A rchive Date
[ 17-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/1871301
Having their say about language
By LEON HALE
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
April 16, 2003, 10:44PM
Let's have word games today. Several of the customers have sent in questions or comments.
Someone whose signature I can't make out - last name is Jordan, I think - writes about the expression "throw a party." The writer's question is, how can anybody throw a party?
Beats me. I guess you throw a party the same way you pitch a fit, hurl an insult, heave a sigh or toss a salad. This is a strange language we have.
For instance, Joe Shaw wonders why we consider it correct to say "an historian" instead of "a historian." Beats me again. As Shaw argues, we don't say "an horse" or "an hill." Furthermore, we say "an historic event" but we don't say "an history book." Some grammarian may want to straighten us out on this matter, but I think it's just a lot of nonsense.
Gene McFaddin has a few words to say against Roman numerals. He'd be in favor of Super Bowl 2003, instead of Super Bowl XXXVIII. McFaddin tells us about the son of the Englishman who asks, "Father, must every gentleman know Greek?" and the father answers, "No, son, but he must at least have forgotten it."
White people dancing
Then here comes Ron Die wondering about the origin of honky-tonk. My American Heritage Dictionary defines a honky-tonk as a cheap, noisy bar or dance hall. It says also that "honky" is offensive slang for a white person. But it gives no help on "tonk."
I do find the word in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, which is a volume you can get ruptured by lifting. It defines tonk as "a heavy, unmusical clang."
Fair enough. In my earlier times, when I was without supervision, I spent a good many evenings in cheap, noisy bars or nightclubs where white people danced to heavy, unmusical clangs.
But that's just guessing.
The customers send me these questions and I enjoy them but I'm no authority on this stuff. The only answers I find are in the dictionary or out of my personal history.
But I feel confident about the matter Gerald Lawson brings forth in an e-mail. He asks when will TV weather people ever learn that there's no place in our state known as Southern Texas or Eastern Texas or Western Texas or Northern Texas.
He may as well give up. I've been fighting this battle practically forever. The trouble is, the TV stations bring in these folks from other parts of the country because they don't want any nasal Texas accents on the air.
These newcomers look at a thunderstorm happening at Lufkin or Nacogdoches and they say it's going on in Eastern Texas. In the language of our state, there's no such place as Eastern Texas. It's East Texas, not Eastern.
Talk to citizens born and raised in Odessa, and ask how they like living in Western Texas and they will give you a blank look. Because they live in West Texas, not Western. We have West Texas and East Texas and North Texas and South Texas. But none of that ern stuff.
Ever-evolving language
However, I would say to Gerald Lawson that he might as well accept what he's hearing, as I have, because the Texas language is dying.
Next we have Frank Schulman wondering about the origin of the term "out of pocket," used to mean unavailable. The big Webster's lists that expression and says it refers to money. One definition of out of pocket is, to be broke, out of funds. Maybe over the years we've warped the expression to mean we're not in a circumstance we'd like to be in. Another guess. But the meanings of these old sayings sometimes change over time.
I'm reading a part of an autobiography by Dr. Mavis Kelsy, The Making of a Doctor. I like an expression he used when writing about the hedgerows landowners used for fences, when he was a boy up in Lamar County on the Oklahoma line. Farmers planted bois d'arc switches, which grew up thick and heavy to produce a natural fence said to be "pig tight, horse high and bull strong."
Finally here's Karen Marrow sending me a picture of a sign she photographed at Ellinger, on Highway 71 between Columbus and LaGrange. Elegant sign, standing by the garbage containers at Hruska's Store. Sign reads:
"Private. Dumpters Caught Dumping Will Be Persecuted."
You can write to Leon Hale at P.O. Box 4260, Houston 77210 or e-mail him at leon.hale@chron.com.]
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