Knowledge Problem

Lynne Kiesling

I love $10 words; my favorite is concatenation, as in “an unforeseen concatenation of circumstances”. I know I used it in my dissertation, and I think I lifted it from P.G. Wodehouse (out of the mouth of Jeeves, naturally).

Thus I particularly enjoyed Jack Shafer’s Slate column from Friday on Martin Peretz’s use of $10 words:

Don’t get me wrong: I get a kick out of $10 words, too, and even use them now and again to make my pieces showier. But the psychic surcharge deters me from using them often enough to fall into the faux-erudition trap that bedevils undisciplined, rich writers like Martin Peretz, co-owner and editor-in-chief of the New Republic. He burns through $10 words and phrases like they’re kindling.

The whole column is quite amusing, and well-researched, with many rich links to Peretz’s repeated use of the high-falutin’ word kindling. It was so amusing that it moved me to revisit Peretz’s op-ed today in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) on Senator Lieberman facing a “peace candidate”. Sure enough, there in the first paragraph:

We have been here before. Left-wing Democrats are once again fielding single-issue “peace candidates,” and the one in Connecticut, like several in the 1970s, is a middle-aged patrician, seeking office de haut en bas, and almost entirely because he can.

Bingo! But he either restrained himself or editor Tunku Varadarajan reigned him in, because that is the sole display of vocabulary ostentation in the piece (which was an interesting read for substance as well as style).

Hat tip to Radley Balko for the Shafer link.

Michael Giberson

Elsewhere in the econ blog world, Tyler Cowen notes a new paper, Poetry in Economics, by Emory University’s Hugo Mialon. Mialon examines the effect on citation counts of employing rhetorical figures in the titles of economics articles. He finds, among other things, that adding a rhetorical figure to the title of an empirical paper increases citations to the paper by more than four.

Mialon’s effort is interesting, but incomplete in terms of the implied policy advice to economists (to wit: pay more attention to the poetics, at least if you do empirical work).

Any look at the rhetoric of economists naturally brings to mind the work of Deirdre McCloskey on the topic. McCloskey not only studied economists’ rhetoric, but often urged economists to write better. Jack High, in a 1987 paper in Economic Inquiry, asked the right question of McCloskey: at the margin, are the benefits of better writing worth the costs? High concluded that the expected private costs of improving one’s writing exceed the expected benefits, for most scholars.

Maybe a poetic title is low-hanging fruit for economists chasing citation counts. But if Mialon believed his own empirical work on the topic, why did he choose a purely informative title for his paper, “Poetry in Economics”? Why not employ a poetic figure in his title?

I suggest: “Low-Hanging Fruit for Economists Chasing Citation Counts?” Two metaphors and a rhetorical question wrapped up into a single title. That should score him an easy extra 10 – 12 citations.

Comments are open, alternative title recommendations welcomed.

Lynne Kiesling

That is how much I like him, that I am willing to break from KP title protocol …

I’m putting the whimsically allegorical poem that Kurt Elling read on Wednesday after the cut, if you are interested. Here’s the first stanza as a teaser:

here is little Effie’s head
whose brains are made of gingerbread
when the judgment day comes
God will find six crumbs

Read the rest of this entry ?

Lynne Kiesling

Adam over at Arthur’s Seat has announced a mini saga contest:

A Mini Saga must be exactly 50 words. A Mini Saga must tell a story. The story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. The title may have no more than 10 words, and is not counted as part of the Saga.

You have until Sunday 10 April to submit your entries. Hmmmm …

Lynne Kiesling

Today’s word from A Word A Day is one of my favorites:

execrable (EK-si-kruh-buhl) adjective

Detestable; wretched.

[From Middle English, from Latin execrabilis (accursed), from execrari (to curse), from ex- + sacrare (to consecrate). Ultimately from Indo-European root sak- (to sanctify) that is also the source of other words such as saint, consecrate, and sacred.]

“They (The Patriots) were execrable, failing to record a first down in the first half.” Bob Ryan; They Stand Atop the Division, But Footing Seems Quite Shaky; Boston Globe; Dec 1, 1997.

