Now it's time to be a groan-up while admiring the following narratives as they lead up to the Christmas punch lines:
Rudolph, a dedicated Russian communist and important rocket scientist, was about to launch a large satellite. His wife, a fellow scientist at the base, urged Rudolph to postpone the launch because, she asserted, a hard rain was about to fall. Their collegial disagreement soon escalated into a furious argument that Rudolph closed by shouting, "Rudolph, the Red, knows rain, dear!"
"Well," said the dentist, "that's probably the problem. Hollandaise sauce is made with lots of lemon juice, which is highly corrosive. It's eaten away your upper plate. I'll make you a new plate, and this time use chrome." "Why chrome?" asked the patient.
"It's simple," replied the dentist. "Dental researchers have concluded that there's no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise!"
© Richard Lederer
Just as one never steps into the same river twice, one cannot step into the same language twice. Even as one enters, the words are swept downstream into the future, forever making a different river. Or, to switch the metaphor, language is like a tree that sheds its leaves and grows new ones so that it may live on. Changes in our vocabulary occur not from decay or degeneration. Rather, new words, like new leaves, are essential to a living, healthy organism. A language draws its nutrients from the environment in which its speakers live.
An updated version of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has just entered the marketplace. This 2006 release includes 500 new entries that did not repose in the 2000 Fourth Edition. These words did not exist or were very rarely used just a few years ago but now are seen and heard regularly on the nightly news.
Here are a dozen brave new words in the updated American Heritage Dictionary. Define each one and compare your definitions with the ones that immediately follow.
1. Amber Alert
2. blogosphere
3. blue state/red state
4. closure (new sense)
5. cosmeceutical
6. double-dip recession
7. edamame
8. instant messaging
9. malware
10. SARS
11. speed dating
12. Texas hold'em
Amber Alert A message that conveys information about a recently missing or abducted person.
blogosphere The set of all weblogs on the Internet.
blue state A state having a majority of its electorate voting for a Democratic candidate in a US presidential election. (Republican candidate in a red state)
closure A feeling of finality or resolution, especially after a traumatic experience.
cosmeceutical A cosmetic that has or is purported to have medicinal properties.
double-dip recession A recession characterized by a brief intermediate period of economic recovery.
edamame Fresh green soybeans, typically prepared by boiling in salt water.
instant messaging The transmission of an electronic message over a computer network using software that immediately displays the message in a window on the screen of the recipient.
malware Malicious computer software that interferes with normal computer function or sends personal data about the user to unauthorized parties over the Internet.
SARS A viral pneumonia that can progress to respiratory failure and is often characterized by high fever, malaise, dry cough, and shortness of breath. [S(evere) A(cute) R(espiratory) S(yndrome)].
speed dating An organized method of meeting potential romantic partners in which participants evaluate each other over the course of a single event through a series of brief one-on-one meetings.
Texas hold 'em A poker game in which players each receive two cards and share five cards.
Throughout history, as people have met with new objects, experiences, and ideas, they have needed new words to describe them. During the twenty-first century, the tree of American English has experienced a riot of new growth -- a sign that our multifoliate language is deeply rooted in the nourishing soil of change.
© Richard Lederer
The first bookmobile in history was, perhaps, the property of the Dutch humanist writer Desiderius Erasmus, who created the first bestseller, In Praise of Folly. Erasmus had few personal possessions outside of his books, and he declared: "When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes. My luggage is my library. My home is where my books are." No surprise, then, that in Erasmus's caravan during his travels throughout sixteenth-century Europe, one donkey was reserved exclusively to carry his books.
Books are our friends. When Sir Walter Scott returned to Abbotsford to die, he was wheeled into his library. He burst into tears as he beheld his many lifelong friends arrayed upon his bookshelves. When we take down a book from the shelf, we hear the voice of a friend across time and space, speaking to us mind to mind, heart to heart.
Books enlarge our humanness and our humanity. This past May, I attended the annual San Diego Book Awards, in which San Diego writers honor other writers for their work in various categories. Susan Vreeland is widely known and much beloved for works such as Girl in Hyacinth Blue and The Passion of Artemisia. In addition to winning the short fiction award for her Life Studies, Susan garnered the Theodore Geisel Award, the literary equivalent of "Best in Show."
