I love’m.

So much writing on the Web is boring. Blah, blah, blah. Quack, quack, quack.  Especially self-absorbed personal blogs like Steve of Upland.

A mischievous homophone can pull an unwary writer’s pants down. Hilarity results.

Take, for example, these newspaper headlines . . .
Woman Kicked By Horse Upgraded To Stable
Married Priests In Catholic Church A Long Time Coming
Child’s Stool Great For Use In Garden

If you don’t see what’s so funny about child’s stool, see homonyms for log in my list further down in this posting.

Homonyms are two or more words that share the same spelling, or the same pronunciation, or both, but have different meanings.

Examples: bow (type of knot) and bow (to incline), heal (restore to health) and heel (back part of foot), sewer (one who sews) and sewer (drain).

Homonyms come in two flavors:

Homophones are words that share the same pronunciation but differ in spelling and meaning, such as there and they’re; to, too, two; and so, sew, and sow.

 Homographs share the same spelling, and sometimes the same sound, but have different meanings.

Sow, a female adult pig (pronounced sou), and sow, to scatter seed (pronounced soh), are homographs. Another example is well, as in wishing well, and well, as in well wishes.

A homonym you don’t often come across is the contranym. A contranym is a word that has two opposite meanings.

The word clip can mean attach to, as with a paper clip. Or clip could mean the exact opposite: cut away from. Clip this coupon and clip it to your grocery list

Contranym examples are dust (to sprinkle with something, as in dust crops) and dust (remove sprinkles from something, as in dust furniture); cleave (to cut apart) and cleave (to cling together); and pit (a hole, as in a coal-pit) and pit (a solid core, as in a peach pit).

How the same word can have contradictory meanings is beyond me, but that’s the English language for you.

And then there’s just plain confusingly similar words, such as delegate and relegate, illicit and elicit, condensation and condescension.

Puns depend on homophones and confusingly similar words.

A pun, or play on words, is a cheap and easy way to get attention and (sometimes) a laugh, which is why annoying idiots like me like to use puns.

Businesses use puns to get attention and fix themselves in a customer’s memory

Here are a few of my favorite business slogan puns:

Roofing company: For a hole in your roof or a whole new roof
Radiator shop: A great place to take a leak
Guns & ammo store: We aim to keep you loaded
Gynecologist: Dr Jones at your cervix
Butcher shop: Where quality meats service
Sewer service: Your poop is our bread & butter
Plumber: A good flush beats a full house
Hair salon: We curl up and dye for you

At the Sand Witch, a sandwich shop here in Upland, California, which (get it?) I visited Thursday (delicious roast beef sandwich, extremely fast & friendly service), a sign reads “Witch Parking Only, Violators Will Be Toad.”

I suspect the young ladies who run the Sand Witch Shop are witches, or Wiccans. I also suspect they’re Lebanese, if you know what I mean. Whatever. The sandwiches are devilishly good.

Rose between two thorns: The Sand Witch Shop has a gas station on one side and a recycling center on the other. It’s magic they do so well. Or maybe because the witches behind the counter are so friendly and the sandwiches so tasty.

Some (homophone: sum) of my favorite homonyms, homophones and confusingly similar words:

air atmosphere
heir inheritor
ere  before

aye  yes
eye  the organ of sight
I  not you, me
Ay-Yi-Yi! Eileen, I have an eye on you! Aye, I do! Eye on you! 

boarder lodger
boarder one who rides a snowboard
border  the outer edge of something

cheap inexpensive; stingy
cheep to chirp
Cheep! Cheep! Cheep! All the little birdies say Steve is cheap, cheap, cheap. ‘Cause Steve buys his birdseed from the 99-Cents Only store. 

complement something that completes
compliment  flattering remark

desperate  having an urgent need; leaving little or no hope
disparate  distinct in kind; essentially different

hair of the head
hare  a rabbit

log  trunk or large limb of a felled tree
log  detailed record of a trip made by a ship or aircraft
log  long, solid mass of feces; a stool; big piece of shit
Steve looks with disgust at Ensign Pulver. “You’re sitting on the captain’s log,” says Steve acidly. Pulver jumps to his feet and exclaims, “LOG! What log? We’re shipwrecked on a bloody desert island, you fool!” Capt. Marlow furrows his brow and thinks, “Steve is cracking up. Obviously my log went down with the ship.”

mall  area set aside for shopping
maul  to beat; to handle roughly

mind  I lost mine years ago
mine  belongs to me
mine  tunnel into the earth or buried explosive device
mined  tunneled under or laid with land mines

unwanted  not wanted
unwonted  rare; unusual
Steve thought his blog Steve of Upland creative, brilliant, so incredibly  unwonted — one of the Web’s true gems. Everyone else on the planet dismissed it as dull, derivative, and unwanted.

walk  stroll; sidewalk
wok  cooking utensil

See my master list of all the homonyms, homophones, and other confusingly similar words I’ve posted to date. And please comment with your favorite homonyms . . .  OK, don’t. I don’t care.

