{"id":2389,"date":"2017-02-14T14:03:12","date_gmt":"2017-02-14T20:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=2389"},"modified":"2021-01-24T16:19:36","modified_gmt":"2021-01-24T22:19:36","slug":"words-can-be-bullies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/effective-writing\/words-can-be-bullies\/","title":{"rendered":"Words Can Be Bullies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Words that start with the letter h<\/em> don\u2019t always act like it.<\/p>\n

Consider \u201cherb,\u201d when it means \u201can aromatic plant used for seasoning in cooking.\u201d Americans dump the h<\/em>, whereas many Brits pronounce it. So we say \u201can \u2019erb,\u201d but an Englishman says \u201ca h<\/em>erb.\u201d<\/p>\n

A different sort of h<\/em>-confusion happens when self-important speakers and writers say \u201can historic occasion\u201d or \u201can heroic soldier.\u201d Ever notice that \u201can\u201d only precedes a few highfalutin h<\/em>-words like \u201chistoric(al),\u201d \u201chypothetical,\u201d \u201challucinogenic\u201d? And they tend to have three or more syllables: \u201cAn heroic soldier\u201d is also \u201ca hero.\u201d<\/p>\n

About 20 years ago, Time magazine ran a front-cover headline beginning, \u201cA Historic\u2026\u201d and misguided word nerds raised a furor, insisting Time should have said \u201cAn Historic\u201d\u2014but the magazine never budged, stating flatly that \u201can historic\u201d is wrong.<\/p>\n

In everyday conversation, would you describe a wailing brat as \u201can hysterical child\u201d? I sincerely doubt it. But what makes \u201chysterical\u201d so different from \u201chistorical\u201d?<\/p>\n

A Google check yields tips from various websites, which only reinforce common sense: \u201cYou should use \u2018an\u2019 before a word beginning with an \u2018H\u2019 only if the \u2018H\u2019 is not pronounced\u201d (from the website wsu.edu\/~brians\/errors\/anhistoric.html<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Or this: \u201cyou use an<\/em> before vowel sounds\u2026Following this rule, we would say \u2018a historic,\u2019 not \u2018an historic\u2019 \u201d (betterwritingskills.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Or this one, which ought to seal the deal: \u201cI\u2019d love to hear a reasonable argument, based on logic and not convention, in support of \u2018an<\/em> historic\u2019\u2026given the prevalence of such similar constructions as \u2018a hotel downtown\u2019 and \u2018a high bar\u2019 and \u2018a hitman killed my dog\u2019 \u201d (ask.metafilter.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Pomposity often leads to tortured language. I remember lawyer-turned-sportscaster Howard Cosell, rest his troubled soul, and the way he regularly subjected professional athletes to his cruel and unusual polysyllabic punishment. In general, jocks are spoiled, semi-educated boors, and they know it, so the tug-of-war between them and Cosell was great theater.<\/p>\n

At its most sublime, it involved boxing champion Muhammad Ali. He and Howard made a great team, and there was genuine love and trust there. Whatever his faults, Cosell, perhaps at the risk of his own career, had taken up for the draft-evading Ali when the champ was something of a national pariah. (YouTube.com has many wonderful sequences of these two through the years.)<\/p>\n

Although there was a good Cosell, all too often we got Bad Howard, neurotically insecure, the one who knew he was kept at arm\u2019s length by these great physical geniuses\u2014and resented it. He knew they mocked him, not caring that Cosell had more knowledge of more subjects than all of them put together. So he would sometimes do perverse things, like the time he bullied a poor rookie football player from some Deep South ghetto. Bad Howard said something like: \u201cSo, my young friend, in your estimation, did the immensity of the task assigned you, juxtaposed with the metaphysical certainty of your callow demeanor, effectuate a lessened or heightened capacity on your part?\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not kidding. That\u2019s pretty close to what Howard said. As the kid listened, his eyes widened with terror and confusion, as if he were being swarmed by a raging horde of ruthless linebackers. I don\u2019t recall his answer.<\/p>\n

\u2014Tom Stern<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Words that start with the letter h don\u2019t always act like it. Consider \u201cherb,\u201d when it means \u201can aromatic plant used for seasoning in cooking.\u201d Americans dump the h, whereas many Brits pronounce it. So we say \u201can \u2019erb,\u201d but an Englishman says \u201ca herb.\u201d A different sort of h-confusion happens when self-important speakers and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,12,25,23,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adjectives-adverbs","category-effective-writing","category-humor","category-verbs","category-vocabulary"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}