The cauliapple

I would like to announce the arrival of a new kind of fregetable, which will debut on page 38 of our hallowed magazine tomorrow.

To the uninitiated, the picture may appear to be of some rotten apples, while the caption says "unlabelled cauliflowers were found at the premises".

"They've made a giant balls-up!" you may cry.

But no, dear reader, we are simply - and without drama - bringing you a new species. The unlabelled cauliapple.

Note: the cauliapple cock-up was brought to you by a triangular breakdown in communication between subs, art and hacks.
Group hug!

The keyboard strikes back

Note to self: if the 'O' on your keyboard is a little bit dodgy (possibly due to a Hula Hoop fragment getting lodged under there during a fit of press day comfort eating), adjectives such as 'countless' are loaded with danger.

A heavy haspiration

The first work email I get this morning is from the Chief. It is short and to the point:

"a: it's a hotel, a historic, not an hotel, an historic."

I beg to differ, Brighton Argus style guide (now online)

Aside from the worries I have about the mental health of a man who spends his spare time reading style guides for local newspapers of cities he doesn't live in (and he's not even a sub!), I thought this was an interesting gripe.

Before I continue, let's just point out that aspiration (a kind of short pant!) is important in this debate. To aspirate, says the OED, is to produce a sound with an exhalation of breath. So, if we're talking h-wise, hotel, happy and Hove are aspirated, but heir and honour are not. Hot!

Fowler's says, rather charmingly:

Opinion is divided over the form to use before h-words in which the first syllable is unstressed: the thoroughly modern thing to do is to use a (never an) together with an aspirated h (a habitual, a heroic, a historical, a Homeric, a hypothesis), but not to demur if others use an with minimal or nil aspiration given to the following h (an historic, an horrific, etc).

No demurring, you old-fashioned types!

The Times Style Guide, however, supports the Chief.

use an before unaspirated h - an heir, an honest woman, an honour; also, prefer an hotel to a hotel, an historic to a historic, an heroic rather than a heroic

Kit and I err on the side of the modern on this one. We are sticking to a historical event, a habitual tic, etc. But I'll admit to the occasional wistful sigh.

A little trivia on the subject, courtesy of Fowler's:

Three special cases:
an hotel (with no aspiration on the second word) is now old-fashioned, but by no means extinct.

In humble, the h was originally mute and the pronunciation prevailed until the 19c, but is now obsolete: it should therefore be preceded by a, not an.

In American English, herb, being pronounced with silent h, is always preceded by an, but the same word in British English, being pronounced with an aspirated h, by a.

Bet this post has got y'all aspirating heavily...

Made-up words

On occasion, I discover that a word I had always thought existed is in fact a figment of my imagination. Does anyone else have these?

To misle - until quite recently, I believed there was such a word, because of all the times I had read "he misled her", etc. And I gave it a slightly sneakier meaning than 'mislead' - more along the lines of 'hoodwink' (which is an excellent word!).

And a couple of other similar things I'll own up to:

Misunderestimate - a mating of misunderstand and underestimate. I've never actually written this one, but when I'm speaking of misunderstandings and underestimations, it's always lurking there waiting to spring out.

Survery - my fingers won't let me type 'survey' without inserting an 'r'. Perhaps a hangover from that long-ago dissertation on slavery? Or perhaps I have a subconscious obsession with serveries.

Anyone else care to confess?

Romance: decimated?

On Saturday night, I presented a handsome man with a Champagne truffle. Just one, you ask? Yes, just one. But it was a large one. So large, in fact, that anyone trying to bite into it would have looked (rather unromantically) a bit like a suckling pig. Being a gentleman, the recipient opted instead for a knife and a plate, intending to elegantly slice the truffle into small pieces that could be shared. However, upon the first application of the knife, the truffle shattered/crumbled/burst into a heap of (very tasty, thank you Montezuma's) crumbs.

"you've decimated it!" I cried.

"Decimated it?" asked he, with a look of undisguised I've-got-her-now glee. "What do you think decimated means?"

It was then that I realised the truffle gift was nothing compared with what I had just done. This was the real gift!

I had thought that 'to decimate' meant to destroy, particularly when something is reduced to small pieces. However, knowing that he knew something I didn't, I had a go. Decimate - decimal... I ventured that perhaps it meant to divide by 10.

Nearly. According to my truffling companion, the word comes from a Roman military practice. If a legion was lacking in discipline, the rulers would kill one in every 10 of the soldiers. This restored order, apparently.

But that's not the end of the story. Reunited with my OED this morning, I discovered it wasn't quite so simple.

Decimate:

1. kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of. Drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of.
2. (historical) kill one in every 10 of (a group of people) as a punishment for the whole group.
   

Usage:

Historically, the meaning of the word decimate is 'kill one in every ten of (a group of people)'. This sense has been more or less totally superseded by the later, more general sense 'kill or destroy (a large proportion of)', as in the virus has decimated the population. Some traditionalists argue that this and other later senses are incorrect, but it is clear that this is now part of standard English.

So I was wrong-ish, but not far off. I had meant to convey that he had shattered the truffle, rather than killed or totally destroyed it. And he was right, but labelled a 'traditionalist'.

Ah, sweet romance.