Elements of Style: Grammar Meets Basketball With Cornell in the Sweet 16

This article is from Morning Edition on National Public Radio:

As the NCAA men's basketball tournament resumes tonight with the Sweet Sixteen, the Kentucky Wildcats — a top seed full of players who will be starters in the NBA — will face an opponent with some players who have set their sights instead on MBAs.
Still, basketball buffs say the Cornell Big Red is a really good team, with a legitimate chance of pulling an upset.
Cornell alumni include Drs. Atkins (of the diet), Heimlich (of the maneuver) and C. Everett Koop (of the beard). Among their men and women of letters is professor William Strunk, who wrote The Elements of Style, the quintessential guide to usage and grammar.
Strangely, the guide also provides some insight into the basketball team. As heard in the audiobook version, Strunk advised writers to take it hard to the hoop:

The habitual use of the active voice makes for forceful writing.

Cornell is a team that plays in the active voice. Past Ivy League champions, notably Princeton, slowed the game down and waited for a defensive breakdown as an opportunity to make a move. But Cornell's coach, Steve Donahue, knows that's not the key to his team's style of basketball.
"For us to win this game, we need to be the team making plays," Donahue says. "We've got to be the aggressor."
To succeed at this method, Cornell needs talented athletes, not just role players who don't make mistakes. Take 6-foot-7 shooter Ryan Wittman. Opposing teams used the same word for him that Strunk used for misplaced commas:

Such punctuation is indefensible.

Wittman's game and enthusiasm are hard to contain.
"Our passion buckets are gonna be filled to the brim tomorrow," he said at a recent news conference.
Passion buckets? It's actually an insider's phrase known to listeners of Dan Patrick's syndicated radio show. Confounding the media with statements of veiled origin has become a specialty of this Cornell team. Last week, point guard Louis Dale seemed to provide perspective beyond his years.
"We got eight seniors on this team and we want to take this ride as long as we can, because after this it's nothing but babies and memories, so we want to just keep going," Dale said.
Dale didn't acknowledge at the time that "babies and memories" was borrowed from the book and movie Friday Night Lights.
By the way, Strunk says:

Proverbial expressions and familiar phrases of literary origin require no quotation marks.

Last week, the team was denied an actual basketball by the NCAA before its precisely allotted practice time. So the players conducted a phantom layup line and mimed as best they could. That was goofiness, says senior Jon Jacques. But babies and memories? That part is real.
"It was definitely a funny quote, which is why we selected it, but it's true," Jacques said. "Ten years from now we're gonna be having kids and having reunions and stuff. It's gonna be only memories."
The memories are not simply of getting this far in the tournament, Jacques said. They go back to the beginning of the season, when the entire team — sans freshmen — found a big house to live in off campus. Not surprisingly, the team has exhibited the cohesion of a well-formed paragraph.

The writer must therefore, so far as possible, bring together the words, and groups of words, that are related in thought.

Cornell thinks together, plays together and therefore the story that teammates are writing flows like free verse. It is Kentucky's job to provide an alternative narrative. Many think the Wildcats will just be too fast, athletic and aggressive for the Big Red.
But as Strunk wrote:

It is permissible to make an emphatic word or expression serve the purpose of a sentence.

Upset would be such a word.

The audio version of the story is available on NPR's website.

"Unfriend" is Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year 2009

'Unfriend' Chosen as Oxford Dictionary's 2009 Word of the Year

Ian Paul, PC World

Nov 17, 2009 5:07 am

Proving that social networking is a huge cultural force, the New Oxford American Dictionary has chosen 'unfriend' as its 2009 Word of the Year (WOTY). To unfriend means to remove someone from your friend list on a social network like Facebook or MySpace. The new word is an excellent choice as the 2009 WOTY because of its "currency and potential longevity," according to Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford's US dictionary program.
Many lexicographers nominate their own WOTY every year. Words are usually chosen based on their popularity in everyday usage and cultural importance over the previous twelve months. Oxford's dubious honor puts unfriend in the same ranks as previous WOTY honorees like hypermiling, locavore and the Al Gore-inspired carbon neutral.
Techno challengers

Unfriend was chosen from a total of twenty-four contenders for 2009. Other technology-related words in the running for Word of the Year included:
hashtag: a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets
intexticated: distracted because texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle
netbook: a small, very portable laptop computer with limited memory
paywall: a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers
sexting: the sending of sexually explicit texts and pictures by cellphone
Words were also considered from the lexicons of economics (freemium), politics and current affairs (teabagger), environment (brown state) as well as novelty words like 'deleb' and 'tramp stamp.'
'Un-' Not Just for Adjectives Anymore

Besides being a popular phrase--not to mention close rival to 'defriend'--the 2009 WOTY employs an unconventional use of the 'un-' prefix.   Unfriend is different, because most 'un-' prefix words are typically adjectives, while unfriend takes on a verb form, according to Lindberg. There are examples of other 'un-' verbs, such as unpack and uncap, but unfriend takes it one step further by employing an abnormal "verb sense" of the word 'friend.'
Unfriend, according to Lindberg, has "real lex-appeal." [Insert eye roll here].
If you're an avid unfriender, don't forget that soon you'll be able to drop friends using your PlayStation 3. Sony announced on Monday, that Facebook integration would be coming with firmware version 3.10, the soon-to-be-released update for the PS3.

