Equanimity -- evenness of temper

from wordsmith.org

equanimity

PRONUNCIATION:
(ee-kwuh-NIM-i-tee, ek-wuh-)

MEANING:
noun: Evenness of temper in all circumstances.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin aequanimitas, from aequus (equal, even) + animus (mind, spirit).

USAGE:
"Even as a young netball star, Tharjini had no inflated opinion about herself nor did she ever take offence at the numerous teasing remarks or stares that her height drew. She met both celebrity status and silly remarks with equanimity."
-- Thulasi Muttulingam; A Player With Many Highs in Her Life; The Sunday Times (Colombo, Sri Lanka); Jul 12, 2009.

Lie vs. lay -- Dylan should have sung "Lie, Lady, Lie"

I once heard a lecture on the poetry of Bob Dylan, in which the lecturer described the tension in the lyric "Lay, lady, lay /Lay across my big brass bed" as deriving from the fact that it should be "Lie, lady, lie," but the singer fears that by uttering the word "lie" he might open up the possibility of her lying to him, turning their love into a falsehood.

Sally Alexander -- longtime English teacher at the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Md. -- offers this perspective on those oft-misused verbs to lie and to lay.

Sally writes:

Principle parts: lie (pres. tense) lay (last tense) lain (participle). This verb is intransitive - i.e., does not take an object. E.g., I lie on my bed, yesterday I lay on my bed, I have lain on my bed all day. (On my bed is an adverbial prepositional phrase, not an object.)

Principle parts: lay (present tense), laid (past tense), laid (participle). This verb is transitive - i.e., must take an object. E.g., I lay the book on the table, yesterday I laid the book on the table, every day this week I have laid the book on the table.

I once had a male teacher in the English department at Holton who, when I pointed out that these two verbs should be taught in the ninth grade, told me, "Teach it somewhere else. I'm not telling fourteen year-old girls that you can lie by yourself, but you have to lay something."

assiduous -- "all over it" from the root sed "to sit"

from wordsmith.org

assiduous

adjective: Constant; persistent; industrious.

From Latin assiduus, from assidere (to attend to, to sit down to), from ad- (toward) + sedere (to sit). Ultimately from the Indo-European root sed- (to sit) that is also the source of sit, chair, saddle, assess, sediment, soot, cathedral, and tetrahedron.

"The reason for his presence there [a Donald Duck statue in a temple garden] remains a mystery despite the author's most assiduous inquiries."Jeff Kingston; Chiang Mai: Thailand's beguiling Rose of the North; The Japan Times (Tokyo); Jun 28, 2009.

Don't confuse "your" and "you're"

From Grammar Gremlins, Knoxville News Sentinel 8/9/09
by Don K. Ferguson

The misuse of "your" for "you're" is far too common.
I have seen this error several times recently, mainly in e-mail messages.
It is common enough that several handbooks make note of it. One says the two words are confused surprisingly often.

"Your" is the possessive of the pronoun "you."
"You're" is a contraction of "you are."

Here are examples from the Gregg Reference Manual that show both uses:
1. Your thinking is sound, but we lack the funds to underwrite your proposal.
2. You're thinking of applying for a transfer, I understand.

Should it be "more important" or "more importantly"?

From Garner's Usage Tip of the Day:

more important(ly)

As an introductory phrase, "more important," has historically been considered an elliptical form of "What is more important," and hence the "-ly" form is sometimes thought to be the less desirable. Yet three points militate against this position.

First, if we may begin a sentence "Importantly, the production appeared first off Broadway . . . ," we ought to be able to begin it, "More importantly, . . . ."

Second, the ellipsis does not work with analogous phrases, such as "more notable" and "more interesting." Both of those phrases require an "-ly" adverb -- e.g.: "More interestingly, he earns lots of money." David Beckham, "Why Are They Famous?" Independent, 31 Aug. 1997.

And third, if the position is changed from the beginning of the sentence in any significant way, the usual ellipsis becomes unidiomatic and "-ly" is quite acceptable -- e.g.: "Shrage believes that the strategy should not be to reverse the intermarriage rate, as some activists argue, but to make sure that intermarried couples embrace Judaism and, more importantly, commit to raising their children as Jews." Diego Ribadeneira, "Jewish Community Flourishing, New Report Says," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 6 Sept. 1997.

The criticism of "more importantly" and "most importantly" has always been rather muted and obscure, and today it has dwindled to something less than muted and obscure. So writers needn't fear any criticism for using the "-ly" forms; if they encounter any, it's easily dismissed as picayunish pedantry.

Limericks for the day

from wordsmith.org

limerick (LIM-uhr-ik) noun
A humorous, often risque, verse of five lines with the rhyme scheme aabba.

[After Limerick, a borough in Ireland. The origin of the name of the verse is said to be from the refrain "Will you come up to Limerick?" sung after each set of extemporized verses popular at gatherings.]

Several modest topical examples . . .

A pious father of four
Met Maria in Ecuador.
They danced in the air
With the utmost of flair.
And now he’s a teary-eyed bore.

A most sanctimonious gov
Met his soul mate and fell quite in love.
Then his savvy spouse
threw him out of the house,
And the Gov prayed to heaven above.

Maria Belén Chapur,
An exquisite Buenos Arian amour,
Met a Furman grad
Who was awfully glad
For a grand South American tour.


From our old friend Jim Lattin:

Along the Appalachian Trail
They looked for Sanford, to no avail.
The news media said
He had gone instead
To chase Argentinian tail!

SLANT -- and how to be the Professor's Pet

A couple of years ago there was a New York Times Magazine story (and a reference to it in David Brooks' column) about successful inner-city charter schools whose pupils are required to SLANT -- Sit up, Listen, Ask questions, Nod, and Track the teacher with their eyes.

This behavior, say educators, is intuitively understood by middle-class kids but must be specifically itemized for those from less advantaged backgrounds.

At one point in the Times' story, the teacher asked the kids to affect the "normal school look." They immediately slouched in their seats and started talking, goofing off and staring into space. The kids, wrote Paul Tough, "seem to be experiencing the pleasure of being let in on a joke."

On a similar theme, the Key Club magazine, Keynotes, ran a feature "Professor's Pet -- High school rules won't cut it. Here are eight tips for making the grade in college." Here again, these tips aren't the Secrets of Dendur, but they can be valuable for kids getting ready for the new expectations of college.

To be the Prof's Pet --

1. Show up!
2. Make sure the professor knows you
3. Be at the head of the class
4. Prepare
5. Participate
6. Take advantage of office hours **(my favorite, discovered a couple of years late)
7. Keep you attitude in check
8. Be polite