 The rule of three I’ve been reading S. Jay Keyser’s fascinating book Play It Again Sam, which (despite its waggish title) is a serious and insightful study of the role of repetition in the verbal, musical, and visual arts. The key idea is that repetition is both efficient and pleasurable, setting up patterns that reinforce linguistic structure and create aesthetic impact. Part of the book deals with the “rule of three” and the role that triples play in capturing and focusing our attention, providing rhythm, and making things memorable and surprising. Take a second and think of some tripled up phrases if you can. My list included these tricolonic phrases, in which the repetition builds the list in significance: Vini, vidi, vici Friends, Romans, countrymen Reduce, reuse, recycle Government of the people, by the people, for the people we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Superman. The number three shows its rhetorical impact in a number of places. It’s in jokes (“A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar …”), folklore (“Goldilocks and the Three Bears”) and advertising (“Snap, Crackle, Pop). The stereotypical five-paragraph essay, which is still taught in some places, consists of an introductory paragraph, a concluding paragraph and three body paragraphs. And its paragraphs are often made up of topic sentence, a concluding sentence, and at least three supporting sentences. In prose, tricolons show up in sentences where triples are used to build emphasis. Sometimes a simple bicolon is too little and a tetracolon is too exhausting. Here are a few from recent reading. In Annie Lowrey’s essay about avoiding microplastic, “I Fought Plastic. Plastic Won” in The Atlantic (August 2025), in one sentence we find a compound noun phrase with three parts, where the second echoes the first and the third expands the idea: Scientists have found plastic in brains, eyeballs, and pretty much every other organ. In another sentence, the triple goes down the body, from the eyes to the groin: We cry plastic tears, leak plastic breast milk, and ejaculate plastic semen. Triples can pack a lot into a small space as the compound subject of a gerund: Concerns over plastic exposure have exploded in recent years, with podcast bros, MAHA types, and crunchy moms joining environmentalists (and a number of physicians and scientists) in attempting to ditch the substance. And they can even be used to organize longer lists in to rhythmic triples of pairs of adjectives: Plastics are amazing. The synthetic polymers are light and inexpensive, moldable and waterproof, stretchy and resilient. Compare that last one to the same sentence with “light, inexpensive, moldable, waterproof, stretchy, and resilient.” You’d be snoring before you get to the end. If you stop, look, and listen, you find tricolons everywhere. Look for them. Featured image by Adriano on Unsplash. OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world. 
 On reading reviews After I’ve finished a book, I’ll often check the reviews to see how my opinion lines up with what others have to say. Sometimes I’m surprised at points I’ve missed and amazed at what others have found (factual flubs, influences, allusions). After reading one recent book where a reviewer flagged a meandering style, I was prompted to reconsider my own reaction: was the meandering an indicator of the narrator’s mental state or the author’s inattention? The review prompted me to think further and reflect on previous books by the same author. Was he slipping? I often use reviews in advance, to get a feel for a book that I’m thinking of reading before I commit. And sometimes I’ll compare a few reviews. I’m still wondering, for example, whether to commit to the 1,000 plus-page biography of Mark Twain by Ron Chernow. I read the New Yorker review by Lauren Michele Jackson (“Up the River,” in the May 5, 2025, issue) which opens with the idea that America sees itself in a young boy who learns—but not too much—and whose story ends with his eyes on an open horizon, a stretch of land claimed by the nation but not yet bound to it.
The review implies that Twain’s work and life parallel the story of the United States and describes Twain as a man of contradictions, whose restlessness “was the most American thing about him.” Graeme Wood’s review in the Atlantic (“The Not-at-All-Funny Life of Mark Twain,” in the May 9, 2025 issue) tells us that the book “dwells more on the wreck of a man than on his sublimely comic work.” Both reviews mention Twain’s coming of age in an era dominated by the legacy of the Civil War and slavery, his sad family life, his addiction to get-rich-quick schemes, and his concern with leaving biographical footprints. Jackson offers a more straightforward summary of the book’s path, commenting on Chernow’s “misreading of Southern racial dynamics,” his focus on Twain’s writing habits, and his “apologies” for some of Twain’s attitudes and behaviors, such as his Lewis Carroll-like affection for young girls, whom he called his “angelfish.” Wood sees Chernow as presenting a Twain who was “gullible, emotionally immature, and prone to shoveling money into obvious scams…,” a man “able to spot and depict frailties of conscience, character, and judgment in others [but who was] … powerless to correct them in himself.” For good measure, I also read Dwight Garner’s review in the New York Times, (“A New Biography of Mark Twain Doesn’t Have Much of What Made Him Great,” May 13, 2025). Garner gives away the game in the title and opens with a jab: Ron Chernow’s new biography of Mark Twain is enormous, bland and remote — it squats over Twain’s career like a McMansion.
It gets rougher, but there are some key insights. Garner notes that the book seems out of balance to him, with Twain’s formative early life given short shrift. The review points us to some other Twain bios that might be worth a look, and it notes that Chernow’s is the first biography to appear in the context of the #Black Lives Matters and #Me Too movements. All three reviews are chockful of detail and wit, so I appreciate them as a writer as well as a reader. I still don’t know if I’ll commit to Mark Twain. But if I do, I know what to watch for. Featured image by Ugur Peker via Unsplash. OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world. 
