A Shirt is a Shoit*

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It’s obviously not some earth-shattering or novel idea that words shift in meaning or usage over time, but this one has always seemed a bit odd to me: people use the term “button down” to refer to any men’s shirt with buttons. But traditionally, “button down” refers to the collar. A shirt with buttons on it is a “button up.” Or, you know, a “shirt.” As opposed to something like a “t-shirt.” This is bit similar to the phrase “gin martini” which I would like to believe is redundant, but might not be anymore.

Here’s someone who cares about this more than me.

*“I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit.” -Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest.

Clichés About Dogs That Have a Strong Basis in Reality

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While I generally (although not dogmatically) think you should avoid using clichés, some of them are accurate. Since we got a puppy, I can confirm the utility and accuracy of the following phrases:

  • Nipping at your heels
  • Let sleeping dogs lie
  • Follow you around like a puppy
  • Don’t bite the hand that feeds you

Moving the Goalposts

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Sometimes thought of as the opposite of a Texas Sharpshooter, “moving the goalposts” is a way of changing the criteria for proving the validity of an argument, often after they have already been met. As Rationalwiki points out that certain movements seem prone to doing it more than others, but I’ve seen this fallacy used by a lot of people. Listserve debates are a common place for this as a rhetorical tactic, although listserve debates are generally a great source of examples of every form of logical fallacy.

Vague & Ambiguous

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Vague and ambiguous are buddies. They are often used together, and people use them interchangeably. But while something can be both vague and ambiguous, the two are not synonyms:

  • Vague means unclear, or imprecise.
  • Ambiguous means capable of having at least 2 meanings.

Examples later.

Apologies for Length

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Often misattributed to Mark Twain, on the theory that everything witty can be plausibly attributed to him, this is a good thought to keep in mind: “I’m sorry about the length of this letter; I didn’t have time to write you a shorter one.” There are lots of variants, but a good summary of the phrase in English, attributing it as a translation from Pascal, is here.

Date Formats

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After stumbling over putting “2015” on the first dated item I wrote this year, a couple things occurred to me. First, while I usually have unnecessarily fervent views on stylistic choices, I don’t have a strong preference for the American or British convention for dates (month/day/year as opposed to day/month/year). The British way seems more logical (smallest to biggest) while the American way mimics the way most people say dates aloud. Second, I’ve never read a good explanation as to why the different conventions came about. If I were guessing wildly, a path-dependent story related to military convention in one of the world wars would be where I’d start, I think.

For date formats in prose, I think my preferred format for is “5 January 2015,” but I’m not sure I have a good, non-aesthetic reason for it.  It sounds overly robotic and bureaucratic if read aloud, but looks nicer on the page and separates numerals, which limits the danger of transposition in typing.

Three Sheets to the Wind

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A phrase which means “very drunk.” Its origins are nautical but contested. In one version, the “sheets” refer to chains or ropes which attach the sails to the boat. For them to be “to the wind” means the ship is falling over itself in the manner of a drunk. This means that there was a scale of how many sheets to the wind one could be. But another explanation is that the sheets means sails, and the key is not that there are three because three is a lot of sheets, but that three is an odd number. Even numbers of sails would be balanced, but odd numbers would not be. I don’t know either is right. The second link references another NY Times article that is a quick and fun read.