Mea Culpa: Smite those words that sound alike

Parameter, perimeter; formerly, formally; queue and cue: confusions and literary heroics in this week’s Independent

Kedar Jadhav, doing some smiting (Getty)

We had a sub-headline this week on a comment article about leaving the European Union: “It is simply impossible for the UK to leave the customs union without a hard border being installed in Ireland, either around the parameters of the island of Ireland or between Northern Ireland and the Republic.”

In maths and computing, a parameter is a value that determines an operation. In statistics it is a fixed but unknown quantity that is being estimated. In journalism it has come to mean perimeter, because that is what it sounds like. Language changes, and such changes are evidence of the vitality of English, but this is an unnecessary attempt to sound learned.

English, being vital, has lots of words for perimeter already, such as boundary, border, edge or, in this case, coast. There is no need to use a pseudo-technical term that serves only to complicate and obscure. Fortunately, it can simply be deleted. “Around the island of Ireland” is much clearer.

Homophone corner: Parameter and perimeter are similar, but English is also sprinkled with words that sound exactly the same but which are spelt differently. We said Donald Trump had “formerly requested Pentagon advice” on changing the military campaign against Isis. That should have been “formally”, meaning that his request was a formal exercise of his presidential authority.

We also wrote that Hillary Clinton and most Republican leaders were unlike Mr Trump in “taking their queue from their donors”. Robert Curtis spotted this common confusion. We meant “cue”, as in an actor’s cue or prompt.

At least our language is not like French, in which most words sound the same and are piled up with consonants at the end that nobody pronounces.

Mixed metaphor of the week: The award goes to a headline in which we said that the fight against pancreatic cancer had taken a “monumental leap forward”. We were quoting the head of research at a cancer campaign, but we need not have put it in the headline. What is a monumental leap? It conjures up an image of a jumping war memorial.

A heroic firm blow: Finally, just to prove that this column is not all negative, allow me to reply to a question from a reader about a report of the last England-India cricket match on Monday. We wrote: “Needing 16 to win from the final over, bowled not by Ben Stokes but Chris Woakes, England were hapless as the first two deliveries were smote by Kedar Jadhav over extra cover, for six and then four.”

The reader asked: “Is ‘were smote’ the correct past passive tense of ‘smite’? In any case, ‘smite’ is rather an archaic word isn’t it?” To which my answers are yes, most definitely and isn’t it marvellous?

As a junior acolyte of the Campaign for the Preservation of Irregular Verbs, founded by Guy Keleny, my predecessor in this column, I note that smote is given by the Oxford Dictionary as the past of smite (smitten is the past participle: it could have been used here but it would not have been as good).

The Oxford describes smite as “literary”: “Strike with a firm blow.” Only in the sense “defeat or conquer” does it call it “archaic”. As long as everyone knows what a word means, “literary” is I think a high compliment.

What, then, of the implied complaint that “were smote” is a passive construction? Would George Orwell not have enjoined us to use the active form, “Kedar Jadhav smote the first two deliveries…”? I don’t think so. The sentence order is better as it is. England were hapless. What happened to England’s first two deliveries? They got whacked. To the boundary. The next thing we want to know is who did the whacking. Finally, we describe the trajectory of the whacking, over extra cover, and the score. But whacked – or hit, or smashed – would be dull. Much better to go for the heroic smote.

The whole sentence is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.