The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time Read Free

government in Britain, admitted misleading the press about helping a contributor get a passport. After this led to a great media furor, Blair’s controversial éminence grise was forced to resign. Then, to refashion his tattered reputation after what he called “a trivial error,” the longtime spinmeister launched what the British press calls a fightback, a colorful term that may or may not lead to a comeback .
    A cabinet colleague, Clare Short, promptly kicked the downed man with “He wasn’t accurate, didn’t speak the truth, let himself down and the government. Peter Mandelson is over .”
    To be over is current British and American slang for “to be finished, washed-up, done with, kaput.” The predecessor phrase from the ’80s is history, as in “Forget him—he’s history .”
    Now history is over. However, over —as in “like, so over “—is a Valley Girl expression from the ’80s that has shown remarkable legs for what seemed to be a nonce term, outlasting both history and been there, done that . Toward the end of the second millennium, so 1999 had a brief run, and so second millennium surfaced briefly, but both were too tightly tied to a specific date to have staying power.
    The Yogi lesson drawn by dialectologists on both sides of the pond: over ain’t over till it’s over.

    In the, uh, rarified vernacular of the world of professional wrestling, “over” means “popular,” as in “The Rock is still amazingly over, while daring aerialist Essa Rios could pop the crowd in his hometown.”
    Rhonda Reddy
Santa Monica, California

    Anticounter. Are we engaged in antiterrorism or counterterrorism ?
    Antiterrorism, according to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, is “defensive measures used to reduce the vulnerability of individuals and property to terrorist acts, to include limited response and containment by local military forces.”
    Counterterrorism is “offensive measures taken to prevent, deter and respond to terrorism.”
    How to respond to September 11? Doves prefer antiterrorism; hawks plump for counterterrorism .

    Arab street. Peppered by questions from senators about why the Bush administration supported a Saudi monarchy that oppressed political or religious dissenters, Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a reply that struck many as puzzling: “Unto dust thou shalt return the day you stop representing the street .” He explained, “When you don’t have a free, democratic system, where the street is represented in the halls of the legislature and in the executive branches of those governments, then they”—the Saudi rulers—“have to be more concerned by the passions of the street .”
    Members of PAW—the Poetic Allusion Watch—instantly caught the secretary’s “unto dust” drift. The allusion was to Henry Wadsworth Long-fellow’s “Dust thou art to dust returnest, / Was not spoken of the soul.” The poet, in turn, was referring to the passage in Genesis 3:19, “Dust thou art, and into dust shalt thou return,” often cited on Ash Wednesday and at funerals.
    Powell’s message limited itself to the prayer’s “dust to dust” portion. His import was that if a Saudi monarch were to go against the Arab street, he would soon find himself dead.
    “Does this Arab street phrase refer to the person (or suicide bomber) in the street,” asks Bianca Carter of Slingerlands, New York, “or is there a broader meaning?”
    The street, from the Latin for “paved path,” has many metaphoric senses. Financiers use it to mean Wall Street, the home of the New York Stock Exchange; those thrown out of work use on the street to mean “unemployed” (and in a recession, many in the financial Street are on the street). To those in prison, the street means “outside,” the place to live in freedom. To those hunting for bargains, street becomes an attributive noun modifying price, meaning “what it actually is selling for, no matter what the price