 Unexpected words When I read slowly, I’m a somewhat easily distracted reader. I might ponder an idea, puzzle at a phrasing, or admire elegance and style. Sometimes, though, it is unexpected words that cause me to stop and wonder about their origins. Here are a handful of expressions that have sent me to the dictionary: “shades of,” “craned her neck,” “sported a new hat,” “madcap kids,” “stool pigeon” and “moniker.” They all put my reading on pause. When I encountered them, I pondered a bit, jotted down the words so I’d remember to research them, and got back to what I was reading. Here’s what I learned. Shades of is related to shadows and to shadow-like nuances. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, from about 1818, shades of was used, “in humorous invocation of the spirit of a deceased person,” with the implication that the deceased person would be horrified or amazed at what was going on. The dictionary notes that it is no longer exclusively humorous and can now refer to some person or thing that is reminiscent of a present happening. So to say “shades of Bruce Springsteen” would be to invoke the Boss’s image or music as a point of comparison. To crane one’s neck is from 1799, according to the OED, and means “To stretch (the neck) like a crane,” and it even has the variant to crane one’s head. The crane in question is the bird, of course, though cranes for lifting have been around for millennia (think Archimedes or the Egyptian pyramids). But the mechanical ones have only been called cranes since 1487, also getting their name from the bird. The verb to sport is fearsomely complicated and has nothing to do with football. It wends its way back to disport, meaning “to divert, amuse or entertain” often with a reflexive. Over time sport came to refer to the act of amusing oneself or frolicking, often outdoors. Sport also developed the meaning of “to display” something ostentatiously or to say something publicly. Since about 1778, it could mean “to wear”, and the OED gives the example of “Some macaroni Barristers [who] have presumed to sport Bags and Pig-Tails.” “Macaroni barristers” refer to ones wearing fashionable Italian and French styles—eighteenth century hipsters. Madcap, it turns out, began as a noun, with a first citation from 1589, meaning a madman, and within a few years the word was also used as an adjective. The suggested etymology is mad + cap, where cap has the metaphorical sense of “head.” And the OED points us to such similar uses as goose-cap, huff-cap, and fuddle-cap for a simpleton, a swaggerer, and a drunk. All are now obsolete. When I hear stool pigeon, I think of a criminal who snitches on cohorts to make a deal. But it turns out to refer back to the practice of using a decoy bird tied to a moving stool to attract its fellows. The OED treats stool pigeon as US usage from about 1804 to indicate first a literal decoy and later an informer. An 1804 citation refers to a turtle “exhibited like a stool pigeon to a parcel of geese, in expectation that it would encrease the flock” and in 1844 we find “Those secret partners, by gamblers, are termed ropers, or stool-pigeons: their business is to delude the inexperienced into their dens of iniquity.” A few years later, we get an 1850 citation that “The senior high constable of Philadelphia … recollected that Harry White … who he had been lately using as a ‘stool pigeon’, or secret informer, had informed him … that ‘a big thing’ was coming off shortly.” Moniker is still a bit of a stumper to me. The OED gives it as “origin uncertain” with an earliest citation from 1851. One suggestion is that it arose from a slang usage for eke-name (meaning nickname). Other ideas relate it to the words monarch or monogram. The scholar R.A.S. Macalister, in The Secret Languages of Ireland (1937), suggests its origin can be found in the mixed language Shelta (sometimes called Tinker’s Cant or simply The Cant). Macalister posits the Shelta word munika meaning name, and this idea is developed further in a 2007 essay by William Sayres called “Moniker: Etymology and Lexicographical History.” That’s the latest word on moniker. Since I started writing this piece, I’ve come across new words and phrases to puzzle over and research: cheapskate, right as rain, beck and call, chockful, and bespoke. I’m off to the dictionary again. Featured image by Paul Melki via Unsplash. OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world. 
 “I’m good” The word good does a lot of work in English. Aside from its garden-variety sense (as in “good game” or “good job” or “good dog”), we find the word has a number of extended uses. For example, it shows up in the funky expression “good and …” which means “very” when connected with short adjectives (“good and smart,” “good and hot,” “good and ugly”). The expression “I’m good” is especially interesting. As a reply to “How’re you doing?” it can be a replacement for “I’m well,” “I’m fine,” or “I’m okay” (acceptable to all but the snarkiest of prescriptivists). “I’m good” also has a related sense in which it expresses satiation or satisfaction and implies refusal. When a server brings more coffee around or the bartender points to your empty glass, you might hold up a palm and say “I’m good.” Here “I’m good” is an indirect way of saying “No, thanks.” In fact, “I’m good” is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary with the sense “no thank you; I’m not in need of anything.” The OED gives it as originally a US usage, with a first citation from 1966 in John Ball’s novel The Cool Cottontail. Asked if he wants another beer, detective Virgil Tibbs replies, “I’m still good, thanks.” “I’m good” can also indicate a negative reply to a suggestion, as in this 2003 OED example from the Toronto Star: ‘Try these on Paige,’ says Emma, holding up the smallest pair of pink shorts I’ve ever seen in my life. ‘Thanks, I’m good!’ I tell her, laughing.
