Kel's previous Ozwords of the day...

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Autodidact This rare, but still used, word turned up in a headline recently. A British composer named George Fenton had just died. His obituary said that he had composed music for such British TV series as Bergerac, Newsnight, The Blue Planet, and The Lady in the Van (among many others). Fenton was 76. He began by getting a few guitar lessons (from a chimney sweep, would you believe!) He had a couple of good music teachers when he was in school, but that was the end of his formal musical education (he skipped university). The report, in the London Daily Telegraph, said that George Fenton belonged to an endangered species—the great British ‘autodidact.’ The word just means ‘self-taught.’ It’s adapted from the Latin word autodidactus and first appeared in English in 1535. The newspaper article went on to say that ‘Shakespeare, the “upstart crow”, whose dramatic presumption was sneered at by the University wit Robert Greene, is the archetype of the self-educated savant whose talents later flourished.’ So the greatest poet/playwright who ever lived was an ‘autodidact.’ Then the article talked about the great writers of the 19th century: ‘The great novelists of the age seem almost driven to fiction by their lack of formal education. The rage for self-expression burned fiercely in writers excluded from a university education by sex (George Eliot, the Brontës, Elizabeth Gaskell) or poverty (Dickens and Hardy).’ I suspect that some of the word crew who join us here each day on Ozwords are also ‘autodidacts’—people who now know far more about words and language than they ever expected to know; knowledge that just accumulated as a result of their own insatiable curiosity. You may well be a member of the great Autodidacts Club!

Lawyer / Attorney It’s an ancient history now, but a short while ago Katie Zachariah was President Trump’s press secretary (for a short while—five days, to be exact). She lost her job for two reasons: (1) the only press conference she held didn’t go so well; and (2) she said misleading things about her legal qualifications. And it is those misleading remarks that make an interesting verbal point. Legal practitioners in Australia (and Britain) are divided into two groups—solicitors and barristers. The barristers have been ‘admitted to the bar’ and can stand up in court to litigate cases, while solicitors do all legal work except litigation. In America, however that neat verbal distinction doesn’t exist. Instead, in the US there is a careful distinction between ‘lawyers’ and ‘attorneys.’ The language journalist William Safie wrote about this some years ago in his column ‘On Language’ in The New York Times. He was bombarded with letters from legal types quibbling over details, but as I understand it—anyone who graduates from college in the Statess with a law degree can call themselves a ‘lawyer.’ And in those terms Katie Zachariah was a ‘lawyer.’ However, such people are not allowed to plead in court. To do that they must sit (and pass) the bar exam. (Katie Zachariah failed her bar exam in California.) Successfully doing so means they are licenced by the state and can call themselves an ‘attorney-at-law’—where the word ‘attorney’ means someone who is entitled to act as the legal representative of someone else. Zachariah (it seems) had sometimes called herself an ‘attorney’ when she was only a ‘lawyer.’ That was her offence. If it seems very picky to you, the distinction matters under American law—and helped to bring Zachariah undone.

It’s important! Countless times over the past four years I have been contacted over the way the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, pronounces the word ‘important.’ Viewers of my TV segment, listeners to my radio show, readers of my column in The Spectator Australia and of this website have all contacted me to point out how the PM says the word ‘important.’—and have asked me to correct him. And the problem? He pronounces ‘important’ as if it were spelled ‘imporDant’—the medial T becoming a D sound. This is called ‘flapping’—or (more technically) alveolar flapping, or intervocalic flapping because the flapping of T is perceived as making a D sound. My observation is that this is becoming more common (and the Prime Minister’s manner of speech is spreading this mispronunciation)—and the source of this error (because it is an error) is the United States. Although ‘flapping’ Ts into Ds happens in a number of countries, my observation is that it is most common in America, and it is America that has the cultural influence to spread this habit. Americans will commonly pronounce ‘butter’ as ‘budder’ (in fact, they almost always do). And they don’t visit ‘Italy’ they go to somewhere they pronounce as ‘Idaly.’ I have often said that most problems in English arise from either a lazy mouth or lazy mind—and this one comes from a lazy mouth. T becomes D when the tongue is not quickly moved to a position in the mouth immediately behind the teeth. In the case of Anthony Albanese, who has an army of media advisors, I’m surprised that this has not been drawn to his attention. Should I drop him a note and ask him to take more care in pronouncing ‘important’?

