A ------ of iPhones

The other day my sister asked what the collective noun should be for iPhones (there was a pile of them on the table), and I couldn't think of one.

Just as there is a pride of lions and a murder of crows, there are all sorts of odd collective nouns hanging around the language - for example a nonethriving of jugglers.

Once*, several British Prime Ministers past and present were gathered together and somebody asked what the collective noun should be for such a meeting. Harold Macmillan suggested that they should be called a lack of principles.

Anyway, if anyone can come up with a collective noun for iPhones, please leave it in the comments. An imaginary prize will be awarded for the best.

Am I doing this right?

*The details of this story vary enormously but they all seem to agree that it was Macmillan who came up with the bon mot.

Taliban Classes

Taliban means students, but class means called to battle.


Taliban means students. There's an Arabic word tālib, meaning student, and, if you make that into a Pashtun plural, you get taliban. This is because the Taliban were, originally, just a small group of religious students who wanted to clean up Kandahar. They then got carried away, as capering students often do, and invaded Kabul.

Class, on the other hand, means those called to fight. There was a Proto Indo European word *kele, that meant, shout. From that the Romans got the verb calare, meaning call to arms. The early Roman population were always getting called to arms. When there were calared, the male population would form up as a c[a]lassis, and set off to find some Sabine women to rape.

The Roman king Servius Tullius divided the Romans into six classes so that he could tax them more efficiently, and so classis then came to mean a group. A classis could still be a military group like an army or a fleet, in the same way that an English division can still be military. But class could just be a part of a whole. Thus a school or a society could be broken up into classes, and the animal kingdom could be classified.

Incidentally, the reason that they are classified ads, is that they are arranged by subject, just as the Roman subjects were arranged for battle.

The Inky Fool found cross-dressing was much less fun in Kabul

The Duck-Billed Platypus

The platypus is a strange creature. When a specimen was first sent back to Europe from the eldritch antipodes it was widely thought to be a fake that had been stitched together from the parts of other animals. But the Inky Fool is interested only in words.

First, some irritating people insist upon latinising their plurals. I have deplored and condemned this habit already. But platypus is one of those lovely cases where latinising leaves the pedant with linguistic egg upon his face. The plural would not and could not be platypi. The word is Greek in origin and the plural would therefore be platypodes, or flatfoots.

Secondly, I have already written of how telegrammists paid by the word, and how this changed their prose style. Pennies sharpen the mind and the nib. Probably the most efficient telegram ever written was on the subject of the humble flatfoot. A platypus is a kind of monotreme. Monotremes are very odd mammals, if indeed they are mammals at all. The platypus is venomous (the poison comes out of a spur on its ankle) and can locate its dinner using electricity. They were also rumoured to lay eggs, but nobody was sure of this until 1884 when a naturalist called W.H.Caldwell found a platypus nest. He was terribly excited, but he was also in Australia and wanted to get the news back to a proper country as soon and as cheaply as possible so he sent a four word telegram:

Monotremes oviparous, ovum meroblastic.

Which means: platypuses lay eggs and within those eggs the young is formed from only a part of the yolk.

Thirdly, one of the greatest poems in the English language was written about a platypus. It is by Lord Patrick Barrington and describes the dazzling career of a duck-billed platypus in the British Foreign Office. The first stanza runs thusly:

I had a duck-billed platypus when I was up at Trinity,
With whom I soon discovered a remarkable affinity.
He used to live in lodgings with myself and Arthur Pervis,
and we all went up together for the Diplomatic Service.
I had a certain confidence, I own, in his ability,
He mastered all the subjects with remarkable facility;
And Purvis, though more dubious, agreed that was clever,
But no one else imagined he had any chance whatever.

And you can read the rest here.

Finally, what do you get if you feed a mallard to a cat?

A duck-filled fatty-puss.

We Few, We Lesser Few

Just in case you didn't know (and I'm sure you did) if you have fewer pints you have less beer. You cannot have fewer beer and you cannot drink less pints.

