Words’ Worth
Issue #2622
- WEALTHY: Why a military drawdown equals profits (Andrew Gordon)
- HEALTHY: What’s a burpee? (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Gyles Brandreth on the pleasure of words
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- An entertaining new book that will improve your command of language (Don Hauptman)
- How to sell a physical product online (Marc Charles)
- It’s Fun to Know… about remote-controlled beetles
- Add “lagniappe” to your vocabulary
== Highly Recommended ==
How to Protect Your Financial Future – Even If the Current “Rally” Doesn’t Last
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The Other Infrastructure Stimulus Program: Iraq and Afghanistan
Two things will define 2009 for the U.S. One is the huge $787 billion economic stimulus package featuring “smart grids,” roads, and bridges. The other is the winding down of the war in Iraq.
Obama will begin withdrawing troops as soon as he can. That may not be until 2010, but much of the planning will be laid out this year.
But downsizing troops doesn’t mean downsizing our involvement. The goal is to save lives. And the quid pro quo will be spending more money.
So talk about reducing contractor levels in Iraq is just that – talk. The next stage will be a big increase in outsourcing reconstruction and security functions to the private sector.
Iraq will be getting loads of new stuff, including tow trucks, communications vehicles, hauling vehicles, aerial platforms for construction, fire and garbage trucks, and heavy-load hauling vehicles.
And Uncle Sam, of course, will be paying the bill.
The companies that can take advantage of both of Obama’s huge infrastructure programs – the one that will play out in the U.S. and the one that will play out in Iraq and Afghanistan – will be big winners in 2009 and 2010.
[Ed. Note: Investment expert Andrew Gordon is just one of 14 masters of making money who will be giving you the inside scoop on some very hush-hush secrets for turning a nifty buck in the next few years. Find out how to get your hands on these experts' SAFEST and most PROFITABLE income-generating and entrepreneurial opportunities right here.]
“Words are as vital to life as food and drink and sex, but on the whole we don’t show as much interest in language as we do in the other – more obvious – pleasures.”
Gyles Brandreth
The Language Perfectionist: Words’ Worth
By Don Hauptman
Are you a writer? A speaker? Whatever you do professionally, you need to communicate effectively. That means your success is determined in part by how well you use language. A new book by Roy Blount Jr. can help you improve your knowledge and mastery of English. And as lagniappe, it’s fun to read.
Published a few months ago, Alphabet Juice revels in the joys of the written and spoken word. The title is, I gather, a play on “alphabet soup.” But it’s also a tribute to the excitement that words can generate. Explains the Introduction: “Juice as in au jus, juju, power, liquor, electricity.”
As you might expect, the text is in alphabetical order. Readers will discover short (mostly) entries on ain’t, beg the question, cliche, double negative, Goldwynisms, headlinese, kvetch, limerick, portmanteau word, semicolon, subjunctive, unbeknownst… and scores of other topics.
Blount delves into the ancient roots of words, points out unexpected connections among seemingly dissimilar words, and explains the origins of slang expressions such as phooey and pizzazz. He debunks popular “folk etymologies” that are, in fact, fabrications or urban legends.
Best known as a humorist, Blount is the author of 20 previous books. His serious interest in language is confirmed by his membership on the American Heritage Dictionary’s Usage Panel, which adjudicates thorny language disputes. But Alphabet Juice is witty and conversational, and festooned with puns, wordplay, light verse, and clever coinages (e.g., antepenultimatum: two warnings from the final one!).
Here are some excerpts that illustrate the book’s range of subjects and the author’s distinctive style:
• babble/babel: “It’s hard to believe that these two words, whose meanings are so close, have no etymological connection. But they don’t, say the scholars: Babble is from baby talk and babel from the Bible.”
• English: “English is an outrageous tangle of those [Greco-Latin] derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.”
• intelligible: “We say something is unintelligible or barely intelligible, but we never say, ‘That argument of yours sure is intelligible.’”
• mic: “I hate to see mike, short for microphone, rendered as mic, which is how it tends to be spelled these days… . Mic, dammit, should be pronounced mick… . The colloquial abbreviation of a word is not limited to letters taken from that word. If it were, we wouldn’t be able to shorten refrigerator to fridge.”