I was so moved by Susan's extemporaneous acceptance speech that, immediately after, I asked her to write down her thoughts and share them with me so that I could share them with you. She has graciously and gracefully complied, and I ask you to respond to the challenge she issues at the end of her remarks:
"Life Studies is my fourth work of fiction dealing with art. Why do I keep returning to art themes? Because art allows us to imagine -- and how precious the imagination is, not just to ourselves as writers, but to our culture."Without imagination we cannot live lives beyond our own. We cannot put ourselves in other people's skin, and when that happens, we cannot learn compassion. But each time we enter imaginatively into the life of another through art and literature, it's a small step upwards in the elevation of the human race.
"Without compassion, then community, commitment, lovingkindness, human understanding, and respect all shrivel. Individuals become isolated, the isolated turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the form of holocausts and terrorism. Art -- and literature -- are antidotes to that.
"That is why the decline of reading literature in America ought to be a vital concern for all. To counter that, I invite you to give a book between now and next year's Book Awards to an adult who you suspect is not a reader. Not for an occasion. Let the book itself be the occasion. This doesn't have to be a new book, but a book carefully selected for a thoughtfully chosen person. We in this room know what the right book at the right time in a life can do. Many people have not had that experience. So I challenge you to join with me in giving one book to one person this year."
Richard Lederer and John Shore won a San Diego Book Award in the reference category for Comma Sense: A Fun-damental Guide to Punctuation.
© Richard Lederer
That's one of my favorite puns and a snappy way of snagging your attention. Now that I have it, I can talk about an event that my San Diego Mensa Scrabble teammates and I attended at the nearby Faith Community Church in Escondido, California, this past February 3. This was the Third Annual Scrabblethon, to benefit Escondido Library's marvelously outreaching Literacy Services. The Escondido Library's Literacy Services provide one-on-one tutoring, book discussions, and networks of literacy learners.
Scrabble was invented in the late 1940s by Alfred Mosher Butts, an out-of-work architect from Poughkeepsie, New York. The game was first called Lexico, then Criss Cross, and finally Scrabble, an actual word that means "to grope frantically." What started as an underground fad and evolved into a cult classic found in one out of every three American homes. The product ranges from a junior edition to CD-ROM and competitions from friendly home games to the national championship, featured in the recent film Word Wars.
We four Scrabble dabblers had a lot of fun and, along the way, learned some compelling facts about literacy in our state:© Richard Lederer
- In San Diego, approximately 422,000 adults cannot read or write well enough to meet everyday needs.
- In California, approximately 5.9 million functionally illiterate adults must compensate for their lack of reading skills by developing effective listening and memorization techniques, and relying on a network of trusted helpers.
We learned that literacy is inextricably bound up with socioeconomic status:
- 46% of parents read to their children every day. 62% of parents with high economic status read to their children every day, while 36% of parents with low economic status read to their children every day.
- Workers who lack a high school diploma earn a mean monthly income of $452, compared to $1,829 for those with bachelor's degrees.
- 70% of prisoners scored in the two lowest literacy levels of the National Adult Literacy Survey prose scale. This means what while they may possess some reading and writing skills, they are not adequately equipped to perform tasks like writing a letter explaining an error on a credit card bill or understanding a bus schedule.
- Only 51% of prisoners have completed high school or its equivalent, compared with 76% of the general population.
We learned that literacy is contagious:
- Parental income and marital status are both important predictors of success in school, but neither is as significant as having a mother (or primary caregiver) who completed high school.
- As the education level of adults improves, so does their children's success in school. Helping low-literate adults improve their basic skills has a direct and measurable influence on both the education and quality of life of their children.
And we learned that literacy programs can break the cycle of illiteracy and make a genuine difference in people's lives:
- Children of adults who participate in literacy programs improve their grades, test scores, and reading skills and are less likely to drop out.
- The odds of low-income parents reading to their children three or more days a week are ten times greater in intervention families, that is, families participating in a primary care setting of literacy promotion.
You can give the gift of literacy by contributing funds that will enhance ongoing literacy efforts, volunteering as a tutor to assist literacy programs, and donating gently used books and supplies.
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