Advice I’m following to improve my writing skills

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.
Samuel Johnson

Where I go for inspiration and to learn the mechanics of writing well 

• Bill Walsh Copyediting Blog
• Daily Writing Tips
• Terribly Write
• The Slot: A Spot for Copy Editors
• The Writer’s Almanac Newsletter

Always ready to trip the unwary writer, homonyms can magically turn sleepy writing into a wild, crazy party.

Take, for example, this newspaper headline: Police: Crack Found in Man’s Buttocks. (Don’t believe me? View article).

Synonyms, in contrast, are serious, sober, precise communicators.

Synonyms are words having the same or nearly the same meaning. For example, over, beyond and exceeding are synonyms of above.

Yawn.  Synonyms, compared to homonyms, are party-poopers.

If you want to throw a wet towel on your writing, use a thesaurus. A thesaurus is a reference work where you can find synonyms and word suggestions.

Budding writers often get this advice: “Use a thesaurus to spice up your writing! When you create sentences, you can make them more interesting by using words that mean the same as the word you are speaking about. This allows you to add flavor to your writing.” (They’re talking about using synonyms, not cinnamon).

To this advice, I say, “Hogwash, bunk, drivel, and nonsense.”

To emphasize my negative opinion, I used a thesaurus  to find the above synonyms for bullshit. But this is a rare instance of reaching for my dusty thesaurus.

Treat a thesaurus as you would a loaded gun. Handle with great care. Leave it alone unless you really know what you’re doing.

The casual use of this loaded reference work is prone to backfire. To sour more often than sweeten your writing.

When to use a thesaurus

You are empty on imagination. You keep using the same words over and over.

Each time my friend Bryan says literally, I literally want to tear my hair out. I’d literally be a millionaire if each time he used literally, he’d literally have to give me a nickel.

How do you know if you’re overusing a word? If a word (noun, verb, adverb, adjective) appears more than four or five times, unless the word is a key word in your title.

Use a thesaurus to avoid using the same word too repetitively, redundantly, recurrently, incessantly…

You are lazy & pretentious. You jack-up or mask what little you have to say with five-dollar words. A thesaurus is indispensable for desperate writers who decide if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.

If you’re lured to utilize the thesaurus on the subsequent occasion you’re toiling on a treatise, mull over what just transpired to this stretch.

You are a nit-picker. Lawyers, for example, are painstaking in their choice of words.  They sift through synonyms to find exactly the right word, either to clarify without ambiguity or to obfuscate the facts — whichever suits their purpose.

Each synonym has a slightly different meaning. The synonym you choose influences the way in which people interpret what you’ve written.

To a jury, there’s a subtle difference between “Did you see  Lindsay Lohan take the necklace?” and “Did you see Lindsay Lohan steal the necklace.”

A hypernym is a synonym of a given word that is more generic — a little more general and less precise. The hypernym of steal is take, just as dog is the hypernym of collie.

The thesaurus lists hypernyms and subordinate words for your search word — the whole family, including distant relations.

You are looking for a jump-start. OK, this is when I turn to a thesaurus. The right word escapes me — it’s on the tip of my tongue but it won’t let go.  I use the thesaurus (Shift+F7) in Word when I’m stuck.

Presented with a choice of related words, I think more about what I’m trying to say.

I grudgingly admit a thesaurus, on occasion, is a catalyst for clarity, for tying together the loose threads of an inchoate thought.

A thesaurus used creatively can yield jackpots. Years ago, an advertising copywriter searching for a catchy slogan for a new breakfast cereal, Rice Krispies, turned to a section in his edition of Roget’s Thesaurus headed “Sudden Violent Noise” and found  ”snap; crackle; pop.”

“Use the thesaurus to increase the effort and work of creating, not as a quick replacement of hard work.”
Trent Lorcher, Improve Writing by Improving Word Choice

You are a logophile, a lover of words. If you can get lost for hours in a dictionary, a thesaurus is just as entertaining. Knock yourself out.

If obscure English words fascinate you — words like horbgorbling, mautuolypea, or amomaxia — may I suggest Charles Harrington Elster’s There’s A Word for It! A Grandiloquent Guide to Life.

Alternatives to a thesaurus

Use a reverse look-up dictionary. I found the word logophile by going to OneLook.com and searching by definition – in this case, lover of words.  I plug in what I want to say and, viola, there’s a word for it.

