The primary definition of the word knock is "to strike with an audible blow," according to one dictionary. Yet in American slang, the word can mean any number of other things. Consider:
knock - to criticize, as when someone knocks a politician or a new movie
knock around - to loaf or to abuse
knock back - to drink in one gulp
knock someone's block off, knock someone's lights out - to hit very very hard or to beat severely
knock 'em dead - to impress
knocked out - intoxicated
knocked up - pregnant
knockers - breasts
knock for a loop - to unsettle severely
knock it off - stop doing something
knock off - to stop working, to kill, to delete, to arrest, to imitate, to rob, to defeat, to attain, to drink, among other possible meanings
knockout - an attractive person
knock yourself out - to work hard at something
knock someone's socks off or knock them in the aisles - to impress
knock together - to make something quickly
In other words, you can use the word knock to say just about anything. I knocked together this post in about 10 minutes. Don't knock it. It's the best I could do today.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Friday, September 14, 2012
Doctors, physicians and surgeons
We tend to think of the words doctor and physician as synonymous, although that is not quite true. There are subtle differences between those words, as well as the word surgeon.
While reading Joshua Kendall's The Man Who Made Lists, a biography of Peter Mark Roget, the man responsible for Roget's Thesaurus, I learned that the difference between doctors and physicians was even more important in the late 18th century than it is today. Roget received sufficient medical training to become a physician, not just a doctor. "In the late 1700s," Kendall writes, "physicians, who were the only doctors to receive extensive university training, constituted a small elite - just ten percent of all doctors."
Surgeons were in another classification altogether. "While physicians treated internal diseases (say, a fever), surgeons treated exclusively external disorders (say, a broken bone)," Kendall says. "Considered technicians rather than men of science, surgeons were addressed as 'Mister' rather than 'Doctor' -- a custom that continues to this day throughout the United Kingdom." Remember that at one time surgeons and barbers were regarded as one and the same thing, the red in the barber's pole representing blood.
Here's how the American Heritage Dictionary, fourth edition, defines physician, doctor and surgeon:
physician - 1. A person licensed to practice medicine; a medical doctor. 2. A person who practices general medicine as distinct from a surgeon.
doctor - 1. A person, especially a physician, dentist, or veterinarian, trained in the healing arts and licensed to practice. 2. A person who has earned the highest academic degree awarded by a college or university in a specified discipline.
surgeon - 1. A physician specializing in surgery.
Thus, all physicians are doctors and all surgeons are physicians, but not all doctors are physicians and not all physicians are surgeons.
When I worked as a newspaper copy editor, our style allowed only medical doctors to be given a Dr. before their names. The thinking was that because most readers associated that title with physicians, it would be misleading to refer to ministers or college professors as doctors. This always struck me as a little unfair to those men and women who had earned their doctorates in fields other than medicine, as well as underestimating the intelligence of our readers.
While reading Joshua Kendall's The Man Who Made Lists, a biography of Peter Mark Roget, the man responsible for Roget's Thesaurus, I learned that the difference between doctors and physicians was even more important in the late 18th century than it is today. Roget received sufficient medical training to become a physician, not just a doctor. "In the late 1700s," Kendall writes, "physicians, who were the only doctors to receive extensive university training, constituted a small elite - just ten percent of all doctors."
Surgeons were in another classification altogether. "While physicians treated internal diseases (say, a fever), surgeons treated exclusively external disorders (say, a broken bone)," Kendall says. "Considered technicians rather than men of science, surgeons were addressed as 'Mister' rather than 'Doctor' -- a custom that continues to this day throughout the United Kingdom." Remember that at one time surgeons and barbers were regarded as one and the same thing, the red in the barber's pole representing blood.
Here's how the American Heritage Dictionary, fourth edition, defines physician, doctor and surgeon:
physician - 1. A person licensed to practice medicine; a medical doctor. 2. A person who practices general medicine as distinct from a surgeon.
doctor - 1. A person, especially a physician, dentist, or veterinarian, trained in the healing arts and licensed to practice. 2. A person who has earned the highest academic degree awarded by a college or university in a specified discipline.
surgeon - 1. A physician specializing in surgery.
Thus, all physicians are doctors and all surgeons are physicians, but not all doctors are physicians and not all physicians are surgeons.