If you are talking about items that you can count - one, two, three, four - you use fewer (in mathematics this is called a discrete variable). If you are talking about an amount you use less. With that in mind, from the sullen quagmire of the Dear Dogberry page comes this query from Eleus:

The other day I wrote a comparison of Mozart and Schumann (not just for fun). The whole essay was coming together really well, except for one sentence that I just couldn't resolve.



I wanted to say something along these lines: "Schumann was born less than 20 years after the death of Mozart". But I had a sneaking suspicion that it should have been "fewer than 20 years", and it niggled at me for hours until I went back and re-wrote the paragraph so I didn't have to say it that way at all.


Still, I'm a bit befuddled.


I know that we say there is "less time" - but years are finite, aren't they, so surely it's "fewer years". What happens then if the years aren't whole years? For instance what if he was born 19 and a half years after Mozart - is that really "fewer"? - because it seems more of a continuum to me.

Or what if one person has 3 litres of water and someone else has only 2.9 litres of water. I know the second person has less liquid but do they really have fewer litres?



I've been thinking the issue over so much it's become obnubilated and I just can't straighten it out.


Am I making a simple thing complicated?

Well, Eleus, I think that in your wisdom you have pretty much answered your own question. It would be "less than a year" because, though a year is a discrete variable, the time that you are now subtracting from it is not, it is an amorphous amount. The same, I think, applies to twenty years.
 
This could not be said of "less than twenty people", which would be wrong because you could only subtract one person at a time from the crowd.
 
Just to be complicated. If, rather than using years, you were using markers of a year's passing (like winters) you would need to use to fewer. Schumann was born fewer than twenty winters after Mozart's death, but less than twenty years.

There's a Cowboy Junkies song about a long marriage that goes "It's been thirty summers that I've spent with him", meaning not that they spend winters apart, but that they've been married thirty years. Had their marriage been shorter, they would have spent fewer summers together. As Wordsworth put it:

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters!

I hope that clears it up.

Incidentally, I love obnubilated, which, dear reader, means beclouded.

Obnubilated

P.S. I'm sorry that this reply has taken so long, I am now back in England and clearing the backtwig (which is like a backlog, but smaller).

Apostrophes and 'Bus[es]

I used to have a teacher who apostrophised everything. That's not to say that he talked to inanimate objects, at least to not to my knowledge. It was not the rhetorical apostrophisation, turning from the audience to address a city or a table or somesuch (London, can you wait?). No, it was turning away part of a word and replacing it with an apostrophe. He wrote a lot of notices that would refer to the 'phone and the 'papers, the punctuation point standing in for the missing tele and news. The habit was at the same time wondrously fastidious and gloriously silly. It would be fun to continue it to its logical conclusion: lunch' as a shortening of luncheon, fo'rt'night as a shortening of fourteen nights and 'bus as shortening for the macaronic voiture omnibus introduced by Monsieur Laffitte to the weary streets of Paris in 1820.

Technically, if you did consider 'bus to be an abbreviation, the plural would be bus as well as omnibus is simply the dative plural of the Latin omnus, meaning everybody. It was a car for everybody. So it wouldn't pluralize to bi as it was already plural.

Mind you, I used to know a jentacular chap who insisted that porridge was a plural as it was a shortening of porridge oats. So "How are your porridge?" "My porridge are delicious, thank you."

Speaking of macaronic buses:

WHAT is this that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!
Implet in the Corn and High
Terror me Motoris Bi:
Bo Motori clamitabo
Ne Motore caedar a Bo--
Dative be or Ablative
So thou only let us live:
Whither shall thy victims flee?
Spare us, spare us, Motor Be!
Thus I sang; and still and still anigh
Came in hordes Motores Bi,
Et complebat omne forum
Copia Motorum Borum.
How shall wretches live like us
Cincti Bis Motoribus?
Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos!
   - A.D. Godley 1914

That was terribly funny if you know a little Latin. If you don't and it wasn't, then I shall tell you what I used to tell my teacher: that I'm terribly sorry and will do better Next Time. Though I never did.

