Insturm* (for Instrum*)

Google had a great image today in honor of Clara Rockmore, an early proponent and expert player of the hands-free musical instrument known as the theremin. Rockmore was born Clara Reisenberg in Vilnius, Lithuania, on March 9, 1911, the youngest of three girls. She was a child prodigy on the violin, reportedly had "perfect pitch," and at the age of four became the youngest student ever admitted to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Clara was close personal friends with the inventor Léon Theremin and worked alongside him perfecting and finessing his instrument. (Although he actually proposed to her on several occasions, she wound up marrying attorney Robert Rockmore instead.) As we breathlessly wait out the last few weeks of winter here, enjoy this eerie and evocative rendition of Ira Gershwin's "Summertime" from Clara Rockmore's Lost Theremin Album, produced by her nephew in 2006. Although the theremin is making something of a comeback, it's still a sort of "geeky" thing to play, as wonderfully demonstrated by Jim Parsons ("Sheldon") on The Big Bang Theory in the episode "The Bus Pants Utilization." There were 36 hits on Insturm* (for instrum*) in OhioLINK today, and 636 in WorldCat.

(Clara Rockmore and Léon Theremin, birthday celebration, 1929, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Thier (for Their)

The American Dialect Society has just given its official imprimatur to the word they "used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun." And I have to say it's about time. Writers like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Jane Austen all freely employed it (along with their and them), and most of the rest of us speak this way without even thinking about it. ("Each and every applicant should bring their references with them.") But for some reason, we have long been told that it should really be "his references" or maybe "his or her references," so as not to sound quite so sexist. Some claim that "s/he" solves all of our problems, but it so really doesn't. What do you do, for example, with him, her, his, and hers? (Zir, zir, zirs, and zirs, zay zome.) And how do you even pronounce a word like "s/he"? It kind of reminds me of the time Sheldon and Rajesh discover an asteroid on The Big Bang Theory. At first, Sheldon proposes they name it after themselves, i.e., COOPER (Cooper + Koothrappali), but when Raj says, "So, KOOPER with a K?" Sheldon reconsiders: "Nah, that's dumb." The more romantic-minded Leonard then suggests they name it for their girlfriends and Sheldon concurs, noting that they can combine the "AM" from Amy and the "Y" from Emily. But Raj objects: "That just spells Amy!" Another use for the new and improved they/their/them, according to the ADC, is with regard to people whose gender is ambiguous or non-binary. ("The person in the front row pushed their hair out of their eyes so they could better view the LGBTQ PowerPoint presentation.") Certain reformers have even tried to invent entirely new words to fill this lacuna (co, ou, ze, etc.), and perhaps the transgender community will succeed where feminism has failed. The funny thing about today's picture and caption (chosen mainly for its inclusion of the word their) is that it seems to show no diversity at all in terms of race or gender, but rather runs the relative gamut in terms of facial hair, collars, and ties. The "singular they" has been used quite naturally for centuries and doesn't require learning anything new, just unlearning all the shame that grammarians have heaped upon those who have dared to put it in writing. For those two very good reasons (along with its now politically correct gender cred), we should soon be seeing it listed in dictionaries as a valid usage. There were 386 hits on Thier in OhioLINK today, and "too many records found for your search" in WorldCat.

(Illustration from Famous Composers and Their Works, v. 5, 1906, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Forzen (for Frozen)

One time on The Big Bang Theory, Leonard went to the North Pole and brought Penny back a snowflake suspended in "a one percent solution of polyvinyl acetal resin." Penny goes: "Oh, my God. That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me that I didn’t understand!" A coworker and fellow fan points out that the only geek gesture arguably more romantic on the show was when Howard gave Bernadette a star necklace, then took it back so he could take it to the International Space Station, then returned it to her so she could say her star had actually been in space. (It could be that great distances and cold temperatures don't imply ardent coupling as much as they do the preservation of long-term relationships—if not exactly "eternal love.") This morning I had to take the bus to work and it was six degrees below zero. After I got on board, I was wiping my glasses off when I noticed a frozen tear stuck to one of the lenses, like one of those candy "dots" from our childhood. I popped it off and into a baggie I had in my purse, pressing it up against the windowpane, for some reason desperate not to let it melt. Which, of course, it did anyway, with relative dispatch. The moral of the story? Don't cry over chilled, um, eye water? Saline solution? Lachrymose liquid? (I know, I know. I really shouldn't milk a joke like that.) All I know is I felt a bit weepy when I got to work with only a tiny wet splotch in a plastic bag. As Lemony Snicket, who knows all about unfortunate events, once said: "The sea is nothing but a library of all the tears in history." Utterly ephemeral, constantly renewable, running both hot and cold, a mark of both sorrow and joy. For zen's sake, let me put it to you this way: Frozen tears, like certain typos, are not very long for this world. Forzen (for frozen) was found three times in OhioLINK, and 57 times in WorldCat.

