The suffix "-bonics"

Justice J. Michael Eakin of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has used the term "legalbonics," which he described in 2012 as content-free comments or "stupid" objections.  The justice called clumsy legal writing "legalbonics" in 2009 as well, perhaps referring to what is normally called legalese.  (Pennsylvania Bar Institute, Legal Writing for the 21st Century).  A 2005, anonymous cite for "legalbonics" is here.

The suffix "-bonics" must be from the dimly remembered "Ebonics" controversy of the 1990s--a proposal that schools reach out to black children by giving lessons in the children's putative style of English, named from "ebony" + "phonics."  From this, "-bonics" has been taken jocularly to denote "a way of speaking."  I have found a few instances of the use of bonics from the era, meaning 1) some local dialect ("Bubba-bonics"¹ in Citrus County, Florida) or 2) some disparaged false dialect (Newt-bonics²; Pol-bonics³ [half-Polish English]; hick-bonics⁴).

Most striking about legalbonics (coming from a public figure like Justice Eakin) is that today it's a little bit non-politically-correct.  Grouping black English in with clumsy legal writing ignores the insistence of many linguists that black English has its own consistent grammar and other features.  Using "-bonics" is meant to evoke the Ebonics controversy and righteous indignation about teaching black English, as in the 1990s quotes footnoted below.  However, it's hard to imagine Judge Eakin is evoking that in lectures to lawyers--there may be some continuing, oral use of the "-bonics" idea that's hard to find on the internet, and that has become a regular vocabulary item for bad or confused English.

For a grammar grinch like me--better, a lexicon-grinch--most striking is the peculiar creation of a suffix.  "Ebonics" really has the suffix "-ics"; the "-on-s" of "ebony" and of "phonics" were creatively (or lamely) lined up.    "Phonics" (from the Greek φωνή "sound of the voice" + "-ics," from -ικός, denoting a noun) is the source of the "-ics" suffix.  The coiners of "legalbonics" and other terms are create a new "-bonics" suffix for (bleh) comic effect.


1. Greg Hamilton, "Hey Bubba, whut chew think a' dis Ebonics nonsense?" St. Petersburg Times,  Jan. 5, 1997, 2.
2. George J. Wilberg, Letter to the Editor, Newsweek, March 3, 1997, 12.
3. Mary McGrory, "The GOP's Newt-bonics," Washington Post, Dec. 29, 1996, C1.
4. Kenneth Li, "Hick Meets Sick," Daily News [New York], May 4, 1997, 42.
 

"Folks" and folksiness

From the early years of the George W. Bush administration I’ve been hearing public speakers refer to others as “folks”—to sound more genuine, informal, democratic, maybe even American.   Paula Broadwell, the now-famous paramour of General David Petraeus started a lecture on her book with the following:

Before we get started I’d like to see how many veterans there are in the room, so I know I who I’m facing. Okay, well, first of all, thank you for all of your service and I know we might have a few folks that belong to Team Red White and Blue as well, are there any folks from this veterans’ support organization?  A couple of folks, okay great, thanks for coming.

Where one would usually say “people” or “individuals,” and then “anyone,” Broadwell gets in touch with her audience by using folks.  This is a folksy (that is, common-man, rural, simple) trope that Bush seems to have initiated—how else might a wealthy grandson of a senator-and-son of a CIA director/congressman show his natural small-town, everyday tendencies?  President Obama seems to have picked it up too.  I’m sure that we can multiply more and more political figures use of “folks.”  I wish I had saved a comment I once saw, sent to the IRS by a tax accountant on behalf of a large corporation, objecting to a new tax regulation in the name of “folks.”

The folksy use of “folks” seems like a newish innovation--maybe a Bush-era innovation.  The plural is an American innovation, recognized before the American Civil War in Noah Webster’s great dictionary.  He notes (s.v. “folk”) that 

“Originally and properly it had no plural, being a collective noun ; but in modern use, in America, it has lost its singular number, and we hear it only in the plural.  It is a colloquial word, not admissible into elegant style.”

In the definition: 

1. People in general, or any part of them without distinction.  What do folks say respecting the war?  Men love to talk about the affairs of other folks.

2. Certain people, discriminated from others, as old folks and young folks.  So we say, sick folks ; poor folks ; proud folks.” (The 1848 printing of the 1845 edition.)

In the authorities collected in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage there “folks” are typically referred to either as rural types, or in Webster’s definition, people in general or  “certain people, discriminated from others” sense.  There’s no indication that “folks” is used in the sense of particular citizens who might have particular, individual experiences, as Broadwell uses it and as Bush and Obama do. 

So these sources don't seem to indicate the politically valuable type of folksiness that Bush and Obama have tried to evoke, and with which they have infected other politically-minded people.  It strikes me as a very recent innovation.  My main objection to this use of "folks" is that it’s simply not genuine—it’s an attempt to inject some average-ness, some common-ness,  some unassuming-ness into the speech of persons who are definitely not average or common or normal.

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?