Kirk Mahoney . com

My wife saw this yesterday in a TV commercial for Outback Steakhouse.

Problem:
The restaurant chain used an adjective where an adverb was required.

Explanation:
Outback Steakhouse now has “Live Adventurous.” as one of its advertising slogans, as my wife saw yesterday in a television advertisement from the chain.

The word “adventurous” is an adjective.

Adjectives modify nouns, not verbs, but Outback is using “adventurous” to modify a verb (”Live”).

Outback is trying to tell the viewer how to live.

This requires an adverb.

Many adjectives can be converted to adverbs by appending the L-Y suffix.

“Adventurous” is one of those adjectives.

This gives us the solution.

I suppose that Outback and its advertising firm were trying to be catchy or edgy by using an adjective where an adverb was required.

But I view this grammatical mistake as encouraging the decline of the distinction between adjectives and adverbs.

Solution:
“Live Adventurously.”

I bought an excellent book on time management a few weeks ago.

Titled Time Management on Crack, it is aimed at anyone who has an Internet-based business, including bloggers like me … and many of my blog readers, I suspect.

The book is by a twenty-something author who is wise beyond his years.

His techniques have helped him be much more productive than most of his peers.

For example, he wrote, “I launched 52 internet marketing and programming products last year while also working a full-time day job. I have no employees.”

The author teaches that part of his technique requires a change of attitude or mind state toward time and tasks.

For example, he wrote, “I’ve used this mind state to write 25 articles in one plane ride, record 12 twenty-minute interviews in one morning, and record 50 five-minute videos in one day!”

The book comes with a money-back guarantee.

Given that it is priced higher than most bookstore books, I expected that I might have to use the guarantee.

But after I read the book and watched his accompanying videos, I was sure that his book was worth more than I paid for it.

To learn more about the book, go here.

Highly recommended!

I suspect that all of my U.S. readers have read or heard the adjective “pre-owned” in automobile advertising over the past several years.

This adjective seems to have begun with the dealers of higher-end automobiles as a euphemism for the adjective “used”.

“Used” apparently sounded too cheap, so dealers of such brands as Lexus and Infiniti started to use “pre-owned” instead to describe the same-brand vehicles in their used-car lots.

Contrary to my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis, it seems that nearly all auto-dealership advertisers today — no matter whether they carry luxury cars or econo-boxes — choose a two-syllable, nine-character word over a one-syllable, four-letter word that says the same thing.

But that is a frequent characteristic of euphemisms: People go out of their way to avoid what they believe will be perceived negatively.

If you find yourself saying or writing a longer word when you know that a shorter word will express the same thing, notice whether you are trying to hide a negative perception behind that longer word.

My wife heard this a few days ago from a high-school student.

She noticed something that the student had just drawn, told him that he was very artistic, and asked him what else he had created.

He said that creating “aerosol art” was one of his favorite activities.

My wife had never heard this phrase but recognized it right away for what it was: a euphemism for graffiti.

Contrary to my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis, the student chose a four-syllable, ten-letter, two-word phrase over a three-syllable, eight-letter single word that says the same thing.

But that is a frequent characteristic of euphemisms: People go out of their way to avoid what they believe will be perceived negatively.

If you find yourself saying or writing a long phrase when you know that a shorter phrase or a single word will express the same thing, notice whether you are trying to hide a negative perception behind that long phrase.

I heard this four days ago on a History Channel television program.

Problem:
I frequently hear “bring” when the speaker means “take” instead.

Explanation:
I was watching a History Channel program when I heard, “Disasters … often bring people closer to God.”

The verb “bring” in the common expression “bring people closer to God” finally caught my ear — as wrong!

You see, one should use “bring” when one is telling the listener to transport something to a location where one currently resides, or when the subject of the sentence is telling another party in the sentence to transport something to the subject’s location.

“Bring” Examples:

1. Please bring the package to me.
2. Jim, who lives in Denver, asked Mary to bring the package to him from his friend in London.

In contrast, one should use “take” when one is telling the listener to transport something to a location other than where one currently resides, or when the subject of the sentence is telling another party in the sentence to transport something to a location other than the subject’s location.

“Take” Examples:

1. Please take this package to my friend in London.
2. Jim, who today is in Houston on business, asked Mary to take the package to his friend in London.

So, if someone says, “X brings Y closer to God.”, then “X” currently resides with God and is drawing or attracting “Y” to the location shared by “X” and God.

In contrast, if someone says, “X takes Y closer to God.”, then the current location of “X” is different than the current location of God, and “X” is transporting “Y” to God’s location.

