Word Errors Revisited

I got an email from a friend and mental sparring partner objecting to my quibbling over fine distinctions between words. His argument is, language must evolve, and evolution implies change. (Implies, not infers.)

He cited Webster's 9th Collegiate dictionary.

There was a lot of controversy when Webster's 9th came out. Traditionalists thought it too permissive. I am one of those. I regard Webster's 9th not as a dictionary but as a door stop.

I have Webster's 7th and four or five others, but my favorite is Oxford American Dictionary published in 1980. It not only preserves distinctions between such pairs as flaunt/flout, imply/infer, and persuade/convince, it gives examples of correct usage and warns of pitfalls.

Oxford's entry: flaunt (flawnt) v. 1. to display proudly or ostentatiously. 2. (of a flag, etc.) to wave proudly >Do not confuse flaunt with flout. We flaunt our ignorance if we flout established grammatical principles.

Evolution of language is inevitable and good. Allowing language to lose precision is bad.

As in biological evolution, variations from the norm survive if they confer some advantage over the norm. If variations are not advantageous, they die.

Those of us old fogies who resist change do the language a service. We tend to defeat bad changes while good changes overpower the establishment and improve the language.

The Ivy in Poison Ivy

As hard as poison ivy hits me, you'd think I'd have known better.

I was under two years old when I first contracted poison ivy, and I remember it. It was here in Ohio where I lived as an infant. It was a few blisters on one ankle.

The second time was worse, and I wouldn't admit for many years what had happened, though my parents and the doctor figured it out. I was about 8 or 9 years old and, while playing with friends in the foothills near my home in Boulder, Colorado, I responded to a call of nature and used the nearest suitable vegetation. Charmin it was not.

Not long after that, I got poison ivy on one forearm and spent several miserable days in front of the old Philco radio listening to Our Gal Sunday, Young Doctor Malone, and other soaps of the pre-TV era and trying not to scratch the blisters.

Susceptibility to poison ivy varies between individuals and within individuals over time. I didn't contract it again until recently, partly because there was little of it where I lived half of my life, and partly because the shiny leaves jump out of the background like a neon Beer sign in a funeral home. Over time, awareness of the leaves lessened.

All the poison ivy I'd ever seen was on the ground, knee high or less, so when I decided I didn't like a fast-growing vine with shiny leaves--three to a stem--on a shoulder-high tree stump in my yard, I simply yanked the tendrils off the stump and wrestled the roots out of the ground. It was only afterward that I considered it might be some other poisonous plant, maybe oak or sumac. I don't know what either of those looks like, but this vine had the tell-tale tri-leaves, and they were shiny. So I thought it wise to wash my hands thoroughly.

I can tell what I did with my hands before I washed them, and I can tell that I didn't wash my arms. By the swelling, blisters, and itching, I know that I scratched my left ear, rubbed the left side of my face and nose, and rubbed my chin. I also... Well, never mind.

The spray I bought to suppress the itch is white, so I look almost as bad as I feel, but funnier. It's supposed to dry up this affliction in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, after 60 years of dealing with the weed off an on, I finally made the connection between the name and this plant that I'd always noticed only on the ground. Only this morning did the obvious penetrate my fossilizing brain: Poison ivy. Ivy. Poison ivy. Ivy, a plant that climbs things! That's why they call it poison ivy!

Duh, as they say.