William Safire's On Language columns

For this week’s blog assignment I read a website from the New York Times. It is called “William Safire’s On Language columns.” (the website is http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/magazine/columns/on_language/index.html?qu&scp=1-spot&sq=on+language&st=nyt)

This website basically just has links to the columns that William Safire writes for the New York Times.

Each column is about language, how it is used in a certain case and what it means in that instance. I found some of the articles to be interesting, but to be honest I thought that some were confusing because I was unsure of exactly what he was talking about.

However, there were some that I found interesting. For instance, I enjoyed “Haircut.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11wwln-safire-t.html) It starts off by explaining how the Detroit News has a headline called “Haircut Politics Bad for Big Three” and The Asia Sentinel in Hong Kong has a headline called “Asia’s Top Tycoons Take a Haircut.”

The article then goes on to talk about how he thinks “haircut” was started as a metaphor. Safire says it is “probably based on the weakening effect of the biblical Delilah’s shearing of Samson’s invigorating mane.”

Next he talks about how “haircut” currently can mean “a sudden loss of equity or drop in income.” I think this is very interesting because usually when you think of a haircut, in its traditional meaning you would not think of it as a bad thing, however, these newspapers are using it in their headlines with a negative connotation.

Another column I thought was interesting was called “Metaphor Mix.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/magazine/26wwln-safire-t.html) The part I liked the best was: “In the second presidential debate, Barack Obama said, ‘Senator McCain suggests that somehow, you know, I’m green behind the ears.’ Obama apparently confused one century-old metaphor, green around the gills, meaning ‘nauseated,’ with another, wet behind the ears, meaning ‘immature, gullible.’”

I think that it is funny this phrase was used wrong. They are both very unusual metaphoric phrase to use, I think. And that is why I think it grabbed my attention because I would not have caught it or known what it meant has it not been explained to me.

I read some of the other articles William Safire read however I did not find many others that I really enjoyed or that really made sense entirely.

I think that this website is good for people who are interesting in language and what words mean when they are used in certain places. However, I think it was less helpful and more just informational and interesting.