("The tree is crying for the ruined snowpeople," Toronto, Canada, 7 February 2008, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Computio* (for Computatio*)

Do you ever find yourself scratching your head or twitching your nose or popping out of a bottle (or whatever it is you do when you're feeling perplexed, confounded, bemused, or nonplussed) and thinking: This does not compute? You might assume the expression comes from Star Trek or Star Wars ("There's absolutely no difference," asserts Penny on a 2012 episode of The Big Bang Theory) or possibly Lost in Space or Doctor Who. Or from the mouth, in any event, of some other boyish robot/alien/android. But surprisingly enough, the phrase was first uttered by the utterly feminine Julie Newmar (in the role of Rhoda Miller, aka AF709) on the short-lived sixties sitcom My Living Doll. At least according to Jesse Sheidlower, editor at the Oxford English Dictionary and author of the eye-catching 1995 lexicon The F-Word, citing the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. Which is good enough for me. There were 23 examples of today's typo found in OhioLINK, and 397 in WorldCat. This one actually does compute (it's common to drop the "ta" in words like computational) and adds up to being a "high probability" typo on the Ballard list.

(Photo of Bob Cummings and Julie Newmar from the TV show My Living Doll, September 4, 1964, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Liklihood (for Likelihood)

As you probably recall from English class, a simile is when you say something is like another thing; a metaphor is when you say it is the other thing. One of my favorite recent examples of both these figures of speech occurs in a Bollywood-style dance number performed by Raj and his secret crush (and buddy Howard's girlfriend) Bernadette on the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. It forms the centerpiece of Raj's current, if unlikely to be realized, erotic fantasy. Waving silk scarves around with a certain provocative modesty and swaying to the music, they each sing their lines in turn. Raj: "Like a wild elephant, I am trumpeting my love for you..." Bernadette: "Like a hidden flower, my sweet fragrance comes into view..." (Speaking of writing, there's a strong likelihood our former teachers would all mark off for that last line, pointing out that fragrance is something you smell, not see, but I rather like it anyway. It reminds me of a sensory disorder known as synesthesia, in which people can "see" sounds, for example, or find that letters and numbers each have a specific color associated with them.) The song continues: "My heart burns for you like a sun at noon ... My desert welcomes you like the rain in monsoon ... You are my heart ... My universe ... You are my heart ... My universe..." And ends with the would-be couple passionately crooning in unison: "My un-i-verse..." As Raj, who earlier had been having some doubts about his sexuality, snaps out of his reverie in the college cafeteria, he wryly observes: "Dance number aside, I am so not gay." (In actual fact, actor Kunal Nayyar, who plays Rajesh Koothrappali, is married to the 2006 "Femina Miss India," Neha Kapur, who studied classical Indian dance from an early age.) Liklihood appears ten times in OhioLINK, and 144 times in WorldCat today. I'd say it's likely that this "moderate probability" typo will be found in your own catalog as well.

(Actor Kunal Nayyar at Comic-Con in San Diego, California, July 24, 2009, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Phyci*, Pysic* (for Physic*)

What's not to love about a sitcom that features a card catalog as part of the set design? Or where Rock-Paper-Scissors isn't geeky enough for the four young physicists—they have to play a more advanced form of the game called "Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock"? The geekiest of the group is undoubtedly Sheldon Cooper, played by Jim Parsons; Sheldon was recently outed as a person with Asperger's syndrome. However, this theory has been disputed by the show's creator, Chuck Lorre. "It would be a lot of responsibility and it would put up some barriers," Parsons commented. "He is Aspergian, but that allows more freedom." (I think "Aspergian" means he has Asperger's, but I won't tell him if you don't.) There were 23 cases of Phyci* and 20 of Pysic* in OhioLINK last time we checked. These may be typos for a variety of words, though, so be careful when making any corrections.

(Johnny Galecki as Leonard Hofstadter in The Big Bang Theory.)

Carol Reid