Next Time used to be such an important idea: a gleaming and better othertime, like an old man's memories.

Data, Singulars and Plurals

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world...

I nearly spilled my coffee all over the Sunday Times article. A typo? No.

Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away...

I know all about the notion that data is plural. I have seen the complaints; but I had never before seen data used as a plural outside of the pages of a style guide. It's like graffiti: any Italian will tell you it's plural and so will Fowler and his ilk, but nobody writes like that. I mean style guides are all very pleasant to read, but nobody, I thought, acted on them. Data is there to complain about, not actually pluralise.

Data is one of those words that have been picked out at random for special pleading. It is, in Latin, a second declension neuter plural nomintative. But the same argument is never made about agenda and stamina, both of which are also Latin plurals. Nobody ever says, 'My stamina are failing,' nor does any pedant or grammarian suggest that one should. There's a list of 55 Latin plurals here.

Gallows was originally a plural (because a gallows is made from several pieces of wood or galgi). But the word was already singular in Shakespeare's time (the gallows is built stronger than the church).

I even used to know an enthusiastic scholar of breakfasts who insisted that porridge was plural as it was a shortening of porridge oats: so 'How are your porridge?'

Etymology is no guide to number, and the grammar of a dead and foreign tongue cannot be applied to English (otherwise you would have to say "interpretations of the datorum vary" (it is strange that the rules tend to stretch to the little learning of the pedant)). Fjords would have to be fjorder, as in the Norwegian. When discussing Alans Hansen and Shearer you would have to go further and discover what the Hindi plural of pundit is.

We would all have to return to proto Indo-European grammar and there would be a great hush.

People write angry letters to the paper when data is singular, but the reader receives a strange jolt when the word is plural. One maniac correspondent wrote "I rebel at the phrase 'the data shows' which has become well-nigh universal", which means I suppose that he is reacting against the universe. If a usage is universal, it is correct. Fowler said that the word was 'plural only', but that was half a century ago. One might as well insist that the second person singular be thou.

The truth?

All of this comes under one simple rule that Bill Bryson and Kingsley Amis both agree on: number in English grammar is controlled by thought.

A gin and tonic is a drink, despite there being two nouns, because the drink is a single idea. One could conceivably say that gin and tonic are both ingredients in a gin and tonic, but it would be awkward. Fish and chips is a meal. Law and order (if considered as a single idea) is breaking down. The long and the short of it IS that:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps [singular] into this petty place

The Telegraph is therefore correct to write that "ministers have insisted that the Olympics is 'on budget'", because the budget would be for the games as a whole: a single idea.

Conversely, a singular noun can be treated as a plural. The couple are in love with each other. One could not reasonably say that the couple is in love with itself. The National Youth Orchestra are all in their teens, but the National Youth Orchestra is 61 years old. It depends how you're thinking about it/them.

Data is singular so long as I consider it so and plural when the whim strikes me. Teams, orchestras, armies, quintets, convocations, councils, countries, sets, groups, flocks, herds, prides and opera must bend  and bow to my ineffable will.

There is, of course, mistakes in number. Often a writer forgets, after a subordinate clause, how many subjects their verb had.  People forget that neither or nor nor give the plural. There are cases, occasional and rare - perhaps once in a century, that requires that two words distant in meaning cannot reasonably be considered a single idea. I even noticed in a previous post that I had made a country singular and then plural with no reason for the change, a shift that Fowler rightly objects to.

As a bit of trivia (another second declension nominative neuter plural), plus, being a preposition, does not change the number of a noun. One and one are two, but one plus one is two. "Tom, plus his friends, has arrived."

And then there are those confused serpents like Mr Fry who think that none has to be singular. It does not. Evidence and video are to be found in my previous post here.

How many legs?

P.S. There's a Polish word that's plural but used as a singular in English, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. Anybody?

