THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 22, 1994 TAG: 9407220504
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
From the snowdrift of papers on my desk, I've been retrieving, off and on, and rereading with pleasure a one-sentence note from Carl Cahill, who is one of the three greatest resources of Chesapeake, including Bergey's ice cream and not counting the immemorial City Hall.
Prompted by a recent column on yellow watermelons, Cahill had just this to say:
``My grandfather grew yellow watermelons more than 50 years ago for the sole purpose of watching the looks on our faces when he cut one open.''
For brevity in getting to the heart of a funny recollection you can't beat that, which was the way with the columns Cahill wrote for The Ledger-Star.
He delighted readers with a swift unfolding of a story just as his grandfather performed with the yellow watermelons.
I'm returning the note to the drift.
From Fred Stant III comes discourse on the word ``supportive,'' which he finds ``as weak and lily-livered as its users.
``Support someone or some thing or some cause.''
He would have us use the strong word ``support'' in asking for it or giving it. ``Supportive,'' he says, ``is the limp handshake of newspeak, and the `ives' attached to words are growing like wire hangers in a closet.''
Stant also decries what he calls the ``conditional, conditional statement of `I would think,' `I would hope' and the like.
``I reckon the speakers haven't decided whether to think or to hope or to whatever - or maybe they can't. . . '' He regrets finding last week in The Virginian-Pilot the phrase ``it would appear. . .
``As if `appear' isn't weak enough,'' he writes, ``it would require a `would.' ''
And soon, during the telecast of the Emmy awards, one TV celebrity after another, clutching an award, will be saying ``I would like to thank'' or ``I want to thank'' in calling a long list of mothers, fathers and second cousins responsible for his or her success.
How refreshing it would be to hear one or two of the winners say, ``I thank'' or just ``Thanks.''
Boomer and I, walking early the other morning, chanced to meet Dorothy Martin, and we paused to talk.
She recalled a recent rather heated exchange she overheard as she was passing two fellows, one replying to the other who had been trying to borrow something, money probably, from him.
``Naw,'' he was replying, ``you don't get it because you got a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much oblige!''
Finally, a new pronunciation popped up on television the other day when the newscaster, using the word ``status,'' pronounced it ``stay-tus'' instead of old-fashioned ``stat-us.''
It sounds ever so much more refined, and when it comes to shaping the language, TV outdoes Shakespeare. by CNB