Who decides? With so many people (often on radio or television) mispronouncing words, or mangling English grammar, the question becomes: who decides what is and what is not good English? In France they have something called the French Academy (the Académie Française). The Académie was officially established in 1635. It was abolished during the French Revolution and then re-established (by Napoleon) in 1803. The Académie is France's official authority on the usage, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language. There is nothing similar for the English language. If memory serves me correctly, back in the 1700s one of the great writers (I think it was Jonanthan Swift) proposed a similar English Academy be established. It never happened. So, without an English Academy who decides what is or is not good English? The answer is: you do. The rules aren’t decided by some academics in their university ivory towers. They are even decided by me in my role as a public wordsmith! You control the English language. Not you alone of course—but you as a member of the global English-speaking community. In the end, English is the most democratic institution on earth. In the English language usage rules everything. What most people do is what becomes correct. So, you ask, what about the people who step out of line? Can we not tell them they are wrong? Yes, we can. If they are making themselves look foolish by mispronouncing a word or mangling a simple statement, we can tactfully and quietly put them back on track. We can tell them that their usage is ‘non-standard’—and, hence, to educated people they will sound ignorant. And we can certainly help the children around us to speak well. Apart from that, our responsibility to English correctness is to always aim to use correct English ourselves—each individual is a self-governing state in the empire of English. And on the correctness front we are responsible for ourselves. So there you are—you are in charge!

Civility Following the brutal attack on independent MP Helen Haines there has been much discussion in the media about ‘civility’—so, clearly, it is time to unpack that word. The word is a very old one, and the way we are using these days it means ‘Behaviour or speech appropriate to civil interactions; politeness, courtesy, consideration’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Other dictionaries say much the same thing, although the Merriam-Webster adds, ‘the state of being civilised.’ ‘Civility’ has been used with this meaning since around 1561—bur the word itself is much older. It seems to have turned up in English in the 1300s. Behind it is a Middle French source word meaning an ‘organized community or its institutions.’ Behind the French is a classical Latin word and an ancient Greek word—both meaning something like ‘a body of citizens.’ In other words, you can’t have a society unless the citizens treat each other with respect. This lunatic and savage attack on Helen Haines is—in some ways—an expression of the wide-spread notion that life should be about ‘looking after number one.’ Those of us who come from the Baby Boomers remember growing up in a society where we were expected to care for each other. But when people put themselves first in the pecking order of importance, civilisation (same word, basically) begins to fall apart. If you are king in your life, and I am king in my life, then who will be king when we meet? Jesus said, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ and told the story of the Good Samaritan as a model of normal, responsible, citizenship. When our society discards its Christian foundations, the end point is the shooting at Bondi which took 15 Australian lives, and the cruel assault on a local member of parliament. The word ‘civility’ reminds us that without foundations a society cannot stand.

Zapped This is a very 20th century word—something that would have baffled Charles Dickens if he had ever seen it. The Oxford says that ‘zapped’ first appeared in 1942 as an American slang word meaning ‘To kill, esp. with a gun; to deal a sudden blow to.’ But the earliest citation they have is from a dictionary of American slang—so the term was probably around well before 1942. And the great William Safire, in one of his language columns for The New York Times says that ‘zapped’ was coined by Philip Francis Nowlan (1888-1940), an American science fiction writer. He created the character of Buck Rogers—a man of our time who was thrust forward into the 25th century, where he had endless futuristic adventures. He created Buck Rogers in a novella published in the August 1928 issue of the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. He then teamed up with artist Dick Calkins to create the ‘Buck Rogers’ comic strip that appeared in many newspapers around the world and even continued well after his death (with other writers taking over). The ‘Buck Rogers in the 25th Century’ daily comic strip continued ran from 1929 to 1967. It generated spin-offs in the form of radio and television series. In the comic strip whenever a ray gun was fired the word that was printed over the flash from the ray gun was the word ‘Zap!’ And that appears to be where and how Philip Francis Nowlan created the verb ‘to zap.’ Over the years the word went on developing new meanings. For instance, from 1975 it was used to mean cooking food in a microwave. So next time you say, ‘I’ll just zap this in the microwave’ you are quoting an old science fiction comic strip! 

