Mea Culpa: Rifling about

Susanna Richards hunts down the past week’s errors and omissions in The Independent

Saturday 27 May 2023 09:30 BST
Comments
An editor encounters an unexpected etymology
An editor encounters an unexpected etymology (Getty)

Police tase 95-year-old with dementia holding steak knife” was the headline of one of our news in briefs last week, leading Roger Thetford to write to us to query the use of “tase” as a verb. When I looked it up, I was greeted with a marvellous account of the origin of the word “Taser”. It appears that it is an acronym loosely derived from the title of a book published in 1911: Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle (or Daring Adventures in Elephant Land). Further, it seems that “tase” is indeed acceptable, and is simply a back-formation from the name itself. A stunning revelation, to steal Roger’s joke.

On a similar tack, Mick O’Hare pointed out a misspelling in our report of a boxing match, in which we wrote that one contestant was “most definitely not phased by the crowd”. Shouldn’t that be “fazed”, asked Mick, and he is correct. The two words have completely different roots: “phase” comes from the Greek word for appearance (relating to how the moon appears at different times), while faze is from the 15th-century Kentish word feeze, meaning “to frighten, alarm, discomfit”.

Interestingly, the name of the “phasers” used in Star Trek is also an acronym, of “phased energy rectification”. I’m always impressed at the amount of thought that goes into the creation of these worlds.

Before Durin and after: Talking of which, time for some Middle-earth. I am not the first curator of this column to have written about dwarves, although my predecessor-but-one was concerned with the spelling of the noun rather than its verb form (as was JRR Tolkien when he wrote about his use of the word, saying that he had chosen to spell it with a “v” in order to afford these characters a degree of gentility).

My research was prompted by another query from Mr Thetford, in relation to an article about football in which we wrote that “there may be a time in the future when Newcastle can fairly be accused of buying success, when their expenditure dwarves everyone else’s”. According to every source I have consulted, the correct spelling of the verb is “dwarf”, so that is probably what we should have used. But it provided, at least, for an interesting excursion into various appendices to The Lord of the Rings.

Order, order: One of the pillars of editing anything is the act of being deliberately obtuse. This might sound like a terrible idea, at least in terms of getting on with one’s colleagues, but it is not done to annoy, and it is largely a private process that takes place within the peculiar brain of an editor. It just happens that, for the purpose of ensuring absolute clarity, it can be extremely useful to read a piece of writing with a mind so open that things might, on occasion, fall out.*

“Joe Biden has insisted Russian president Vladimir Putin ‘will not break our resolve’ as he vowed America would show ‘unwavering’ commitment to Ukraine in a speech at the G7 summit,” we wrote in a report of events in Hiroshima last week. The way we arranged the information made it look as though the US president had only promised to sound like a steadfast ally for the duration of his speech, which was clearly not the case, given his approval the previous day of the provision of fighter planes to Kyiv.

We should have written: “... as he vowed in a speech at the G7 summit that America would show ‘unwavering’ commitment to Ukraine.”

Seeing double: In another report from the summit, at which the British press seemed more interested in the speeding-ticket shenanigans back home than the important issues at hand, we wrote: “The PM appeared visibly frustrated at repeated questioning by journalists on the issue, asking reporters: ‘Did you have any questions about the summit?’”.

At a glance, there’s nothing amiss in that sentence, but thinking about it I realised that we had tautologised. (Before anyone writes in about that, yes it is a verb, and I don’t want to hear any counterarguments against it.) We could reasonably have said that the prime minister was visibly frustrated, or that he appeared to be frustrated, but to use both seems overcautious, as though we are unwilling to presume his state of mind – which is sometimes a prudent position to take, but in that case we would be better not to mention it at all. Anyway, we took out the “visibly”, and all became clear.

Mother country: “Quite apart from the possible danger to life and limb, the loss of precious artworks, heritage, architecture, original vellum acts of parliament and plenty of history, the sight of the ‘mother of parliaments’ reduced to a smouldering ruin would be a sorry symbol of the low ebb to which Britain has sunk,” we wrote in our Politics Explained column last week. I was surprised to see this misuse of a phrase that was coined by renowned orator John Bright, in 1865, when he said that England (rather than parliament itself) is the mother of parliaments.

I thought we had made another mistake in the same article, when we said: “Furthermore, they baulk at having to tell their constituents that it might cost them £14bn to sort the structure out.” I’ve previously been of the view that the verb should be spelt “balk”, and the other spelling reserved for discussion of billiards (in which it is a section of the table). In fact, it turns out that baulk and balk have exactly the same origin, relating to the ridges of earth in or between ploughed fields.

What’s more, the version with the “u”, as well as being prettier, is more common in British English. So I think that’s perfectly fine. Anyway, nobody writes articles about billiards.

*(Don’t worry: we pick them up, dust them, and put them back in again. Can’t you tell?)

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in