The Unknown Unknown

I've written another book! Well, I say book, it's an essay for the Independent Booksellers Association on why bookshops are a Good Thing. It will be on sale in June, but only in independent bookshops.

It's largely about Donald Rumsfeld, but it also involves a discussion of theology, First UK Bus employees, and naughty French photographs from the nineteenth century.

Hungry Rhetoric

When Joyce is too simplistic, Tolstoy too brief, Kafka too jolly and Lautreamont too bourgeois, it's time to read The Hunger Games. I've just finished.

The third volume has as its catchphrase the rather catchy line "If we burn, you burn with us", and it occurred to me to wonder why the line is so... memorable, catchy, what you will. And when you inspect it, it's rhetorically rather interesting.

The following will all make more sense to those who have read The Elements of Eloquence, but there we go.

Firstly, there's the antithesis: we burn, you burn. Nice simple trick "East is East and West is West", "Man proposes, God disposes", "You say potato and I say potato". But there's more.

There's the pleasant little repetition of burn. Indeed, it's repeated with one word in between, which is a buried diacope. "Bond, James Bond" "Run, Forest, run", "burn, you burn", "Burn, baby, burn"

DISCO INFERNO!

Sorry, I became rather carried away there.

But finally, there is the chiasmus, the symmetry. You start with:

You

Then you put a burn on either side:

Burn, you burn

Then you put "we" on one side and "with us" on the other:

We burn, you burn with us

And then you add an "If".

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. One for all and all for one. Nice to see you, to see you nice.

So that's three pretty sure-fire rhetorical tricks - antithesis, diacope and chiasmus, hidden in one sentence, combined with remarkable dexterity, and thoroughly memorable.

The Inky Fool made his own cinema version

I Rare To Go

The other day, I was writing a text message in which I said that I was raring to go; and it struck me that rare is one of those odd verbs that you only see as a participle. Nobody ever says "I have rared to go", or "I plan to rare a lot on Thursday". It struck me that maybe you couldn't rare; maybe rare wasn't even a verb at all, as with sidling.

But it turns out that you can rare, and indeed often do. You just spell it slightly differently. Rare is a variant pronunciation of rear. Rear is an Old English word meaning raise (indeed if you go back even further in time rear and raise come from the same root). So you can rear a child, for example, without it being rude, or having anything to do with the rear end (which comes from the French).

Moreover, a horse can rear up on its hind legs. Horses do not do this simply in order to get things down from high shelves, they do it because they are impatient to get somewhere. They are rearing to go, or much more commonly raring to go.

Indeed, the first recorded use of the phrase in the OED has a significant apostrophe. It's from a book called Cabin Fever from 1918

‘Yuh ready?’ Foster's voice hissed in Bud's ear. ‘R'aring to go.

Of course, horses only rear children when they are in a stable relationship.

The first of the Inky Fool's equine kan-kan group was in training

Adults and Adultery

You don't have to commit adultery to be an adult, but you do need to have been an adolescent.

I was rather surprised to find that the words adult and adultery have nothing to do with each other, apart from the prefix ad-, which hardly counts.

Adultery comes from the Latin ad-altarare, where the second half is where we got the English word alter. Originally, it just meant that something had been changed and therefore falsified. From that you got the idea of corruption, to which was added (by the French) the notion of corrupting the marriage bed. Mind you, it's important to remember that the marriage bed can be corrupted by husband and wife having sex simply because they enjoy it. This is a sin. Even Chaucer says so in the Parson's Tale.

The thridde spece of Auowtrie is som tyme bitwixe a man and his wyf..whan they take no reward in hire assemblynge but oonly to hire flesshly delit.

I am confident that none of the readers of this pure blog would ever be so evil as to make sex enjoyable for themselves or others.

Meanwhile, there was another Latin verb alescere, which meant to be nourished. By putting an ad- on the beginning you got adolescere, which meant to grow up, and that meant that somebody in the process of growing up was adolescent. The past participle of the verb was adultus, which just means having grown up.

You can also, according to the OED, commit adultery by being a bishop when you shouldn't be. This means that I now have plans for this afternoon.

The Inky Fool gives in to temptation

P.S. There's a very kind review of The Horologicon here.