Protein Walking around the supermarket the other day I noticed how prominent the word ‘protein’ is right now. It has become the food word of the moment. Things that were once just breakfast cereals now announce (in large letters on their box) that they are ‘protein’ breakfast cereals. And every second packet or bottled product in the supermarket now seems to be proclaiming its ‘protein’ content. At one level I understand this—I am largely persuaded that the current push for a diet high in protein and low in carbohydrates is probably a good thing. And it’s certainly caught on in a big way! But what are ‘proteins’ and where does the word come from? As for what these ‘proteins’ are, I can get no closer than saying they are long-chain biological molecules that the body needs to grow and maintain good health, and that they are (say the dictionaries) found in meat, milk and eggs. Although the dictionaries look a bit out of date there—since in my local supermarket proteins seem to turn up in just about every food product! As for the word, ‘protein’—it is derived from the Greek word πρώτειος (proteios), meaning ‘primary’, ‘in the lead’, or "standing in front.’ The name was chosen by a Swedish chemist Jon Jacob Berzelius in 1834 (based on the work of his colleague, a Dutch chemist with another impossible name—Gerhardus Johannes Mulder). Only a few years later, in 1844, the word ‘protein’ appeared for the first time in English (in a dictionary of medical science published that year). And now ‘protein’ has become the fad food word and has taken over the shelves of our supermarkets. (Let’s see if this is permanent, or just another fad that fades!)

Indigenous Monday (18 September) was Indigenous People’s Day in the United States. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary people tell me this resulted in an increase in the numbers looking up the word ‘indigenous’ on their website. Here’s the comment made by their lexicographers: ‘The relevant and usually capitalized sense of Indigenous is defined as “of, relating to, or descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a place and especially of a place that was colonized.” The word comes from the Latin noun indigena, meaning “native.”’ I find that answer disingenuous at best and misleading at worst. Let’s start with the Latin source word behind ‘indigenous’—this (they say) means ‘native’, but the truth is that in Latin in means ‘native’ not in the popular sense of some primitive tribe living remote from civilisation, but in the sense of ‘nativity.’ And that, of course, means ‘birth.’ You are a ‘native’ of wherever you are born—you are ‘indigenous’ to wherever you are born. The rest of their remarks about ‘being descended from the earliest known in habitants’ is simply false. It is a straightforward fact that you are ‘indigenous’ to wherever you are born. A Jewish person born in New York to parents who migrated from Germany is an ‘indigenous’ American. If that’s not so—then where are they ‘indigenous’ to? Everyone was born somewhere—that makes them a ‘native’ (an ‘indigenous person’) to that somewhere. One linguistic fiddle that has been attempted is to pretend there are two words: (1) ‘indigenous’ with a lower-case I which means just what I have said; and (2) ‘Indigenous’ with an upper-case I that means descended from the earliest inhabitants. I think this is a cheat—not only are the two indistinguishable in spoken English (hence, the upper-case I is pointless), but it is also a false distinction that the English language does not support. What do you think?

Behemoth This is a very old (and largely forgotten) word (pronounced buh-HEE-moth) that turned up in the headlines recently. The news stories said that after a fierce bidding war and a months-long legal battle, Paramount acquired Warner Bros studios, and the Discovery network, creating a massive new entertainment company. The media ‘behemoth’, now called Skydance, combines major film studios, streaming services, and franchises from both companies, making it one of the largest entertainment conglomerates in the world. But why is it called a ‘behemoth’? Not a word that turns up on casual conversation these days! The word means ‘one of the largest and strongest animals’ (and you can see how that might fit figuratively as a descriptor for this new media giant). The word came into English from the Bible, specifically from the Old Testament book of Job, chapter 40 verse 15, which says: ‘Look at Behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox.’ Now, the book of Job is very old (written perhaps two-and-a-half to three thousand years ago). These days the most common suggestion is that ‘behemoth’ is a reference to the hippopotamus—a large brute of a land animal, and (reputedly) the most ill-tempered animal in Africa. The word itself is said to be the plural of bĕhēmāh ‘beast,’ and might be interpreted ‘great or monstrous beast.’ Some scholars take it as coming from an Egyptian source word meaning ‘water-ox’ assimilated into a Hebrew form (which seems to fit in with the hippopotamus idea). And this new entertainment company is certainly a ‘mighty beast’ and so deserves the metaphoric title of ‘behemoth.’