“She persuades us to admire an execrable (‘lovable’, she says) woman who was doggedly, arrogantly and treacherously misguided.” Mosley’s final insult; Sunday Times (London, UK): Aug 24, 2003.

Lynne Kiesling

Today the Wall Street Journal had a story about students writing poetry inspired by WSJ stories (subscription required) for Emily Farrell’s English class in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. The story included excerpts from some of the poems. My favorite:

The thing about technology is
A public with mobile cellphones
That is Internet based and
Googles anyone
Doesn’t quite get the appeal of
This:
You and I,
Knowing the rules of engagement
Concocting the games
Not one-hit-wonders, us;
You are addictive.
You and I,
Vibrant and excited
Unlimited frontiers
An epic success story of
This PC world
(Personally, googling you,
the hits just keep coming.)
– Danielle Jubic, from “Tech’s Next Big Thing?”

Lynne Kiesling

Sitting here at O’Hare, 6 AM … today’s A Word A Day word is encaustic:

encaustic (en-KO-stik) adjective

A method of painting using pigments with wax fixed onto the surface
by heat.

[From Latin encausticus, from Greek enkaustikos, from enkaiein (to burn in), from en- + (kaiein) to burn. Some distant cousins of this word are caustic, calm, and holocaust.]

This is a great word, and refers to a tile technique that was used to very great effect by tile artisans working during the Arts & Crafts movement. My favorite encaustic tiles are British and American, but you see them in Art Nouveau style in France, Belgium, Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic too.

One of the premiere encaustic tile manufacturers in the US in the late 19th century was the American Encaustic Tiling Company of Zanesville, Ohio. The subtle coloring and the texture on this tile is very nice, although such companies also produced vast amounts of more utilitarian tile.

Lynne Kiesling

Today’s word from A Word A Day is reprobate, a great word:

reprobate (REP-ruh-bayt) adjective

Depraved.

noun

A wicked person.

verb tr.

To disapprove or condemn.

[From Middle English, from Late Latin reprobatus, from reprobare (to
disapprove), from re- + probare (to test, approve), from probus
(good).]

AWAD is also good for the quotes that come at the end of every entry. Today’s is a good one from everyone’s favorite wag (OK, my favorite wag) H.L. Mencken:

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Here’s what AWAD said in 1997 about a word I used last week to describe Putin’s re-nationalization of Yukos:

retrograde

adj. 1. Moving or tending backward.

2. Inverted or reversed.

3. Reverting to an earlier or inferior condition.

4. Astron. Having a direction of motion opposite to that of the earth on its axis or of the planets around the sun.

5. Archaic. Opposed; contrary.

-intr.v. 1. To move or seem to move backward. 2. To decline; degenerate.

[ME [Lat. retrogradus : retro-, back + gradus, step]

Michael Giberson

A news story about GEICO and Google sent me to Thesaurus.com this morning, trying to find just the right word for the lawsuit the insurer filed against the search engine.

But which is the right word? The great thing about Thesaurus.com is that there are a lot of options. For example, search on “uppity” — not the word I want, but in the ballpark — and you get full entries for aloof, arrogant, brash, condescending, confident, distainful, and many more.

Lordly? Overbearing? Pompous?

Again none of those is quite the word I’m looking for. You see, Geico is suing Google, because of the way Google AdWords works. Search on Geico, and in addition to search results, you may get a few blocks of advertising on the right hand side of the page. Geico objects to the way that Google’s advertising progam allows a competitor to pay to have sponsor’s ads be displayed when a consumer searches on “Geico.”

Presumptuous? Pretentious? Self-important?

None of these words are quite right, but they are all in the neighborhood. You know how it is when your researching an idea or trying to recall the name of an author of an article you read once, and can’t quite remember the word. Oftentimes you have start with a word that is in the neighborhood, and hope it will trigger your memory.

Sniffy? Snippy? Snooty?

Geico goes to a lot of trouble to try to establish their name as something meaningful, spending more the $1 billion over the last five years according to the Washington Post story. Now Geico’s upset that consumers may use that meaningfulness for other than official Geico-approved commercial purposes.

Toplofty?

No that’s not the word I want, either. But it’s a cool word.