Be careful, though, in choosing an obscure word, even if it’s one you happen to know. Not everyone is a former Jeopardy champion and shares your limitless vocabulary. If that word is a head-scratcher for most of your readers, you’re not communicating. (Yeah, and I’m the one who used inchoate a few paragraphs ago.)

Today, the Word of the Day from dictionary.com is entelechy, meaning “a realization or actuality as opposed to a potentiality.”

I can’t imagine ever using entelechy, outside of Scrabble or a college class in philosophy. I want people to understand what I’m writing.

• Write in your own words. Be honest and authentic. Write just as if you were talking to a friend.
• Read a lot. Be omnivorous: Read a variety of sources. Read to learn new words. Read to learn original ways of expressing old ideas. Old magazines in the doctor’s office are a goldmine — you’re forced to read what you would never have given a second glance.
• Run your copy through the EditMinion. EditMinion, your personal copy editor, will check for overused words, weak words, clichés, adverbs, “said” replacements, passive voice, often misspelled words, and sentences ending with a preposition (as in, on, by, to, since). And EditMinion is free.

The best way to connect to your readers is to pick an interesting subject and don’t let your writing get in the way.

Best practices: Strangers in the Night

Be creative: Slam unrelated words together for fresh perspectives and memorable meanings.

It’s called Poetry.

Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate,  claims “there is no such thing as a synonym.” Billy says to avoid bland, uninspired writing, keep your thesaurus high on a shelf, out of reach.

Thesaurus

by Billy Collins

It could be the name of a prehistoric beast
that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up
on its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary,
or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book.

It means treasury, but it is just a place
where words congregate with their relatives,
a big park where hundreds of family reunions
are always being held,
house, home, abode, dwelling, lodgings, and digs,
all sharing the same picnic basket and thermos;
hairy, hirsute, woolly, furry, fleecy, and shaggy
all running a sack race or throwing horseshoes,
inert, static, motionless, fixed and immobile
standing and kneeling in rows for a group photograph.

Here father is next to sire and brother close
to sibling, separated only by fine shades of meaning.
And every group has its odd cousin, the one
who traveled the farthest to be here:
astereognosis, polydipsia, or some eleven
syllable, unpronounceable substitute for the word tool.
Even their own relatives have to squint at their name tags.

I can see my own copy up on a high shelf.
I rarely open it, because I know there is no
such thing as a synonym and because I get nervous
around people who always assemble with their own kind,
forming clubs and nailing signs to closed front doors
while others huddle alone in the dark streets.

I would rather see words out on their own, away
from their families and the warehouse of Roget,
wandering the world where they sometimes fall
in love with a completely different word.
Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever
next to each other on the same line inside a poem,
a small chapel where weddings like these,
between perfect strangers, can take place.
__________________________________________________

Peter Mark Roget was about my age, in his early sixties, when he conceived the idea and seventy when he began work on his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, classified and arranged so as to facilitate the expression of ideas and to assist in literary compilation. 

First published in 1852, Roget’s Thesaurus has never been out of print. With each succeeding edition, the popularity of the work has increased.  Here’s a short bio of Dr. Roget.

Members of the last group of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry, are the last U.S. troops to leave Iraq as they cross the border into Kuwait. (Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times / December 17, 2011)

Nine years of war. Nearly 4,500 American troops killed, scores of thousands more who will suffer a lifetime from their wounds and memories. More than 100,000 Iraqis dead. Hundreds of billions of dollars spent.

On the TV news I watch the last US troops exit Iraq into Kuwait and think, what was that all about? The waste sickens me.

I remember a few years ago stopping at a restaurant off the freeway near Riverside.  A popular family restaurant crowded with locals and travelers on a Saturday morning.

As I waited for a seat, I noticed a display near the cash register, where every customer pauses.  Photos of a young man surround an American flag. Here he’s a high school football player. There he is smiling and waiting tables in this restaurant. In one he poses with his parents, the restaurant’s owners, in Army uniform.

A framed letter from the young man’s commanding officer says what a fine soldier he was, how popular he was in his platoon, and how he died in combat.

It’s the closest I ever got to the real cost of the war in Iraq.

Because of the all-volunteer military, few Americans serve or even know anyone who serves in the armed forces.

Our military men and women, serving deployment after deployment in Iraq, Afghanistan, are also members of the one-percent, as distant as the rich and powerful.

I bet people see who that shrine in the restaurant today don’t give it a second thought. Too soon, young people will say, “Iraq? Where’s Iraq? Was there a war?”

Flashman’s reaction following the Battle of Alma in the Crimean War comes to mind.

The camp ground was littered with spent shot and rubbish and pools of congealed blood — my stars, wouldn’t I just like to take one of our Ministers, or street-corner orators, or blood lusting, breakfast-scoffing papas, over to such a place as the Alma hills – not to let him see, because he’d just tut-tut and look anguished and have a good pray and not care a damn – but to shoot him in the belly with a soft-nosed bullet and let him die screaming where he belonged. That’s what they all deserve.