Buckley’s chance Riley Knight has just published a book called The Most Interesting People You’ve Never Heard Of. One of the chapters is devoted to William Buckley, a runaway convict who lived in the bush with the local Aborigines for about 30 years from 1803. Unfortunately, Riley Knight makes the mistake of repeating one of the most persistent myths in the Australian language, when he claims that the expression Buckley’s chance— ‘is thought to have originated with the English convict William Buckley.’ Oh no it didn’t! Totally wrong. That old theory was debunked many years ago. For a start, the dates just don’t fit. The convict William Buckley died in 1856, and the expression ‘Buckley’s chance’ did not appear until 1887. And here is the true story behind the phrase. In 1851, a certain Mr Mars Buckley, in partnership with one Crumpton Nunn, set up a store in a small shack in Melbourne. The business of Buckley and Nunn flourished—and it became a large and prominent store in Melbourne. Then in 1893 a depression hit Melbourne and there was a run on the banks. Wily old Mars Buckley accompanied by four assistants carrying four leather suitcases, pushed through the crowds around the bank (who were demanding their money) and withdrew 10,000 gold sovereigns which he then locked away in a safe in his shop—leaving no chance that the bank might fritter away his fortune among other anxious depositors. But earlier, in 1887, the expression ‘Buckley’s chance’ first appeared—in the longer, original form of ‘You’ve got two chances, Buckley’s and none’—as a play on the name of the (by then) famous store. This is the source of the meaning of the expression—namely, no chance at all; a snowball’s chance in hell: sometimes said these days as ‘You’ve got two chances, mate – yours and Buckley’s!’ (meaning: ‘Give up – you haven’t got a chance). So, sorry Riley—the convict had nothing to do with it!

Concept creep A reader (Helen) has alerted me to this newish expression ‘concept creep.’ Sometimes a concept simply ‘takes off’ in a culture and becomes the ‘go to’ explanation for… well, almost whatever you want to explain. That is ‘concept creep.’ Some examples will make it clearer. It seems that in medicine the vastly over popular diagnosis these days is ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). This was once applied only to children. But now adults all over the place are being diagnosed as having ADHD. Medical authorities in both Britain and America warn of over-diagnosis. If an adult is a bit twitchy or has trouble paying attention—bingo! —they are said to have ADHD. Mind you they might only be suffering from lack of sleep or work stress, but the label is always ADHD. That is ‘concept creep.’ The same has happened with ‘climate change.’ These days every storm, every high tide, every earthquake, every volcano is said to be caused by ‘climate change.’ This is ‘concept creep’ in high gear. ‘Climate change’ is a slow moving, long-term phenomenon, but that does stop the alarmists from applying the concept to everything that happens. ‘Concept creep’! Then there’s the word ‘Nazi.’ This is now used (often people who have no idea what the word means) to describe people whose politics they disagree with. Usually it’s people on the left calling people on the right bad names. But if everything is Nazi then nothing is really Nazi. Just like the other examples of ‘concept creep.’ If everything is ADHD then nothing is really ADHD. And if ‘climate change’ causes everything, you can be sure it is causing nothing! ‘Concept creep’ explains it all. 

Colour names ‘Crimson Lake’ sounds like a waterfront beauty spot at sunset. But it’s not. It’s the name of one of the tubes of colour paint used by artists. ‘Cadmium Yellow’ sounds like a metallic element that has developed a golden glow—but it’s just another tube of paint on the artist’s palette. How did they end up with such dramatic sounding names? I assume because they are being named by artists. The name ‘Cadmium Yellow’, for example, is recorded from 1879 in a book called Modern Chromatics. Recently I came across another of these odd artists’ names for colours that I had never encountered before— ‘Leather Lake.’ It does paint much of a picture in the mind’s eye, does it? A lake made out of leather? It is described as ‘a brownish orange that is deeper and slightly redder than leather, yellower and deeper than spice, and yellower and deeper than gold pheasant.’ (I’m not sure that helps me picture it, actually.) And when you think that a painter is choosing use blue you could be wrong—they could be picking up a tube of ‘Ultramarine.’ This is described as being a complex combination of alumina, silica, soda and sulphur. The process was made viable by a Frenchman, named Guimet, in 1828. But the name of the colour had been around long before that— ‘Ultramarine’ (meaning ‘blue’) is recorded from 1686. And if blue is your thing, there is also ‘Prussian Blue.’ This is a deep blue pigment consisting chiefly of ferric ferrocyanide—which means this is not just about art, it is also chemistry. And it was by doing chemistry that back in 1650 someone invented a reddish brown and called it ‘Burnt Umber.’ There is clearly as much creativity in the names of the colours as there is on the canvas!

