Word of the Day: Obverse

I often edit academic writing, and one of the perks of doing so, besides learning about subjects I didn’t get the chance to take classes on, is running across words I have never seen before. I mean, you can discover new words in any kind of writing, but there’s usually a higher chance of doing so in specialized writing, like academic writing, than in mainstream writing. I said writing four times in that sentence. Holy cow, lady, buy a thesaurus. 

I read a lot, so coming across words with which I’m completely unfamiliar doesn’t happen that often. (Coming across words with which I’m vaguely familiar but unsure enough about that I need to check the dictionary to make sure they’re being used correctly, on the other hand, happens ALL THE TIME.) So my reaction to a new word goes something like this: 

Me: What the heck, “obverse”? What does that mean? That is so not a word. What was this writer thinking? He made this up and I will prove it.

Me: *fetches dictionary*

Me: Yes, lalala, flipping through pages, I love this dictionary, look at all these wooorrds, I have the best job, okay, here are the O’s, it’ll come after objurgation, after obstreperous…

Me: Oh. Obverse. There you are.

Me: Coooooolll. 

So! Obverse is totally a word! And it’s a pretty neat word, too. It can be an adjective or a noun, and it means “facing the observer or opponent,” “having the base narrower than the top,” “opposite”; the front side of a coin, “a counterpart having the opposite orientation or force,” or “a proposition inferred immediately from another by denying the opposite of what the given proposition affirms.”*

Some in-use examples of obverse:

I stood obverse to my foe, both our swords raised, ready to begin.

The leaves of a four-leaf clover are obverse.

On the color wheel, red is the obverse of green.

The obverse of a quarter features the face of George Washington.

“The obverse of ‘all A is B’ is ‘no A is not B.’”**

These leaves are totes obverse, y’all.

There’s also a regular adverbial form, obversely, though evidently Microsoft Word doesn’t like it. Eh, it also doesn’t like “objurgation.” Fussy.

What new words have you learned lately?

*Definitions taken from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 11^th edition, page 857.

**Also taken from Merriam-Webster.

Punctuation and Grammar and Usage, Oh My! Part 2: As

Reader, beware! There’s a perfectly innocuous preposition out there waiting to trip you up with its quiet ambiguity. 

The culprit: as. This lovely little word, elegant in its simplicity, has caused me more headaches while editing than any other preposition. (Probably. I’m side-eying you hard, among and between.) 

The problem with as is that it’s acquired three equally valid meanings: like, because, and while. This happens in language all the time. Words take on new meanings, sometimes shedding their old meanings and sometimes hanging on to more than one. Sometimes they even end up meaning precisely the opposite of their original usage. But, as in the case with as, this scenario can cause confusion. Allow me to demonstrate.

Here’s a sentence using as to mean like:

I dressed for the party as you did. 

Here’s a sentence using as to mean because:

I dressed for the party as you did.

Here’s a sentence using as to mean while:

I dressed for the party as you did.

Okay, maybe I’m stretching a bit there, since the likelihood of each meaning varies slightly; if I encountered this sentence “in the wild” I would probably assume that this as meant while—but maybe like. The because meaning would be more likely if there were a comma after party. But most of my clues would have to come from context, and it would be far easier on the reader to replace as with one of its clearer synonyms. 

Usage prescriptivists will be quick to point out that replacing as with like willy-nilly is a crime against the language, because the two actually have separate uses, or at least they did until a cigarette commercial messed everything up. (More on that in a later post.) In general, I’m a prescriptivist myself, but in this case, I prefer clarity to textbook correctness. Editors and writers must choose their language with the reader in mind, because clarity—or, more specifically, communication—is the highest calling of language. 

So be careful with as. It's a slippery little stinker. 

Do you have any usage questions that have been bugging you? Ask me in the comments—I’ll comment back if it’s a simple fix or do a post if it requires more depth (or is too awesome not to post about).