• wrought: “… not the past tense of wreak, as is often assumed, but of work, in the sense of making something, forming something, bringing something about… . Archaic though the word wrought is, it has stayed alive… .”
One of Blount’s favorite themes is that certain words are imitative, reflective of their meanings, or that they “sensuously evoke the essence of the word”: blob, crackle, grunt, queasy, scrawl, throb, wince, zest, and many others. He calls such words “sonicky.”
I applaud the author’s prescriptivism. He firmly defends the traditional definitions of many words and doesn’t capitulate to their popular misuses – e.g., disinterested, hopefully, and literally. He also advocates, as I do, retaining the hyphen in e-mail.
Any quibbles? A few. Because the book is formatted like a dictionary or encyclopedia, some readers may be misled into assuming that it’s a comprehensive reference work. It’s not. The author chose to include items that struck his fancy, and excluded others. Thus, you’ll find helpful discussions on flack vs. flak and the misuse of incredible, but you’re out of luck if you’re seeking clarifications for other troublesome words, such as comprise, enormity, or fortuitous.
My hunch is that Blount, over several years or decades, habitually tossed notes and clippings into a shoebox. Then, when the collection became large enough, he cobbled everything into a book. There’s nothing wrong with that. After all, it’s pretty much the technique I use to write these columns for ETR! But for a complete guide to the English language or English usage, you’ll have to consult a volume other than Alphabet Juice.
It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that the book is something of a grab bag. The content sometimes tends toward the random, desultory, and idiosyncratic. Blount isn’t reluctant to free-associate or to digress into sports, movies, or an irrelevant anecdote from his childhood or adolescence. The entry on consonants somehow sparks a recollection of his father’s tool chest, and a discussion of spelling bees leads to… Madame de Pompadour? He’s also prone to shameless name-dropping. These excursions are interesting, but their connection to language is often minimal or nonexistent.
A final gripe: Alphabet Juice lacks an index and a table of contents. Apparently, when a book is formatted alphabetically, the publisher considers both to be dispensable. But without an index, the reader can’t easily find proper names or terms that aren’t major entries. A listing of topics up front isn’t redundant. It’s a valuable tool that gives the reader an overview of the book at a glance.
These reservations aside, Alphabet Juice is informative, entertaining, and amusing. And a big advantage in these times of information overload is that you need not read it cover to cover. Browsing and grazing in its pages will reward you well.
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book recently published by AWAI that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.
Knowing just the right word to say can not only help you become a more persuasive writer and speaker - it can elevate others' impressions of you. Spend 10 minutes a day with ETR's Words to the Wise CD Library and learn how to command a powerful vocabulary quickly, confidently, and easily.
He Might Be a Very Successful Investor, But You’ll Never See Him on CNN!
The Wall Street financial jackals extract their "take" from investors just like you. They perpetuate the myth, "Buy into good companies and hold on for the long term." Sure, sometimes these stocks go up, but they also go down. In the meantime, these greedy insiders make money either way. They can do it because they're playing with a whole different set of rules.
One Wall Street Insider has jumped ship and started on his own path to profits. And he's ready to give you all of his insider secrets so you too can make money no matter what the market does.
Of course, he wants to keep making these cash withdrawals himself... so he can only share these secrets with a limited number of folks. If you want to stop being one of the sheep and join him at the table of success with all of those blueblood financial elitists, please read the following report.
Dear ETR: "Who can effectively put my product on the market?"
"I just read Marc Charles's article about getting 100,000 people hawking your products. I have a special situation, and would like your guidance.
"I have almost finished producing the first of four hour-long instructional DVDs. I have found that there's an average of 3,000 hits daily from folks wanting this informational product, but there is nothing out there to fill the demand.
"This product is perfect to sell online. Organizations such as ClickBank, however, handle only digital, downloadable products, not physical products like mine. (I've looked into it and, because the video is so long, have not yet found a way to allow buyers to download it immediately upon purchase.)