Winnie-the-Pooh I missed it! I missed the 100thbirthday of Winnie-the-Pooh! A. A. Milne’s first Winnie-the-Pooh book was published on September 12th, 1926—making the 100thbirthday just three days ago. For we wordies the interesting question is where the name of Christopher Robin’s teddy bear comes from. The ‘Pooh’ part is fairly straight forward. Christopher Robin had a soft toy swan that he called ‘pooh.’ This was (apparently) because there was a tradition in the Milne family that if you called a swan and it didn’t come you said ‘pooh’ to pretend that you never really wanted it to come at all. As for the ‘Winnie’ part—that is an abbreviation of the Canadian city of Winipeg. In 1914 a contingent from the Canadian Army arrived in Britain to support the British war effort in the First World War (which had just begun). Among them was Lieutenant Harry Coleman who brought with him a small black bear from his hometown of Winipeg. The bear became a popular attraction at London Zoo where it was named ‘Winipeg’—and called ‘Winnie’ for short. Milne and Christopher visited the zoo, were delighted by the bear, and gave the name to the small boy’s teddy bear. And that was how ‘Edward Bear’ became ‘Winnie-the-Pooh.’ Happy 100thbirthday to the bear of very small brain! (By the way, in case you’d forgotten, Teddy Bears go their name from President Theodore Roosevelt. After a bear hunting trip in 1902 a popular political cartoon showed the president with a black bear. Thereafter Roosevelt’s nickname of ‘Teddy’ was transferred to all bear-like soft toys.)

Roger that We’ve all seen (and heard) the use of ‘roger’ to acknowledge a communication—in movies and on TV the radio operator signs off a two-way radio call with the word ‘roger’, or indicates agreement by saying ‘roger that.’ So, where does it come from? Who was this Roger anyway? Was he a famous early radio operator? And if not, why use the name ‘roger’ in this way? The explanation turns out to be simplicity itself. In the early days of radio communication (at sea or between aircraft) there was always the risk of mishearing, or a misunderstanding between sender and receiver (because of crackling and poor signal strength). To avoid that a method of spelling out key words or initials was invented. This consisted of giving each letter an agreed (and unmistakable) key word as its indicator. The code that we know now (Alpha, Baker, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf… and all the way down to Whisky, Yankee, X-ray, Zulu) has only been in use since about 1955. There were earlier (similar) key word lists that preceded the now familiar one. And from about 1941 both the United States Navy and Britain’s Royal Airforce used a code that used ‘roger’ as the standard key word for the letter ‘R’. (On the current system it has been replaced by ‘Romeo’ as the R word.) So if you wanted to (very quickly) indicated that a signal, or a message, has been received you would broadcast the initial letter of the word ‘received’—R. And how would send that ‘R’ signal? By using the keyword for that letter ‘roger.’ And that’s all it ever meant—‘roger’ meant ‘received.’ Which is why in movies they say ‘roger and out’ or ‘roger that.’ Now you know. 

Galvanised A reader (Martin) has written to ask an interesting question: ‘How did people being motivated to perform to a high standard become associated with ‘dipping steel into molten zinc’, that is, being “Galvanised”?’ And we understand what he means, don’t we? We are familiar with both uses of the word ‘galvanised.’ We talk about ‘galvanised iron’ and we also say that ‘The promised bonus galvanised the staff into action.’ Both uses make sense, so how are they connected? The word ‘galvanised’ comes from the name of the Italian doctor and physicist Luigi Galvani (1737-1798). And what he described was the way that an electrical charge could make the muscles of dead frogs’ legs move. This was the discovery of what is now called ‘bioelectricity.’ Biological electricity has the same chemical underpinnings as the current between electrochemical cells. Galvani continued actively investigating animal electricity until the end of his life. Which is all very good—but where does the coating of iron and steel come into this? The answer is: very much later. Galvani’s experiments (and the original use of the word ‘galvanised’) was in the 1700s. Later, in the 1800s, it was discovered that a protective coating of zinc could be applied to steel using an electrical charge. So, what we think of as the figurative use (‘galvanising’ people enlivens them) came first—it preceded by a century the production of galvanized steel. So, there you are Martin, we are not applying the metallic process to people, but the other around—it was the existing biological word that was applied to iron and steel.

Raining cats and dogs I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me why we say, ‘Raining cats and dogs.’ (Come to think of it, since I get paid to do language journalism I probably do have a dollar for every time I’ve been asked that!) All it means (as everyone knows) is that there has been a heavy rainstorm. So, where do the small animals come into it? The Oxford English Dictionary says that it is first recorded (with any certainty) from 1661. And that date is significant. At that period in England gutters were not the neatly constructed channels at the sides of the streets that we know today—back then there was one gutter in each street, and it was (very often) a large drain running down the middle of the street. Also back in those days there was a large population of stray animals in any city or town of any size. A heavy rainstorm would result in the bodies of dead strays being washed down the large drain in the middle of the street—so ‘it’s been raining cats and dogs’ started as a joke about where those small dead bodies had come from. Not a very good joke, I agree, but a joke, nonetheless. In 1710 Jonathan Swift wrote a poem called ‘A Description of a City Shower’ which contained these lines:

Sweeping from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood;
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.