Minding your p's and q's

Almost everybody knows that it is wrong to use apostrophes before an ‘s’ which denotes a plural rather than a possessive. So it is “breakfasts” and “tomatoes”, not “breakfast’s” (which I saw on a sign yesterday) or “tomato’s”.

But what about plurals of words made up of initial letters, like “GCSE” or “CEO”? (Incidentally, these should – strictly speaking – be referred to as initialisms, rather than acronyms – see explanation below)*. Does the same rule still apply?

I think it does, but perhaps not so strongly. A reference to “CD’s” or “MP’s” may not stand out so clearly as being wrong as “tomato’s”, but the apostrophe is still unnecessary – the lower case “s” is on its own enough to denote the plural. The Economist’s online style guide, in its section on acronyms, recommends using a regular lower-case “s”, with no apostrophe in sight. The same – and here The Economist is explicit – holds true for decades, so it is “the 1990s”, not “the 1990’s”.

Things get a little more complicated when it comes to plurals of single letters. Here the authorities do not agree. The Times style guide advises that “an apostrophe should be used to indicate the plural of single letters - p's and q's”**. This is presumably to avoid confusion with two-letter words (or initialisms) ending in "s", like "ps", "as" or "is",

But, although a recent Sunday Times feature followed this format, a Times column earlier this month referred to “Ps and Qs”. A similar discrepancy can be found between a recent article from the Daily Mail (“Ps and Qs”) and one from its sister paper, the Mail on Sunday (“p’s and q’s”). This suggests that with plurals of single letters, either format will do – upper case letters with no apostrophe, or lower case letters with an apostrophe.

* An acronym is made up of initials, or first syllables, of other words, and is pronounced as if it were a word – like NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) or Unicef (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund). With an initialism like CD, MP, GCSE or CEO, each of the initials is pronounced separately.

** The etymology of this phrase, which means “to be careful or particular in one's words or behaviour; to mind one's manners”, is mysterious; The Phrase Finder discusses it at some length. Some people think it stems from advice to apprentice typesetters or children learning to write (not muddling up two similar-looking letters), but it has also been suggested that it comes from “pints and quarts” or “pleases and thank-yous”.

(Picture from a Walk in the WoRds)

The Sartorial Singular

I have just received an email inviting me to buy Christmas presents at Sweaty Betty, which for the uninitiated is a shop selling fashionable sports and fitness clothes for women - in some cases so beautifully designed that customers are inspired to take up certain sports simply for the opportunity to wear the clothes.

One item in particular caught my eye: the "unwind pant". Pants, of course, is an American word for what the British call trousers. Although it is still considered an Americanism, it is gaining ground in Britain for terms referring to sportswear. "Sweatpants" is far more common than the unpleasant-sounding "sweat trousers". "Jogging pants" and "tracksuit pants", meanwhile, are used about half as frequently as "jogging trousers" and "tracksuit trousers" - although "bottoms", as in "jogging bottoms" and "tracksuit bottoms", remains the most popular word by a wide margin.

But it was not the word "pant" in itself, nor the use of the verb "unwind" as an adjective which struck me - it was the use of the singular. I have never referred to a "pant" or a "trouser", any more than I would use "a glass" to mean a pair of spectacles - it is always "pants" or "a pair of pants". "Pants" is what is known as a plurale tantum - a word that only ever appears in the plural form - and "pant" is a bizarre and grammatically incorrect back-formation.

However, the use of the fashion singular - identified here by the wonderful Hadley Freeman, although even she seems uncertain about the word "pant" - is becoming more and more common, mostly in marketing and advertising copy (as in the Gap advert above) but also in the words of designers themselves. We can probably expect to hear more about "the pant", "the trouser" and "the legging", although I hope that we will be spared "the bottom", at least in reference to sportswear.

A week or so ago I surprised myself by using the word "jean" in the singular - something like "that's a nice jean", or "I like a jean with a high waist". Thus fashion-speak insinuates itself into everyday life.

* Curiously, the only recent reference I have found to "sweat trousers" appears in a Financial Times fashion review).