Saturday, December 13, 2008

Bald Faced Lie

Today, while researching the phrase "bold faced" to see if I could use it to mean "extremely candid," I found that there are actually three similar phrases that all mean the same thing (brazen, shameless, etc.).

However, two of them, "bald faced" and "bare faced," refer to being uncovered or unconcealed whereas "bold face" indicates someone daring enough to lie to someone's face or is a description of attention-grabbing typesetting.

For whatever reason, the WikiAnswers article claims that bald or bare faced is the most appropriate and, of the two, bare is preferred.

I went with bald faced because that was the first one that came to mind when I was writing and it accurately describes the clever thinking behind New Orleans' Prospect.1 Biennial as a giant ad promoting tourism to the city.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

For All Intensive Purposes

Only sometime last year (and I think I'm not alone here) did I realize that the phrase isn't about some super intense purposes but rather about "intents and purposes." Probably some legalese so that you know it covers both.

There's actually something satisfying about that way of talking, being extremely thorough and long-winded. It's pretty much the opposite of how we communicate these days.

It's already happened to me where someone uses a crazy version of an acronym and I have no idea what they're talking about. Most recently it was Leti using "LULZIE" in place of "LOL."

The line between using that type of language ironically to make fun of it and naturally as part of everyday speech has all but disappeared. Which just means that life is more annoying and I am more of a curmudgeon.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Minus Swell

This blog (along with many painfully hilarious stories) really owes its origins to a certain ex-bf who thought that the phrase "might as well" was "minus swell." I somehow extrapolated a surfing reference from it, but really it is a pretty unpoetic phrase made nonsensical by the misinterpretation.

How do weird phrases like "might as well" happen? English is full of these little sayings that are untranslatable, relying on nothing words to say something in one of those tenses that you only use when you mean, "kinda maybe sorta." It's amazing that we can communicate at all, hence my growing belief in nonverbal communication.

The less said, the better.

Grin and Bare It

Ok, this is the first post, inspired by Doug IM-ing me, "I think I found another thing that I've gotten wrong forever."

It nicely illustrates what we can call, "Malapropisms that are maybe even better than the correct word or phrase."

Here's the definition:

To accept an unpleasant or difficult situation because there is nothing you can do to improve it. I don't want to spend the whole weekend working but I guess I'll just have to grin and bear it.

But the idea of getting naked makes whatever unpleasantness you're talking about that much more uncomfortable. Unless you're a nudist.