Riassunto esame Lingua Inglese II, prof. Piotti, libro consigliato Horrible Words, Gowers

CHAPTER I – Slipslops

A slipslop is the accidental misuse of a word for another. The term refers to Mrs. Slipslop, a character from a Henry Fielding's novel who mistakes words such as virulent for violent.

In English, there are also caricatures of these mistakes called malapropisms after Mrs. Malaprop, a character in a Sheridan's play who mistakes allegory for alligator and pineapple for pinnacle.

Despite scholars regarding slipslops in a negative way, these word swaps can make sense: parameter, for perimeter, still maintains the sense of boundary, and superfluous is as clear as surplus. Some word swaps which are now widespread in the English language are not considered mistakes anymore: for example, brothel was used to mean a prostitute but acquired a new meaning after coming in contact with the Italian bordello.

CHAPTER II – Folk etymologies

Some scholars resist to words picking up new meaning because they believe that their roots should be definitive. For example, when

We refer to its Latin origin, condone means to forgive, not to allow.

Folk etymology happens whenever a word changes its form. An example of this phenomenon is the Old English word shamefast, which was created by linking together the word shame and the idea of fastness: this new word meant "caught by shame" and has remained in the language to indicate a person with blushing checks.

The phrase upside down first appeared as "up-swa-doune", but then evolved into "up set downe" and "upset downe".

While hiccups is a word we use in every day communication, the more recent form of the word is instead hiccoughs, which exists since the 17th century.

Even the word honeymonth was replaced with the older honeymoon, which, rather than a month's time, refers to the quality of the moon being changeable and therefore to the difficulty in saying how long two people might like each other after marriage.

CHAPTER III - Conversion and verbifying

Words with more

than one meaning can occur both as nouns and verbs. A word can in fact start as one class of word and then begin to be used as another in a process of word-class conversion. The word cloud started as a noun, meaning "a pile of rocks" or "a hill", and then became "a heap in the sky", while in the 16 century it was converted into a verb meaning "to darken".

In English there are also nouns converted from verbs, such as disturb or disconnect. Some scholars do not accept the noun fail in certain expressions like "epic fail", while they allow it in the phrase "without fail".

Another trend in word-class conversions is the use of nouns in place of adjectives, which can actually cause some confusion in double meanings. A headline in the Guardian read as "Let's see some babyboomer rage about generation jobless?": in this sentence babyboomer can be intended both as "an unspecified individual" or

“an unspecified quantity of”.

CHAPTER IV - Back formations and ize-mania

A back formation is a word derived from another word in a way that might give the impression of the derivative word having come first. The noun burglar precedes the verb to burgle, the noun shoplifter precedes the verb shoplift and the adjective greedy came before greed.

Among English speakers, it remains the idea that verbs derive from nouns: to emote from emotion, to spectate from spectator, to choreograph from choreography.

Ize-mania is the phenomenon of creating new verbs by adding the suffix -ise/-ize. The verb to burgle came up in Britain at the time another verb, to burglarize, came up in North America: this second from arrived into British english without becoming popular. The verb to jeopard, from jeopardy, soon declined when the American jeopardize came into British English.

While verbs formed by adding the suffx -ise/-ize can be seen as lightweight, some are normalized in the language: finalise, prioritise,

CHAPTER V - Past tense

Regular verbs form the past tense and the past participle by adding the suffix -ed, while some verbs are less regular (thing gives thought, drink dives drank).

In Modern English, it is normal to use both forms for some verbs, such as burnt and burned, and quit and quitted.

Some scholars despise irregular forms and blame this change on Americanization: in British English, the past tense of dive is usually dived, while in American English is dove. However, some verbs follow the irregular form in British English, rather than in American English, such as snuck and sneaked for the verb to sneak.

CHAPTER VI - Transitivity

Another way to misuse a verb is to take one that is either transitive or intransitive (but not both) and use it the wrong way round. A transitive verb has one direct object ("the dog ate the food"), while an intransitive verb has no direct object ("the dog died").