Flashman at the Charge by George MacDonald Fraser

My favorite anti-hero in all literature is Sir Harry Paget Flashman.

In George MacDonald Fraser’s brilliant series of historical novels, Flashman is a self-confessed coward, libertine, and scoundrel.

Sir Harry is also the most decorated soldier in Victorian England, lionized in the press as a hero of the British Empire.

Flashman has one redeeming virtue, at least for historians: he is a reluctant eyewitness and scrupulous reporter of major events worldwide in the nineteenth century, including British military engagements from the Khyber Pass in the First Afghan War to Rourke’s Drift in the Boer War, the American Civil War, and foreign intervention in Imperial China.

Flashman survives Custer’s Last Stand and numerous other infamous massacres around the globe.

Soldiers, Crimean War 1855

Flashy witnesses the nasty, sordid Crimean War. Thousands of British soldiers perish from cold, exhaustion, and disease, far more than are killed by the enemy.

And for what?  The reason given by the British government for its involvement in the Crimea was a long way from its real and deeper aims. Sound familiar?

Despite Flashy’s best efforts to avoid duty, he unwillingly participates in as pointless and stupid a waste of lives and money as our misadventure in Iraq, though the Crimean War (1853-56) didn’t drag on for nine freakin’ years.

Flashman’s fictional memoir (and GMF’s extensive research; the book’s footnotes expand on Flashy’s observations) reveal the horror of the Crimea War and the incompetence of Britain’s military leaders.

Flashy doesn’t flinch from telling the truth. I wish we had someone like him to report on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I owe a great debt to George MacDonald Fraser. Through the dozen or so Flashman books, I’ve learned a great deal about the  British Empire. This knowledge is relevant to world-changing events as they enfold today.

Afghanistan, China, India, Russia, Africa, Europe,  even the US,  are all locales for Flashman’s adventures and insightful commentary. George MacDonald Fraser connects our world to the extraordinary people and events of the nineteenth century.

George MacDonald Fraser knew war. He saw action in Burma during World War II. In one attack, the men on his left and right were killed.

The Flashman Papers are also great entertainment, and have kept me up late many a night reading and laughing.

For example, Flashman rode in the famous Charge of the Light Brigade. In fact, as George MacDonald Fraser writes it, Flashy is responsible for instigating that military blunder.  As the brigade forms, a hung-over and terrified Flashman loudly farts, startles his horse, and triggers the disastrous charge against entrenched Russian artillery.

Come to think of it, a fart is as good an excuse to start the insanity as the Bush administration’s bogus claim of Sadam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Or any war.

Biography of the fictional(?) Sir Harry Flashman

Awkward Family Photos

Families are like fudge – mostly sweet with a few nuts.
~Author Unknown 

Martina Strong has assembled eye-popping examples of excruciatingly embarrassing family photos. She used Pinterest, an online pinboard.

Mom? Dad? Both?

After scrolling through photo after photo of spectacularly tactless, sometimes painfully hilarious, often what-were-they-thinking? family shots, I’m grateful my family never posed in such epic bad taste.

But judge not lest ye be judged. You may have a few skeletons in your family album.

As a teenager, I discreetly showed my middle finger in a photo of a nice family gathering. Forty-five years later I’m still trying to live that one down.

Then there’s my high school yearbook photo. But who doesn’t have an embarrassing high school yearbook photo? At least they air brushed out my zits.

My yearbook photo isn't quite this humiliating

But nothing I’ve ever seen compares to the uber-embarrassing photos, and lots of them, at Awkward Family Photos.

Check it out. And hope a family member hasn’t posted that photo of you (you know the one I mean).

Not that I ever looked very hard.

Like many people, I get caught up in day-to-day existence, stumble through life. Lots of distractions, don’t you know. Not the least of which is this pesky cat climbing all over my computer and bookshelves.

As Dante says at the start of Inferno, “Midway in the journey of our life, I woke to find myself in a gloomy woods, having lost the correct path.” At least I woke up. Many people never wake, never face the reality of their lives, have no self-awareness.

My regret of years lost in a pointless, wasted life resurfaced when I came across this website: Center for Cowboy Ethics & Leadership.

How do we find meaning in our short lives? 

Cowboys have a  simple answer:  Every one of us, as an individual, is responsible for what we do, for who we are, for the way we face and deal with the world, and ultimately, for the way the world is.

A meaningful life requires GOD, Good Orderly Direction

Maybe it’s not too late for me to take this path. Time to saddle up!

Yeah, I’ll get right on it.

