Page 13 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition kind of sucked. I thought it might be a page where I knew all the words. But it turned out to be just a clump at the beginning of the page.

Just the same, there are already days that I think this series was a very bad idea. I’m pretty skeptical today because I didn’t have a great deal to work with. And today, we have a word that is about grammar. I suppose that isn’t such a bad thing. It’s helpful to me to know these obscure words to describe how sentences work. I’m just not sure how interested you all are. Then again, since when have I cared what you all think? (Actually: all the time — especially when I’m writing something I know you aren’t interested in. Sorry, but it’s for your own good!)

Beyond Apodosis

So what do we have besides “apodosis” to make your life interesting? There is “apopemptic,” which is an adjective that describes the act of leaving — apparently in an official sense. And there is “apothegm,” which is a pithy saying, which I guess makes it different enough from “aphorism” to make it worth while (it’s more general). Finally, there is “apperceive,” which is to be conscious of perception. That’s a good one because so much of my life is habit. Did I take my thyroid medication today? I try to be very conscious of it so I don’t wonder all day. Of course, I could buy one of those daily pill boxes, but why? I can just work on apperceiving it.

But here is apodosis:

You will note that the definition above is not correct. the apodosis usually starts with “then,” but not always. I just thought you would want to know, given how much you are likely to use the word.

Page 12 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition was even worse than page 11. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Page 11 had the ante- words; page 12 thus had the anti- words. But I picked a word that came in between: anthropophagi.

Not Really Anthropophagi

Before we get to the word, I suppose I should point out that the word should not be “anthropophagi.” It should be “anthropophaguses.” This business has got to stop! We take English language words that are based on Greek words and create plurals based on Latin grammar?! What’s with that?! The Greek word isn’t “anthropophagus” anyway; it is “ανθρωποφάγος”! And where Latin fits in, I can’t say.

An unrelated issue: “antihero” is on the same page. The book claims that such a character lacks all heroic attributes and noble qualities. That was doubtless how the word was originally used. But by the time this dictionary came out, it was not used in that way at all.

Anyway, on to anthropophagi:

Note that anthropophagus is normally used for folklore cannibals, as in the image above.

Page 11 of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition is another with a lot of known prefixes and thus not a lot of unknown words. Still, I found an interesting one: anomie.

Beyond Anomie: The Ante- Words

There were a couple of words that I knew on seeing them, but didn’t know existed. One was “antepartum” — the other side of postpartum. Although it doesn’t just mean before childbirth, but right before childbirth. I suppose that is because we have a general word for before childbirth: pregnant.

Another such word was “antepenult.” Since penultimate is the second to the last, antepenult is the one before that: the third to the last. I might have grabbed that word, but it is specially used to refer to syllables in a word. And I don’t want to make this series about odd words just odd words about words.

Thus, I picked anomie:

Most definitions do not mention an “uprooted” people. And thus, it seems like like a great word for modern America — and to a lesser degree the western world. I blame it on Ayn Rand and the Masters of the Universe who came after — the whole “greed is good” crowd. People who think they own nothing to their society will eventually tear it apart.

Onward to page ten of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition! There were a number of good words on this page. But I picked the very first one: analects.

But first, let’s take a quick look at some of the other words. There was “anamnesis.” This is memories of a past life. Like I remember when I was Mary Wollstonecraft, and just as I finished A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, I thought, “They’re only going to remember Tommy Paine!” There was also “anchorite,” which is a religious recluse. On seeing it, I knew what “androcracy” meant. But I don’t remember ever seeing it. Why would we need it? It’s like a fish needing a word for water. There’s also “anechoic,” which is something that is very important in building stadiums and such. There were also some medical words, which I would describe, but I just can’t stop yawning.

Analects

This is another literary word, which does not make me yawn. Other than being a word that I have a hard time imagining ever needing, it’s interesting in that it is almost always used as a plural. “Analect” is also a word. But it is almost never used. I assume that this is because one would just use the word “quotation.” Oh my! Did I just spoil the surprise? Well, read on anyway.

Here’s the definition of “analects”:

And just because of the assonance, I thought of this song:

Page nine of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition starts with the am— words. And that means I know a lot of them, because I like words that have to do with getting along. But today’s word is a really specialized grammar word that is super useful: amphibology.

There weren’t any really interesting words today, other than “amour-propre” — a very pretentious way of saying “self-esteem.” So let’s get right to today’s word. You can jump down and look at the definition. Right now, I want to talk about why it is so useful.

Amphibology and Scott Turow

The biggest hurdle that writers face is seeing what they write from the standpoint of the reader. The classic example is, “The dog caught the ball as it flew through the air.” This is one grammar pedants love, “Oh, the poor dog! I wonder who threw it?” The truth is this response is incorrect, because one couldn’t say grammatically whether the dog or the ball flew through the air. So picking the dog is not correct. The original sentence is an example of amphibology.

I wrote about an instance of amphibology, How Good is Scott Turow? The sentence was from his novel, Innocent. The main character’s son is asked about his relative computer skills and he responds, “Compared to my father? Yes. I know a lot more than him.” Well, it isn’t exactly amphibology, because what the son says literally means, “I know a lot more about computers than I know about him.” Which happens to be true, and I wondered if Turow was such a great writer that he knew what he was doing.

Anyway, here’s the definition:

Page eight of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition is an odd one. In the first column, I knew perhaps half the words. I knew all the words in the second column — except for one that I’ll come back to in a moment. In the mean time, get chomping on “allochthonous.”

American Plan?!

There is this thing in the hotel business called “American Plan.” It is a system where you pay a single rate for your hotel and meals. I’ve traveled quite a bit and stayed at a lot of hotels. I’ve never even heard of such a thing. I guess cruise ships work that way. But I always figured that if you didn’t keep people on a ship constantly busy eating, drinking, and watching banal entertainment, they would realize just how awful they felt about spending thousands of dollars to be stuck with all of these people for a week!

Allochthonous and Others

I’ve noticed this before: words I don’t know come in clumps. I assume it is because there are a bunch of specialized words that are based on the same foreign root that I just don’t know. But I can’t say for certain. Doing so would require that I do a bunch of work. And I’m really tired and just want to get this post done!

Here it is; the word you’ve been waiting for: allochthonous:

It seems to be a geological word. But it would be a great word to have for invasive plants. I suspect there is a different word for that.

We are on to page seven of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. I had planned to do a legal word, but then I found these two mathematical words that I just had to do: aliquant and aliquot.

You Say Aliquant and I Say Aliquot

I love math. You all know that! God is a mathematician. But that should tell you something right there. Jim Holt once speculated that “the universe was created by a being that is 100 percent malevolent but only 80 percent effective.” There’s no question but that mathematicians are an odd bunch. And the choice of these two words does strike me 100 percent malevolent.

So first up, we have: aliquant:

Next, we have: aliquot:

That’s right: these two words that sound almost identical mean exactly the opposite. It would be like deciding the best words for “yes” and “no” would be “yes” and “yef.” Only a mathematician would do this!