When I worked as a newspaper copy editor, our style allowed only medical doctors to be given a Dr. before their names. The thinking was that because most readers associated that title with physicians, it would be misleading to refer to ministers or college professors as doctors. This always struck me as a little unfair to those men and women who had earned their doctorates in fields other than medicine, as well as underestimating the intelligence of our readers.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
More book than story
My problem with Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves is that there is more book than there is story. The story itself is intriguing. Robert Oliver, a prominent artist, is caught trying to deface a painting in a museum and psychiatrist Andrew Marlow tries to discover why he would do such a thing. Oliver, however, refuses to say a word. He just paints images of the same unknown woman over and over again.
So Marlow must look elsewhere for answers, first to Oliver's former wife, then his former girlfriend, whom Marlow falls in love with himself. He studies old letters, visits museums and travels as far as Paris to interview people who might be able to shed light on the mystery.
It's a good story. I'm just not sure there is enough there to justify such a long novel.
So Marlow must look elsewhere for answers, first to Oliver's former wife, then his former girlfriend, whom Marlow falls in love with himself. He studies old letters, visits museums and travels as far as Paris to interview people who might be able to shed light on the mystery.
It's a good story. I'm just not sure there is enough there to justify such a long novel.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Three surprises
When in my early teens, I joined the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club, like so many boys my age and older did in the late 1950s. Those science fiction novels and short story collections became the nucleus of my personal library, although by the time I entered college I was reading very little science fiction. That remains true to this day, although I have kept most of those book-club editions. Recently I leafed through one of those books, The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Ninth Series, published in 1959. I discovered three noteworthy things in this anthology, noteworthy at least to me.
1. The book contains two stories by creative writing instructors at Ohio University while I was a student there in the 1960s. The stories are "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes and "Far from Home" by Walter Tevis. Keyes later turned his short story into a novel, the one for which he is best known. The Tevis story is a delightful little thing about how a blue whale wound up in an Arizona swimming pool. Tevis, the only one of the two I had for a class, is best known for The Hustler, but he also wrote the science fiction novel The Man Who Fell to Earth. When I took that class under Tevis, I didn't remember that I had once read one of his stories.
2. There is a poem, An Expostulation, by C.S. Lewis. I had never heard of Lewis at the time I read this book, but I later read many of his books, including the Narnia Chronicles, The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. He also wrote a science fiction trilogy that remains in print more than half a century later. His poem laments the fact that so many sci-fi stories could just as easily be set in the Bronx, Montmartre or Bethnel Green. It is, he writes, the "same old stuff we left behind."
3. The anthology contains several feghoots. A feghoot is a contrived little story that leads to an outrageous pun. Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine regularly ran stories called "Through Space and Time with Ferdinand Feghoot" between 1956 and 1973. They were written by Reginald Bretnor under than name Grendel Briarton. The stories in the book ended with puns like "give 'em an Inge and they take a knell" and "the little fish is his herring aide."
These tiny sc-fi stories, never more than a few paragraphs long, are the reason elaborate puns like these are today often called feghoots. Check out another blog, Feghoots.blogspot.com, for some entertaining feghoots.
1. The book contains two stories by creative writing instructors at Ohio University while I was a student there in the 1960s. The stories are "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes and "Far from Home" by Walter Tevis. Keyes later turned his short story into a novel, the one for which he is best known. The Tevis story is a delightful little thing about how a blue whale wound up in an Arizona swimming pool. Tevis, the only one of the two I had for a class, is best known for The Hustler, but he also wrote the science fiction novel The Man Who Fell to Earth. When I took that class under Tevis, I didn't remember that I had once read one of his stories.
2. There is a poem, An Expostulation, by C.S. Lewis. I had never heard of Lewis at the time I read this book, but I later read many of his books, including the Narnia Chronicles, The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. He also wrote a science fiction trilogy that remains in print more than half a century later. His poem laments the fact that so many sci-fi stories could just as easily be set in the Bronx, Montmartre or Bethnel Green. It is, he writes, the "same old stuff we left behind."
3. The anthology contains several feghoots. A feghoot is a contrived little story that leads to an outrageous pun. Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine regularly ran stories called "Through Space and Time with Ferdinand Feghoot" between 1956 and 1973. They were written by Reginald Bretnor under than name Grendel Briarton. The stories in the book ended with puns like "give 'em an Inge and they take a knell" and "the little fish is his herring aide."