Right after I check out the latest crazy photos on Is Anyone Up?, see what Sasha the cat wants, take out the trash, and check what’s on TV — maybe those relentless, bothersome zombies on Walking Dead. Now there’s some people who lack self-awareness!

I’ll always have tomorrow to find my way out of these gloomy woods.

Also on the website is this illustration, which the website claims is an actual photo. Anyway, I think it’s inspiring. Especially helpful for someone lost in a dark forest, paralyzed with the seeming futility and meaninglessness of life.

We can all be heroes in our own lives

From the website…

Titled “Hero of the Storm,” this extraordinary photograph really
says it all. Just look at this image and ask yourself: What kind
of person does it take to get up in the middle of the night,
saddle up his horse and set out into a raging blizzard — all
to rescue a calf he doesn’t even own? This cowboy is simply
“doing what has to be done” with no regard for his own comfort or safety.

This kind of ties into a Nicely Said post I’m writing. The theme is how the culture we live in and our emotions — more than anything else — shape our  behavior, the decisions we make, who we are.

We may think that what we believe and do is largely under our conscious control. We may believe that we should try to increase this control by the conscious exercise of reasoning and will power. But are we just fooling ourselves?

Do social and subconscious powers actually control more of our lives than we think?

Could explain why people make irrational, even self-destructive decisions.

As my favorite philosopher Blaise Pascal says,
The Heart has its own reasons that Reason itself cannot understand

Why is the cowboy willingly risking his life to save someone else’s calf? (And what about the cowboy’s poor horse?)

Why did the first responders on 9/11 rush into the burning World Trade Center towers?

Why does a soldier willingly give his life to save his comrades?

Self-sacrifice is the subject of an excerpt I’m using in my Nicely Said posting from WAR by Sebastian Junger, a book about an American platoon’s experience in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley in 2007 and 2008.

Talk about “doing what has to be done” regardless of cost, one of the platoon members in Junger’s book is  Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, a soldier who risked his life to stop Taliban fighters from kidnapping a fallen comrade.

In 2010, Pres. Obama presented Giunta with the Medal of Honor for the actions Junger relates in heart-pounding detail.

If any of this interests you, vote for the Nicely Said post in the poll you’ll find in my Dec. 3 post, Writer’s Block.

My cat Sasha is bugging me. She must be fed NOW! Which is how I translate that long, loud MEOW!

Sasha’s green eyes flash with impatience. She lives in the now — no past, no future. A creature ruled by her appetites. Like the zombies on the Walking Dead. Like most people.

Gotta go.

Hey, you walkers, get a life! Have you ever questioned your mindless, consumer existence?

I’m stalled on several posts I’ve been writing forever (or at least the last three months).

Here’s what I’m working on, ever so slowly . . .

What’s In A Word: Chico, the Barking Spider
Definition of barking spider: What farts are blamed on when there is no dog available.

My friend John Gallanos didn’t invent the barking spider excuse, but he did name the barking spider Chico. Someone farts, just say “Chico!”

I reminisce about John, now 20 years gone (included in my memories are surfing in El Salvador, a close encounter with a shark, and John playing the piano at Santa Monica’s Fox Inn, home of Foxy, The World’s Fastest Beer Drinker).

More about farts, including a restriction on public farting placed on US Marines in Afghanistan. Afghans are not amused by Chico.

A new posting about Homonym, Homophones, and Other Confusingly Similar Words

With such words as aye/eye/ I,  boarder vs. border, hair/hare/heir. A really great list with homonyms I bet you’ve never thought of.

Then eye… excuse me, I… I digress  into puns. Got a list of great puns that show up in business slogans, like the radiator shop: A Great Place To Take A Leak, the electrician: Let me remove your shorts, and the gynecologist: Dr. Jones At Your Cervix.

I’m working on a great list of business slogan puns.

Puns, of course, depend on homophones and confusingly similar words.

A new post under my blog’s category of Nicely Said. 
When I come across something I think is particularly well written or well said, or that I admire for the writer’s creative choice of words, effective syntax, and clarity of thought, I like to share them with you.

This one starts with a great quote from The Social Animal by David Brooks:

“We are emotional beings with a cognitive side, not cognitive beings with an emotional side.”

And includes a startling excerpt from WAR by Sebastian Junger, a gripping book on an American platoon’s experience in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, and  something about angry fish in America’s aquariums as a metaphor for our nation’s obesity epidemic.

But I do tie it all together rather nicely, at least as far as I got.

It’s not the fish, it’s the aquarium… change the aquarium!

Fight the obesity epidemic by not focusing on individuals but changing the social and emotional environment.

It would help if I focused on just one post and finished it, instead of trying to write three posts at a time.

I’m also my wife’s caregiver, and Lizzie is having a difficult time now. Hasn’t left me much time for writing. And Lizzie’s suffering weighs on my mind.

