Kirk Mahoney . com

I saw this in a message from a company.

Problem:
The hyphen does not belong in this phrase.

Explanation:
The company in question was announcing that it had agreed to exchange some assets with another company.

The company stated in its announcement that the deal had not been approved by regulators.

So the company was emphasizing to readers that it would have to continue to operate as if the deal had never been made.

“At arm’s length” — with no hyphen — is the phrase that essentially describes a business/legal relationship in which the two parties make sure that they treat one another in the same way that they would treat other competitors.

While it is true that “arm’s length” must be hyphenated to form a compound modifier of a noun — as in “an arm’s-length transaction” — it makes no sense to insert a hyphen in the phrase “at arm’s length from”.

I believe that attorneys were involved in approving the aforementioned company’s announcement and that these attorneys included the hyphen between “arm’s” and “length” because they are very accustomed to using these two words to modify a noun.

Solution:
“… as a separate business at arm’s length from …”

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I sometimes see these words used interchangeably.

Problem:
The words “hoard” and “horde” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The word “hoard” — spelled H-O-A-R-D — dates back to before 900 to the Gothic word “huzd”, which literally meant treasure.

When it acts as a noun, the word “hoard” means an accumulation that is carefully guarded for future use.

When it acts as a verb with an object, the word “hoard” means to accumulate for future use in a hidden place.

When it acts as a verb without an object, the word “hoard” means to accumulate food, money, or anything else valuable in a hidden place for future use.

The word “horde” — spelled H-O-R-D-E — dates back to about 1550 but apparently originated before then with the Turkic word “ordu”, which literally means royal camp or residence.

The primary meaning of the word “horde” as a noun is a mass or crowd, and an alternate meaning is a nomadic group.

The word “horde” can also be used as a verb without an object, in which case it means to gather or assemble in a horde.

Solution:
Remember that the word “horde” — spelled H-O-R-D-E — seems to come from the Turkic word “ordu”, which means royal camp or residence, to remember that this word relates to a crowd or mass or group of people and to distinguish it from the word “hoard” — spelled H-O-A-R-D — which comes from a Gothic word for treasure.

I sometimes see or hear these verbs used interchangeably.

Problem:
The verbs “defuse” and “diffuse” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The verb “defuse” — spelled D-E-F-U-S-E — was coined in the early 1940s and means to remove the fuse from, where the “de” prefix in this verb indicates negation and the “fuse” suffix refers to a cord of readily combustible material and comes from the Italian word “fuso”, which literally means spindle.

Unless you are a terrorist or sadist, you want the police to defuse a bomb.

The verb “diffuse” — spelled D-I-F-F-U-S-E — dates back to the late 1300s and means to spread or disseminate, where the “dif” prefix means apart or away and the “fuse” suffix comes from a form of the Latin word “fundere”, which literally means to melt.

Once the police have defused a bomb, they often will diffuse a message to the public about their success.

I believe that the oral/auditory confusion comes from mispronunciations of these two verbs.

I believe that the written confusion comes from ignorance about the roots of these two verbs and from misspellings originating from that ignorance or the mispronunciations.

Solution:
Remember that the “de” in “defuse” indicates negation, and remember that the “dif” in “diffuse” means apart or away.

My wife and I saw this at the bottom of an invoice a few weeks ago.

Beyond noticing that the preposition “For” should not have been capitalized, we both had a gut reaction to the hyphen in “Thank-You”.

The reaction was that the hyphenated form of the imperative “Thank You” felt like something that we used to see a few decades ago.

Of course, she or I today would use the hyphenated “Thank-You” when those two words together modify a noun, as in “Thank-You Cards”.

But neither of us would hyphenate “Thank You” when using those two words as an imperative (in, say, a headline).

I saw no matches when I searched Google for the use of the hyphenated “thank-you” as an imperative, but I admit that it was not a very deep search.

What I now wonder is whether the hyphenated imperative form in my wife’s and my memories comes from seeing typesetters’ mistakes or is based on a style that has gone out of favor.

Do you recall seeing the hyphenated imperative “Thank-You” years ago?