These tiny sc-fi stories, never more than a few paragraphs long, are the reason elaborate puns like these are today often called feghoots. Check out another blog, Feghoots.blogspot.com, for some entertaining feghoots.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
I could have done
If you read many books written by British authors or watch many British films, you will be familiar with sentences like these from Susan Howatch's novel Absolute Truths:
"You could have done, but you didn't."
"I would have done, but I never got that far."
Those lines always jar me a little when I come across them. That's because Americans omit the done in similar sentences. We would say, "you could have, but you didn't" or "I would have, but I never got that far."
So who's right? Do Americans leave out a word that should be there, or do the British insert a word that isn't necessary? I think you could make an argument both ways.
We Americans understand one another perfectly, so obviously the word done is not really necessary in those sentences. It is always implied, however. The British put the word in their sentences rather than just let listeners and readers assume it is there.
Here on the west side of the Atlantic we do use other verbs in similar sentences. We say, "it would have been" or "I could have gone." Sometimes we leave them out, but just as often we include them. Yet only the word done seems strange to us when we hear it or see it in print in these kinds of sentences. Or am I alone in this?
"You could have done, but you didn't."
"I would have done, but I never got that far."
Those lines always jar me a little when I come across them. That's because Americans omit the done in similar sentences. We would say, "you could have, but you didn't" or "I would have, but I never got that far."
So who's right? Do Americans leave out a word that should be there, or do the British insert a word that isn't necessary? I think you could make an argument both ways.
We Americans understand one another perfectly, so obviously the word done is not really necessary in those sentences. It is always implied, however. The British put the word in their sentences rather than just let listeners and readers assume it is there.
Here on the west side of the Atlantic we do use other verbs in similar sentences. We say, "it would have been" or "I could have gone." Sometimes we leave them out, but just as often we include them. Yet only the word done seems strange to us when we hear it or see it in print in these kinds of sentences. Or am I alone in this?
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
An apology card
It's always welcome when a restaurant sends you a coupon for a free meal or a discounted meal for your birthday. Less a big deal is when a business sends you an institutional birthday card. Unless there is a handwritten note or at least an actual signature, why bother? It just seems like advertising in the form of a greeting card.
Around the time of my last birthday in early June, I received such a card from a firm that handles investments for me. It was worth opening, but hardly worth displaying with other birthday cards. It did not survive long before going into the trash.
Then in late August, on the same day my wife received her birthday greeting from the same company, I received a second birthday card. It drew a laugh, nothing more.
A few days ago I received a third card, not from the investment company but from the company that sends out those birthday cards for the investment company. This card, with "Sincerest Apologies" on the front, apologized for sending the birthday card that "was sent entirely too early." So they know they made a mistake, even if they are not clear what the mistake was.
The first card from this company was a trifle. The second one was silly. The third seemed somehow offensive. Perhaps the offense, if there was one, lay in destroying whatever illusion may have existed that the birthday greetings, even the erroneous one, were somehow personal, perhaps even sincere.
In a civilized world, we need our illusions. A "good morning" said to a stranger may be somewhat fraudulent but such things can nevertheless make our days a trifle brighter. If we were to say "good morning," then apologize by saying, "I'm sorry, I thought you were someone else," it would break the spell. It would also be rude in its own right.
Not every error requires an apology.
Around the time of my last birthday in early June, I received such a card from a firm that handles investments for me. It was worth opening, but hardly worth displaying with other birthday cards. It did not survive long before going into the trash.
Then in late August, on the same day my wife received her birthday greeting from the same company, I received a second birthday card. It drew a laugh, nothing more.
A few days ago I received a third card, not from the investment company but from the company that sends out those birthday cards for the investment company. This card, with "Sincerest Apologies" on the front, apologized for sending the birthday card that "was sent entirely too early." So they know they made a mistake, even if they are not clear what the mistake was.
The first card from this company was a trifle. The second one was silly. The third seemed somehow offensive. Perhaps the offense, if there was one, lay in destroying whatever illusion may have existed that the birthday greetings, even the erroneous one, were somehow personal, perhaps even sincere.
In a civilized world, we need our illusions. A "good morning" said to a stranger may be somewhat fraudulent but such things can nevertheless make our days a trifle brighter. If we were to say "good morning," then apologize by saying, "I'm sorry, I thought you were someone else," it would break the spell. It would also be rude in its own right.
Not every error requires an apology.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Shopping for books in Toronto
Whenever I visit Toronto, as I did last weekend, the bookstores are always a major attraction for me. Sure, I enjoy the shows, the restaurants, the museums and just about everything else about the city, but it's the bookstores I think about as I enter the city and as I leave.