Help Steve Focus. Help Him Squeeze Something Out.

So few people comment (or visit this blog), your opinion will carry tremendous weight.

There, I’ve empowered you. And you didn’t even have to camp out and Occupy Steve of Upland!

While you’re at it, you could also send well wishes to Lizzie. I’ll pass your message along. She’d like that. Lizzie rarely gets to talk to anyone except me and her doctors.

In the meantime, for all you word lovers, my sister Bonnie sent me a link to an entertaining, very creative blog, Hyperbole and a Half.

This post on Hyperbole and a Half cleverly illustrates a common grammatical mistake — condensing the phrase a lot down to one word, alot.  Take a look, it’s alot of fun!
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

You could also click at the top of the column to the left and see all my postings for Homonyms, Homophones, and Other Confusingly Similar Words.

I’m going to check on Lizzie. Then I’m going to my library, sit down, and  see if I can do something about my mental constipation. Maybe Chico will show up to help, who knows? Cheers!

Homographs share the same spelling, and sometimes the same sound, but have different meanings. An example is well, as in wishing well, and well, as in well wishes.

Words that share the same spelling but have different sounds and meanings are also called heteronyms. Sow, a female adult pig (pronounced sou), and sow, to scatter seed (pronounced soh), are heteronyms; they’re homographs, too.

And then there’s confusingly similar words, such as affect and effect, desert and dessert, flammable and inflammable (both mean combustible, easy to catch fire).

Homophones and confusingly similar words are the stuff that malapropisms are made of. A malapropism is the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one of similar sound, with humorous results. Before grampaw could read my poem, he had to put on his testicles. [spectacles]

Malapropisms from Gloria on Modern Family

“Don’t give me an old tomato.” [ultimatum]

“Blessings in the skies.” [in disguise]

“Carpool tunnel syndrome.” [carpal]

“It’s a doggy dog world.” [dog-eat-dog]

Some (homophone: sum) of my favorite homonyms, homophones and confusingly similar words:

colonel  an officer
kernel  seed in a nut

delusion  misleading of the mind
illusion  misleading of the mind as well as a misleading of the senses
The lake mirage, far on the desert horizon, was a tantalizing illusion. Steve, crazed by thirst, gave into the delusion that if he flapped his arms hard enough, he could fly to it.

Though the words overlap in meaning, delusion is the stronger word. Illusion, however, is the more common word.

discreet   tactful, prudent, circumspect; keep something quiet
discrete   separate, detached, individually distinct
A discreet way to inform a gentleman his pants are unzipped is to lean forward and whisper in his ear, “Pardon me, sir, your fly is down.” Discrete from this is the following method… point at the poor guy’s groin and say loud enough for everyone to hear, “Hey! Got a license to sell hot dogs? Your fly’s open, pervert!”

Thanks to computer spelling checkers and unthinking writers, discreet and discrete are so often “misspelled” and mixed up that we all might as well throw our hands up and allow interchangeable spelling for these two words.
Wait a minute! If we did that, discreet / discrete and discrete / discreet would become both homophones and homographs – two, two, two mints in one!

The Word Detective, a great blog for word lovers with a sense of humor, dissects discreet / discrete. 

eruption  sudden violent discharge; outbreak
irruption  sudden violent entrance; invasion

flew  did fly
flue  chimney
flu  influenza

hail  ice
hale  salute, greet; summon
hale  healthy

insight seeing deeply into something
incite  pick a fight

pare whittle down
pair  two of something
pear fruit shaped like that nice woman who lives across the street
Oh, there she is now!

precisian  a person who is rigidly precise or punctilious, especially as regards religious rules. The Puritans who landed at Plymouth Rock were precisians. So, I guess, are the Taliban.
precision  accuracy; exactness

steal  take without permission
steel  iron treated with intense heat and mixed with carbon to make it hard and tough

tire  to become weary.
tire  ring of rubber, usually inflated with air, placed around the rim of a wheel to provide traction and cushion the ride. The British spell it tyre, and thereby change a homograph to a homophone.
I quickly tire of Steve’s stupid blog. I’d rather change a flat tire in the pouring rain than read it.

vice  moral fault or failing
vise  tool with tight-holding jaws

waiver  relinquishment of a right or obligation
waver  someone who vacillates or is unsteady

See my master list of all the homonyms, homophones, and other confusingly similar words I’ve posted to date. And please comment with your favorite homonyms and confusingly similar words.

The The Dick Van Dyke Show first aired Oct. 3, 1961 on CBS. Lucy debuted on Oct. 15, 1951, also on CBS.

I was around on both those dates.

