Make Your Point > Archived Issues > SOLECISM
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pronounce
SOLECISM:
Say it "SOLL uh sizz um."
To hear it, click here.
connect this word to others:
If you've been studying vocabulary with me for a while now, you've no doubt gotten the impression that French is particularly rife with snobby, judgmental words that came into English: bêtise, déclassé, and malapropos, just for starters.
But don't discount Greek! The Greek language gave us plenty of snobby, snooty, more-sophisticated-than-thou terms.
Like B____ian: "dull, stupid, simple, and uncultured, purportedly like the people of Bœotia."
And hoi_____oi: "all the lowly regular folks, not the upper class; literally 'the many.'"
And today's word, solecism: "an ignorant grammatical mistake, like the kind made by the people of Soloi."
(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)
definition:
In ancient Greece, Soloi was a colony where the citizens were known for speaking like barbarians. Their grammar was so bad, apparently, that it led the Greeks to coin the word soloikos, meaning "speaking wrongly" or "rude in manners."
And around 1577 or so, the idea entered English in the form of the word "solecism," meaning "a mistake in grammar."
That's what the word "solecism" often means today: "something said or written that breaks the rules of grammar in an especially basic or ignorant way," as in "I seen that already" or "He knowed better than that," or "Your dumb."
More loosely speaking, a solecism can also be anything done that breaks the rules of good manners or polite society.
grammatical bits:
Part of speech:
Noun, the countable kind: "I can't believe that solecism they just committed;" "Did you hear those solecisms?"
Other forms:
The plural noun is "solecisms."
People who use solecisms are "solecists."
Something that's full of solecisms is "solecistic" (or, more rarely, "solecistical").
And there's a rare verb, "to solecize," as in "They solecize often in their letters."
how to use it:
This word can sound snobby, so use it with care! I'm sure you guys will agree with me on this: that it's never cool, or kind, or productive, to make fun of people for their bad grammar. Still, there may be a time and a place for the word "solecism."
You might label something a solecism if it's so grammatically wrong, or so socially wrong, that it makes people cringe.
We usually reserve the word "solecism" for errors committed by people who should know better. So, we probably would not use it to label, say, a teenager's typo in an email, or a toddler's loud yawn during her aunt's boring story.
You might talk about people committing solecisms, correcting solecisms, or shuddering in horror at solecisms. Or, just talk about someone's solecisms: "George W. Bush is famous for his solecisms."
examples:
1. "[David Foster Wallace] was famously obsessed with English usage, and it showed in his teaching. Each week he'd pass around a handout titled Your Liberal Arts $s at Work, which collected solecisms perpetrated by students in the previous week's writing."
— Mac Barnett, The Guardian, 12 September 2016
(Note: You can peek at one of Wallace's handouts here, but it's not terribly entertaining. He just points out what some very basic rules of grammar are: rules that some of his students had recently broken.)
2. "Bernard felt extremely uncomfortable. A man so conventional, so scrupulously correct as the Director–and to commit so gross a solecism! lt made him want to hide his face, to run out of the room."
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932
has this page helped you understand "solecism"?
study it:
Explain the meaning of "solecism" without saying "blunder" or "grammatical blooper."
try it out:
Check out this embarrassing solecism, as reported by the Guardian:
"A BBC employee, Ahmen Khawaja, having overhead a technical rehearsal of coverage in the event of the Queen’s death, sent out a couple of tweets the other day saying that she was [dead]. That’s extremely awkward for Khawaja... There’s no more awful social solecism than accusing someone of being dead when they aren't."
Whoops. That's definitely a solecism.
I once accidentally introduced myself to the same person a second time-- a pretty awkward solecism, too, but Khawaja's is worse for sure.
Can you think of an even worse social solecism? If so, what is it?
While we're on the subject, I have this theory, or maybe just a hope, that we tend to remember our own solecisms and forget everyone else's. Do you think that may be true? Why or why not?
before you review, play:
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
Our game this month is "Faces & Feelings."
If the word you're studying were a facial expression, what would it look like? Maybe one of the seven universal facial expressions, the ones identified by the psychologist Paul Ekman.
In each issue, take a handful of words and assign each to an emotion it inspires. I'll list my answers at the bottom of each issue. Yours might be different from mine, which is okay--words, and emotions, are complex and personal! The goal here is just to interact with our words, to tie them more securely into memory by connecting them to emotion and to the face.
Try this set today. Match each face on the left to a term on the right:
paroxysm
pensive
pervasive
phantasmagoria
piece de resistance
pigeonhole
pinchbeck
review this word:
A. NICETIES (small details pertaining to correct social behavior).
B. VICISSITUDES (unpredictable changes that just always happen in life).
C. BREAD AND CIRCUSES (food, entertainment, or anything else that people are so pleased with or so busy with that it makes them fail to care about more important things in society).
2. On the flyer was a solecism that made us chuckle: _____
A. "Free Tudoring."
B. "Have you lost a chicken?"
C. "Lost: Ring. Please call Frodo Baggins."
a final word:
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.
From my blog:
36 ways to study words.
Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.
Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.
If you've been studying vocabulary with me for a while now, you've no doubt gotten the impression that French is particularly rife with snobby, judgmental words that came into English: bêtise, déclassé, and malapropos, just for starters.
In ancient Greece, Soloi was a colony where the citizens were known for speaking like barbarians. Their grammar was so bad, apparently, that it led the Greeks to coin the word soloikos, meaning "speaking wrongly" or "rude in manners."
Part of speech:
This word can sound snobby, so use it with care! I'm sure you guys will agree with me on this: that it's never cool, or kind, or productive, to make fun of people for their bad grammar. Still, there may be a time and a place for the word "solecism."
1. "[David Foster Wallace] was famously obsessed with English usage, and it showed in his teaching. Each week he'd pass around a handout titled Your Liberal Arts $s at Work, which collected solecisms perpetrated by students in the previous week's writing."
Explain the meaning of "solecism" without saying "blunder" or "grammatical blooper."
Check out this embarrassing solecism, as reported by the Guardian:
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
|