Yet shopping for books there is always frustrating. The good news is a huge selection to chose from. Some of the stores are very large, including the one that calls itself the World's Biggest Bookstore. That may not be literally true -- Powell's in Portland seems bigger to me -- but it's close enough. Canada's Indigo stores are comparable to Barnes & Noble in the U.S. They're large, and their selection is magnificent.
These stores sell books from American publishers, as well as a broad selection of books from Canadian and British publishers that may be available in the U.S., but you are less likely to find them in any bookstore.
The frustrating part is, most of these books are terribly expensive. A mass market paperback that sells for $7.99 in the U.S. costs $9.99 in Canada. A book that sells for $12.95 in the U.S. is $16.50 in Canada. Most trade paperbacks now cost more than $20 in Canada.
This markup for Canadian shoppers may have made sense a few years ago when the rate of exchange favored Americans shopping across the border. You might once have gotten about $135 in Canadian currency for every $100 U.S. This is no longer true, and hasn't been true for several years. When I crossed into Canada last Friday, I got fewer Canadian dollars than I had American dollars. Yet Canadian booksellers must still charge more for books than U.S. booksellers do. So mostly I just wrote down the titles of books I craved, hoping to find them later in the United States.
Even so, there are bargains to be found in Canada, primarily when it comes to used and remaindered books. At a discount bookstore right next to the World's Biggest Bookstore, I found a wonderful selection of P.G. Wodehouse books selling for $6.99 or, in some cases, $8.99. The same books were selling next door for more than $20 each. I grabbed up several of them. They look new but do not have that black dot on them to indicate they are remaindered. At the same store I bought a trade paperback edition of Jar City, a mystery by Arnaldur Indridason, for $6.99.
At the World's Biggest, I bought a couple of nonfiction books at discounted prices - The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes for $9.99 (it had originally sold for $45 in Canada) and Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn for $5.99 (originally $32.50). Also I came out with a trade paperback of Railway to the Grave by Edward Marston, one in his Railway Detective series that, except for the first, I have never seen in the U.S. It cost $14.99, which I didn't think was bad for a book I may never see again.
So good book deals can be found in Toronto. It just takes a little work.
Yet shopping for books there is always frustrating. The good news is a huge selection to chose from. Some of the stores are very large, including the one that calls itself the World's Biggest Bookstore. That may not be literally true -- Powell's in Portland seems bigger to me -- but it's close enough. Canada's Indigo stores are comparable to Barnes & Noble in the U.S. They're large, and their selection is magnificent.
These stores sell books from American publishers, as well as a broad selection of books from Canadian and British publishers that may be available in the U.S., but you are less likely to find them in any bookstore.
The frustrating part is, most of these books are terribly expensive. A mass market paperback that sells for $7.99 in the U.S. costs $9.99 in Canada. A book that sells for $12.95 in the U.S. is $16.50 in Canada. Most trade paperbacks now cost more than $20 in Canada.
This markup for Canadian shoppers may have made sense a few years ago when the rate of exchange favored Americans shopping across the border. You might once have gotten about $135 in Canadian currency for every $100 U.S. This is no longer true, and hasn't been true for several years. When I crossed into Canada last Friday, I got fewer Canadian dollars than I had American dollars. Yet Canadian booksellers must still charge more for books than U.S. booksellers do. So mostly I just wrote down the titles of books I craved, hoping to find them later in the United States.
Even so, there are bargains to be found in Canada, primarily when it comes to used and remaindered books. At a discount bookstore right next to the World's Biggest Bookstore, I found a wonderful selection of P.G. Wodehouse books selling for $6.99 or, in some cases, $8.99. The same books were selling next door for more than $20 each. I grabbed up several of them. They look new but do not have that black dot on them to indicate they are remaindered. At the same store I bought a trade paperback edition of Jar City, a mystery by Arnaldur Indridason, for $6.99.
At the World's Biggest, I bought a couple of nonfiction books at discounted prices - The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes for $9.99 (it had originally sold for $45 in Canada) and Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn for $5.99 (originally $32.50). Also I came out with a trade paperback of Railway to the Grave by Edward Marston, one in his Railway Detective series that, except for the first, I have never seen in the U.S. It cost $14.99, which I didn't think was bad for a book I may never see again.
So good book deals can be found in Toronto. It just takes a little work.
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