As Mike the Musicologist likes to point out, this is a local crime story that doesn’t deserve or need national coverage.
I agree with him, but I do want to note: it is wonderful to see “canoodling” in a headline. “Canoodle” is a delightful word that deserves to be used more often.
Sometimes I want to put up an obit just because the writer clearly had fun writing it.
That’s the lead from the obit for Katherine Barber, founding editor of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. She was 61.
Chuck Hicks. He has 197 credits in IMDB as an actor…and 110 as a stunt person. He worked a lot with Clint Eastwood, was in “Cool Hand Luke”, “Dick Tracy”, and played the robot boxer in the “Steel” episode of “The Twilight Zone”…
…and among all of his other movie and TV credits, he appeared seven times on “Mannix”.
Noted for the record (though I don’t think I ever did a full-blown “you’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena” on this one):
…
“tawdry”. A great word. And much like “gargantuan”, the opportunity rarely comes up to use it in a sentence.
This is how Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary on Project Gutenberg defines the word “infamous”:
INFAMOUS
In”fa*mous, a. Etym: [Pref. in- not + famous: cf. L. infamis. See
Infamy.]1. Of very bad report; having a reputation of the worst kind; held in abhorrence; guilty of something that exposes to infamy; base; notoriously vile; detestable; as, an infamous traitor; an infamous perjurer. False errant knight, infamous, and forsworn. Spenser.
2. Causing or producing infamy; deserving detestation; scandalous to the last degree; as, an infamous act; infamous vices; infamous corruption. Macaulay.
3. (Law)
Defn: Branded with infamy by conviction of a crime; as, at common law, an infamous person can not be a witness.
4. Having a bad name as being the place where an odious crime was committed, or as being associated with something detestable; hence, unlucky; perilous; dangerous. “Infamous woods.” P. Fletcher. Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds. Milton. The piny shade More infamous by cursed Lycaon made. Dryden.
Syn. — Detestable; odious; scandalous; disgraceful; base; vile; shameful; ignominious.
I quote this here because it is in the public domain. More modern sources, such as the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, agree with the definition, especially the “having a reputation of the worst kind”.
So what?
That’s part of the front page of today’s HouChron. The 1993 Houston Oilers had “a reputation of the worst kind”? They were “held in abhorrence”? They were “base; notoriously vile; detestable”? That’s really not how I remember things.
After a 28-3 halftime lead against the Buffalo Bills, the Oilers eventually lost 41-38 in one of the most infamous comebacks in NFL history.
Same thing here. Guys, “inflammable” and “flammable” mean the same thing, yes. But “infamous” and “famous” do not.
They may have been “dysfunctional”. But they went 12-4. I’d be more inclined to refer to the 2013 Houston Texans as “infamous” instead of the 1993 Oilers.
That is, if I was going to use the word to refer to a football team. Which I’m not, because I feel like I have a grasp of what the word means, unlike the HouChron headline writers. (Brian T. Smith, the author of the linked article, avoids using “infamous”. Kudos to him; I’d like to read the piece that’s coming on Sunday, but it looks like it will be behind the paywall.)
Oooooh crap did that guy’s leg just get Theismanned?That looked awful.
— Popehat (@Popehat) March 31, 2013
“Theismanned”? (That guy in question.)
Watching Duke/ Louisville my heart goes out to Kevin Ware.
— Joe Theismann (@Theismann7) March 31, 2013
(Subject line hattip, more or less. If you put “verbing weirds language” into Google, you can find the original C&H strip.)
Nothing to see here, just me being silly. And yes, it is true that I do my own stunts.
In the App Store,
the Apple App Store,
the Lion ships tonight.
(I actually don’t care that much. I’m planning to wait on Lion.1 at least, maybe Lion.2. But Lawrence and I were chatting earlier today and that riff came to me; it’s the kind of thing you only get to use maybe once in a lifetime.)
(This is kind of interesting. Especially for $5.99. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but I have downloaded it: this BBC documentary sounds like it could be worthwhile. Download link.)
…”Baldenfreude”.
The NYT has at least two things going for it:
Put those things together, and what do you get? A list of 50 words most looked up by NYT readers.
Number one on the list? “inchoate”. “baldenfreude”, which is actually a MoDo coinage, comes in at #6. “Kristallnacht” ranks 13th. Heretically, “Manichean” comes in at #28.
The takeaway from this?
Still, we should remember that this is journalism, not philology.