Do you believe that this form was a mistake or that it was a commonly accepted form?

Please let me know, and I will elaborate on this topic in a future post.

I saw these two headlines in a TV ad two weeks ago:

• “Police Impounded Cars”
• “Bank Foreclosed Homes”

The television commercial was intended to advertise cars and homes available at deep discounts.

In other words, the TV ad was promoting two items: (a) cars that had been impounded by police; (b) homes that had been foreclosed by banks.

But the lack of punctuation was troubling.

If the headlines were intended to be phrases, then hyphens should have been used to create modifiers of the words “Cars” and “Homes”:

• “Police-Impounded Cars”
• “Bank-Foreclosed Homes”

Unfortunately for the advertiser, the common style for punctuation of headlines is to omit periods at the ends of sentences that form headlines.

So the common expectation of viewers of the ad was that the headlines were sentences, like so:

• “Police Impounded Cars.”
• “Bank Foreclosed Homes.”

But the advertiser was promoting cars and homes, not making news announcements.

So the advertiser should have punctuated the headlines as phrases.

I learned about this name years ago, and it came to mind again recently.

Dr. Peeks is an optometrist.

The verb “peek” — spelled P-E-E-K — dates back to the mid-1300s and means to glance or look quickly.

The irony is not lost on me that an optometrist — a licensed professional who practices the profession of examining eyes and helping people with their vision — has a surname that refers to looking.

I do not believe that it is a coincidence that someone with the surname “Peeks” is involved with vision.

Names mean things.

I noticed this yesterday.

I was searching for stories about AT&T in the news portion of Google when I saw “AT&T Taps Charlene Lake As Chief Sustainability Officer” as the top headline.

Clicking the headline led me to an EnvironmentalLeader.com Web page.

I had never heard of a “Chief Sustainability Officer” until I read that page, but apparently the role relates to the environmental impact of AT&T.

Then I re-read the name of the appointed officer, and I had to smile.

I do not believe that it is a coincidence that someone with the surname “Lake” is involved in environmental issues.

Names mean things.

I heard about this expression last Saturday at a party.

Problem:
The fourth word is incorrect.

Explanation:
My friend Nickie F. sent me more information about this expression.

She said that a friend was describing her daughter’s solution to a bath-time dilemma when the friend said, “She had gotten so tired of getting shampoo in her eyes that the next night, I walked into the bathroom and found her in the tub wearing her pool gargles to keep the shampoo out.”

As all readers should recognize, the word after “pool” should be “goggles” instead.

The speaker apparently was accustomed to mispronouncing “goggles” as “gargles”.

Sometimes one must “squint one’s ears” at what is being heard to identify what the speaker intended to say.

In this case, though, no ear squinting is required.

Solution:
“… wearing her pool goggles …”

I heard this on TV the other day.

Problem:
The modifier “quality-built” is truly meaningless.

Explanation:
I heard “a quality-built Ford” spoken by a narrator during a television commercial run by Ford the other day.

When I blogged two months ago about “a quality product”, I pointed out that the word “quality” was meaningless in that phrase.

Ford was trying to say that it makes high-quality vehicles.

But “high-quality-built” is awkward.

The solution comes from appreciating that high-quality vehicles are vehicles that are built well.

Solution:
“a well-built Ford”

I heard about this expression last Saturday at a party.

Problem:
The second word is incorrect.

Explanation:
My friend Nickie F. sent me more information about this expression.

She said that a co-worker was discussing possible scenarios to resolve an ongoing HR issue when the co-worker said, “If worst comes to shove, then that is what we’ll have to do.”

The second word, as many readers will recognize, should be “push” instead.

The expression “If push comes to shove”, according to Answers.com, “comes from rugby, where, after an infraction of rules, forwards from each team face off and push against one another until one player can kick the ball to a teammate and resume the game.”

And its figurative use — that is, its use outside of rugby — dates back to the 1950s.

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

• “If push comes to shove” — 155,000 matches
• “If worst comes to shove” — 344 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct expression versus the incorrect expression by a ratio of 451-to-1, which is excellent.

Solution:
“If push comes to shove, …”