Re: Words, Words, Words

On 11/07/12 15:54, Sibyl Smirl wrote:
> On British English:
>
> My proofreader's eye always jolts on British spellings and usages,
> even though I _know_ they're perfect normal and usual for the writer.
> The first time that I noticed the differences was over sixty years
> ago, in "Black Beauty".
>
> I'm reading a British mystery novel right now, on my Kindle, "In the
> Blood", a genealogical mystery, by Steve Robinson. The viewpoint
> character is (supposed to be) American, though most of the action
> takes place in Cornwall. Quite a few of those strictly British items
> caught my eye, but several have been new to me, like "juddering",
> which is in the Oxford English Dictionary. Two, though, were in
> descriptions of people, which is especially jarring since they occur
> in the mind's eye of the American character. I'd like to know whether
> they are usual usages in the UK, or unique to the writer.
>
> "...He was a stocky man, barely five feet, eight inches tall,
> clean-shaven with a thick crop of short silver-grey hair that to his
> constant irritation would never sit down, spoiling an otherwise
> pristine appearance."
>
> Jarring for me, because to me, hair that will behave would be _lying_
> down, while hair that might be called "sitting down" would evoke a
> vertical appearance, like "standing up", that is, _not_ behaving, but
> straight out from the root, or, in the case of "sitting", out from the
> root, then a bent section, then out again...

I think your version seems more natural to me but the published version
doesn't jar for me.

>
> "Detective Sergeant Bill Hayne wore a light-grey suit over the
> standard-issue white shirt. In his neck, a plain navy tie was pushed
> too far up to be comfortable..."
>
> "_In_ his neck"? That one is especially uncomfortable for me, because
> the story has just been describing, before that, a body with a cut
> throat. I'm not even sure what it means-- a too-tight tie might be
> making a groove in his neck, and definitely not comfortable, but that
> doesn't seem to work. An American might think "on" or "around", but
> not "in".
>

"At his neck" would be what I expected but around works to. On doesn't
work for me.

> And one for Leslie, a piece of horse equipment, like a feedbag, in an
> early Eighteenth Century setting, of which I've never heard before.
> This one isn't in the OED either, though specialized equipment might
> not be. "His Shire mare, Ebryl, named after the Cornish for the month
> of April in which she was born, was happily eating her reward from the
> morral looped around her neck."
>
>

I haven't come across that word before. But I'm not a horse person.

--
Bernard Peek
bap@shrdlu.com