"Who do you know that can effectively put my product on the market? My time will be taken up with production, shipping, and other such details that will limit my opportunities to handle marketing."
Edith Benjamin
Dear Edith,
When you say there are "3,000 hits daily" from folks wanting this informational product, that doesn't tell me what I need to know. "Wanting" and "buying" are two different things. A lot of people want information but are not willing to pay for it. And where are these "hits" occurring? In Google? Another search engine? Across the entire Internet?
You say that "there is nothing out there to fill the demand." This is a big red flag! As marketing master Michael Masterson has said time and again, "Base your plan on the success of someone else. Don't reinvent the wheel."
Whenever someone comes to me with a product idea they want me to develop, I require three specific examples of a similar product already selling in the marketplace. I'm not interested in trying to develop or sell a product when there is no competition. If there's nothing out there to fill a "perceived" demand, it usually means there is no demand for that product in its current form and at its current price point.
The first thing you have to do is prove that your product will sell. You're looking for someone else to do the marketing because you say your time will be taken up with production, shipping, and other details. This is a huge mistake. Right now, 90 percent of your time, money, energy, and passion should be focused on marketing and making the first sale. Production, shipping, and other details are irrelevant unless you can do that.
You're right. ClickBank does not handle physical products. But hundreds of sites do. Nightingale-Conant, for instance, is one of the top marketers of instructional DVDs. However, they tend to focus on products produced in house. The lion's share of instructional DVDs are being sold on eBay, Amazon.com, Yahoo! Marketplace, and BN.com.
You can set up your own affiliate network to sell your DVDs with Linkshare.com, Commission Junction (cj.com) and PayDotCom.com, and Pepperjam.com. And don't forget about selling on Google directly with organic search and pay-per-click keyword ads.
Search Google today to discover who's selling instructional DVDs successfully and how they're doing it.
I hope that helps!
- Marc Charles
[Ed. Note: Marc Charles is an expert at finding low-cost business opportunities. He'll reveal a new money-making method each week in Profit Center Dispatch. Sign up now.
Have a question for an ETR expert? Send it to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com.]
A No-Equipment-Necessary Strength Builder
A “burpee” is a tough, advanced bodyweight exercise – strength and endurance packed into one – that you can do without any equipment. There are all sorts of variations, but my favorite is to add a push-up in the middle and a jump at the end. Here’s how to do it:
• Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.
• Squat down, place your hands on the floor, and thrust your feet back into push-up position.
• Do a push-up, and bring your knees back up to your chest.
• Jump up as high as you can, landing with your knees slightly bent.
• Repeat for 6-10 repetitions.
Make sure you wear proper shoes and do this on a soft surface (not concrete or pavement).
[Ed. Note: You don't need fancy equipment, hours of cardio training, or even a gym membership to build muscle and burn fat. Learn how you can get fit with three 45-minute workouts a week with fitness expert Craig Ballantyne's Turbulence Training program right here.
For more easy-to-follow advice on how to stay fit, lose weight, and eat right, sign up for ETR's FREE natural health newsletter.]
It’s Fun to Know: Remote-Controlled Beetles
University of California researchers have figured out how to control the flight of the flower beetle by remote control. The four-inch-long insect is rigged up with a radio receiver and electrodes, allowing the controller to “tell” the bug’s muscles to move it left, right, up, down, or to hover.
The research is being funded by (who else?) the U.S. military, which hopes to turn these insects into mini spy planes by strapping cameras to their backs.
The project is ongoing. They’re still working out the bugs. (Yes, we went there.)
(Source: News of the Weird and MIT Technology Review)
== Highly Recommended ==
Ready to Recoup Your Recession Losses By 9/30/09?
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Another “Liberty Street” opportunity is currently offering the chance to gain year-in and year-out returns of 65% with 99.77% certainty – even in today’s economy.
Word to the Wise: Lagniappe
“Lagniappe” (lan-YAP) – derived from “the gift” in Spanish – is an unexpected or indirect benefit.
Example (as used by Don Hauptman today): “A new book by Roy Blount Jr. can help you improve your knowledge and mastery of English. And as lagniappe, it’s fun to read.”
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2009
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