Mediaboss Marketing

Published: Friday, March 1, 2013, 8:42p.m. Updated 17 hours ago

Some of you might remember comedian Johnny Carson's trademark response when a guest on The Tonight Show told him something surprising: I did not know that! That's how I reacted to the following tidbits of verbal information that came as news to me.

Full-court Press: I've always been fuzzy on the distinction between repress and suppress. Is the Syrian government, for instance, suppressing a rebellion or repressing it?

Suppressing it. Repress means to keep something under control in order to maintain or regulate order. Suppress denotes a more vigorous curtailment, to fight actively against an opposing force. IDNKT!

Spouting Off: I've always assumed that a waterspout was simply a tornado that occurred over the ocean. In fact, as the American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style points out, Most waterspouts arise under weather conditions different from those spawning tornadoes (generally with the formation of a large cumulus cloud over the ocean, rather than from a large thunderstorm.) IDNKT!

Affirmative Action: The use of affirmative and negative arose among military aviators because the one-syllable words yes and no were sometimes misheard because of radio static. IDNKT!

Hue Knew?: The correct spelling of the phrase meaning an uproar is hue and cry, not hew and cry. Hue, of course, means a gradation of color, but an unrelated and now archaic hue meant outcry. IDNKT!

Homin-ization: Ad hominem, which means to the person in Latin, originally denoted an argument that appealed to the human emotions of the person being addressed; the hominem was the person listening to the argument. So a speech designed to elicit human sympathy made an ad hominem appeal.

But in recent decades, ad hominem has come to denote the criticism of an opponent's personal character, as in, He delivered an ad hominem attack on his rival. Now the hominem is the person being criticized, not the person listening. IDNKT!

Coy Polloi: My mom always referred to the upper crust in my hometown as the hoi polloi, so I guess I can be excused for not realizing that hoi polloi actually means just the opposite: the masses, the general population. Of course, now that my hometown has been taken over by wealthy people, they've become the hoi polloi (general population) after all. So I guess I did know that!

Excerpt from:
The Word Guy: Welcome to the Know-Nothing Party!