Skullduggery!

This is Boom Boom Afridi, one of India's best cricket players. Being an American, I am totally unfamiliar with this sport, but I do know that it is not as gentlemanly as it thinks itself. It is very physical and very ... cut-throat. Even better that it is in this environment that one of our words is used - skullduggery!

I had just dropped the boys off at the junior high school and, as is my habit, tuned into National Public Radio. A segment was beginning on the game and the controversy surrounding Boom Boom tampering with the ball. And it was all caught on tape! Here is the usage:

In cricket, ball tampering is seen as one of the lowest forms of skullduggery. There've been similar scandals before when players were caught scouring the ball with dirt or bottom tops or even candy. Thirty-four years have elapsed since the notorious Vaseline Incident, when an Englishman was accused of polishing the ball with Vaseline. Cricket connoisseurs still have not forgotten it.

Beautiful usage!!

Say what you mean!

At a mission study some friends and I led for a church last year, we performed a skit using various idioms commonly used in our part of the country. The character played by my friend was a mission worker visiting a foreign country (we used Guatemala since this country was the focus of our mission study). My character was a translator, interpreting for the audience as the mission worker told the story of her adventure getting to the country. I spoke in English, of course, but in a Hispanic accent, as if the audience couldn’t understand the mission worker, but could understand me. We had so much fun coming up with various phrases to use and deciding how the translator would interpret their literal meanings. Probably had to be there, but here were some of my favorites…

Mission worker: The plane ride here was a little rough, and for a while, I was scared to death.
Translator: The plane didn’t feel very soft, and someone died and she was scared. I would be scared, too!

Mission worker: I have been in church most of my life, and God has forgiven me of my sins over and over.
Translator: She has been going to church all of her life, and she keeps doing bad things over and over again. But it’s okay.

Mission worker: The wind was blowing and it started raining cats and dogs.
Translator: The wind was blowing and all of a sudden little animals fell out of the sky... I don’t know why.

Mission worker: A little birdie told me that you have prepared dinner for us after the service.
Translator: Apparently she talks to animals because a “BIRD TOLD HER” we had dinner.

Again, it’s better when you can see and hear it, but we sure had fun with the English language that night!

Why the usage of "how come"?

I have noticed more and more people using the combination of words "how come" in place of "why". Why on earth would anyone do this? Do people love the sound of their voices so much they have to invent longer expressions?

I have included only a few of the plethora of examples found on the Internet. I can understand it most in the Dennis the Menace, since it is most fitting as a child's expression. But as the title of a book? Egad! Why on earth would a publisher let that pass scrutiny?

From the cigarette ad at the top, it's sadly clear that this is no recent phenomenon. The ad is from 1977, and surely grammar was not as lax back then as it is now. I refer to Jan Venolia's Write Right!, 4th edition published in 2001. "Perhaps no other grammar rule has prompted so many to say so much as the now-outdated rule prohibiting ending a sentence with a preposition." Outdated??!

Heresy! Heresy, I say!

It is a beginning of the tattering of the language's binding. You all know what happens when the binding comes off a blanket. Soon the blanket is used as a rag, then finds its way to the dog's bed, later used to wipe up oil on the floor of the garage. Finally, the landfill.

To what is the world coming?

Mend our precious blanket of the English language. Don your needle and thread of tradition and literary rules. Let no hole go unattended, regardless of size. Do not stand for "ain't", "irregardless" or "heighth" in a dictionary serve any purpose but to point the dear student to the correct usage elsewhere in its hallowed pages.

Be strong, lovers of English and keep the fires burning.