Some Forgotten English

[the_gneech]

Yesterday's and today's, lj-cut for your protection. I figure word wonks will be interested enough to click, and everybody else would just skim over the entry anyway. ;)

prosodist
One who understands prosody, that part of grammar which treats the quantity of syllables, of accent, and of the laws of versification. Prosidian, one skilled in prosody.

--Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

[March 3] Birthday of Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933), Oxford-educated grammarian and lexicographer, who collaborated with his younger brother Frank, a tomato-grower, on The King's English (1906) and A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926). The latter book had an influence on the modern copy editor's bible, The Chicago Manual of Style. In Modern English Usage, Fowler declared: "The English-speaking world may be divided into those who neither know nor care what a 'split infinitive' is, those who do not know but care very much, those who know and condemn, [and] those who know and distinguish. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, and are a happy folk, to be envied by most of the minority classes."

Actually, I remember that Fowler quote from an essay by James Thurber; that particular essay convinced me that all the nonsense about split infinitives was indeed something I ought to resolutely ignore. ;)

shapesmith
One who undertakes to improve the form of the body.

--Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755

On this date [March 4] in 1741, the English anecdotist Joseph Spence wrote to his mother about an incident involving Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of England's ambassador to Turkey. She had recently visited a Turkish bath, and according to Spence, "never saw finer shap'd women than the Turkish ladies, tho' they never wear stays. Their make is more natural, and really more beautiful than that of the ladies with us. The first time she was at one of those baths the ladies invited her to undress, and to bathe with them; and on her not making any haste one of the prettiest ran to undress her. You can't imagine her surprise upon lifting the lady's gown and seeing [corset] stays all around her. She ran back quite frighten'd and told her companions that the husbands in England were much worse than in the East, for they ty'd up their wives in little boxes of the shape of their bodies. ... They all agree that 'twas one of the greatest barbarities and pitied the poor women for being such slaves in Europe."

Sounds like an episode of Love Hina. 0.o

-The Gneech

Comments

[laurie-robey.livejournal.com]

The "corset crowd" at Dragon*Con would disagree, but given the frequency of fainting in those days, I think we're far better off without corsets.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

I suspect the corset crowd would happily bring back fainting if they could. ;)

-TG

Oh, my!

[reynai.livejournal.com]

Hey, if there's a handsome man there to catch me, I'll faint any day... *grin*

[rowyn]

The corset crowd nowadays is much less prone to doing that whole "suck in your stomach, lace up the thing as tight as it will go, and don't breathe for the rest of the day" thing. ;)

[kagur.livejournal.com]

We have shapesmiths today:) They're called plastic surgeons.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

"Split infinitives" are part of a big steaming pile of alleged "errors" of English grammar that come from the asinine assumption made by pretentious prosodists a few hundred years ago that the rules that hold true in Latin should hold true for English.

In Latin, it's not POSSIBLE to split an infinitive, because it's only one word.

In English, it frequently flows better.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Nail: meet hammer!

*WHAM*

-TG

PS: Yes, exactly. :)

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

Latin. I should have known. I bet that's what "don't end a sentence with a preposition" comes from too, doesn't it? If ever there was a majority of "those who do not know but care very much"...

Speaking of "Split-infinitives"

[lowen-kind.livejournal.com]

In English, it frequently flows better.

As in the (in)famous Star Trek intro:

"To boldly go where no..."

If the language "Nazis" had their way, it would be either
"To go boldly where no..."
or
"Boldly to go where no..."

I'm sorry, but "To boldly go..." sounds much better to my ear.

Note: First reply deleted due to major grammar error. :=/

Re: Speaking of "Split-infinitives"

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

IMO, "boldly to go" sounds *worse* than awkward; it sounds completely wrong, as wrong as if you changed "a yellow house" to "yellow a house".

[the-lizard-rat.livejournal.com]

*imagines the female cast of SJ in medieval corsets* That's be an interesting storyline... a Ren Faire shoot for Tiffany, with Leona and Comfort as noblewomen and Yin as a bar wench lady-in-waiting to Tiffany's Queen attire.

*then imagines the male cast in them* Hee Hee Hee...

*runs, grinning*

Lizard Rat out.
Hyper on five bags of gummy worms in Albany NY

[kylet.livejournal.com]

How 'bout some male shapesmiths, please? ^.^

[dbcooper.livejournal.com]

I lost a Scripps-Howard city spelling bee on the word prosody.