It is sometimes written at the end of an argument (or a mathematical proof) to say, “This is the end of my argument, and see, I proved what I set out to prove.”

In your first example, “QED” means “therefore I have proven that Tom Frank must be like Ann Coulter.”

In the second example, QED means, “There’s my argument. There’s my proof. I proved what I set out to prove.”

The abbreviation has no succinct exact translation in English, since “QED” often serves more of a function than having an actual translation, but it is used to indicate the end of an argument where the arguer believes he has proved his point.

purposively. purposely. purposefully

Purposively means “having or tending to fulfill a conscious purpose or design.”

Purposely means “with a deliberate or express purpose.”

Purposefully means “full of determination.”

propaganda

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Assistant Editor, Jennifer N. Cislo, replied as follows.

Q: Your Collegiate Dictionary says “propaganda” can be ideas or rumor. While ideas can be true or false, it seems that rumors are usually false. Does “propaganda” therefore carry both positive and negative connotations? Is one more prevalent than the other is?

A: The connotation of the word “propaganda” is almost invariably negative.

The history of “propaganda” begins with the Catholic Church. During the 16th century, Spain and Portugal mainly controlled missionary activity, which made Italy unhappy. Seeking to centralize the administration of missionary activity, Pope Gregory XV issued a bull that instituted the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (in Latin, “Congregatio de propaganda fide”). The office was simply referred to as Propaganda and was charged with the direction and administration of ecclesiastical affairs in non-Catholic countries.

While this ecclesiastical use of “propaganda” was well known through the 18th century, by 1790 a generic use meaning a group or movement organized for spreading a particular doctrine had been established in English. By 1840 this usage had acquired a derogatory connotation. In the early twentieth century we find “propaganda” used to mean “the systematic dissemination of ideas, information, or rumors so as to promote or injure a cause.”

This sense also gave rise to the use of “propaganda” to denote the ideas so disseminated. During the First World War both sides put out a profusion of propaganda, most of it false or exaggerated, further damaging the word’s reputation. Propaganda also played an important role in the Second World War as a weapon of “psychological warfare.” Since then we have heard much about Communist propaganda, Socialist propaganda, rightwing and left-wing propaganda.

Addendum: See also “indoctrinate.”

indoctrinate

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Assistant Editor, Jennifer N. Cislo, replied as follows.

Q: The first definition of “indoctrinate” has no connotations, but the second definition, owing to the adjectives “partisan” and “sectarian,” implies negativity. I assume the first definition is more prevalent, since it is first?

A: Actually, Merriam-Webster dictionaries are historical; the sense ordering is based on chronology and not on prevalence or usage, which means the first sense of indoctrinate developed prior to the second sense.

The second sense defines how indoctrinate is used in most contexts. The word “usually” is meant to point out that indoctrinate means “to imbue with (an) . . . opinion, point of view, or principle,” not always but usually partisan or sectarian in nature. This definition is not meant to make any negative or positive comment on the word indoctrinate or on indoctrination itself. It simply reflects how it is used by speakers and writers.

The first sense of indoctrinate is broader in its coverage. There, as you point out, indoctrinate simply means “to instruct.”

Though this sense is first historically, I think it is the less prevalent. Most often when indoctrinate is used today, the speaker is purposefully suggesting an instruction of a sort that is partisan.

Addendum: See also “propaganda.”

etatism. statism

In 2002, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Thomas Pitoniak replied as follows.

Q: How do etatism and statism differ?

A: “Statism” is defined in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition) as “concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government.” It is a broader term than “etatism,” which is a synonym of “state socialism,” since “statism” could refer to a highly regulated economy that does not share the specific characteristics of state socialism. “State socialism” means “an economic system with limited socialist characteristics introduced by usually gradual political action.”

Commentators toward the right of the political spectrum often do employ “statism” as a rough synonym, not just for “state socialism,” but “socialism” itself. The demon, then, in such a case, is obviously a state stranglehold on free enterprise. For example, in 1977 then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said:

the tide is beginning to turn against collectivism, socialism, statism, dirigisme, whatever you call it . . . It is becoming increasingly obvious to many people who were intellectual socialists that socialism has failed to fulfill its promises, both in its more extreme forms in the Communist world and in its compromise versions (quoted in the London Daily Telegraph, March 23, 2002).

