Look and see
THE postbag has been filling up with observations, questions, and corrections. Keep them coming!
A versatile word
Quoth a Cromwell reader: ‘‘What a versatile word is look, with the help of sundry prepositions. We do not look up someone whom we look down on
[nor do we look up to them]. We may have to look out when crossing the street to look in on a friend. A narrow outlook may be improved by a good look round.
We may look forward to a pleasant event, unlike Robert Burns, whose poem To a Mouse concludes ‘‘But och! I backwards cast my ee/ On prospects drear,/ And forward though I canna see,/ I guess and fear’’. These lines show that other verbs of seeing can behave like look. You could sit on Charles Brasch’s memorial seat at Prospect Park to consider your prospects.
General words
The more uses that a general word (like look or see) has, the more prepositions it picks up, into phrases radiating out through life. The online OED project, garnering words and senses from all the Englishes that currently go on, let slip that it had needed a year to update the word go. ‘‘365 days for a 2letter word!’’ a journalist sniped. The caustic comment was silly; the more ways in which a word is used, the more work its uses need in the recording, splitting and lumping.
Word order
Mind you, the flexibility of general words does at times make me wonder what I mean, let alone other people. Context explains. Or situation, tone of voice, or habit. And wordorder. Reader Two instanced the mother who said to herself of her errant son: He does love me
really. Then noticed she had not
said He really does love me.
Almost opposite meanings from the same words.
Ullage
Reader Three liked the strange word ullage (from Old French ouillage, ‘‘little eye’’). This too means exact opposites: the ‘‘amount by which the contents of a cask fall short of filling it’’; and ‘‘the quantity of liquid remaining in a cask after leakage or evaporation etc’’. Context tells which meaning is intended.
Cheesy
In discussing the importance of cheese [June 7] I forgot to mention the cheesy smile. As Reader Four said: ‘‘A cheesy grin is a false, forced smile that speaks of guilt rather than pleasure’’.
Conga
He went on to correct my spelling ‘‘conger’’, for the dance. The conga was a Cuban dance which travelled, and somewhere got mixed up with the conger eel (which its shape resembles).
Conga derives from the Spanish-American for ‘‘Congolese dance’’: it was thought to have come from Africa, like jazz.
Good night
Then, apropos of ‘‘Goodbye’’, he said how in some regions two people who meet at night may say, not Hallo and/or Goodbye, but Good night. It covers both meeting and parting, in cordial fashion. ‘‘I wish you a good night, the next little chunk of your life.’’ Is it faintly oldfashioned, like Good day to you?
Phoning
If goodbyes are complex, so for a long time were the ways of starting off a phone call once invented, before hello established itself. Do you remember saying Are you there?
Or answering the ring by solemnly announcing your own number? Reader Five recommends a new book from the DPL (by Daniel Tammet) which tells amusingly how, from its invention onwards, the
Grammar of the Telephone has
varied.