Grant Barrett said:

Garage said:

Another question about punctuation placement: if you single quote a word at the end of a quote it would look like this: “She said she was ‘busy.’” Right?

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Yes.

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That is what Martha seems to propose.
I say it would be:
“She said she was ‘busy’.”
This implies she was re-defining what busy means.
This helps smoke out prevaricators like our ‘beloved’ President and his minions.
The situation is most valuable in short text where it might not be clear that I am using the word beloved in a sarcastic sense.
English syntax tends to force such words to occur in positions other than the last word in a sentence so it is not very common. I guess your example is a good one. I can’t think of any excuse for putting the period inside the single quote other than it will “keep the tiny period warm”.
Here, I claim that the period belongs to my words and that what is between the quotes is incomplete but exactly as originally stated. I am trying to help the nit picker by signaling that the partial quote might be out of context. But, of course, ‘We’ know better.

About the subject of:

“Why is an undesirable task called a g-job?”

There seems to be a variety of meanings for “G-Job” but I think that the expansion is meant to be “Government Job” in most cases.

I worked as a contractor on many military and government projects and when government projects had “deep pockets,” there were always more workers than needed on a job. Many workers had lots of time on their hands and so would pursue their own personal projects or fabricate things related to their particular area of expertise (electronics for example). When anyone referred to these projects it was called a “G Job” which was short for “Government Job”, a sort of cross between a cynical remark and a code word (for those who didn’t know any better (such as a new “green” boss or a family member or friend). I suspect that this phrase was more common in the 50’s to 70’s when a lot of government money was available and so has fallen into disuse or forgotten by the younger generation.

I have never heard “G Job” used in a manner such as “Good enough for government work” although it may have evolved this way in some environments.
Paul Holliday 071202-5

Re: The government of children

When I heard your listener talking about a word for the situation when children are in charge, I thought immediately about “paedocracy”, or “pedocracy”, take your pick. I was surprised, being a non-native speaker of English, when I checked and found that it does not really function in English apart from such sites as “The Phrontistery” http://phrontistery.info/p.html . It does function in Polish, mostly in a derogative sense, for instance when the former (thank God) Minister of Education announced “Democracy in schools is paedocracy” (which was basically his version of the saying “Children should be seen and not heard”).

Thanks for that insight, Monika. What is the Polish sentence, exactly?

Monika said:

When I heard your listener talking about a word for the situation when children are in charge, I thought immediately about “paedocracy”, or “pedocracy”, take your pick.

I (almost) second this. “pediarchy” was my first thought. This is what I would call the rule of Tutankamon.

Edit: I often get confused differentiating “pedo” and “pedi”. Would a pediarchy be a society ruled by children, or feet?

Oh, regarding where I put the period with respect to the quote: I placed it outside as I am comparing the prefixes “pedo and pedi”, not “pedo and pedi.” which would not have a period next to them in use. That is the same logic applied to the placement of the comma in the previous sentence.

dilettante said:

Another reason why a foot doctor is a “podiatrist”!

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True, but then why are “centipedes” not “centipodes” or “centipods”? It is an ambiguous prefix, to me anyway.

Paradox said:

Ah, but then there is PEDIAtrician.

Yes, but there are also pedodontists.

I find that “pediarchy” rolls off of the tongue better than pedarchy or pedoarchy (*ouch*). I also like the -archy choice better than the -ocracy choice as it keeps the form of Patriarchy and Matriarchy.

I agree.

luke said:

Grant Barrett said:

Penny said:

A 12-year old had given a puzzle–what 4-letter common male name can change the first letter to the next letter of the alphabet and create another 4-letter common male name.

My husband and I thought it was Mick and Nick.

Did anyone else come up with something else?

They’re not *that* common, but what about Raul and Saul?

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Not to mention Paul.

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Cale (Yarborourgh) and Dale (Earnhardt) are not only sequential. They were even in the same profession.

Emmett

Leo, to me, your surname (Kulonosen) looks Finnish or at least Uralic, am I right? (Go ahead and tell me even I’m wrong; I’d like to know its origin.)

And, Grant and Martha, speaking of orthoepy, when was the last time either of you talked with Lederer or Elster? I have some of their books and know that if they (R.L. and C.H.E., that is) ever visited the forums here they’d have alot of valuable insight.

What do you think about Chuck’s Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations?

Personally, I found it a bit meandering. It has some very helpful things in there, but it also has some orthoepic prescriptions which I simply cannot follow; e.g., Celtic¹ with a soft [s]. True, the majority say “SEL-tick” when referring to the basketball team, but most linguists (myself included) pronounce it “KEL-tick” elsewhere.

One thing he seems to take for granted is that he happens to own (or at least have access to) numerous unabridged dictionaries, whereas the average American² is lucky to have a lonely desk dictionary. There is not one dictionary that Elster stands by consistently; they all have their flaws. All dictionaries and manuals on orthoepy do. Except, of course, BBoBM. I understand Elster’s mother was a die-hard by-swearer³ of Websters II. There are even some pronunciations she used which were sanctioned by WII which Elster has decried (though these are admittedly a precious few). But with Charles’ pronouncements, there are no two ways about it, are there? My main point is that it would’ve been nice to have at least one other person co-write the book with him; that way we’d be able to get a second opinion. It’s just hard for me to trust a single author to keep a non-biased stance on such a broad area as the correct pronunciation of a dialect/language⁴.

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¹FWIW, it comes from Greek Κελτοί (with a hard [k]), and for a while English had Keltic as an alternate spelling. French say their version with [s], but Italians theirs with [ʧ]. Whom should we follow?
²The book, as you know, deals mainly with American pronunciations.
³That is, she swore by it as an undisputable authority.
⁴The latter, if you consider American a separate language from British English (a.k.a. English-English).