Burning question
A meteoric rise?
"HUCKABEE'S METEORIC RISE has reset expectations for Romney" in the Iowa presidential caucuses, a
The conclusion may be correct, but the metaphor, for reader Rick Anderson, seemed contrary to natural law. "The one thing I know about meteors is that they fall very quickly," he e-mailed recently, "so I could understand a meteoric fall. But a meteoric rise?"
It's not as nonsensical as it may sound. Yes, meteors do fall, at least from an earthling's point of view, but that isn't all they do. Historically and linguistically, it isn't even their main claim to fame.
Meteors, after all, are not just falling stars but also shooting stars - both nicknames date to the mid-16th century. And what made meteors noteworthy to early observers was not that they fell, but that they blazed so suddenly and briefly - and portentously, for the astrologically inclined - across the sky.
John Donne, for instance, compared a fever to a meteor, hot but short-lived: "These burning fits but meteors be,/ Whose matter...is soon spent." The Oxford English Dictionary quotes Charles Fitzgeoffrey's 1596 poem on Sir Francis Drake, which calls the British admiral "a dreadful Meteor in the eye of Spain," Britain's great rival. "I have seen the Meteors of fashion rise and fall," writes Samuel Johnson in 1752.
The later adjective, meteoric, follows in the path of this figurative meteor: It refers not to the astronomical facts of meteors (or meteorites) but to their fast, flashy visible lives. Meteoric, says Merriam-Webster's Unabridged, means "resembling a meteor in brilliance, rapidity, or short duration."
If meteor had acquired its figurative use in modern times, it's true, we might be referring to the "meteoric downfall" of businesses and stars. But meteor turned metaphoric in a more poetic age, and it has remained indifferent to mundane facts about the trajectory of burning space rock.
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WORDS OF THE YEAR, CONTINUED: The WOTY 2008 parade has marched on since fall, when Webster's New World chose grass station (where you buy green fuel) and New Oxford American picked locavore (someone who eats locally grown food). Next up was Merriam-Webster, which changed its rules last year, asking Web visitors to vote on a field of 20 words rather than simply ranking winners by the frequency of Web lookups.
The previous three words of the year had been democracy (2003), blog (2004), and integrity (2005), but the new method gave Stephen Colbert's truthiness a runaway victory in 2006. And the hipward trend continued this year, as voters bypassed Pecksniffian, pugnacious, and eleemosynary in a stampede for w00t, a cry of triumph or glee, spelled with zeroes in the middle.
Wot's w00t, you ask? The word "first became popular in competitive online gaming forums as part of what is known as l33t ('leet,' or 'elite') speak - an esoteric computer hacker language," explains the M-W website. "The exclamation is also known to be an acronym for 'we owned the other team."'
Global Language Monitor, on the Web, has multiple lists - top phrase, top name, top emoticon - but its top word for 2007 is hybrid, as in hybrid electric vehicle; close behind were surge, the Iraq war buzzword, bubble, as in housing, and smirting, or flirting with a fellow nicotine fiend banished to an outdoor location.
Next week comes the vote by the American Dialect Society, which started the whole WOTY thing 16 years ago. In The
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CHANGING THE SUBJECT: Dear readers, would you kindly consider my suggestion for a New Year's resolution? It goes like this: When e-mailing The Word, I will use clear, specific subject lines.
Sure, greet your friends with "Hi" or "D'oh" or "Check this out"; they already know and love you. But for me, subject lines like "your column" and "words" and "12/23 article" are almost useless - they hint that the e-mail isn't spam, but that's about all they communicate.
On the other hand, a label like "hew and hue" or "bruschetta" or "whole 'nother" telegraphs your topic instantly, and since it's there every time I look at the inbox, it's much more likely to get a response.
For my part, I'm resolving to answer all such clearly labeled e-mails promptly. I won't ignore the mystery mail, of course, but since it takes longer to process, it will wait its turn on a sidetrack. Here's to a clean, well-lighted inbox and a sparkling 2008.
E-mail Jan Freeman at freeman@globe.com. For past columns, go to boston.com/ideas. 