Perhaps “compromise versions” itself alludes to state socialism.

However, the conservative commentator George Will uses the word more typically, not as a mere synonym of “socialism” or “state socialism,” here:

Such praise is not much heard in Sweden nowadays, and anyway Sweden is clearly a capitalist society, albeit one suffocating beneath statism (quoted in the Springfield Union-News [Massachusetts], June 11, 1990).

“Etatism” has perhaps the most complicated history of these terms, and in researching this response and in particular looking over some of our older evidence (and I mean old, going back more than 100 years), it seems to me that this entry may deserve some revision in the future, or at least serious consideration for such.

There are two main reasons for this. One is some evidence of occasional use to simply mean “statism,” and the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, bears this out even though they do not cover the most prominent use of “etatism,” and that is in regard to Turkey.

Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal) used “etatism” as one of the “six pillars” of the new Turkish constitution in 1937. The pillars were republicanism, nationalism, populism, etatism (listed, significantly, as “statism” in Encyclopaedia Britannica), secularism, and revolution (or reformism). (It is worth noting that the Economist, in its August 23-29, 1986 issue, said those pillars “are so nebulous that every Turkish political party has been able to pay lip service to them.”

Ataturk overhauled Turkey from the top down, and may well have been drawing on “etatism” in the sense of “state socialism,” since that also involved action by the state, not engendered in the proletariat. (State socialism has been traced by some to the “socialism of the chair” associated with German intellectuals in the 1870s and later who advocated bettering the lives of the working class through discrete adjustments [such as through legislation, insurance, labor reforms, etc.] rather than revolution or radical change.)

But what is clear is that the “etatism” that evolved under Ataturk in Turkey was its own species, specifically, it seems narrower in being confined primarily to the nationalization of industry. This looks like one pillar that was subsequently remodeled, especially after 1950, and the term “etatism” appears to have survived in regard to Turkey as a descriptor of its own distinct economy, not state socialism per se.

So there are at least three meanings of “etatism” that have been attested to various degrees: statism (in the sense we include in the Collegiate), state socialism, and perhaps most prominent, the economic system marked by nationalization of enterprise under Ataturk in Turkey and subsequently modified to reduce state control. This does not mean all three of these meanings are equally deserving of coverage, but I do thank you for bringing this issue up.

entitled. titled

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Assistant Editor, Kory L. Stamper, replied as follows.

Q: If I were to say that the title of this e-mail is “titled. entitled,” would I say it is entitled or titled as such?

A: It would be correct to use either “entitled” or “titled” in this way (“a book entitled Fury,” “a lecture titled “Democratic Leanings in Current Thought”). Our own Dictionary of English Usage notes:

Sources as diverse as Emily Post 1927 and Bremner 1980 have expressed disapproval of using entitled to mean “titled.” However, this well-established usage has been common for over 500 years and is the older of the two senses

Postscript: In Writing for Time (Time Inc. Magazine Company, 1990), Jesse Birnbaum and the editors of Time magazine say that entitled is

fine, when referring to a legitimate claim; not so when the word is followed by the name of a book, story, essay, paper, movie, TV show, etc. In such cases, say titled or called. In many instances, the term can be omitted: “The movie Ghostbusters opens in September” (42).

justice. judge

In 2005, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Senior Editor, Linda Picard Wood, replied as follows.

Q: People usually refer to the judges of the U.S. Supreme Court as “justices,” whereas all inferior judges are usually called “judges.”

1. Is this accurate?


2. Is there any difference between a “justice” and “judge”?

A: Members of the Supreme Court of the United States are usually referred to as “justice,” but so are judges of other high courts.

The level at which they administer justice (e.g., a district vs. appellate court) is the only difference between a “judge” and a “justice.” Otherwise, the words mean the same thing. (The day to day duties of a judge and a justice undoubtedly differ, too.)

Interestingly, the word “justice” in this sense appears to be the older of the two terms. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the earliest date of “justice” to mean an administrator of the law back to before the year 1200. The earliest known use of the word “judge” with this meaning goes back to around the year 1300.

Islamicist. Islamist

In 2005, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Associate Editor, Kory Stamper, replied as follows.

Q: Is the correct spelling “Islamicist” or “Islamist”? And is it “Islamism” or “Islamicism”?

