College Presidents and words

Well, someone today told me that I was "word" person. I've not really considered myself a word person, but I am a talker. But thinking on it, I guess I do pay attention to words. I mean, I use a real dictionary every once in a while to see if a word means what I think it means. And, then I look at the words around the searched word. It's interesting to me.

But, in terms of using some tricky words correctly, I'll never get "lay" and "lie" sorted out, and I don't think I'll ever be much a swimmer (except at the beach) because I dread using the past tense or the participial form. Swam? Swum?

There are few words that I do use correctly thanks to the wonderful book, "A Civil Tongue" by Edwin Newman, a newscaster in the 1960's and 1970's. He wrote "A Civil Tongue" in 1975, and some of his priceless observations about proper word usage have stuck with me ever since. For instance, I do know how to use "comprise" properly. The greater comprises the smaller. The greater is also "composed of " (not comprised of) the smallers.

There is a big difference between "less" and "fewer". "Less" implies a static quality or condition that is diminuative to a greater quality, condition or quantity. I have less interest in blogging than most people. The prices for Antonio Melani shoes at Neiman Marcus are less than the prices at Lord and Taylor. To use "less" to indicate items can be really problematic. For instance, if I say that my parents have less children the LaRoccos, that means that we kids are of "lesser quality". What I should say is that "my parents have "fewer" children than the LaRoccos. When you go to grocery store, the express line should say. "Express line for customers with "fewer" than 15 items." If you say something about KDL, and you say that Centre College has "less items" in the KDL that would be wrong, but it you said that Centre College has "less content" ( content being a singular/plural neutral word), that would be correct.

Another important distinction to learn is the difference between "nauseous" (pardon me while I check the dictionary for spelling) and "nauseated". The word "nauseous" means "causing nausea." The word "nauseated" means you are experiencing nausea. If you are not well and are experiencing nausea, then you are "nauseated." To say that you are "nauseous" means that you are causing nausea in someone else. In other words, when little suzi says she's nauseous, she's making me sick.

Well, I could go on, but to get to the title: "college presidents". Newman also observed most really successful college presidents have "interchangeable" names. He listed a slew of them from the 1970's in his book. It's true. That's why Lee Todd is great. His name is Lee Todd, but it also makes sense interchangeably as Todd Lee. Edgar Shannon at UVa when I was there was an awesome scholar and college president. Edgar Shannon or Shannon Edgar.

Now consider PDP: who's the future college president? Molinaro Mary? Plarr Margie? Hall Benjamin (pretty close)? Sullivan Cliff (very likely---think Montgomery Cliff), Terry Kopana (definitely since many people interchange Ko's name.

So that's the story about words for now. Maybe I'll add a chapter later.