The Packbats' Weblog

(original thread version on Weirder Earth, a Mastodon instance using the Hometown fork. Lightly edited.)

"mastodon" is spelled "mastadon" because the 'o' there is reduced to schwa and 'a' is the most schwa-like vowel letter in English. Same thing behind "definite" and "definate" - a schwa got spelled with an 'a', it's phonetic as hell. It sucks when it's in a hashtag because that splits the hashtag, but mostly it doesn't matter which you use - it's just an "uh" sound, it's the most generic sound possible.

Anyway all writing is a lie, if people understand you then you succeeded, go push the grammaticasters into a pool and live your life.

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Sorry, that was kind of judgey.

What you're feeling when you cringe at "mastadon" is damage that was done to you. It is all the people who fucked you up because it was more important to them that you looked like a rich white person than that you survived intact - probably because they got fucked up the same way, because that's what generational trauma is. It fucking sucks and I get it.

But the answer to generational trauma isn't to pass it on, it's to heal.

And everyone knows what "mastadon" is. It's the "calling all photocopers xeroxes" word for the microblogging side of fedi.

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20 year old Packbats: I know I'm on the Internet, but I'm going to spell everything correctly, with proper grammar, because that's just the kind of man I am!

37 year old Packbats: I'm not a man and spelling is fake and that makes me really mad because "actually, 'muchly' has been a part of English since the 1620s" is a really cool historical fact and completely irrelevant to why this jackass needs to shut the fuck up about our grammar

(yes, we're still bitter about the person who said that "thanks muchly!" was incorrect to us last year - they knew exactly what we meant, they were able to paraphrase it perfectly)

(don't be like that person, thank you and we appreciate it)

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Addendum the next morning:

We care about this because that "you must spell it this way" damage isn't just a thing for those of us who do spell it the way we're told, it's a thing for those of us who can't.

Like, listen: we suck at remembering names, they slide right out of our head, they're arbitrary sounds and they barely come up most of the time ... and for a lot of people, that's spellings of words.

Plus there's disabilities affecting writing.

Plus there's differences of education.

And the thing about mocking people who don't spell it the way they "must" is that that mockery always always always lands on those who can't, over and over and over, and is used as justification for shutting down anything they have to say.

It has a discriminatory impact.

It marginalizes people.

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Addendum 2: everything we know about schwas we know from that one Language Files video from two years ago. Shoutout to Tom Scott, Molly Ruhl, and Gretchen McCulloch.

(Emeto content warning on video for brief comment+animation about almost throwing up.)

I have wondered online a number of times about how to describe pithily that state of physical and mental deterioration that results from staying up too late without sleep - the analog in many ways is being drunk (key difference: lacking sleep doesn't imbue a false confidence in your current abilities), but "sleepdrunk" is weak, and the other terms are all obscure and obsolete.

Except they aren't - there's already a widely-used term for that state. It's called "wiped", as in "I'm sorry, I tried to push through an all-nighter, but I was so wiped by one a.m. that I just passed out."

This has been your wiped-post of the wee hours of the morning. Carry on.

coppervale, yesterday, wrote a bit On Becoming a Writer where he approvingly quotes a rule Harlan Ellison said to him: "You're not a writer until a writer tells you you're a writer."

gregvaneekhout begged to differ, and suggests that "the designation 'writer' can only come from the act of doing it".

The question I am inclined to ask is: whence* comes the divide?

First: I claim that it truly is a divide, not merely a quibble of the sort which may be casually dismissed in a footnote. It tears along the same line dividing elitism and egalitarianism, distinction and description - either the former elevates Writer to a title or the latter reduces it to trivia, depending on which side of the line the reader falls, and there is a real sense of investment in the side. "How dare you claim we are not writers?" one might ask; or, inversely, one might ask, "If you are writers, where are your publications? Where are your awards? Where are your membership cards?"

