Band strand pt. 1

I find band names and their associated pronouns and verb tenses kind of neat.

If a band name is plural, then things are easy -- The White Stripes have (never "has") a devoted legion of fans. But if a band name is singular, I think you should put nearby verbs in their singular tense -- Radiohead was (not "were") in Spain last week. Plenty of publications, including Pitchfork, don't follow this grammatical regulation. "Keeping their winning streak alive, the Hold Steady plug into something special for a fleeting unplugged EP." Makes me a little mad. The Hold Steady is an "it", not a "they." And not a terribly talented "it," I must say.

In a much nerdier way, I'm also fascinated by what to do when a moniker that sounds like a band name is really just one person. Is Iron & Wine a "he" or an "it" -- or a "they"?

What's even weirder (and pretty annoying) is if you have a band name that is also the name of a person in the band. I guess "Danko Jones" is supposed to be the band name as well as the name of the singer/guitarist. And a friend told me that "Patrick Watson" refers to the whole band as well as to the main dude. There no "Patrick Watson and his band" -- it's just one entity, which seems to imply that there is no hierarchy in the group. Therefore, "Patrick Watson is a great band" or even worse, "Patrick Watson are a great band"? Sounds silly.

Okay let's try something else.

Something else, like a word I find interesting for some reason, perhaps a word I have just learned or a word that fascinates me. That's a more sustainable approach. Yes, quite sustainable.

For today, then: "apocrypha." Found in the title to Andrew Bird's new record, Armchair Apocrypha, which promises to be very good.

Apocrypha comes from Greek and refers to "texts of uncertain authenticity or writings where the authorship is questioned," according to Wikipedia. It often describes a writing that is plausible enough to be considered true but is nevertheless fictitious.

More here.

Auto-antonyms

"Auto-antonyms" are words that can mean the opposite of themselves. Like these:

• Dust, which can mean to sprinkle fine particles onto, or to remove fine particles from.
• Fast, which can mean firmly set in place, or moving quickly.
• Screen, which can mean to show (as in a movie), or to hide from view.
• Splice, which can mean to join together, or to separate.

Here's more from Wikipedia. The phenomenon is also called "enantionymy" or "antilogy".

Um, yeah, there's a difference between those two words

Here's something embarrassing:

In a recent article about university rankings, I accidentally used the word "suppository" in place of "repository". The mistake has been corrected in this online version.

As a colleague pointed out, a national repository for university institutional data might be full of crap, anyway.

Interesting things about the internet No. 1 and No. 2

Wordie: A social networking site for people who love words.

ninjawords: A Really (capital R) fast dictionary, like a capital N Ninja.

Collective Words

Several years ago my mom bought me a thesaurus called The New Penguin Thesaurus. It's mostly okay and perhaps not the best resource around. However, not long ago I discovered a section at the back of the book titled Collective Nouns. If I had to be stuck somewhere, you know, isolated, and without access to thesaurus information, I would be sure to smuggle these two pages in the back pocket of my jeans.

I like these: "hover of crows", "blush of boys", "henpeck of husbands", "ruck of stones", "exaltation of larks", and "galaxy of beauty" (okay, that one's lame).

Really, it's got to be somebody's job to think this stuff up.

Wiki has some pretty sweet entries on collective nouns, too.

Interesting thing about words No. 1

When I say to Jen, "I think I'll go to my house tonight," she replies in the affirmative, but with two opposite answers. "Yes, I think I'll go your house tonight, too" or, "Yes, I think I'll go to my house tonight, too."

Synecdoche

A "synecdoche" [si-nek-duh-kee, emphasis on the "nek"] is a special kind of metaphor that uses the whole to describe the part, the part to describe the whole, something specific to describe something general, or something general to describe something specific.

Like this: "crib" for house, "Ottawa" for the government of Canada, or "wheels" for car.

Here's there Wikipedia entry. Not incidentally, Charlie Kaufman's new movie is called Synecdoche, New York.