Some verbs have dual transitivity and

CHAPTER VII - Phrasal verbs

A phrasal verb is created when a particle – a preposition or adverb – is placed after a verb and the result has a distinct meaning. Take off can mean "remove", take in "to shelter" and "to delude", take out "to extract", crack on means "to continue", act out "to have a tantrum" and screw up "to get wrong".

Some phrasal verbs, such as check out and pay off, are seen by scholars as examples of careless writing, because their particles give no special meaning and could be lost. However, check out is often used to imply an act of assessment ("check out that dude") and pay off is used in reference to an illicit transaction.

CHAPTERS VIII/IX - Compounds

A compound word is formed by different morphs linked together, but its meaning is not always just the sum of

its parts: bedroom used to mean “space in a bed” and diehard was a criminal slang to refer to “showing no signs of fear”, but changed its meaning to “to resist” when it entered military slang.

In Modern English, new compounds are always being formed: clickbait, bar-code, photobomb.

There are some particular compounds, such as ongoing, offshore, offline, input, which can become adjectives; we can have “ongoing problems”, “a breakout role”, “an offline world”.

The compound output, meaning “exclude”, has been in English for centuries and it used to mean “the time of the year when winter passed”, and income started as a verb meaning “to come into”, only to become later a noun meaning “entrance”.

CHAPTER X - Portmanteau words.

Alright is a merged form of “all right” and is seen by scholars as an illiterate word, despite words such as although, already and always being accepted.

Alone started as “all one” and lost the unstressed initial vowel “a” to give lone, from which Shakespeare has formed the adjective lonely.

Nother is identified with the phrase “a whole nother”, which linguists call metanalysis or false splitting. The world another is made from “an” and “other”, but after a false split the “n” from “an” was placed to other. Nother can even be found as far back as in Beowulf, and was used in the phrase “neither nother” in the XVth century.

CHAPTER XI - Syncope, mumbling, mangling

As compacted words become widespread they come in contact with the aversion of many scholars. Some of them believe that specialty shouldn’t replace speciality, even though it has been part of the English language long before American English was formed.

Some scholars accept interjections, the noises we make during a discourse, which are normalized, like ugh, wow or whoops, but dislike

The new ones, like meh duh and ew. Non-lexical back channels are noises we make when we want to persuade people that we are interested in what they are saying, while phatic communication covers the phenomenon of words spoken without referencing their literal meaning, like "how's things?", which functions as a salute, not as a question.

CHAPTER XII - Baby talk

Many scholars believe that using baby language is an attempt to promote language acquisition in children. However, there are many reasons for using this language that do not have to do with this function.

One of the reasons for using baby talk is flirtation: the word ducky enters English because king Henry VIII used it in letters to refer to Anne Boleyn's breasts.

Baby language can also be used to talk about indelicate subjects (for example, tummy for stomach), and it can be used to convey contempt (twee for sweet).

The reduplicative babbling of children is mirrored in nursery songs, like Baa black sheep and Humpty

Dumpty. This childish vocabulary is also found in adult vocabulary with reduplicative compounds where vowels alternate, like zigzag and flipflop.

CHAPTER XIII - Affixes

Affixes are linguistic elements that have to be added to words at their beginnings (prefixes) or ends (suffixes). The Old English word diore (now dear) meant "glorious" or "noble" and had the opposite undiore through the prefix un-, and diorling (now darling) through the suffix -ling, which indicates that somebody possesses the quality of that adjective. Many scholars claim that reliable is a recent Americanism and that it should mean "a person who is able to rely", not "a person who is capable of being relied upon".

CHAPTER XIV - Abstract nouns

Abstract nouns are often formed by adding suffixes like -ness, -ity and -ation, after the suffix -ize (like problematization). The word centralization has three suffixes: -al to turn the noun centre into an adjective, -ize to turn the

meaning of a word by adding a prefix. Some scholars argue that pre-prepared should mean just “prepared” and pre-planned just “planned”