I don’t remember watching original broadcasts of  I Love Lucy, but I can clearly recall episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. I wanted to grow up to be just like Rob Petrie — decent, funny, handsome, beautiful and loving wife, great job in New York City.

One of my favorite episodes was when Rob and Laurie brought their new son home from the hospital. Somehow Rob suspects a mix-up at the hospital. Perhaps they have someone else’s baby.

Rob is driving Laura crazy. He has the names of another couple at the hospital whom he thinks were on the other side of the mistaken baby swap. Rob arranges a meeting to see if the other couple has the same doubts about their baby boy.

The couple’s arrival in the final scene is a surprise twist no one sees coming, especially a TV audience in the early Sixties. The other new parents are well-dressed African-Americans, the equivalents of Rob & Laura.

It was a historic moment, the first time black actors had a non-stereotyped role on an American sit-com.

Apparently, Lucy & Desi live in an all-white New York. The Beaver lives in a lily-white suburb. Even more bizarre, on The Andy Griffith Show,  Mayberry, a Southern town, has no black residents. Talk about segregation!

All TV shows in the fifties were broadcast in black & white (with the exception in the late 50′s of Bonanza). But in sit-coms such as Lucy, Father Knows Best, My Three Sons, you only saw white, never a black face.

Hell, I don’t recall seeing a black Mouseketeers on The Micky Mouse Club.

Think we’ve come a long way? Though Latinos are now the nation’s largest minority, you rarely see a Latino character on a sit-com  (outside the Spanish-language stations). Today, mainstream TV is still black & white.

I missed a great event in Hollywood celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Besides airing classic episodes of the show, Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) and Alan Brady (series creator Carl Reiner) were on hand to reminisce. I wonder if Alan Brady still wears his toupee?

Here’s more on the event from LA Weekly… Oh, Robbbbb!

I confess. I have a thing for Ethel Mertz. Why did she ever marry grumpy, old Fred?

Vivian Vance, who played Ethel, was 22 years younger than the actor who played Fred, William Frawley.

In real life, Frawley was as cantankerous and cheap as the character he played. He lived alone in a modest bachelor apartment. A fondness for the bottle didn’t improve Frawley’s disagreeable personality.

Before Desi Arnaz agreed to cast William Frawley as Fred Mertz, Arnaz made it clear to him that, if he showed up drunk for work more than once, Frawley would not only be fired from the program but blacklisted throughout the entertainment industry.

William Frawley died in 1966 at age 79. He had a heart attack while walking down Hollywood Blvd. I’ve probably stepped over the very spot Frawley died. Especially if that spot is near the Frolic Room bar next to the Pantages at Hollywood & Vine.

When Vivian Vance heard of Frawley’s death, she reportedly shouted, “Champagne for everybody!”

She and Frawley despised each other. You can see that if you closely watch the interaction between Ethel and Fred on I Love Lucy.

“She’s one of the finest gals to come out of Kansas, but I often wish she’d go back there.”
– William Frawley on Vivian Vance

“I loathed William Frawley and the feeling was mutual. Whenever I received a new script, I raced through it, praying that there wouldn’t be a scene where we had to be in bed together.”
– Vivian Vance on William Frawley

Source: The Internet Movie Database

See also a great book, Meet the Mertzes: The Life Stories of I Love Lucy’s Other Couple by Rob Edelman

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See Main Titles for Your Favorite Old TV Shows

LA Times Magazine has 50 main title openers for the TV shows I loved as a kid, from Addams Family to Zorro.

The Dick Van Dyke Show main title is here (see #14), so are the titles for Dragnet (#16) and Rawhide (#42), two shows I never missed.

Most of the openers are in black & white, making me feel even more ancient.

Kids, once upon a time TV was only b&w. TV sets were huge boxes and had vacuum tubes. You could only choose from six or seven channels (and that was in LA, even fewer channels outside metro areas).

Broadcasters went off the air at midnight, and there was no cable, no satellites — had to have an antenna on your roof or bunny ears.

Instead of Terra Nova, we had The Flintstones — that about sums it up.

I noticed several shows missing from The Times’ choice of 50 main title cards.

How could they overlook Leave It To Beaver, Highway Patrol, The Munsters, Father Knows Best or Our Miss Brooks?

But this limited collection is sure to bring back memories, if you’re my age.

Youngsters will groan at the shoddy graphics and hokey subject material.

A talking horse? A handsome astronaut who lives with a beautiful genie but none of the wishes involve the bedroom? A family where the dad is wise & wonderful and not a hapless moron or buffoon, as in Family Guy and every other dysfunctional family show today?

If only the Times had included audio. We could hear again the theme music our memories attach to these classic shows.

50+ Main Titles

Caje and Littlejohn were my squad favorites.

What a crazy pair! Today, Patty Duke pitches Social Security to aging baby boomers (like me!)

