We’ve blogged recently about a few noteworthy people who have achieved the status of human verb — an unlikely mix of sports stars and federal judges.  A slightly more common phenomenon (but still not one most of us will enjoy) is the adjective based on a person’s name — let’s call it adjectivization.  Most of those who enjoy this tribute are writers whose style is distinctive enough to warrant this treatment.

A prime example of this phenomenon is Charles Dickens, whose 200th birthday is being celebrated today by bookworms worldwide.  A quick Google search of the word Dickensian gets around 2 million hits.  Here’s the definition from Cambridge dictionaries:

1. relating or similar to something described in the books of the 19th century British writer, Charles Dickens, especially living or working conditions that are below an acceptable standard

example: The bathrooms in this hotel are positively Dickensian — no hot water and grime everywhere.

2. written by or in the style of Charles Dickens

George Orwell is the other big example who leaps to mind, and he blows our birthday boy out of the water: Orwellian gets 7 million Google hits. And let’s not leave out Franz Kakfa, whose personal adjective has no doubt featured in many a lawyers’ hyberbolic arguments.

Your Honor, the charges against my client are nothing less than Kafkaesque!

So, happy birthday Charles! I can’t think of a nicer gift than your very own bespoke adjective.

image from latimes.com

Never able to resist scatalogical humor, we thought that the bowl to bowel mix-up was especially amusing.  Perhaps it’s an unconscious reference to the devastating effect Superbowl snacks can have on the gut?

As always, we love the hilarious finds at CakeWrecks!

Well football fans, it’s a tie game in the Superbowl spelling bee: Giants -1, Patriots -1.  Don’t decorate drunk!

For more screwed up Superbowl cakes, check out the always entertaining cakewrecks.com, which has been the source of other pls clarify posts.

He’s a Quarterback, He’s a Winner, He’s a TV Draw, He’s a Verb

The article brought me up to a speed on the cultural phenom that is Tim Tebow—the movie-star handsome (as my dad would say), second-string quarterback for the Denver Broncos who is also a devout Christian. Tebow’s religious devotion is quite public: to celebrate success on the field, he drops to one knee and bows his head in prayer.

Hence the verb: to Tebow. As Dan Barry explained in the TImes article,

Around the world, people are “tebowing” — kneeling in prayer, with head resting on one hand, oblivious to surroundings, just as Tebow does after victories.

Wow! Verbification of nouns has become commonplace, but it’s not every day that a human being gets verbified. One of the many ways that Tim Tebow is special.

As it happens, NY Times Dan and I both live in Maplewood (that’s Jersey, people). I accosted him on the train to discuss his article and my fascination with the verbification of a human. Dan helpfully pointed out that boycott is another verb derived from a person’s name. Who knew?

Lawyers and other Supreme Court watchers fondly recall our own example of human verbification: Borking, derived from federal judge Robert Bork’s ill-fated confirmation hearings back in 1987. The word is still very much in use—cbsnews.com published this headline just a couple months ago:

The “Borking” of Herman Cain?

So, I’m seeing a joke here…Tim Tebow and Robert Bork walk into a bar….

Yes. But that may be ok every so often.

I’m pretty clear about insisting that emoticons and multiple exclamation points undermine a writer’s professionalism.  Especially the ladies!!  (See what I mean?)

But there are three sides to every story, as a recent NY Times piece proves. In Emoticons Move to the Business World, the Times reports that the occasional well-placed smiley can be just the thing for a work email:

Lisa M. Bates, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia, has lately embraced the smiley — as have her academic colleagues, albeit “sparingly and strategically,” she said. “Basically, I’m often sarcastic and in a hurry, and a well-planted smiley face can take the edge off and avoid misunderstanding,” Dr. Bates wrote in an e-mail. “I figure they have saved me some grief from misconstrued tone many times.”

I’ll buy that.  Better to risk being perceived as a bit silly than to come across as alienating and humorless.  In my book, anyway.

We’ll be keeping an eye out for how this trend plays out in the impossibly stuffy land of legal writing. Given the need for precision, these more nuanced emoticons might be useful than the plain old smiley and frowny faces. “Something’s fishy” seems especially promising for lawyers dealing with delicate circumstances.