That was a definite “No” on the pink shorts. But sometimes “I’m good” seems to signal agreement. If you are planning to meet someone, you might propose a time by saying “Can we meet at 7:30?” and get a reply that “I’m good.” This may be a reduction of phrases like “I’m good with that.” Similarly, if you are inquiring of a friend or significant other whether they are prepared to do something. you might ask “Are you just about ready?” A possible reply (one of many), might be “I’m good.” Again this could be a reduction of “I’m good to go” or a response to an implied disjunction “Are you ready or do you have to go to the bathroom?” In the latter case, “I’m good” can indicate “No, I don’t need more time.” Sometimes the meaning of “I’m good” is in the eye of the beholder. The linguist John Rickford recounts an incident involving two African American sisters who were on a bus that was being checked by Drug Enforcement Agency agents. When an agent asked if he could search their bags, one sister said yes. When he asked the other sister if he could search her, she said “I’m good,” which the agent took as “Okay.” He discovered some drugs and arrested the woman. She contested the search, and Rickford presented a long deposition giving evidence about the meaning and frequency of “I’m good” to mean “No, thanks.” The case ended in a plea deal with time served—two years. So the next time you say “I’m good,” stop to consider what you might be saying. Featured image by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash. OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world. 
 Symbol swearing with the Grawlix I miss a lot of things about the decline of paper newspapers, especially the comic strips. The comics were verbal humor with pictures and recurring characters, and the language of the comics provided a window into how spoken language was represented in print. I was particularly taken with the swearing symbols known as grawlixes. That’s a term coined by Charles D. Rice of This Week magazine, and popularized by the Beetle Baily creator Mort Walker. Typically, Walker’s grawlixes came from blustery Sarge, cursing at his men for being slackers. As an artist, Walker didn’t limit himself to punctuation marks, sometimes adding hand-drawn lightning bolts, stars, squiggles and jagged lines as well. For those of us who are not artists, a grawlix is typically made from the characters on top of the number row of a keyboard: the at-sign (@), the pound sign (#), the dollar sign ($), the percent sign (%), the ampersand (&), and the asterisk (*), along with the exclamation mark. Symbol swearing didn’t begin with Mort Walker or Charles Rice. Examples have been traced back to newspaper comics around the turn of the turn-of-the-(twentieth)-century like The Katzenjammers Kids, by the German immigrant Rudolf Dirks, and the Lady Bountiful strip by Gene Carr. And the Belgian comics historian Thierry Smolderen spotted an even earlier use in a 160-page book from 1877 called Lightning Flashes and Electric Dashes: A Volume of Choice Telegraphic Literature, Humor, Fun, Wit & Wisdom. Grawlixes made their way to comic books as well as strips, particularly under the Comics Code Authority which lasted from 1954 till 2011. In an early issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson complains that he doesn’t have “one %$!!?#$#!* photographer” to cover a big story. Along with their use in comics and comic books, grawlixes have also shown up in book and television show titles. There was the short-lived CBS comedy $#*! My Dad Says, adapted from the 2011 book Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern. Grawlixes, or obscenicons as linguist Ben Zimmer has dubbed them, call to mind the so-called minced oaths of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists: gadzooks for “By God’s hooks” and zounds for “By God’s wounds,” or the replacement forms gosh darn, heck, fudge, and so on. And they serve the same purpose as abbreviations like SOB and WTF. Such replacements simultaneously pretend to protect readers from being offended and protect writers from stepping over a line. Sometimes propriety is maintained by replacing all but the first letter with a hyphenated –word, as in the title of Jesse Sheidlower’s splendid study The F-Word. On occasion you can see the label censored replacing a bit of swearing, or in some older journalistic practice the phrase [expletive deleted]. We probably don’t want to consider a single * to be a grawlix, but rather a redaction, and the * is pretty common in book titles. There is Adam Mansbach’s book Go the F*ck to Sleep, whose cover replaces the missing vowel with a moon, Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, andMelissa Mohr’s Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing. Grawlixes like $#*! or replacements like sh*t sometimes need to be read aloud. $#*! My Dad Says was referred to as Bleep My Dad Says on air, but the full word was used in the audiobook. The same is the case for Go the F*ck to Sleep and Holy Sh*t. It’s hard to imagine pronouncing the *s. Redacted forms and grawlixes also offer some complications to indexers as well. The Guidelines for Alphabetical Arrangement of Letters and Sorting of Numerals and Other Symbols put out by the National Information Standards Organization advises alphabetizing symbols before numbers and letters (and putting numbers before letters). But practices seem to vary. The index to Micheal Adams’s In Praise of Profanity, indexes shit before s**t and fuck before both f–k and f**k. However, the very first entry in that index is @#%&*! Smilers, a reference to the 2008 album by singer-songwriter Aimee Mann. Grawlixes and redactions are increasingly rare, but there’s a lot to them. No $#*! Featured image by vocablitz on Pixabay. OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world. 
|
|
