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Authors: William Safire
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anymore.” “I don’t have to be a corporal to clean your clock .”
More specific usages abound, from the sexual (“to deliver complete satisfaction”) to the automotive (“to pass another vehicle at great speed”). In all, the essential meaning remains: “to whomp, clobber, slaughter, pulverize” and all the other evocations of thoroughness expressed in clean your clock. “Ankle-biters” started out as an annoyed epithet for small neurotic dogs that attacked visitors and tradesmen and mailmen and paperboys by trying, literally, to get a bite or bites out of their ankles. If you had spent any time delivering papers (or mail, or magazines, or grocery store circulars), you would have met a number of ankle-biters during your career. There was also an occasional thigh-biter and crotch-biter and arm-biter among the larger dogs.
In cookery, isn’t there a role for “to cream,” meaning to puree until the product is as close as possible to the consistency of cream? Maybe a chef was the first one to threaten to “cream” an adversary, presumably, in such a hypothetical context, a cretin who had criticized his cooking or infringed on his domain.
John Strother
Princeton, New Jersey
I believe that in boxing circles—and other places too—the phrase is: “May the best man win.” You have grammarized it, for the sake of the children, I suppose.
Jacques Barzun
San Antonio, Texas
I was a tad surprised not to find “eat [someone’s] lunch” in your list. Oh well, one cannot let the complete be the enemy of the excellent.
Saul Rosen
Rockville, Maryland
Clintonisms. “Bill Clinton is a relic of another age,” the essayist Lance Morrow wrote in Time magazine, “like the 20s party boy F. Scott Fitzgerald stranded in the landscape of the Great Depression.”
I rise today to our immediate past president’s linguistic defense. Let me tell you about the very articulate. They are different from you and me. The Lexicographic Irregulars, asked in this space to choose the phrases that Bill Clinton would be remembered by, responded with words that evoke an era of intense controversy and vituperation. Respondents included his critics and his speechwriters, those nostalgic for the time of prosperity and peace as well as for the days of whine and nosiness.
The most memorable Clintonism or Clintonym (a coinage of F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre) chosen by a plurality of entries was a sentence that thrilled every semanticist, grammarian and syntactician in the nation: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
The words that raised parsing to a fine art were spoken under oath to a grand jury. They were about a statement made by the president’s lawyer during a deposition about the relationship with a White House intern, in which the lawyer asserted, “There is absolutely no sex of any kind.” Clinton pointed out that because his attorney had been speaking only in the present tense, the statement was true: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” he explained, adding, “Actually, in the present tense, that is a true statement.” That is indisputable: during the deposition, no sex of any kind was taking place between them.
What made the sentence so memorable? Part was the exquisite nature of the literal reading, taken by Clinton critics to be an infuriating example of legalistic slipperiness. Another part was the unique juxtaposition of the quoted is with the unquoted is . The sentence would not have had the same puissance—indeed, it might not be destined for the next edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations —had it concluded with “the meaning of ‘is’ was.”
“I feel your pain,” an expression of compassion often associated with psychiatric jargon, was the runner-up in this sample (which has an accuracy estimated at plus or minus sixty points). The remark was ad-libbed at a March 26, 1992, campaign rally as part of a riposte to an AIDS activist who angrily accused
More specific usages abound, from the sexual (“to deliver complete satisfaction”) to the automotive (“to pass another vehicle at great speed”). In all, the essential meaning remains: “to whomp, clobber, slaughter, pulverize” and all the other evocations of thoroughness expressed in clean your clock. “Ankle-biters” started out as an annoyed epithet for small neurotic dogs that attacked visitors and tradesmen and mailmen and paperboys by trying, literally, to get a bite or bites out of their ankles. If you had spent any time delivering papers (or mail, or magazines, or grocery store circulars), you would have met a number of ankle-biters during your career. There was also an occasional thigh-biter and crotch-biter and arm-biter among the larger dogs.
In cookery, isn’t there a role for “to cream,” meaning to puree until the product is as close as possible to the consistency of cream? Maybe a chef was the first one to threaten to “cream” an adversary, presumably, in such a hypothetical context, a cretin who had criticized his cooking or infringed on his domain.
John Strother
Princeton, New Jersey
I believe that in boxing circles—and other places too—the phrase is: “May the best man win.” You have grammarized it, for the sake of the children, I suppose.
Jacques Barzun
San Antonio, Texas
I was a tad surprised not to find “eat [someone’s] lunch” in your list. Oh well, one cannot let the complete be the enemy of the excellent.
Saul Rosen
Rockville, Maryland
Clintonisms. “Bill Clinton is a relic of another age,” the essayist Lance Morrow wrote in Time magazine, “like the 20s party boy F. Scott Fitzgerald stranded in the landscape of the Great Depression.”
I rise today to our immediate past president’s linguistic defense. Let me tell you about the very articulate. They are different from you and me. The Lexicographic Irregulars, asked in this space to choose the phrases that Bill Clinton would be remembered by, responded with words that evoke an era of intense controversy and vituperation. Respondents included his critics and his speechwriters, those nostalgic for the time of prosperity and peace as well as for the days of whine and nosiness.
The most memorable Clintonism or Clintonym (a coinage of F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre) chosen by a plurality of entries was a sentence that thrilled every semanticist, grammarian and syntactician in the nation: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
The words that raised parsing to a fine art were spoken under oath to a grand jury. They were about a statement made by the president’s lawyer during a deposition about the relationship with a White House intern, in which the lawyer asserted, “There is absolutely no sex of any kind.” Clinton pointed out that because his attorney had been speaking only in the present tense, the statement was true: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” he explained, adding, “Actually, in the present tense, that is a true statement.” That is indisputable: during the deposition, no sex of any kind was taking place between them.
What made the sentence so memorable? Part was the exquisite nature of the literal reading, taken by Clinton critics to be an infuriating example of legalistic slipperiness. Another part was the unique juxtaposition of the quoted is with the unquoted is . The sentence would not have had the same puissance—indeed, it might not be destined for the next edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations —had it concluded with “the meaning of ‘is’ was.”
“I feel your pain,” an expression of compassion often associated with psychiatric jargon, was the runner-up in this sample (which has an accuracy estimated at plus or minus sixty points). The remark was ad-libbed at a March 26, 1992, campaign rally as part of a riposte to an AIDS activist who angrily accused
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