Bill Brohaugh - Everything You Know about English Is Wrong

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Brohaugh, William

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EVERYTHING

YOU KNOW ABOUT

BILL BROHAUGH

Digitized by the Internet Archivein 2018 with funding fromKahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/everythingyouknoOOOObroh

EVERYTHING

YOU KNOW ABOUT

IS

Why English aintfrom England,and aintaint a bad word

BILL BROHAUGH

Sourcebooks, Inc!

Naperville, Illinois

Copyright 2008 by William Brohaugh

Cover and internal design 2008 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

Front cover design by Nu-Image DesignCover photo by Nu-Image Design

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks ofSourcebooks, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in anyform or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systemsexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviewswithout permission inwriting from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritativeinformation in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold withthe understanding that the publisher is not engaged in renderinglegal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice orother expert assistance is required, the services of a competentprofessional person should be sought.From a Declaration ofPrinciples Jointly Adopted by a Committee of the American BarAssociation and a Committee of Publishers and Associations

All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respectiveholders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product orvendor in this book.

Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410(630) 961-3900Fax: (630) 961-2168www.sourcebooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataBrohaugh, William.

Everything you know about English is wrong / by Bill Brohaugh.p. cm.

1. English languageEtymology. 2. English languageHistory. 3.English languageTerms and phrases. 4. English languageUsage. I. Title.

PE1574.B63 2006

422-UC22

2007046889

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

BG 10 987654321

Dedication

Howz mom 'nm?

Thank you, Gary Burbank, for giving radio voice these past twentyyears to my wackiest thoughts. I am honored and thrilled on thoseoccasions when I can make you laugh, sirbecause you have mademe laugh so much harder.

And given that The Gary Burbank Show is a community, Imhonored to also bow graciously to Burbank writers who havebecome more than challenging colleagues, but also fast friends, inalphabetical order ranked according to their smell: John Bunyan,Tim Mizak, Jim Probasco, Mary Tom Watts, Kevin Wolfe.

I must be off.

Acknowledgments

My gratitude to

Jack Heffron for his first recognition of this books possibilities

Annie Sisson for not questioning why her husband kept chortlingfervently at the keyboard at odd hours of the night

Sandra Bond for laughing at mostly the right times (at the book,anyway) and subsequently selling the book anyway

Dennis Chaptman for friendship and for challenging me to surrealistic humor extremes with his own surrealism

Shakespeare for spelling it theater and to me for getting out of thetheater biz just in time

Mad magazine and, independently, Jay Ward of Rocky andBullwinkle fame, for perhaps shaping my preadolescent sense ofhumor too damn much, as well as Richard Armour (and mostlyRichard Armour) and the style of written humor that tickled andpropelled me at an impressionable age (who else could demonstrate that footnotes could be rollickingly funny?)

And, oh yeah, to Green Acres. I suspect I may be the first to thankGreen Acres in a books front matter, but as far as humor goes,Green Acres is the place to be.

Introduction

The English language is nobodys special property. It is theproperty of the imagination: it is the property of the languageitself.

Derek Walcott

Never trust a bookstore employee who, when asked where to findetymology and word books, leads you to the word-search puzzlerack.

In the true story that prompted this advice, I stared at the pulp-paper acrostics and cryptograms and crosswords. Though a bitflummoxed, I realized that I should forgive this earnest associate.After all, English itself is, in a broad sense, a word puzzle, and likeboth those puzzles and the queries of where the etymology sectionof the bookstore is, sometimes people try hard yet come up withwrong answers. Our understanding of Englishits history, itsrules, its useis often misconceived, misguided, misinformed, orbased on some lie someone told us, probably via email, cuz it madea good story.

Yet, what a wondrous language. Puzzle me this language always,despite its inherent confounderies.

Yes, English is Swiss'-cheesed with pitfalls, almost all of ourown fermenting. Yes, there are 512.6 ways to pronounce the letter

Bill Brohaugh

viii

combination o-u-g-h from through to tough to cough to plough tojlough to Brohough (a branch of my family). Yes, English is knownkto khave kmore kpotential ksilent kletters kthan kactual kones.Yes, we confuse our own spelling by respecting the languages weborrow from to the point of retaining both original spelling andpronunciation2 (for example, we spell rendezvous and say ron-day-voo but we dont write rondayvu or say wren-dees-vows). Yes, thewhole language is, in modern terms, a mash-up that allows slangwords like mash-up and slang to not only enter the language but alsobecome living, vibrant vocabulary. Yes, English is distended withexceptions, oddities, antiquities, fossils, distractions, oxymorons,shifts, speed bumps, flipflops, flummeries, and words with therehomonym3 disasters. And, yes yes yes, everything you know aboutEnglish is wrong because of all the above.