I’ve mentioned the ongoing expropriation of the word ‘purity’, and here’s the latest manifestation:

Apparently Christian kids who promise not to have sex get to wear ‘purity rings‘. (Oops, my mistake. It’s just the girls. It doesn’t seem to matter if guys have purity. Wonder how that works.)

Obviously, as a linguist I realise that semantic shift happens. And if the meaning of ‘purity’ narrows down to only a sexual meaning, then my job is to describe, not prescribe.

And yet — I’m not content to leave the word-manglers to it. This shift is motivated by the hatred of sex evidenced by so much of authoritarian Christianity. They want to talk about sex, but they don’t want to say the words!

Just imagine the father-daughter chat: “Princess, I’d like to talk to you about fucking. Please don’t bang anyone until you’re married. The Lord has promised blessings for those who only root their marriage partner.”

So they talk about it using any other terms they can (morality! virtue!) and as a result, a lot of fine words become useless for anything else. The words become — how to say — slutty.

It’s easy to decry this tendency at the hands of the word sluttifiers. But I have a way to take back the word ‘purity’. The first thing is to get the word out of the clutches of the Evangelical Right. And to do that, we have to redefine the word so they’ll drop it like a rock. So hear me out:

These virginity pledges have dismal success rates, right?

[R]esearch by Columbia and Yale Universities found while those who pledge chastity may delay first sex, 88 per cent of them eventually break the promise, and are then less likely than non-pledgers to use contraception.

So, Stage 1: everyone start using the word ‘purity’ as a euphemism for sex. As in:

– I was wondering if you might like to get together and promote ‘purity’ tonight.
– I’ve never had ‘purity’, but I’m curious.
– That girl is what we call ‘pure’.

People already think of sex when they hear ‘purity’, so it’ll be easy to nudge it over to prurience.

After the abstinence crew stop using the word in disgust, we can talk Stage 2: Rehabilitation.

Who’s with me?

Final observation from the article:

A MORI poll for The Observer found a fifth of British teenagers had had underage sex. The average age of losing virginity was 17. Almost a third of women questioned wished they had waited longer.

What they mean, of course, is that a whopping two-thirds of women polled thought they’d waited just about long enough.

I had an occasion to visit a Montessori school today; Oldest Boy is going to need to transfer out of the local Steiner School and go secondary soon. Where did the time go? Oh, yeah, I was doing a PhD.

The differences between Montessori and Steiner are like those between Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses — virtually indistinguishable to outsiders, but adherents to either system think they’re almost opposites. We liked Montessori, but we were put off by the focus on doing the tasks the right way. And in fact, whenever Oldest Boy’s Montessori friends would come over, they wouldn’t just play with toys, they’d sit down and very concertedly play with the toys until they had finished playing with the toys. Eventually we plumped for Steiner, but it was close.

To help you sort out the two, I present the facts about both systems, pulled from their own pamphlets.

A lot of my collection comes from the 80s when I started collecting CDs, and they’re starting to show up in the playlists. My fault, really, for feeding every last one of them to the computer to be mp3ed. Now I’m stuck with them. Our possessions are our joy and our curse. One reason why I’m not going through Vinyl Conversion Hell. Some things are better left in the box.

Here are the five for today:

A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours by The Smiths Album: Strangeways, Here We Come
Was there ever a finer band than the Smiths? Reams have been written about the dour/jangly songwriting team of Morrissey and Marr, but sometimes you just have to go on a Smiths phase and hear the songs again to remember how well-constructed and engaging they are (except for ‘Barbarism Begins at Home’). This song opens their last album, where things were just starting to get interesting. Guitars were making way for other instruments, different styles of songs were cooking, and then Johnny Marr ended it by leaving the band and never doing anything worthwhile again ever. “Oh, but don’t mention lerv. I’d hate the pain and the strain again.”

Primitive Heart by Cocteau Twins Album: Tishbite (Single 2)
There were two singles for Tishbite, each with their own b-sides. This track comes from the rarer one. A lovely single from the band before their breakup. Not as dreamy perhaps, but still easy on the ears. Also, it’s fun to say ’tishbite’. What is a tishbite? Elijah was one, I know that much.

The Ritual Echo by Bill Nelson Album: Sounding the Ritual Echo (Atmospheres for Dreaming)
Continuing on the floaty thing. Bill Nelson, rock guitar virtuoso from Be Bop Deluxe, reworked his sound in the early eighties, producing song after song of soft and intricate soundscapes on antiquated analogue equipment. These songs worked into a five-album set known as ‘Trial by Intimacy’. I remember spending many afternoons in the undergrad days looking from my 6th floor dorm window, gazing out onto the foggy valley below. This was the soundtrack.