That, I think, is a contemporary observation of exactly what I am saying. Now, there are some other proposed explanations of ‘raining cats and dogs’ (that it might come from mythological beliefs that these small animals had a mystical control over storms). But that looks farfetched to me, and I am sticking to my explanation (which makes much more sense). 

Literally Emil (a viewer of the ‘Credlin’ program) would like to know why the word ‘literally’ is so often misused? It’s a good question. I am tempted to reply: ‘Ignorance, Emil, sheer ignorance.’ The truth is that all language errors come from a lazy mind or a lazy mouth. This one is from lazy minds. People don’t stop and think what the word ‘literally’ means. It came into English from French around 1429. It means ‘to the letter’ or ‘exactly’ or ‘just like this.’ So when a friend says he is ‘literally dead on his feet’ he is asking for a coffin not a rest break. Unless it would have been visible and obvious to anyone there at the time, then it is wrong to use the word ‘literally.’ It’s fine to say after a heavy rainstorm that ‘it rained cats and dogs’ (a familiar English idiom—which, since it has sprung to mind, I will explain tomorrow) but, but, but, it is always wrong to say ‘it literally rained cats and dogs’ because cats and dogs don’t ever fall out of the sky! Sadly people have started using ‘literally’ as a vague, meaningless intensifier. They use it to say, ‘I mean this, and I mean this a lot.’ Well, that’s not its meaning. It adds nothing to most sentences in which it appears. It seems to be me that today literally almost no one knows how to use ‘literally’ correctly. (And in that sentence it was used correctly!) So, what is my advice? I think this is probably the time to stop using the word at all—since it has so many people so confused. It has been misused to the pointing meaninglessness—so just drop this word from your vocabulary.

Strategic The word ‘strategic’ has been in the news lately. For example: ‘Yemen’s Houthi rebels seized two strategic islands in the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait.’ The Oxford defines ‘strategic’ as meaning, ‘useful or important in relation to military strategy.’ Which (for me at least) raises the often tricky question of: what is the difference between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics? Is that a question you have occasionally thought about? I suspect the answer is not immediately obvious. Basically ‘strategy’ seems to mean ‘a plan’—or, at least, that seems to be the core notion. The Oxford talks about strategy involving ‘planning or directing the larger movements or long-term objectives of a battle, military campaign.’ In other words, strategy is the big, overall, plan. The Collins talks about ‘a general plan, or set of plans.’ The Cambridge calls it a ‘detailed plan.’ But when we turn to ‘tactics’ the focus seems to be not on the plan so much as how to accomplish it. Draw up a plan (that’s the strategy) then work out how to do it (that’s the tactics). The Merriam-Webster dictionary says ‘tactics’ means ‘disposing and manoeuvring troops, ships, or aircraft’—in other words, the ‘how’ of putting the plan into action. The Cambridge says tactics means the organisation and use of troops etc.; the Collins talks about ‘direction and control’; while the Oxford uses the word ‘deploying.’ And I think that nails the difference between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics—between the ‘plan’ and the ‘how.’

Buck stops here This is an expression that a reader has asked me to write about. ‘The buck stops here’ is a promise that responsibility will not be passed on to anyone else. U.S. president Harry S. Truman had a sign on his desk saying, ‘The buck stops here.’ Truman didn’t coin the phrase, but it went into dictionaries from about 1952 because of his popularising it. Fred M. Canfil, United States Marshal for the Western District of Missouri and a friend of Truman’s, saw a sign like it while visiting the Federal Reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma in 1945. He thought it would appeal to Truman and had a copy of it made and sent to him. The expression comes from the game of poker. Players were highly suspicious of possible cheating. To avoid unfairness, when the deal changed hands the person next in line to deal would be given a marker. This was often a knife with a handle made of buck’s horn—hence the marker was known as ‘a buck.’ When the dealer’s turn was over he ‘passed the buck’. The dramatic contrast to ‘the buck stops here’ is found in our own political leaders. When told about the tragic lifestyles (and deaths) of little Aboriginal children in West Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, ‘That’s a state problem.’ No, it’s not. Following the 1967 referendum, under the constitution Aboriginal welfare is vested in the federal government, not the states. But Albanese seems incapable of accepting responsibility for anything. Unlike Harry Truman, Albanese’s tactic is to always ‘pass the buck.’ Victoria’s Ben Carroll is just as bad. Asked about the appalling state of Victoria’s roads he said, ‘I’m not the roads minister.’ But he is the premier, and responsible for the whole state. A responsibility he refuses to accept. Just like his friend Albanese he ‘passes the buck.’

