Streamline

If you potter about the business world for even five minutes you're liable to come across the word streamline, often as a verb. This may seem curious, given that streams tend to meander in curvy and inefficient fashion, simply taking the route of least resistance, and heading permanently downhill - all things that businesses try to avoid.

Properly speaking, though, the streamline is a very precise scientific idea. It is a situation where the direction of any given particle moving past a surface is equal to the tangent of the curve of the surface at that point.

A tangent is, of course, a straight line that touches (tangibly) a curve (as in the picture at the top right). So if an object is of just the right shape and put in a stream in just the right place it will have a minimal deflection of the flow.

The word streamline was invented in 1868 and spent the next 65 years as a proper scientific term, appearing only in stern academic papers on inviscid fluid, until it was taken out one night by the poet Stephen Spender, who got the word drunk, took her honour from her, and included her in a bit of a poem about sunset. Now, shamed and denuded of her original sense, she is, I'm afraid, in business.

The Inky Fool has a new car

Fun, funner, funnest

A few days ago I noticed an ad for "the funnest iPod ever". Despite having gone through a phase of using “funner” and “funnest” when I was young and foolish, I still felt a little pedantic and prickly about Apple using its marketing might to popularise what some still view as a “ghastly”, “grating and horrifying” word. I wonder whether the use of the non-standard superlative was deliberate - possibly to make a banal slogan less banal and more fun - or whether it is entirely unselfconscious: a quotation from Steve Jobs, perhaps, or a reflection of the way people speak in techworld.

A more important question is why "fun" and "funner" should be considered wrong, while almost all other short adjectives ending in a consonant take -er and -est in the comparative and superlative (here is a link to a simple table showing the rules for comparatives and superlatives). WorldWideWords and Grammar Girl (in a response to Steve Jobs' use of the word at a press conference) explain that this is because "fun" was not, historically speaking, an adjective at all, but a noun.

It started being used as an attributive noun (a noun which modifies other nouns) in the nineteenth century, with phrases such as “fun-room”, “funfair” and “fun-fest” creeping into use. It is only recently that it has made the transition to being an adjective, and even now not all dictionaries accept it as one – my online OED only lists it as a noun and a verb (meaning to “make fun or sport”).

As a result, fun is still treated like a noun when forming comparatives and superlatives - so it is "more fun" and the "most fun", like "more sugar" or the "most sugar". Grammar Girl explains it thus:

“Even people who accept that "fun" is an adjective are unlikely to embrace "funner" and "funnest." It seems as if language mavens haven't truly gotten over their irritation that “fun” has become an adjective, and they've decided to dig in their heels against “funner” and “funnest.” In their minds, if “fun” as an adjective is still informal, then the inflected forms are still “nonstandard,” or to use less fussy words—“funnest” is grating and horrifying. And the language mavens still have enough influence to hold the line for now”.

Incidentally, I have noticed that some non-native speakers of English use "funny" as an adjective meaning “fun”, which is entirely logical, in that it does derive from the noun “fun” (and has been around much longer than “fun” as an adjective). However, it always seems to have had the specific sense of “comical”.

On another slightly tangential note, I have noticed that another set of adjectives which don’t seem to follow the normal rules are adjectives of nationality. Words like “French”, “Dutch”, “Greek” and “Swiss” should in theory act like other one-syllable words ending in consonants, but I have never heard anyone use “Frencher” to mean “more French” (as in, “it’s more French to cook that way”, or “this bistro feels more French than the other one”). Does anyone know why this is?

No fun for pedants

Lies! Lies! Lies!

I once bought a Gillette Mach 3 Turbo razor. I made this purchase on the understanding that it would move at three times the speed of sound (it was after all invoking the name of Ernst Mach) and further that the razor would use the power of its own engine to funnel back compressed air into its combustion chamber. That's what turbo means. I didn't know why a razor would have an internal combustion engine, but it was precisely this curiousity that led me to make the purchase.

A day later, I stormed back into the chemist and started haranguing, accusing, cajoling and condemning the young deceiver behind the counter who had the cheek to feign innocence.

I once (truly) engaged in an e-mail correspondence with a fellow from Dell Computers asking him if I qualified for the free executive carry-case when I wasn't an executive. He seemed confused, but I did actually manage to get his assurance in writing that executives have the same hand-shape as other humans.

Someday, when I have more money than thirst, I'm going to go on a rampage of barratry suing any seller of tandoori that is not made in a clay oven. Moreover, I'm going to put a huge series of posters on the Tube showing the actual Jack Daniels Distillery. I do not believe that that company has managed to get a bottle of sugary raccoon urine into every bar in the world on the basis of two slow-moving rustics called Jeb and a horse-drawn cart.

Is that so, Santa?

Opening the Kimono

This suggestive little phrase originally meant opening the books, or providing additional information about a company, to an outsider - typically a potential investor, employee, merger partner, acquirer. But it is also used as a metaphor for "organisational openness and transparency".

According to the Microsoft Lexicon it is:

"A marvelous phrase of non-Microsoft origin, probably stemming from the rash of Japanese acquisitions of American enterprises in the ‘80s, that has been adopted into the Microspeak marketing lexicon. Basically a somewhat sexist synonym for "open the books," it means to reveal the inner workings of a project or company to a prospective new partner".

Those who like to "open the kimono" praise it for its vividness, but - quite apart from the "somewhat sexist" connotations - it feels almost too vivid for use in business meetings. To me, at least, the image of kimono-swathed businessmen opening their robes and letting it all hang out - or alternatively, trying to get a peek under somebody else's kimono - is too distracting, too comical and too suggestive of striptease for such a serious setting. But after reading reports this week of a financier who attended overseas meeting accompanied by an escort in "revealing hot pants and high heeled shoes", I think I may have been underestimating the tolerance for burlesque in business.