This is an old story, but still one of my favorites. A couple of years back, my friend Shannon enlightened me about the Vigilante Copy Editor surreptitiously roaming Pratt Institute, an art school in Brooklyn, N.Y.
I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what I'd like my epitaph to read, but I would be pretty happy with "Vigilante Copy Editor." (Even though I am not the perpetrator at Pratt.)
The New York Times story by Jay Dockendorf was about the sculpture garden at Pratt. Each sculpture has an informational plaque. Apparently, these plaques have a number of grammatical errors. Some scamp started making corrections on the plaques, with a marker. Commas were inserted where they were missing; apostrophes were added. Words were crossed out and fixed.
It turns out that the original words for the plaques had been written by an assistant to the garden's curator. This assistant was French and was "not completely connected to the English language," the curator said. Good choice of author, Pratt people!
The correcting culprit has not been found.
A vigilante, of course, is a person who takes it upon himself to right wrongs without any formal authority. Normally, the targets are legal or moral matters. At Pratt, anyway, linguistic indiscretions were getting the scrutiny.
Merriam-Webster says "vigilante" comes from Spanish and means "watchman." Within the word is "vigilant," which has Middle English and Latin roots and means "watchful" and "awake."
Stay alert out there.
SMOOTH TALKER
The "I need a dictionary" word of the week is "diasyrm," pronounced, "DAI-uh-surm."
Diasyrm is the practice of describing something with faint praise. It's a form of rhetoric, or a persuasive use of language. You use it when you don't want to say something bad, but you also can't lie and say something good. The answers to the following questions are examples:
How was the movie?
Not as bad as I expected.
Did you like the book?
It was different.
How was tonight's casserole?
It was very colorful.
What do you think of my car?
I'm sure you don't have to worry about it being stolen.
How did I do with the paint job?
It's not the worst I've ever seen.
NEAR-PLANETARY PROPORTIONS
I always enjoy a good mis-
pronunciation. I hear from many people about words and phrases pronounced incorrectly. My favorite one recently came from my friend Margaret.
She said she has heard people say they are interested in a "plutonic relationship."
Now, I suppose these people may want to form bonds with Pluto, the heavenly body that was demoted to a dwarf planet in 2006. But, more likely, they want a "platonic relationship," a nonromantic one.
Sources: LinguaLinks Library, The New York Times, m-w.com, Grammar Girl, phrontistery.info
Reach Bernadette at
bkwordmonger@gmail.com
ActiveStyle on 08/28/2017