Fooled by a Smile by Swing Out Sister Album: It’s Better to Travel
This whole album from Swing Out Sister was a perfect slice of Art Deco Paris-in-the-thirties tongue-in-cheek jazz-pop that could really evoke the hyphens like few before or since. The production was smooth, the horns and strings sassy and precise, the instrumentations full of angles and chords. Great vocals too. A very assured debut.

We Care a Lot (Original Version) by Faith No More Album: Who Cares a Lot? – Greatest Hits
Just as Nirvana wasn’t Nirvana until Dave Grohl joined, Faith No More wasn’t really Faith No More until Mike Patton. But this is still a fine song from the early days that answers the musical question “To what extent does Faith No More care?” I seem to remember an early review in Spin that didn’t really review the album, though it did take the piss out of Kim Carnes, for some reason.

Will we hear some newer stuff next time, or is Daniel’s iTunes Library so clogged with 80s stuff that it resembles KROQ’s playlist? Tune in next time and find out.

I did mention that it’s tough to name any good that’s come out of the Bush presidency. And — you must forgive me for seeming cynical — whenever Bush has done something that seems good, there’s always a kicker. Remember when he said he wanted to increase money to charities? But then it turned out they were faith-based charities. Which meant that he was going to funnel federal money into religions. Or remember Mr Bush helpfully offering to fix Social Security? Yeah.

Well, now it looks like he’s done something genuinely unambiguously good.

President Bush will create the world’s largest protected marine area today, designating as a national monument a 1,200-mile-long chain of small Hawaiian islands and surrounding waters and reefs that are home to a spectacular array of sea life, senior administration officials said last night.

Uh, today? Like, now?

What caused this? Perhaps something he watched on TV.

A turning point came in April, when Bush sat through a 65-minute private White House screening of a PBS documentary that unveiled the beauty of — and perils facing — the archipelago’s aquamarine waters and its nesting seabirds, sea turtles and sleepy-eyed monk seals, all threatened by extinction.

The film seemed to catch Bush’s imagination, according to senior officials and others in attendance. The president popped up from his front-row seat after the screening; congratulated filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the late underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau; and urged the White House staff to get moving on protecting these waters.

Okay, I’ll still take it. Even if it’s something he just saw on TV, I’ll take it.

What’s going on? Are we having a Dave situation here? Can someone (perhaps dobbins?) tell me if there’s some kind of huge upside for Big Oil on this? Because I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. I wouldn’t be like this if the last five years hadn’t been what they were.

Also, could someone please get Mr Bush to watch more PBS?

I have figured out the appeal of quiz shows. Like why people go on them. Going on a quiz show is a really big risk, you know. It’s like, here’s an opportunity to show how much stuff you know. And what if the answer to that question is “Not much”? Then everyone knows that despite your carefully contrived aura of wisdom, you actually don’t even know things like “Who was the 42nd President of the United States?” because you never bothered to count them. And you could actually know a lot, but everyone has these gaps in their knowledge, so you could blow an easy one like “What country do they make Waterford crystal in?” and everyone at home is eating potato chips and thinking, “If he doesn’t know that one, then he probably doesn’t even know (say) how many cards are in a deck.”

So why do they do it? Because there are PRIZES. I don’t care how stupid you make me look as long as people can see me WINNING STUFF.

And that is why I found myself at the Channel 7 studios this evening with a bunch of other eager contestants trying out for a new quiz show, called Quiz Show. It’s still in development, but apparently it’s a serious one with a million dollars at the end of it.

Everyone took the 40 question test, on which I scored a modest 24. I put that down to not knowing any Australian trivia, and also I can never remember for the life of me whether it’s M or Q that designs the weapons for James Bond. Lucky for me the cutoff was 18 tonight, so I stayed while half the crowd filed out in an abashed way.

Then it was the interview, where I chatted for a few minutes with a lovely young lady named Belinda, and when I say ‘chatted’, I mean ‘tried desperately to leave a positive impression’.

They may call in a few weeks or a few months for the taping. But I’m through to the next round. I’ll keep you posted.

Let’s make this an open thread. Put your favourite trivia question in comments.

I am a linguist. That’s not just something I say to get people to believe me when I try to pass off ‘fotarb’ as a real word in Scrabble, although I have done that. Being a linguist is also a opportunity to help.

So in the interest of providing a community service — a bit of pro bono if you will — here’s a question from comments.

in english, what is the plural of Jesus, ie if there is a group of men called Jesus, what do we call them?

