Today in History (March 22nd):
1599: Birthdays: Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck.
1791: The U.S. Congress enacted legislation forbidding slave trading with foreign nations.
1887: Birthdays: Actor Leonard Chico Marx of the Marx Brothers comedy team.
1894: The first Stanley Cup playoffs began.
1908: Birthdays: Author Louis L’Amour.
1912: Birthdays: Actor Karl Malden.
1920: Birthdays: Actor Werner Klemperer Actor Ross Martin.
1923: Birthdays: French mime Marcel Marceau.
1924: Birthdays: Newspaper executive Allen Neuharth.
1930: Birthdays: Composer Stephen Sondheim; Televangelist Pat Robertson.
1931: Birthdays: Actor William Shatner.
1934: Birthdays: U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
1935: Birthdays: Actor M. Emmet Walsh.
1941: The Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River began producing electric power for the Pacific Northwest.
1943: Birthdays: Singer George Benson.
1945: Representatives from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen met in Cairo to establish the Arab League.
1948: Birthdays: British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber; Television journalist Wolf Blitzer.
1952: Birthdays: Sportscaster Bob Costas.
1955: Birthdays: Actor Lena Olin.
1959: Birthdays: Actor Matthew Modine.
1968: U.S. President Lyndon Johnson recalled U.S. Army Gen. William Westmoreland as commander of U.S. troops in Vietnam and made him Army chief of staff. Gen. Creighton Abrams took over in Saigon.
1972: Birthdays: Canadian skater Elvis Stojko.
1974: The U.S. Senate passed and sent to the states for ratification the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a measure popularly known as the Equal Rights Amendment. However, the required number of states failed to ratify it before the deadline.
1976: Birthdays: Actor Reese Witherspoon.
1987: Chad troops drove Libyan forces from a key airstrip in northern Chad, apparently ending Moammar Gadhafi’s seven-year occupation. The Libyans abandoned $500 million worth of Soviet-made tanks and airplanes.
1992: 27 people were killed when a USAir plane bound for Cleveland skidded off a runway at New York’s LaGuardia Airport during a snowstorm and landed in the bay.
1997: Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to Earth — about 122 million miles.
2000: Pope John Paul II visited a Palestinian refugee camp and declared the conditions there to be degrading.
2003: As the war in Iraq gained momentum, a U.S. Army maintenance convoy made a wrong turn and was ambushed. Eleven soldiers were killed and seven, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch, were captured.
2004: The founder and spiritual leader of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, was killed in an Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip.
2005: North Korea’s government-controlled news agency claimed the country beefed up its nuclear weapons arsenal to counter U.S. security threats.
2006: General Motors, in a reported deal with the United Auto Workers Union, said it would offer buyout and early retirement packages to each of its 113,000 unionized employees. Basque separatists who live mostly in Spain declared a cease-fire and ending their long violent struggle for independence.
2007: Violence erupted in Somalia between government forces and militia fighters one day after at least 22 people were killed. Hundreds of Mogadishu residents fled their homes.
2008: Yousaf Raza Gillani, former speaker of Parliament, was chosen prime minister of Pakistan. And, opposition candidate Ma Ying-jeou won the Taiwanese presidential election. The Bush administration bullied and threatened foreign leaders to build a show of support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Chilean diplomat Heraldo Munoz said in a new book.
2010: The largest U.S. community organizing group, known as ACORN, announced it was disbanding because of declining revenues.
2011: A senior U.S. official confirmed Russia and the United States have begun exchanging nuclear stockpile information under the new arms reduction treaty.
2012: U.S. President Barack Obama had ordered approval of the southern part of the Keystone pipeline from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast. The pipeline is designed to transport synthetic crude oil and diluted asphalt to the Gulf of Mexico and other U.S. destinations from Alberta, Canada. A group of military officers seized control of the Mali government and ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure who had planned to step down after the April elections.
Quotes
“The military don’t start wars. Politicians start wars.” – William Westmoreland, U.S. Army Gen.
“Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.” – John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)
“Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)
“To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator.” – Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – J. Krishnamurti, author, speaker, and philosopher (1895-1986)
Marcel Marceau (1923- ) French mime:
“Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?”
“I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man’s destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth. I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish.”
“In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people.”
“It’s good to shut up sometimes.”
“Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.”
“Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it’s music, not words, that provides power.”
“Never get a mime talking. He won’t stop.”
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“To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.”
“What sculptors do is represent the essence of gesture. What is important in mime is attitude.”
effulgent
PRONUNCIATION: (i-FUHL-juhnt, i-fool-)
http://wordsmith.org/words/effulgent.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Shining brilliantly; radiant.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin effulgere (to shine out), from ex- (out) + fulgere (to shine). Ultimately from the Indo-European root bhel- (to shine or burn), which is also the source of blaze, blank, blond, bleach, blanket, and flame. Earliest documented use: 1737.
USAGE: “No other ballet so remorselessly exposes the gulf between effulgent grandeur and mere competence.” – Allen Robertson; The Sleeping Beauty; The Times (London, UK); Jul 27, 2007.