DVD Review: Classic Peanuts Holiday Videos

Are you looking for a couple of fabulous videos to show to English language learners and to native speakers of English for Halloween and Christmas? There are plenty available, but few withstand the test of time better than the all-time classic Peanuts holiday shows! Use these to introduce your learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to both new vocabulary words, parts of speech, intonation, and American holiday celebrations. Show these videos to classes of mixed English as a Second Language (ESL) and native speakers of English classes in the United States or elsewhere. Show these classic made for TV specials at parties and social gatherings when you want your guests to feel nostalgic. Whether you are a teacher or not, whether you have ESL/EFL students in your class or not, these are two of the most timeless and versatile shows available. Those of us here in the Language Village highly recommends adding them to your collection! The videos are in English and are each about 25 minutes long--a perfect length for using in class. Click the link below for a low Amazon price. 6% of each sale made through this website benefits the Language Village, and helps to keep this site free to the public. Thanks for your support!



Contact the Language Village editors at citizensofplanetearth@gmail.com, attention Language Village Editors if you need free and easy activity ideas to use with these holiday videos!

What's the Difference Between a Biscuit and a Cake?

In the clip below, host Stephen Fry and the panel of comedians on the BBC comedy Q.I. discuss biscuits, cakes, and cookies in American and British English. Enjoy!

New English Term: Greenwash

A new hybrid (also known as a "portmanteau") word has recently appeared on dictionary.com: Greenwash! Keep yourself and your English conversation students up to date with the latest terminology! Follow the link below for more information about the origins of "greenwash."

Earthly Happenings: Are You Tired of "Greenwash"?

Greenwash--A combination of the words "green" and "whitewash". The dissemination of misleading information by an organization to conceal its abuse of the environment in order to present a positive public image. It is a term used to describe the practice of companies deceptively marketing their products and policies as environmentally friendly.

The Dictionary of American Regional English

The Dictionary of American Regional English, Volume I: Introduction and A-C is part of a multi-volume effort to capture regional expressions and colloquialisms. The DARE project, as it is known, was started in the 1950s by Frederic Cassidy, a linguist who sent field workers out across the United States to interview people. Cassidy's catalogers talked to nearly 3,000 people over six years, making recordings along the way in order to capture pronunciations.

The first volume of the DARE was released in 1975, with additional volumes following in time, but the final volume still had not been published by the time of Cassidy's death in 2000. His tombstone reads, "On to Z!"

Now, after five decades of research, "S to Z" of the DARE will be published next year. Joan Hall, the book's chief editor, says the dictionary is unique because it tells us how we speak, rather than how to speak. "It's very helpful because it's really more descriptive than prescriptive," she says.

And now for a few sample expressions from around the country...How many do you know???

NPR.org, June 11, 2009 · The following definitions were adapted from the Dictionary of American Regional English.

elbedritsch (n) An imaginary creature which, as a practical joke, a greenhorn is sent to hunt or capture. (Usage: Southeast Pennsylvania)

flannel cake (n) A pancake. (Usage: Appalachians)

flea in one's ear (n) A hint, warning, disquieting disclosure; a rebuke. (Usage: chiefly the Northeast)

hell-for-leather (adv) At top speed, in great haste. (Usage: scattered, but especially the West Coast)

honeyfuggle (v) To swindle or dupe; to intend to cheat or trick. (Usage: scattered)

hookem-snivey (adj) Deceitful, sneaky. (Usage: scattered)

Lucy Bowles (n) Diarrhea; loose bowels. (Usage: scattered, but especially Pennsylvania, New Jersey and southeast New York)

mulligrubs (n) A condition of despondency or ill temper; a vague or imaginary unwellness. (Usage: scattered, but especially the South)

nebby (adj) Snoopy, inquisitive. (Usage: chiefly Pennsylvania)

pungle (v) To shell out; to plunk down (money); to pay up. (Usage: chiefly West)

rantum scoot (n) An outing with no definite destination (Usage: scattered)

roller bird (n) blue jay (Usage: In the vicinity of Dothan, Ala., bluejays are often called "roller birds" because when chinaberries are ripe, the birds sit in the trees and gorge themselves until they grow drunk. Then they tumble out of the trees and roll on the ground, and the cats creep out and eat them.)

say-so (n) An ice-cream cone. (Usage: scattered)

DARE is published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. The above definitions were adapted from the University of Wisconsin's DARE Web site.