Ah, yes. I first came across this conundrum when Youngest Boy gifted me half a walnut shell with two wax figurines inside.

“That’s nice,” I said. “What is it?”

“It’s the two Baby Jesuses,” he said.

“I didn’t know there were two of them,” I said.

“Well, there were,” he said. “They were separated at birth, and they had to fight each other.”

“Did they work it out eventually?”

“Yes. They decided to team up to fight crime.”

“That’s good,” I said. “And along the way, they learned a little something about… the power of friendship.”

“Yep,” he said.

Well, anonymous, if that is your real name, there are two approaches.

Approach 1: Find out where the name comes from, and apply the rule appropriate to that language of origin.

This is the approach favoured by annoying people who insist that the plural of ‘octopus’ should be ‘octopodes’ and not ‘octopi’ because ‘octopus’ comes from Greek and not Latin. Avoid them.

But if we took that approach, we’d have to track the name back to Hebrew. And we’d find something like this:

The name Jesus is an anglicized form of the Latin Iesus, which itself is derived from the Greek name Iesous. Iesous was the Greek transliteration of the Aramaic name Yeshua, which itself was the later Aramaic form of the Hebrew name Yehoshua.

Got all that? So, most recently, Latin.

You may know that Latin has five nasty declensions — different categories that have endings and you have to memorise them all. Life is somewhat easier if you know that ‘Jesus’ is a fourth declension noun, and is pluralised thus: One Jesus, two Jesus. Wasn’t that simple?

But the second approach is: screw it, just pluralise it like English. One Jesus, two Jesuses. Like a little black dress, it’s always appropriate when you’re dealing with borrowed Latin words.

And as a parting thought: if you’re worried about doing the wrong thing, just remember that language is what you do. Any linguist worth his or her salt doesn’t care what you should do. Just talk. We’ll be listening and writing it down. Not in a creepy way.

The phrase of the week would have to be ‘asymmetrical warfare’. Picture it: you’re the camp commander at Guantánamo. Your prisoners are being held indefinitely without due process. There are some suicide attempts, and three prisoners finally succeed in hanging themselves. What do you tell the media?

“I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

Or perhaps:

a “good PR move to draw attention“

Or perhaps both.

This is only the latest (and most extreme) manifestation of the same damn line over and over again. And here it is: The strong are being persecuted by the powerless. Check these examples and spot the pattern:

When unlawfully held prisoners kill themselves, the US military accuses the dead of trying to make them look bad.

The Wall Street Journal says that people that earn the least are ‘lucky duckies‘ who don’t pay enough taxes and take advantage of the system.

The religious right, with all three branchs of government under their control, scream that America isn’t Jesusy enough.

Speakers of English, the majority language of the USA, worry about being overrun with Spanish speakers.

A soldier is killed in Iraq, and wingers, enmeshed in the war they wanted, attack the slain soldier’s mother for becoming a visible symbol for opposition to the war.

Christians, members of the world’s most common religion, scream that atheists are trying to suppress Christmas.

Bush, having stacked the Supreme Court with two extremely conservative justices, still complains about judicial activism.

The Christian Right (again) fear that heterosexual people are being recruited by gay people, and that gay marriage is somehow cheapening straight marriage. Apparently 97% of the population isn’t enough.

It’s just never enough for some people. Right-wingers have often accused the Left of promoting a culture of victimhood, but I’ve never seen anyone hone a persecution complex like this, and they’re the ones in power. Just holding a different point of view is enough to get you labelled an America-hater, a terrorist-sympathiser. And when you die, they’ll call it a cheap stunt.

I always thought that the word ‘good’ came from ‘god’. After all, didn’t ‘good-bye’ derive from ‘God be with ye‘?

Well, yes it did. But that happened later.

It turns out that ‘good’ and ‘god’ come from completely different places.

According to the OED, the word ‘good’ comes from an Old Teutonic root ‘gôđ’ which meant ‘to bring together’. You can even tell that the word ‘gather’ comes from this. This source, on the other hand, has it as coming from a Proto-Indo-European hypothetical root ‘*ghedh-‘, meaning the same thing. Either way, the word meant something like ‘fitting’, or ‘suitable’, and in time, good.

There are two possibilities for the origin of ‘god‘ though, and both are from Proto-Indo-European. Either it’s ‘*ghut-‘ meaning “that which is invoked”, or ‘*ghu-to-‘ from “poured”, as you’d pour on offering on the ground for the gods to drink.

Not surprising, though, that the two words would converge as they have. There always seems to be more than one motivation for how words are.