I still remember the distinctive, wheezy voice of Grandpa Amos (Walter Brennan)

Watch The Real McCoys “The Gift” (Aired December 11, 1958)

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Seeing those TV-screen shots, I just had to throw this in…

Marc Brown of KABC Los Angeles is the wrong newscaster for this story. What was the news director thinking? Now when I watch the KABC afternoon news I always flash on this. And Marc Brown is one of my favorite local newscasters, too.

Homonyms come in two flavors:

Homophones are words that share the same pronunciation but differ in spelling and meaning, such as to, too, two; and so, sew, and sow.

Homographs share the same spelling, and sometimes the same sound, but have different meanings. Sow, a female adult pig (pronounced sou), and sow, to scatter seed (pronounced soh), are homographs. Another example is well, as in wishing well, and well, as in well wishes.

And then there’s just plain confusingly similar words, such as elusive and illusive, entropy and atrophy, and my personal favorites penal and penile, which I discussed in an earlier post.

Homonyms, homophones, and confusingly similar words are the stuff that malapropisms are made of. A malapropism is the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one of similar sound, with humorous results.

Teachers come across the best malapropisms:

• If it is less than 90 degrees, it is a cute angel.
  
• Crabs and creatures like them all belong to a family of crushed Asians.
  
• In Scandinavia, the Danish people come from Denmark, the Norwegians come from Norway, and the Lapdancers come from Lapland.

I got these examples from Ed in the Clouds, a wonderful blog by British educator Mark Adams. 

Some (homophone: sum) of my favorite homonyms, homophones and confusingly similar words:

acclamation applause
acclimation used to climate

colon a punctuation mark ( : ) used after a word introducing a series or an example or an explanation 
colon your poop chute

chute a channel, trough or shaft for conveying something to a lower level
chute short for parachute
shoot to discharge a missile from a weapon: to shoot a bullet
shoot euphemism for the slang interjection shit.
Oh, shoot! I forgot my chute!

In French, chute means fall. The word “parachute” comes from the French para, meaning “to protect against,” and chute, “fall.” Parachute literally means “that which protects against a fall.”

The word parachute was coined by the eighteenth-century French physicist Louis-Sébastien Lenormand.

Lenormand made the first recorded parachute descent in 1783. As a large crowd watched, Lenormand jumped from a tall tower in Paris. His invention, a pyramid-shaped parachute, worked: he landed unharmed. I wonder what Lenormand’s mom thought of her son’s bold experiment?

Lenormand intended his parachute as a fire escape for people trapped in tall buildings.

Fortunately for aviation pioneers, his invention came along just as French aeronauts were experimenting with hot air balloons, ascending thousands of feet over Paris.

We associate parachutes with airplanes and think they’re a modern invention. Remarkably, the history of the parachute goes back a thousand years.

elegy a sorrowful song or poem
eulogy a speech of praise

epigram any witty, ingenious, or pointed saying tersely expressed: Life imitates art far more than art imitates life  Oscar Wilde
epitaph a phrase or statement written in memory of a person who has died, as on a tombstone: “That’s All Folks” reads the epitaph for Mel Blanc, the voice of Porky Pig and dozens of other Warner Bros. cartoon characters.
epithet any word or phrase expressing a quality or characteristic of the person or thing mentioned: Man of a Thousand Voices is Mel Blanc’s epithet.  Another meaning of epithet is an abusive or contemptuous word or phrase: Steve screamed epithets at the telemarketer who called during dinner.

Epitaph and epithet on Mel Blanc's headstone

gibe  to utter taunting words
jibe  to be in accord; (nautical) to shift suddenly

lo look, see
low not high, mean
Lo, how low Steve can go with his blog!

palpate to examine by touch
palpitate to beat rapidly; to throb
”Where were you wounded?” she asked the old vet with a Purple Heart medal pinned to his lapel. “Madam, give me your hand!” he exclaimed. “You shall palpate the very spot!” And his heart — along with another organ — began to palpitate in anticipation.

queen king’s wife
quean impudent woman; shrew; hussy

reek give off a strong, unpleasant smell
wreak to inflict, as in wreak havoc

resume to get, take, or occupy again
résumé a fruitless document associated with frustrated jobseekers

roes  eggs, deer
rows  things arranged in adjacent lines, rows of eager faces turned toward me
rows  uses oars
rose  flower
rose  get up

which a question word
witch a woman who does magic
Dorothy looked from one to the other: ”Good Witch of the West? Bad Witch of the East? Which witch is which?” Boy, was she dense. Even Toto could tell the difference — the nice white witch is good, the grouchy green witch, bad.

See my master list of all the homonyms, homophones, and other confusingly similar words I’ve posted to date. And please comment with your favorite homonyms.