Transhumanism This strikes me as a nonsense word naming a nonsense concept. But who knows I might be wrong. (Yes, I am wrong sometimes… I remember the last time I was wrong… it was a Thursday, I think… about seven years ago… and, yes, I am only joking). The word ‘transhumanism’ was coined in 1957 by Julian Huxley in his essay New Bottles for New Wine. Julian Huxley (1887-1975) was an English biologist who had all sorts of weird beliefs (including in eugenics—stopping lesser people from breeding—and parapsychology and spiritualism). One of the mad ideas he dreamed up was ‘transhumanism’—the belief that humans can deliberately evolve beyond their current physical and mental limitations. Different ‘transhumanists’ have a range of different ideas. Some of them seem to think that the next level of human evolution will be human brains (or human minds) kept alive forever inside computers (sounds like a heap of fun!) Some have pictured robots (so not static computers, but walking, talking bipeds) inside of which are human minds—kept alive forever inside repairable machines. Huxley wanted to consciously apply scientific knowledge to overcome biological and social limitations. I mention this because one of the key founders of AI, Eliezer Yudkowsky (who I mentioned yesterday), seems to have started his journey into the world of strange ideas with this one—'transhumanism.’ My own view (for whatever it’s worth) is that human beings are souls—and that souls survive death, so immortality is already part of being human without any technological interference being required. Anyway, I thought this was an interesting word (and interesting notion) that you might be intrigued to hear about. (Something a bit more mainstream tomorrow!)

Superintelligence I have to follow up yesterday’s exposure of what AI really is by unpacking this expression ‘superintelligence.’ One of the key American researchers (one of the foundation researchers) into artificial intelligence is Eliezer Yudkowsky (born, 1979). After pioneering some of the big ideas behind artificial intelligence, he turned his attention to what he called a ‘runaway intelligence explosion.’ This was labelled ‘superintelligence’ by philosopher Nick Bostrom in his 2014 book of that name. Yudkowsky is best known for his 2025 book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why AI Would Kill Us All. Clearly these are people pushing an alarming doomsday scenario. At some point, clearly, Yudkowsky’s enthusiasm for AI turned to fear, and he came to believe that a superintelligent machine could escape human control. But his fear is no reason for the rest of us to start building underground bunkers and stocking up on canned food! There are two things to remember: (1) this is not real intelligence, it is ‘artificial’ intelligence—just an imitation of the real thing—and real, human intelligence will always have a quality that AI can never have; and (2) this sort of thing happens with every new technology. Possibly when our cave dwelling ancestors first discovered fire it may have taken them a while to work out that fire was a good servant, but a bad master. They may have burnt down the odd tree or bush unintentionally until they discovered they needed a control device (called a ‘fireplace’—for them perhaps circle of stones) to keep their new invention under control. So, there never will be any ‘superintelligence’ only ‘super-artificial-intelligence’ (which is not the same thing) and it seems as though everyone is alert to watch out for accompanying risks. So you can sleep easy at night!

AI I suppose it is time for me to re-visit the expression ‘AI’ (‘Artificial Intelligence’). It is back on the agenda with all the current debate about how safe AI might be for human beings and human society. One computer whizz actually stirred a small storm of controversy when he said AI might kill us all. Hence, some governments are saying there need to be ‘guardrails’ hedging in AI, while Donald Trump is dead-set against any such regulation. All of which means it is time for me to go back to exposing the real meaning of the source expression ‘Artificial Intelligence.’ And they key (as I have pointed out in the past) is to be found not in the noun but in its qualifying adjective. In other words it is the adjective ‘artificial’ that tells us what AI really is. It is not ‘intelligence’ it is ‘artificial intelligence.’ The relationship between intelligence and AI is the same as the relationship between artificial flowers and real flowers. On the one hand you have real flowers which are organic, growing, and living, and reproducing—on the other hand you have a manufactured, contrived, imitation of real flowers. In exactly the same way, you have on one hand real intelligence that organic, living, growing and reproducing—on the other hand you have a manufactured, contrived imitation of real intelligence. The proper technical name for the computer function we call ‘AI’ is actually ‘Large Language Computing.’ And because it is very powerful very fast, very complex, calculating that uses a large corpus of human language it succeeds in imitating the appearance of real (human) intelligence—without (in reality) being any more real than artificial flowers. Does that help in understanding what we’re dealing with here?