Second: that's where it comes from. It comes from the split between the prototype of the writer and the etymology of the term - from the difference between definition by similarity and definition by function. Further, it gains its power from the conflict in the definition. To use an elitist frame, because we ascribe merit to the title, we wish to gain it (this drives the meaning towards the more general functional form), but because the merit of the title comes from the prototype, we wish to restrict the title to the deserving (this drives the meaning towards the prototypical). To use an egalitarian frame, because we pay attention to this behavior, we wish to employ our language to match the behavior as logically as possible (this drives the meaning towards the functional), but because we pay attention to this behavior, we want to make sure to be thrifty, to only pay to the truly exemplary examples (this drives the meaning towards the prototypical).

Third: These very tensions make the divide impossible to resolve by any maneuvers. Nevertheless, I have an opinion.

My opinion is thus: the best strategy is to employ the word in the functional sense. This does tarnish the trademark, if you think of "writer" as a trademark, but to try to apply the elitist standard raises too many ridiculous confusions. (Check it out: Is Anne Frank a writer, by the elitist definiton? Samuel Pepys? William Topaz McGonagall?) But on the other hand, we should recognize that adjectives apply - professional versus amateur, good versus bad, original versus derivative - and we should recognize that people may (or may not!) take "Writer" as a part of their identity, and not to deny them their identity or ascribe too much moral or social value to their identity.

The same goes for a lot of other titles - "artist", "dancer", "fisher", "poet". These words are not states of being, they are states of doing. Best to recognize it and go from there.

* Linguistic aside: "from whence" is an equally valid form. I simply prefer the shorter version.

Have you ever been trying to think of a word for ages, and just couldn't come up with it?

Have you ever ran into some new concept which you would love to articulate, but you can't think of a neologism for it?

Have you ever found or invented a term which deserves wider use?

The thing is, I've seen people doing all these things all the time, and recently. Shouldn't there be a LJ comm where people can find and fill their lexicographical gaps?

Who's with me?

bak·sheesh - Persian: a payment of money as a gratuity for good service, an acknowledgement to a holy figure, or bribe to make things go quicker or easier.

Found, inexplicably, when searching for oesophagus (which, in turn, was prompted by Planet Karen). Wikipedia is both amusing and highly "non-encyclopedic".

[Poll #1015910]

I forgot to mention – in my first game of "Literati" yesterday, my opponent attempted two interesting words: "Stoor", and "Coag". I was quite skeptical of these during the game, but afterwards I discovered, amazingly enough, that both were genuine.

From Google (which led me to dict.die.net, a dictionary that seems more comprehensive than many), I discovered that stoor was a relative of "stir", and meant, quote, "to rise up in clouds, as dust" (I presume you could stoor flour in a mill as well) and coag was a carpenter's term for a dowel or tenon connecting two timbers. (The distinction between calling something a "coag" and calling it a "tenon" was not explained – perhaps "coag" is simply more general, referring also to third pieces that connect.)

A dictionary! Of phrases! Now, when some Greg wonders what's so special about tomfoolery, compared to the regular sort, we can inform him that Tom has long been a name associated with honest dullards, and therefore a "Tom Fool" is one of those idiot practical jokers. Thus, "tomfoolery" is exemplified by the sort of imbecilic sense of humor that thinks taking someone else's things, claiming them as your own, and then returning them is the height of comedy. Q.E.D.!

...Or not. But I'm bookmarking this dictionary anyway.

is, like, n. Slang 1. to say something similar to [she was, like, "whoa!"]  2. to perform an action implied by; often is followed by a sound effect [I was, like, "wham!"] : same as is like,
—Note that, unlike paraphrase, the expression is, like, indicates a rewording performed by the speaker, rather than the individual quoted

As you can guess, I didn't get this one out of Webster's New World, Second College Edition.

From Wikipedia: A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage. My paper dictionary, previously mentioned here and elsewhere, concurs on this.

Why do I mention it? I don't know. I like having names for interesting things.