Wanstead and Punctuation

Just a link today to this fantastic article on the five best punctuation marks in literature. Just the sort of thing I; love.

Also, I'm giving a talk tonight at the Wanstead WI at 8:15.

Valentines Again

Just a little repost today of this video of me explaining why Geoffrey Chaucer is responsible for your restaurant bill this evening.

And I should mention that I'm terribly grateful to Macmillan who have nominated Inky Fool in their Love English blog awards. You can vote on the subject until midnight tonight.

Less Fewers

Really?

I have been asked to pronounce on the explosive question of 10 Items or Less vs 10 Items or Fewer.

Just in case anyone is unaware of this Great Issue of the Day, there is a rule that appears in every English style guide: less amount and fewer numbers. So if I drink fewer pints, I have drunk less beer. That's because pints are something you can count, whereas beer is just frothy liquid.

Fewer children are less trouble.

I have less hair, because I have fewer hairs.

I have less shopping because I bought fewer items; fewer, in fact, than ten.

That's the rule. But, as with most rules, it's worth checking whether it's correct. After all, all that you need to get a book out on the English language is a willing publisher and a high opinion of yourself. I am living proof.

So, first let's check if you can use fewer for amount.

I like him fewer.

I am fewer happy today than yesterday.

I am fewer tall than you.

These are just plain wrong. And importantly they're not wrong because a style guide says so. They just Sound Wrong to A Native Speaker (SWANS). If a foreign friend were to talk like that you would giggle or gently correct them. This is not some rule known only to an elite few. It's SWANS, and SWANS is the most important rule of all.

So, what happens if you use less for numbers? Can you get the same effect?

I've drunk less pints than you.

There are less than five children here.

The answer must be less than five.

10 items or less.

Now, the thing about these is that though I know that the style guide tells me they're wrong, they aren't wrong in a SWANS way. They don't make you jump out of your skin. You would never be so rude as to correct a foreigner on this. The style guide says it's wrong, but it doesn't feel wrong.

I spent an awful lot of time trying to think of an example that sounded Properly Wrong, and I couldn't. I retreated into the desert and meditated on the subject* and I just couldn't think of anything that really sounded bad.

And then something really strange happened.

That's one fewer mouth to feed.

Sounds wrong. Properly SWANS wrong.

If we go this route, the journey will be twenty minutes fewer.

That's SWANS.

I have a hundred pounds. He has fewer.

That grates.

I started to find loads of examples where fewer sounded wrong when applied to a number, and less sounded right. I became confused and frightened and decided to try a different tack.

After style guides and SWANS, you can use God And Shakespeare (GAS) to decide what's correct. So I looked up fewer in the Shakespeare concordance.

He used the word 3 times. 3 times in 39 plays. That's really odd. That's less than he used also. The word only appears in Henry IV 2 once and Henry V twice. That's it. However, it is always applied to number.

Less, on the other hand, appears 225 times. And... and... I barely know how to tell you this:

Thou, why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou.

Shakespeare happily applies less to number as well as amount. Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

So after a strong drink and a lie-down, I decided to proceed to the King James Bible. There, at least, I would find the eternal certainties on which I need to rely.

The KJV uses less 30 times. And it uses fewer once. Here's the line:

And ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance among your families: and to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance: every man's inheritance shall be in the place where his lot falleth; according to the tribes of your fathers ye shall inherit. Numbers 33v54

That's it. God uses fewer even fewer times than Shakespeare.

So, where are we? Common usage, Shakespeare and God all seem to work the same way and have the same rule hanging around in the background. You can't use fewer for amount. But you can use less for number if you feel like it. And you can get away with not using fewer at all.

I realise that this is a surprising conclusion and that governments may fall, riots break out in the deserts and the earth fall from its orbit into the sun. But I couldn't care fewer. I hereby pronounce ex cathedra linguae anglorum that "10 Items or Less" is Absolutely Fine.

And for those of you interested either in the philosophy of mathematics or the works of Brett Easton Ellis, consider this: Fewer than Zero.






*Seriously. I was in a car that broke down somewhere near Abu Dhabi, and there wasn't much else to do.