Image from mentalfloss.com.

Hat tip to Legal Writing Prof Blog, via Legal Blog Watch.

It’s been way too long!  pls clarify has been on extended hiatus, but we are back in action. I’ve just seen a misplaced modifier that I can’t keep to myself.  

Here it is, the offending CNN headline:

Obama talks politics, life with Leno

Perhaps I haven’t ingested enough caffeine yet this morning, but I just stared at the words for a long moment, wondering, “Who is this Leno and when did Obama share a life with him or (more likely) her?” 

Finally it dawned on me…with Leno modifies talks, not life. Oh….

As I suggested, insufficient caffeine may be the culprit here. Off to make more tea.

Lots of virtual ink has been spilled in the past week or so about the Fifth Circuit opinion rejecting the lawsuit of a Texas cheerleader who claimed that her civil rights were violated when she didn’t make the varsity squad. 

The opening paragraph of the opinion gives a hint as to the court’s view of the merits:

Reduced to its essentials, this is nothing more than a dispute, fueled by a disgruntled cheerleader mom, over whether her daughter should have made the squad. It is a petty squabble, masquerading as a civil rights matter, that has no place in federal court or any other court.

Ouch. The court was irked not only by the action’s lack of substance but also by the sloppy and nasty brief writing of the cheerleader’s attorneys. The court singled this muddled passage from the cheerleader’s brief:

The Magistrate’s  egregious  errors  in  its  [sic]  failure  to utilize  or apply  the  law  constitute  extraordinary  circumstances,  justifying vacateur [sic] of the assignment to [sic] Magistrate. Specifically, the Magistrate applied improper legal standards in deciding the Title IX elements of loss of educational opportunities and deliberate indifference, ignoring precedent.  Further, the Court failed to consider Sanches’ Section 1983 claims and summarily dismissed them without analysis or review.  Because a magistrate is not an Article III judge, his incompetence in applying general principals [sic] of law are [sic] extraordinary.

The court handles this “unjustified attack” by carefully analyzing all the passage’s possible interpretations:

These sentences are so poorly written that it is difficult to decipher what the attorneys mean, but any plausible reading is troubling, and the quoted passage is an unjustified and most unprofessional and disrespectful attack on the judicial process in general and the magistrate judge assignment here in particular.  This may be a suggestion that Magistrate Judge Stickney is incompetent. It might be an assertion that all federal magistrate judges are incompetent.  It could be an allegation that only Article III judges are competent.  Or it may only mean that Magistrate Judge Stickney’s decisions in this case are incompetent, a proposition that is absurd in light of the correctness of his impressive rulings. Under any of these possible readings, the attorneys’ attack on Magistrate Judge Stickney’s decisionmaking is reprehensible.

And here’s my favorite part — a footnote precisely describing the grammatical and other errors in that paragraph: 

Usually we do not comment on technical and grammatical errors, because anyone can make such an occasional mistake, but here the miscues are so egregious and obvious that an average fourth grader would have avoided most of them. For example, the word “principals” should have been “principles.” The word “vacatur” is misspelled. The subject and verb are not in agreement in one of the sentences, which has a singular subject (“incompetence”) and a plural verb  (“are”). Magistrate Judge Stickney is referred to as “it”  instead of “he” and  is called a “magistrate” instead of a “magistrate judge.”  And finally, the sentence containing the word “incompetence” makes no sense as a matter of standard English prose, so it is not reasonably possible to understand the thought, if any, that is being conveyed. It is ironic that the term “incompetence” is used here, because the only thing that is incompetent is the passage itself.

Put that in your pompom and shake it. 

It took me a minute to figure out what Robby was trying to say here.

Aye caramba! Who would want to watch his grandpa engage in sexual relations with a man in the hospital? 

Mason is on the right track, but both a period (after him) and a comma (after man) would help here. But a comma would be better than nothing. 

Reblogged from mister-rager.

Thank you! This illogical expression has frustrated me ever since I was a baby word nerd.

From anunexpectedterror.

Check out this cool cascading visual representation of Stephen Fry’s views on the lovability of language, and the idiocy of language pedants.  All delivered with a frothy and fantastic British accent.

Kinetic typography by RogersCreations, reblogged from roadtoenderheim.