Explore “effulgent” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=effulgent
pug
PRONUNCIATION: (puhg)
http://wordsmith.org/words/pug.mp3
MEANING:
(verb tr.)
1. To knead clay with water.
2. To fill with clay or mortar.
3. To make soundproof by packing with clay, sawdust, or mortar.
4. To track by following footprints.
(noun)
5. A footprint, especially of a wild animal; a pugmark.
6. A boxer.
7. A dog of a breed having a snub nose, short hair, wrinkled face, and curled tail.
ETYMOLOGY:
For 1-3: Origin unknown. Earliest documented use: early 1800s.
For 4-5: From Hindi pag (foot, step), from Sanskrit pad (foot). Earliest documented use: 1851.
For 6: Short for pugilist (boxer), from pugnus (fist). Earliest documented use: 1858.
For 7: Of unknown origin. Earliest documented use: 1702.
USAGE:
“For wheel-throwing, once the clay is pugged and wedged, it can be centred on the wheel.” – Edwin Wong; Going Potty Over Handmade Dinnerware; New Straits Times (KualaLumpur, Malaysia); Sep 25, 2010.
“There is the oddly delicate track of a leopard and the just-plain-scary pugs of a male lion.” – Mike Leggett; Tales of Life in the Wild; Austin American-Statesman (Texas); Aug 12, 2010.
“Sporting comebacks used to be associated with desperate pugs risking their final brain cells for a cheque desperately needed to pay off a bookie or a bar tab.” – Richard Hinds; Thorpe Brave to Meddle With Golden Legacy; The Age (Melbourne, Australia); Feb 5, 2011.
Explore “pug” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=pug
moment of truth
PRONUNCIATION: (MOH-muhnt of trooth)
http://wordsmith.org/words/moment_of_truth.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A crucial point; a turning point; a decisive moment.
ETYMOLOGY: Loan translation of Spanish el momento de la verdad. In bullfighting, the moment when a matador is about to kill the bull is called el momento de la verdad.
USAGE: “The moment of truth has arrived for the euro. The 16-nation monetary union faces its greatest test Wednesday in Athens, as the Greek government orders last-ditch radical cuts in hopes of preventing the eurozone’s first debt default and a wider financial and monetary disaster.” – Doug Saunders; Greece Set to Impose Austerity Measures; The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada); Mar 2, 2010.
Explore “moment of truth” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=moment+of+truth
diptych
PRONUNCIATION: (DIP-tik)
http://wordsmith.org/words/diptych.mp3
MEANING: (noun), A work of art on two hinged panels, such as a painting or carving.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin diptycha, from Greek diptycha, from di- (two) + ptyche (fold).
NOTES: Then there is triptych, the word for a set of three hinged panels. The words triptych and diptych are sometimes extended to refer to movies, books, etc., for what usually would be called a trilogy or dilogy/duology.
USAGE: “It’s an installation in which participants interact with a diptych of two real-time images of themselves.” – Tom Shields; Electronic Madness; Sunday Herald (Glasgow, Scotland); Jun 28, 2008.
Why I’m Reluctant to Use ‘Reticent’
During a recent interview on the “PBS News Hour,” Middle East expert Andrew Tabler observed that President Barack Obama was very “reticent” to arm Syrian rebels. He meant, of course, not that Obama was reserved and unwilling to speak (the traditional meaning of “reticent”) but that he was reluctant to arm the rebels.
For me, hearing “reticent” used to mean “reluctant” is like watching someone use a dictionary as a doorstop. You can do it, I suppose, but it’s not exactly what the thing was designed for.
“Reticent,” an adjective that has been cowering in the corner of English for 200 years now, derives from the Latin root “tacere,” meaning “to be silent,” as in “tacit.” But recently that most gentle of military officers, General Parlance, has been coaxing little “reticent” out if its corner and persuading it to mean “reluctant.”
The now common use “reticent” to mean “reluctant” can produce some humorous results, as in this passage from a wildlife magazine: ” … bluefish are rather reticent to strike surface poppers.” (Well, it’s true they don’t say much.)
The confusion is understandable. After all, the two words look and sound alike, and they overlap in meaning; people who are reluctant are often also reticent. Ask a group of fishermen, for instance, “Who wants to clean the bluefish?” and they’re likely to be both reticent and reluctant.
In 2001, 83 percent of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary condemned the use of “reticent” in this sentence: “A lot of out-of-towners are reticent to come to the Twin Cities for a ballgame if there’s a chance the game will be rained out.” (In Minnesota, there’s probably a greater danger the game will be snowed out.)
But the Usage Panel was more accepting of “reticent” when used in constructions such as “reticent to talk.” Sixty-one percent of panel members approved this sentence: “Whenever I fail to arrange the chairs in a circle, the students have been more reticent to speak out.”
During the past decade, the use of “reticent” to mean “reluctant” has become so common that it’s no longer considered an error. As Bryan Garner points out in Modern American Usage, “The difference between taciturnity and reluctance is extremely subtle.”
Even so, when it comes to accepting the use of “reticent” to mean “reluctant,” I’m afraid I’m a party popper (and pooper). I just hope those bluefish don’t strike me.
Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254
Copyright 2013 Creators Syndicate Inc.