Anthropic One of the huge AI companies has chosen the word ‘anthropic’ as their brand name. The word ‘anthropic’ means ‘of, or related to, human beings.’ It comes from the Greek word anthropos meaning ‘human.’ Does it strike you as odd that a company that is pushing AI should (by using such a name) be saying to the human race ‘we’re on your side.’ Because there is no certainty at the moment that AI is a technology that will prove to be an unbounded benefit to humanity. I suppose it might be—but we shall have to wait and see. The word has (up until now) mainly been used in the expression ‘the anthropic principle.’ This is a scientific principle that says when you look at what are called the ‘constants’ of the physical universe (such as gravity, the balance between helium and hydrogen, the size of our sun, the size of out planet, the laws of thermodynamics and so on) they are all exactly fine-tuned to support human life. If any one of them had been even fractionally different then human life would be impossible. The fact that they are exactly (to the smallest decimal point) what is needed to support human life looks to be beyond coincidence—it looks suspiciously as if the whole universe was designed precisely to bring forth and support human life. Which gives the universe an intelligent and purposeful design. That, until now, has been the main use of the word ‘anthropic’—and now it’s being used by an AI company as if to imply ‘everything we do is for the benefit of the human race.’ At least that appears to be their claim. Whether it turns out to be true or we shall (as I said) have to wait and see. 

Home in on There it was in the newspaper—the use of ‘hone in on’ when (surely!) the only correct usage is ‘home in on.’ The story was about the pursuit by the Albanese government of a group called the Plymouth Brethren. They are, it seems, a very conservative group and during the last general election they campaigned against Labor. Anthony Albanese and senior frontbenchers have accused them of improper behaviour. But my point is an entirely verbal one. The journalist writing about this said: ‘Labor has honed in on the behaviour of the Plymouth Brethren. Oh, no they haven’t! The verb ‘to hone’ means ‘to sharpen.’ You can ‘hone’ a knife, you could use it figuratively and say you have ‘honed’ (sharpened) your arguments. But you can’t use ‘honed’ to mean ‘targeted.’ Here’s the background. Apparently the verbal phrase ‘to home in on’ was used by pilots employing their electronic equipment to target incoming missiles or enemy aircraft. The problem is that ‘hone’ and ‘home’ sound so similar (only differing in one letter) and people have forgotten that the original meaning of this verbal phrase was ‘targeting.’ Webster’s English Usage (1989) notes that ‘hone in on’ seems to be on the increase, although it is not yet recognised by any of the major dictionaries. What all of the dictionaries do recognise is ‘home in on’—the Cambridge English Dictionary says it means ‘to aim for’; Collins says, ‘to guide or be guided as by radar, heat, etc., to (a destination or target); while the Longman gives this definition, ‘to aim exactly at an object or place and move directly to it’ Now that’s what the Albanese hit mob is doing, right? It is ‘homing in’! I do wish some of these journalists would buy a dictionary!

Puns We all know what a ‘pun’ is: a joke (often a feeble joke) that is a play on words—sometimes using words that sound similar, or that have two meanings. But where does the word ‘pun’ come from? The experts at the Oxford say they are unsure, adding: ‘perhaps formed within English, by clipping or shortening. Or perhaps a borrowing from Italian.’  The Italian word they have in mind is puntiglio which in English becomes ‘punctilio’ and means ‘a minute detail.’ The word ‘pun’ has been part of English since at least 1644. And I can’t write about puns without giving you some examples (don’t blame me if they make you groan rather than laugh);

A man died when a pile of books fell on him—he only had his shelf to blame.

Thanks for explaining the word ‘many’ to me—it means a lot.

Boxes of weight loss pills were stolen from a chemist—police say the suspects are still at large.

Today a man knocked on my door and asked for a small donation towards the local swimming pool, so I gave him a glass of water.

Stop making jokes about being blind—I don’t see the point.

If at first you don't succeed—then skydiving is not for you.

Why did the octopus beat the shark in a fight? Because it was well armed.

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

I put up a high-voltage electric fence around my property over the weekend, my neighbour is dead against it.
I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. It's impossible to put down!

Well, I did warn you, didn’t I. And looking at those awful puns I was reminded that kids find these thing hilarious (when they’re around nine or ten years old). If you are a glutton for punish (if you’ve gone off you ‘glutton free diet’) American wordsmith Richard Lederer has written a whole book about puns.