A: We enter “Islamist” and “Islamism” in the Eleventh, so I’ll assume that those are the most recent and most frequent words used. A quick search of Lexis-Nexis confirms this: “Islamist” and “Islamism” are overwhelmingly preferred in American and British news sources. I find only a handful of hits for “Islamicist” or “Islamicism.”

incriminate. criminate

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Associate Editor, Kathleen M. Doherty, replied as follows.

Q: “Round” is to “around,” and “disfranchise is to disenfranchise,” as “criminate” is to “incriminate”; the former are simply abbreviations for the latter.

For brevity, I prefer to use the abbreviations. Do you think this is permissible as a rule, and do you know why the preponderance of people prefer the full words?

A: “Criminate” and “incriminate” are really two separate words, synonymous with each other. There’s no reason you can’t use “criminate” if you want to. It’s far less commonly found, though, and some might not be familiar with it, which could lead to confusion on the part of the reader or hearer of the word.

The same answer applies to the words “around” and “round,” and “disfranchise” and “disenfranchise.” These are four separate words, with “around” and “round” being synonyms of one another as are “disfranchise” and “disenfranchise.”

While “around” is the more common in American English, “round” is used more often in British English.

At one time “disfranchise” was more common than “disenfranchise.” It’s only been over the last 40 years or so that “disenfranchise” has become more frequent.

Q: What about “ameliorate” and “meliorate,” and “iterate” and “reiterate”?

immigrate. emigrate

In 2002, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Emily Brewster replied as follows.

Q: How do immigrate and emigrate differ?

A: “Emigrate” is an intransitive verb that our Collegiate Dictionary defines as “to leave one’s place of residence or country to live elsewhere.”

“Immigrate” can be used both intransitively and transitively. Its intransitive sense is defined as “to enter and usually become established; especially: to come into a country of which one is not a native for permanent residence.” The transitive sense is defined as “to bring in or send as immigrants.”

The difference between the two words really has only to do with place. “Emigrate” focuses on the place one is leaving. People emigrate from somewhere. “Immigrate” focuses on the place one is going to. People immigrate to somewhere. And in the transitive sense of “immigrate,” a country can immigrate people, which, confusingly enough, is used to mean that it either brings people into itself or sends them to other countries.

gay. lesbian

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Assistant Editor, Emily A. Vezina, replied as follows.

Q: People often distinguish between “gay” (homosexual) and “lesbian” (a female homosexual); in fact, many groups call themselves the Gay and Lesbian… But if one is a lesbian, one is by definition gay. Is the distinction between “gay” and “lesbian” therefore false?

A: Our job here is to describe the English language as it is actually used and not to tell people how they should or should not use words. Currently, both men and women use the word “gay” to describe themselves, though the word is used more frequently to refer to men. “Lesbian” refers exclusively to women.

So, yes, the meaning of “gay” does overlap with the meaning of “lesbian.” However, we would never call this distinction “false” since this is simply the way the words have evolved and we make no judgment about that.

forsooth

In 2002, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Emily Brewster replied as follows.

Q: How can “forsooth,” which means “in truth,” “imply doubt”?

A: “Forsooth,” like “indeed,” can imply contempt or doubt when it’s used, as it often is, with sarcasm. It’s similar to the more modern and direct “I don’t think so,” as in, “You called but no one answered? I don’t think so.” One might also say, “You called but no one answered, forsooth.”

egoism. egotism

In 2002, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Kory L. Stamper replied as follows.

Q: How do egotism and egoism differ?

A: “Egotism” is the earlier word, appearing about 60 years before “egoism” did, sometime around 1720. Initially, it simply referred to the overuse of the first person pronoun, and then to excessive talk about oneself. Around 1800, it gained the common “conceit” sense that we use today. “Egotism” has rarely been used in a scholarly or clinical sense.

“Egoism,” on the other hand, began in scholarly and philosophical circles. Arriving in English in the 1780s, it was used first for the idea that nothing apart from the speaker’s mind truly exists (this sense was often used to refer to the logic of one’s opponents, naturally). Within a few decades, it came to be used to refer to the ethical stance that one’s self-interests are the foundations for personal morality and action. Only in the 1840s was it made synonymous with “egotism,” no doubt because of the similarity in spelling and the implication that an egoist thinks very highly of himself and would have quite a sense of self-importance.

concretize. crystallize

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Assistant Editor, Rose Martino, replied as follows.