Some — such as insurance-company policy writers! — might argue that disasters reside exactly where God resides, in which case “bring” is the correct verb.

However, I strongly suspect that most speakers of “Disasters … often bring people closer to God.” either assume that God resides somewhere other than where disasters reside or give no thought to it.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following expressions (with the quotation marks) and got the indicated numbers of matches:

• “bring people closer to God” — about 11,600 matches
• “take people closer to God” — exactly 6 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the incorrect vs. correct expression by a ratio of 1933-to-1, which is dreadful on a Biblical scale.

Solution:
“Disasters … often take people closer to God.”

I got an interesting email message last Sunday from one of your fellow readers of this blog.

I will refer to him simply as “Ian” because I don’t have permission to use his surname.

Ian had read “Perogative” and wanted to share his own perspective from the United Kingdom.

When I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) for my original blog post, I got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,750,000 matches
• “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,610,000 matches

This told me that Web authors had favored the incorrect word over the correct word by a ratio of 1.02-to-1, which is horrible!

When Ian tries to access Google.com in the UK, Google auto-redirects him to Google.co.uk, where he got these statistics:

• “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 244,000 matches
• “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 4,000,000 matches

I could not exactly reproduce Ian’s results, but I searched at Google.co.uk and got nearly the same ratio that he did.

The 16.4-to-1 dominance of the correct spelling at Google.co.uk puzzles Ian and his fiancée, given that they agree that the incorrect pronunciation and spelling of “prerogative” is very common in the UK.

I saw this yesterday in a message about story-related evidence.

Problem:
The adjective “antidotal” has nothing to do with story-related evidence.

Explanation:
The word “antidotal” is the adjectival form of the noun “antidote”, which means a medicine for counteracting a poison.

The word “anecdotal” is the adjectival form of the noun “anecdote”, which means a short account of an incident as an unpublished narrative.

Those who confuse these two adjectives probably are distracted by

1. the fact that both adjectives have “dotal” — spelled D-O-T-A-L — in them because both nouns have “dote” — spelled D-O-T-E — in them,
2. the fact that both adjectives start with A-N, and
3. the fact that both adjectives are nine letters long.

The noun “antidote” is constructed from the prefix “anti-”, which means against, and “dote”, whose origin essentially means given. In other words, the roots of “antidote” when assembled mean given against.

The noun “anecdote” is constructed from the prefix “an-”, which means not, and “ecdote”. The “ecdote” part of “anecdote” is a combination of “ec”, which means out, and “dote”, whose origin, as just noted, means given.

So the “ecdote” part of “anecdote” essentially means published. In other words, the roots of “anecdote” when assembled mean not published.

Solution:
“anecdotal evidence”

My wife noticed this one.

She saw in a gardening newsletter an announcement about a plant physiologist giving a presentation.

The presentation? It was about mulch.

The presenter? It was a Ph.D. with the surname Funk.

I do not believe that it is a coincidence that Dr. Funk has been involved with mulch.

Names mean things.

I saw this the other day in an announcement from AT&T about its negotiations with the CWA union about union contracts.

“Work Stoppage” is a euphemism for “Strike”.

Contrary to my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis, AT&T chose a three-syllable, twelve-letter, two-word phrase over a one-syllable, six-letter single word that says the same thing.

But that is a frequent characteristic of euphemisms: People go out of their way to avoid what they believe will be perceived negatively.

If you find yourself saying or writing a long phrase when you know that a shorter phrase or a single word will express the same thing, notice whether you are trying to hide a negative perception behind that long phrase.

“Better Communication for Smart People” is the theme of this website.

And I devote most of my blog posts to the English language.

But there is more to communication than human languages.

One avenue for better communication that we have on the Internet is the use of a photo-sharing site.

I have gotten accounts at several photo-sharing sites over the years, and each site offers certain advantages.

My latest account is at PhotoPeach.com, which offers two distinguishing features:

1. It simplifies the addition of music to a slideshow.
2. It provides a “swirlable” view of a sequence of photos.

Although PhotoPeach is not perfect — no photo-sharing site is, in my opinion — I found it nearly perfect for quickly assembling a slideshow about the Amazon Kindle 2 at my Kindle2Tricks.com website.

And PhotoPeach liked my slideshow so much that they gave me an award!

It truly was very simple to create the slideshow with the music and the titles.

If you are looking for a slideshow-centric photo-sharing site, then I recommend PhotoPeach.com as one to consider.