I caught the national news on cable today at lunch.?ÿ It keeps me astride of our ever changing world.?ÿ The buzz was heralding the arrival of the vaccine to various cities across the US.?ÿ I'm happy.?ÿ We need it.?ÿ American ingenuity and stubbornness just might prevail and save us all.?ÿ
So I'm watching this young reporter at a medical center.?ÿ She's blathering to her camera about the vaccine distribution process and how the frozen vial need to be de-thawed.?ÿ I flinched a little when I heard the word.?ÿ I think the part that bothered me the most was I'm pretty sure the reporter probably had at least a BA in Journalism.?ÿ With my rudimentary GED level knowledge of this horse crap we call Engish I'm guessing de-thawing something would mean to reverse or undo the thaw.?ÿ I don't think that was what the young lady was trying to relate.?ÿ I was pretty sure I heard my 8th. Grade English Comp teacher rolling over in her grave...
BUT..I'm a professional high-school dropout.?ÿ Just about everybody with a valid driver's license has more formal education than myself.?ÿ Just because something doesn't sound right to me doesn't mean I'm correct.?ÿ So I looked it up...
I was surprised to find there are several on-line cognition centers that jump through a lot of hoops to defend the use of the word de-thaw.?ÿ I will also bet you money I have Levi's in the closet that are older than any of those rationalizations.
SO I delved a little deeper.?ÿ The flaw of creating the word dethaw by adding the prefix de to the word thaw is defined by the origins of the words themselves.?ÿ Using the prefix de?ÿin conjunction with another word has to do with the word's origin; Latin.?ÿ Basically we can use the Latin prefix de if we are modifying a word with a Latin root.?ÿ Here's the catch; thaw is a derived word we have borrowed from Germanic origins, not Latin.?ÿ I'm throwing the penalty flag on that word.?ÿ I don't care if the Urban Dictionary says it's OK.?ÿ They're wrong too. 😉
But that's not the whole story.?ÿ Right after the young lady wrecked my ear with her us of dethaw, the scene changed to a young man reporting from a loading dock at some medical facility in the Midwest.?ÿ Behind him was a large white tractor-trailer emblazoned with the seven feet tall blue and red letters "FedEx".?ÿ The young man authoritatively explained "the UPS truck behind me just brought in the first shipment of vaccine".
I'm guess I'm lucky I'm a high school dropout.?ÿ I can screw up.?ÿ I have an excuse.?ÿ 😉
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What really bothers me is that if you correct somebody's butchering of the language or obviously demonstrated factual error, you are the bad guy for noticing and if you were smart you would know what they meant.
Maybe it was just because I was in school and then an engineering environment, but it didn't used to be that way.
And get off my lawn.
There is a radio ad that plays every few minutes. It begins with a person saying "As the owner of a construction company, hiring the right people is difficult".?ÿ Meaning that hiring the right people is easy for people who don't own construction companies.
To de-thaw would be to re-freeze.?ÿ Right??ÿ I can believe they are, in fact, lowering the temperature of the vials as they must stay at some superlow (my made up term) temperature or may become useless.?ÿ I don't they have any chance of actually getting to what we think of as thawing, however. until arrival at the site where they will be used.?ÿ But, they could become warmer than ideal during transit.
She was using dethaw to describe bringing the temperature UP.?ÿ That's what threw me.?ÿ Apparently there are others on the planet that understood what she meant...
Are you sure she didn't say rethaw?
Strange, but in dutch we have the same issue.
Normally 'de-' translates in 'ont-' and means the opposite but not for thawing.
In dutch we use 'dooien' and 'ontdooien' for the same action of melting.
dooien - thawing is used for when freezing stops
over here ontdooien is used for bringing or letting the temp coming above freezing point.
So far the linguistic part of this post.
As you all know the UK was the first to start vaccinating,
the caption of the image is in dutch and translates as the vaccination is a BIG succes!
Be warned!
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Maybe the young lady has a lisp and really meant?ÿde-saw, which means eliminating things from your memory that you wish you hadn't seen, like that picture.
Waiting for the Barbarians
BY C. P. Cavafy
Translated by Edmund Keeley
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn??t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What??s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they??ll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city??s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor??s waiting to receive their leader.
He??s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don??t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they??re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people??s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
Now what??s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
UPS, USPS, FEDX, DHL, etc. who cares? When I see one of those pull in my driveway I know something good is arriving. Usually can??t remember what it is, but it??s here! ?????ÿ
If you had given that explanation to the reporter, her response would have been, "what's Latin"?
Pretty sure it is a regional thing (think Minnesota/Wisconsin. I blame their proximity to French speakers.
interesting...my comment above was that I believe it is a regional colloquialism.
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This video uses "unthaw"
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You're probably right. Last time I was visiting up in the great north woods I heard someone use the word "conversating"...it was like fingernails drawn slowly across a chalkboard to me.?ÿ But yous knows they all talk funny up there, eh?
Some French folks must've swam the river to get further south and warm up.?ÿ 😉
Hee hee hee
Drink, drank, drunk is how I remember swim, swam, swum.?ÿ The third version being used in a past participle.
English is de-Latin.
English is a mongrel composed of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon plus French after 1066, which is a Latin relative, plus many words borrowed directly from Latin and Greek as was taught in schools of prior centuries, plus words borrowed from Native American, African, Japanese, etc, and words that started as acronyms and slang. It is flexible enough to allow invention of words from other word forms (add -ize, -able, -ion, or -ity for instance). What a mess.
