Errors & Omissions: how to spell BBQ and other linguistic irregularities
Can a man be petite? And other questions raised by this week’s Independent
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Your support makes all the difference.We reported last Saturday on the plans of the Pret sandwich chain to serve hot food in the evenings. The delights on offer include, apparently, “Korean barbeque”.
The spelling “barbeque” is a sad piece of mistaken erudition. Perceiving vaguely that the word is of foreign origin, people feel the need to give it a Frenchified spelling. No need. It comes from the Spanish barbacoa, originally meaning a kind of trellis for smoking meat.
The English spelling has always been “barbecue”, which has the virtue of looking like three syllables. The deplorable “barbeque” looks as if it ought to be pronounced “barbeck”.
• A financial column last Saturday informed the reader that “Our proximity to the local Tesco has been superceded by the closer proximity of Sainsbury’s”.
“Supercede” is a common misspelling, and it is easy to understand, because there are so many English verbs derived from the Latin cedere, to go or yield. Succeed, accede, recede, concede… the list goes on. But “supersede” is not one of them; it comes from sedere, to sit. The meaning is “sit above”, and there is an S in the middle.
• A news report on Wednesday dealt with a meeting of evangelical Christians to promote the idea that gay people can and should be “helped” to turn away from homosexuality.
One of the speakers, the piece reported, was “earnest and petite, with a neatly trimmed dark beard and a bright blue bow tie”.
Can a man be “petite”? On the face of it, no. The word is a French feminine, usually applied to women and girls of small stature and slight frame. Applied to a man it becomes rhetoric, summoning up a picture of a tiny elfin figure.
And that’s the trouble. Does such language – colourful though it is – have a place in news reporting? But then again, if it expresses the impression the man made on the reporter, and if the chap really was on the small side, why not?
• Last Saturday’s profile of Ayaan Hirsi Ali was preceded by a blurb: “Unbowed by death threats, this apostate turned author is once again ruffling feathers with calls for religious reform.”
“Apostate turned author” is not quite right. A poacher turned gamekeeper, for instance was once a poacher, but is now a poacher no longer, having turned into a gamekeeper.
Ms Hirsi Ali is not quite in that position. She has indeed become an author, but she is also still an apostate, or at least what the fanatics who persecute her would call an apostate, that is to say a person who has renounced Islam.
• A news item last Saturday reported that the German army will “buy back 100 Leopard battle tanks from the defence industry which has kept them in storage”.
Oh, so they are battle tanks, not country dancing tanks? Who would have thought it?
“Main battle tank” is a technical term. “Battle tank” is an absurdity.
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