Taking the First Stab at "Taking the First Stab"

I couldn't find this with a simple Google search, but if you think about it, the origin of the phrase "take the first stab" has to be rather violent.

Maybe a nice piece of art to go with somebody starting to write the initial draft of an academic paper would be a picture of a scientist quite literally taking an initial stab through a pile or papers or perhaps through a laptop.

(If anybody has a favored website for etymology and similar matters, please let me know. I was hoping my global search would turn up a good answer on one of those pages.)

And, by all means, somebody should take the first stab at answering my query.

"A Quantitative Phrase of Deliberate Vagueness"

I love the phrasing "a quantitative phrase of deliberate vagueness" that this very interesting article on Yasiel Puig's defection uses to describe the phrase "a number of", which is something that I find irksome when it is used as a descriptor in scholarly articles.

The sentence in which this phrase appears is the following: A story has emerged from Despaigne's affidavit, the lawsuit, and its proceedings. It spawned a five-month investigation by The Magazine that included analysis of an array of legal documents and interviews with more than 80 people: Cuban baseball players in the U.S. both retired and active, talent scouts, sports agents, former MLB and players' union executives, federal law enforcement personnel, former Cuban government officials, former Cuban and American spies, Miami lawyers who have represented and are representing alleged smugglers who were and are the targets of criminal investigations, and --- to use a quantitative phrase of deliberate vagueness --- a number of smugglers themselves, who agreed to be interviewed under conditions of anonymity motivated by obvious fears.

Additionally, the article title refers to an old baseball expression that has been used for decades to describe the often-legendary impatient while batting of many foreign-born Hispanic baseball players (especially those from the Dominican Republic). It apparently goes back at least as far as Rafael Ramirez in 1986, though baseball prospects in the Dominican Republic appear to have used it long before then. I really like the article title, as it takes an old baseball expression and then changes its meaning in an interesting way.

Super Salads and Meat-Eaters

At dinner tonight, my waitress asked the usual question "Soup or salad?" Also as usual, she said it reasonably fast. This caused me no end of trouble when I was a child, as I thought that waiters and waitresses were asking me if I wanted a "super salad," and I had no idea what a super salad. I was confused about this for years before I ultimately figured it out, and even then it still usually sounded like the waiting staff were saying "supersalad."

Another major confusion during my childhood was "meteor" versus "meat-eater." I thought they were both pronounced "meat-eater" and it also took me a while to figure that one out. I have vague memories of one discussion that caused particular confusion for more than one of the parties involved.

Of course, issues with pronunciation and enunciation are not unique to kids. There was one memorable incident involving an 'aunt' (technically a great aunt or other such variant) who wanted to have whipped cream. Unfortunately, English wasn't her first language and she had a thick accent, so it sounded like 'vit cream.' The waiter or waitress---and it's likely that multiple waiting staff ultimately tried to help with this one, though I don't remember that specific detail---was extremely confused. For example, this could sound like 'with cream' and I want to say that the waiters brought multiple different types of cream to our table but never the desired one. Or maybe my aunt wanted something 'with cream' and was brought whipped cream? I can't remember those details (I think my brother and parents remember this one much better), but the conversation was pretty damn funny. By the way, have you ever noticed that even 'memorable' incidents are often hard to remember? Somebody should look into the meaning of that word, because it seems to have somewhat lost it.

Thinking back to childhood memories also reminded me of the home video of me reacting to the song 'Da Da Da' when I heard it for the first time. I would love to post this on YouTube, but it was taken on a roughly 30-year-old movie camera---that's right, an old-school movie camera* rather than even a video camera---and the film itself is buried somewhere in my parents' home anyway. Seeing that home movie would not make you think the the strange child depicted therein would eventually become a member of the Oxford mathematics faculty, but it certainly would explain my musical tastes. I'll let you know if I ever find it.

Anyway, did any of you have this kind of confusion with words or phrases when you were young?

* I actually started using the \latex command '\emph' before I realized that I needed to use the html command for italics. I actually do this quite a lot for things like bold and italics: I type a \latex command when I should be typing an html command and vice versa.

Update (8/22/11): I completely forget to mention in this post another confusion I had as a child---I thought that "lavatory" was the same thing as "laboratory", though I suppose that that can genuinely be the case in some circumstances. Alas, this update is so late that few people will read it. Maybe I'll bring it up again in a later post.

Infinite Penetration

It doesn't matter how serious the science is. If you start your title with the phrase "infinite penetration of a projectile", then people are going to giggle.

T-shirt of the day (epic fail)

No really, this is a t-shirt about an epic fail.

The shirt is ok; I'm basically blogging about it because I really like the term 'epic fail'. I've been spreading this term around here, along with other phrases I like such as "tool".