Copy Edit du Jour

They sampled delicious tomato tartar.

Changed to:

They sampled delicious tomato tartare.

Mmmm. Delicious tartar. (Yuck.)

And for anyone who simply must know more about tartar, tartare, Tartars, and mayonnaise-based fish sauces, the Web has you covered.

Just When I Thought I Knew Every Possible Reason to Dislike Merriam-Webster ...

... I learned that, according to Merriam Webster, we copy editors don't copy edit. We copyedit.

I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying it's gross, unseemly, disorienting, and disturbing. Other dictionaries let me copy edit, why can't Merriam?

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional, cleverly named series on words I'm looking up

teabagger

In a recent column on healthcare, Paul Krugman wrote that "the teabaggers have come and gone."

I've been hearing variations on this word a lot in the last few years, but not like that. Not like that at all.

Usually, the term is uttered by a Jon Stewart or a Seth Rogen and received by snickering twentysomethings privy to all kinds of filthy new figures of speech. I've resisted the temptation to look up the Stewart-Rogenesque form of the word because, well, I don't know. Maybe I'm getting too old for Beavis and Butthead humor. I certainly hope not.

But when a Princeton professor and New York Times columnist uses "teabagger," well, that lends some academic legitimacy to my search for truth.

But here's the thing: Neither Webster's New World online, American Heritage online, nor Merriam-Webster online contains an entry for "teabagger," nor for "teabag" or "tea bag" as a verb.

Which leaves readers like me with no better resource for understanding Krugman's comment than UrbanDictionary.com's definition of the verb "to teabag."

Hey, I wonder if there's an old Beavis and Butthead episode on ...

Now THAT'S Etymology

I've never found word origins very interesting. Every once in a while, I'll wonder how we ended up with a word like "shampoo," so I'll look it up to see that it comes from a Hindi word meaning "to massage."

But for the most part, in those moments when I'm feeling both intellectually curious and energetic enough to do something about it, I'd much rather learn about chemistry or geology or modern French or credit default swaps than the points A, B, and C that one of our words passed through. (It probably has to do with my aversion to history and linear time in general.)

Today, however, I make an exception. It's a passage I came across in "The Omnivore's Dilemma" in a chapter about corn.

"The shelled cobs were burned for heat and stacked by the privy as a rough substitute for toilet paper. (Hence the American slang term "corn hole.")

Now that's etymology.

Whom Can We Rely On, New York Times?

In this New York Times grammar quiz, the failure to use "whom" is actually counted as an error of sorts in the question 7 in the passage: "If we can’t rely on the marketers or the government or even the nutritionists to guide us through the supermarket woods, then who can we rely on?"

The reason, the Times says, is that: "If the correct grammar — in this case, 'whom' — sounds stuffy, we should try to find a deft way to rephrase a sentence to make it both fluid and correct."

The key word is "try," which means it's not mandatory, which means the sentence is fine as-is.

The only alternative would be to consider "to rely on" off limits in interrogative uses like this.

Weird.

Great Moments in Copy Editing

Admission is $17 for adults, $10 for children ages 5 to 12. One child per adult under 5 is complimentary.

Copy Edit du Jour

The school receives funding from the Jones Foundation, which is dedicated to fostering lifelong learning.

changed to:

... which promotes lifelong learning.

Again, it’s a newspaper thang.