Words I Love: Gerard Manley Hopkins

I finally ordered myself a copy of Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works, which I have been coveting for weeks. Hopkins is my favorite poet (except when my favorite poet is Tennyson. They trade off) but very few people have read him. He was a Victorian, but he wasn’t published until the twentieth century, partially because his poetry hardly resembles any of his contemporaries’. He wrote primarily using “sprung rhythm,” a rhythm system he made up himself, using stressed and non-stressed syllables to determine line length. Much of his poetry was about “inscape,” also a term he invented, which concerns the true nature and purpose that lies inside everything, from animals to sunsets to people. 

One of the reasons I love Hopkins is that his poems are incredibly dense. He chooses words that can have multiple meanings in the context he shapes. Take the first few lines of “No worst, there is none”:

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, 

More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.

“Pitch” conjures up a number of images: the act of throwing; a note of music or the act of tuning a musical instrument; tar/resin; the phrase “pitch black.” Hopkins wraps these images into a single phrase, layering them, giving his words an incredible richness. It may take a while to unpack all the meanings, but the effort is well worth it.

The sound of his words is wonderful, too. He uses lots of alliteration and internal rhyme; his words taste like honey on the tongue, warm and slow and thick. Try reading some Hopkins aloud and see if it doesn’t make you want to write better!

Hopkins’ poetry ranges between ecstatic joy and blackest despair (yet another reason to love him—the acuity with which he portrays a range of emotion). I'll leave you with one of his “Bright sonnets,” my current favorite.

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; 

All is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

What do you think? Do you like Hopkins’s poetry? Who is your favorite poet?

Punctuation and Grammar and Usage, Oh My! Part 1

Confession: I am obsessed with punctuation. I adore it. I agonize over it. I have had a favorite punctuation mark since I was fourteen years old. (The semicolon. I love the semicolon like I love my dog.) And my favorite thing about punctuation is that a single, tiny mark can completely change the meaning of an entire sentence. 

Not all punctuation is this important, of course. In many cases a choice in punctuation isn’t a big deal. For example, I could have put a comma after “in many cases,” since those three words form an introductory adverbial phrase.* But I didn’t, because it’s optional and I didn’t want the pause.

But that last sentence—take a careful look—brings me to a punctuation question that is capable of sending me into raptures. This is the question of whether or not to put a comma before a “because” clause that follows a negative statement.** 

In other words, which of these sentences is punctuated correctly?

I didn’t go to the dance, because my suit was yellow.

I didn’t go to the dance because my suit was yellow.

Trick question! The answer is, it depends on whether or not this person attended the dance. The first one implies that they didn’t.*** The second implies that they did. 

When my Basic Editing Skills professor went over this question, I was baffled. It took me the full hour to catch on. So let me explain. The first one is fairly straightforward. This person didn’t go to the dance, and the reason they didn’t go was that they only have one suit and it is yellow, and for some reason that is a problem. Psshh. You would have rocked it, dude. Get over yourself.  

The second sentence implies that this person did attend the dance, but that they did so not because their suit was yellow, but rather for some unknown reason, like that they wanted to show off their new neon dreads. Hopefully, for the sake of clarity, the person who writes the second sentence follows up immediately with a clarifying sentence:

I didn’t go to the dance because my suit was yellow. I went because I wanted to show off my new neon dreads. 

See the difference? And it all hinges on that one little comma. How cool is that?? This is me in raptures over punctuation, people. 

Of course, it would be clearer, in the second case, for the author to retool the sentence so that the negative falls in the second half rather than being stuck to the verb, but honestly, who’s going to write

I went to the dance, not because my suit was yellow, but because I wanted to show off my new neon dreads. 

Um, no one. Fine, maybe John F. Kennedy. 

So the comma picks up the slack, for the win. You’re awesome, comma. Thanks for being a bro.

Do you have any punctuation questions that have been bugging you? Ask me in the comments—I’ll comment back if it’s a simple fix or do a post if it requires more depth (or is too awesome not to post about). 

*Chicago (16^th ed) 6.36, “Commas with introductory adverbial phrases.”

** Chicago (16^th ed.) 6.31, “Comma following main clause.”

***I’m a fan of using “they” as a generic singular pronoun, but I understand if this hurts your soul, and I apologize. I thought about using “he” here, but I have a female friend who would totally rock a yellow suit. Yes, Bridey, I’m talking about you.