Q: Crystallize means “to cause to take a definite form.” Concretize means “to make concrete, specific, or definite.” How do crystallize and concretize differ?

A: As far as I can tell, crystallize and concretize don’t really differ at all; they’re essentially synonymous. Both are used to refer to ideas, for example.

clean one's clock

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Associate Editor, Kory L. Stamper, replied as follows.

Q: Your Collegiate Dictionary defines the phrase, “clean one’s clock,” as “to beat one badly in a fight or competition.” But “clock” is somewhat imprecise. Does it mean to beat another intellectually or physically, or both? Perhaps it’s just a stock word, symbolizing all these things? If so, can you tell me the origin of the phrase?

A: Like many phrases, “clean one’s clock” originated in spoken English, so it is nearly impossible to come up with a definitive origin for the phrase. We have evidence of “clock” being used of someone’s head or face as far back as 1908, but this use doesn’t have any documented connection to “clean one’s clock.” Our earliest citation for “clean one’s clock” is from 1959, while the heyday of the “face” sense of “clock” was the 1920s and 30s. It’s certainly possible there’s a connection, but without further written evidence, we can’t positively say one way or another.

As for what “clock” means in the current phrase, it’s difficult to tease it apart from the meaning of “clean,” which is why the phrase “clean one’s clock” is entered as opposed to the separate elements “clean” and “clock.” Our citational evidence shows that it’s used for the physical (Language Arts, Vol. 66, No. 3, March 1989):

“Defeated players ring the Champ squares, egging on those still in the game. . . . “Spike him one.” “Clean his clock.”

and for the abstract (Time, Vol. 130, No. 23, December 7, 1987):

“We have come down on the side of it not being worth what it costs right now,” says Runkle. “But we could be wrong. Honda could come in here and clean our clock with four-wheel steering.”

catch-22

In 2002, I asked the Chicago Manual of Style the following question. I received the following reply.

Q: Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary spells “catch-22” as such; but doesn’t the Chicago Manual of Style recommend spelling-out numbers this low?

A: This would be a certain exception: the title of Joseph Heller’s novel was Catch-22, not Catch-Twenty-two.

Blue Helmets

In 2002, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Emily Arsenault replied as follows.

Q: U.N. peacekeeping forces are often called Blue Helmets. How much more evidence of usage of this term do you need for its inclusion in your Collegiate dictionary?

A: “Blue Helmet” is a proper noun and therefore essentially “nonlexical,” as we call such terms.

bête noire. persona non grata

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Neil S. Serven from the editorial department replied as follows.

Q: Bête noire means “a person or thing strongly detested or avoided: bugbear.”

Persona non grata means “personally unacceptable or unwelcome.”

Does persona non grata refer exclusively to people, or, like bête noire, can it also refer to things? If the latter, how do bête noire and persona non grata differ?

A: A survey of usage shows that persona non grata is used almost strictly in terms of people and not things, such as in the following example, which comes from USA Today (9/1/2004):

[Senator Zell] Miller is persona non grata in his own party for becoming the first keynote speaker from the opposition party at a national political convention.

There are occasional examples of this term in reference to nonliving things, such as the example below, but overall these are very rare:

The [stadium] project was persona non grata to city officials who rebuffed attempts to take a second crack at a tax increase to pay for the stadium.

Although the two phrases are quite similar, they are not exactly synonymous. While bête noire refers to things that are generally detested, persona non grata usually refers to things that are unwelcome among the members of a particular group.

Also, while bête noire is used in English as a noun, persona non grata usually appears as an adjectival phrase. Therefore, it would be incorrect to use persona non grata with an article such as “a” or “the,” as in, “He is a persona non grata.”

Al Qaeda. Al-Qaeda. al Qaeda. al-Qaeda

In 2004, I asked Merriam-Webster the following question. Associate Editor, Thomas Pitoniak, replied as follows.

Q: What is the spelling you plan to include in your collegiate dictionary for al Qaeda, the terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden?

A: The spelling given in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia is Al-Qaeda. There is certainly variation, perhaps most notably including Al-Qaida, but Al-Qaeda is certainly acceptable.

The term is not entered in our dictionaries, because it is a proper noun for a specific group of people. Thus, we don’t enter similar terms like Red Brigades or Abu Sayyaf (Philippines group linked to bin Laden).