Impressive title

I just read in Debrett's Correct Form that in Malta "the Executive Head of the University is termed "Rector Magnificus."

Business philosophy

I can't resist reporting on one of the most-true statements I have ever heard (although I'm not very well-read in philosophy).  The recorded message on the phone line at my insurance company, CIGNA, told me, "Your unique individuality is what makes you you." 

Office bullshit

Before the days of "synergies," "solutions," "leveraging," and "skill sets" there was plenty of office bullshit.

I've been doing some research on the history of commercial correspondence--letter-writing in the days before phone calls, faxes, and the telex--and have found many instances of "favor" to mean "letter."  It occurs especially in the locution "your favor(s)," as in "We beg to acknowledge receipt of your favor of May 24th . . ." as late as 1912 (Eleanora Banks, Correct Business and Legal Forms).  OED finds "favor" meaning "letter" as early as 1645, and by the time its letter F came out in 1895 OED editors labeled it "Now, at least in England, confined to commercial correspondence."  However, simultaneous American authorities label it "hackneyed" (Edward Hall Gardner, Effective Business Letters (1920); (Hotchkiss and Burnett, Advanced Business Correspondence (1920)).  The clunking respectfulness of "favor" could be made even more absurd:

"Gentlemen--We are in receipt of your esteemed favor of the 17th, ordering five car-loads of our best pine . . ." (O. R. Palmer, Type-Writing and Business Correspondence, 1891).

An example of another common feature from these old books: " Your favor of the 3d inst. is at hand, and we are surprised to learn that the books forwarded February 11th, by freight, have not been received.” (Thomas R. Browne and Edmond C. Browne, Miscellaneous Correspondence: Commercial and Legal Forms (Part I, 1907), p. 3.)   "Inst." ("instant") refers to a letter of the third day of the month in which the response is written; "your favor of the 3d ult." or "ultimo" would refer to a letter of the preceding month.

Your word of the day: "Spermologer"

Came across this one in my fitful studies of Greek. While St. Paul preaches in Athens the local philosophers taunt him and ask, "What might this spermologos [σπερμολόγος] be wanting to say?" (Acts 17:18).  The Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon shows the word is a combination of sperma (σπέρμα) for "seed" and logos (λόγος), a noun from the verb legō (λέγω), in one sense "to pick up."   "Spermologos" originally meant some bird that pecked for seeds, but applied disparagingly to a person it means he is a "babbler," in Liddell's and Scott's translation.  So "What might this babbler be wanting to say?" taunt the Epicureans and the Stoics in the Agora.  But you can Paul a "spermologer," and the word shows up in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Squinch: a false etymology on Wikipedia

There's a couple instances of false etymologies on Wikipedia.  If something on Wikipedia looks too exotic or interesting to be true, it probably is.  Grant Barrett on "A Way With Words" pointed out that "homie" and "homeboy" are nineteenth-century black slang.  He had more than once changed the Wikipedia page "Homeboy" to reflect this, and each time others had changed it back to a false etymology: that homeboy came from homo or homme or hombre.

I discovered what looks like a false etymology in the Wikipedia article "Squinch."  A squinch is an architectural member that was an early (Byzantine?) solution to the problem of stacking an octagonal or a round dome on a square, four-walled structure: create four squinches, or little bridges at the corners of the walls, set at 45-degree angles to the walls.  The dome can sit on these, as well as the center-points of the four walls.  The Wikipedia article thinks squinch comes from a Persian word "pronounced 'sekonj.'"  "Persian, huh?" I thought.  The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word to the French escoinson, meaning "from an angle" and via the English word "scuncheon." 

Can anyone out there explain the reasoning behind the Persian-word claim?

A verb "to diary"

I haven't been able to find it in the Oxford English Dictionary, or in any of my American dictionaries.  I came across correspondence at work where someone in Britain suggested the letter's recipient "diary for" a certain future date.  According to this post, it means to put a note in your diary.  Does anyone know if this is business jargon?

Pronouncing "permit"

Here's something that makes my skin crawl.  I have noticed many people pronouncing the noun "permit" with the stress on the second syllable, /per-MIT/: "Can I get a per-MIT to do this?"  I believe that it's /PER-mit/ and dictionaries agree with me, although some list /per-MIT/ as a secondary pronunciation.  Everyone thinks the verb is the one pronounced /per-MIT/.  So saying "the city gave me a /per-MIT/" sounds wrong.

A change in stress occurs in other noun-verb homographs--compare the noun /PRO-duce/ to the verb /pro-DUCE/.   As with "produce," the noun usually stresses the first syllable, and the verb the second syllable.  Here's a good list. This change in stress carries over to the nominalized form of the verb--/pro-DUC-tion/ is a noun that comes from the /pro-DUCE/, not the verb noun /PRO-duce/.  Whence we get second syllable stresses in /per-MIT-ting/ and in /per-MIS-sion/, the noun form of the verb /per-MIT/.

Curiously, there seems to be another series.  A government's procedure for issuing a (noun) /PER-mit/ is called the /PER-mitting/ process; in making a verbal gerund out of the noun, it ignores the second-syllable stress the verb typically gets.   So we now have /PER-mitting/ as well as /per-MIT-ting/.

Of course, this latter series won't exist if you pronounce the noun /per-MIT/.  By the way, I can't tell if per-MIT is a regionalism, and I've exhausted the dictionaries on the reference shelf at the New York Public Library.