Word Tidbits: Reveille vs. Revelry vs. Reverie

A recent incident sparked this post: I heard someone singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B) and, yet again, use the word revelry instead of reveille. I thought perhaps I should point out to folks that the two words have absolutely nothing to do with one another. If you substitute one for the other you'll be blowing nonsense. Then I thought of reverie, a third word that sounds similar but, again, has a very different meaning.

Reveille, as you may guess from the spelling, comes to us from the French imperative réveillez with its understood vous. If you shout, “Réveillez!” you mean, “Wake up!” The term in English refers to both the bugle call at sunrise that signals time for troops to form up and the actual formation that results. Thus when the Bugle Boy of Company B plays reveille in boogie woogie fashion it makes the company jump to its positions (and perhaps dance about once there).

Now, should Bugle Boy, whom I'll just call BB to save repetition, get those soldiers jumping they may turn to revelry instead of standing at attention as they should. Revelry pretty well opposes military order and discipline. It's the word for partying, merrrymaking, and general festive good times. I suppose BB could play a song called Revelry but that's not what The Andrews Sisters meant.

Reverie stands utterly opposed to both revelry and the focus of soldiers organizing themselves into ranks. Rather than stiff attention or cheery dancing, someone in a reverie daydreams, is lost in thought and as likely to bump into his or her fellows as anything else. As it's early in the morning I suppose some of the troops might be lost in reverie, their minds still in their beds and on their dreams. But if BB blows something so mellow and emotive as to encourage that condition the company will never get into reveille.

Thus you can see that our vigilant BB leaps from his bunk to play reveille at the base of the flag, not to incite revelry or plunge his fellows into reverie. If he gets a little boogie into the steps of the others perhaps that enthusiasm would be no bad thing. But partying and woolgathering have no place in forming up ranks at the crack of dawn, whatever soldiers do on their off time. Click the song name above to find a series of different versions of the song. En Vogue manages to have poor BB playing reverie. You may be rolling your eyes as much as I did when I heard it.

Too Quick with the Acronym

What is it with me and acronyms? I seem to have become obsessed. But when I read my post about using pronouns clearly I found that I had used one without explaining it. Shame on me!

I referred in that post to Dave from “HR”. While many people likely knew for what words the acronym stood the proper thing to do would have been to write out the phrase and then give the acronym in parentheses if I intended to use it in the rest of the piece. Thus it should have read, “What if I had written about Don, Ted, and Dave from Human Resources?”

If I had continued to talk about the human resources department I would have included (HR) before the question mark and then I would be free to use HR as an acronym (or an abbreviation, if you will) rather than tediously spelling it out each time. Of course, I could have avoided the whole issue by using the word personnel.

All of that merely means that you and I should watch our use of colloquialisms and common abbreviations in our writing. A shortened term that you commonly use may slip right past your internal editor, as it did mine in this case.

By the by, I have a new favorite acronym that I just couldn’t resist sharing with you all. Apparently there exists out there somewhere an organization called Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human or PHLUSH. I will resist the urge to make puns and just leave my announcement at that.

For Whom the Pronoun Stands

In my post about may versus might I included the sentences, “Don may be forced to fire Ted if he cannot resist the temptations of YouTube while at work. I’ve heard that he might seek counseling to curb his addiction.” In rereading that example, I wondered if my pronoun use was perhaps unclear. Naturally, that made me wish to post about how I could tell.

In short, the general rule runs thus: unless the sentence otherwise specifies to which person it refers, a pronoun used refers to the last person/group/object named. That means that you have to pay attention to the gender and number of the pronoun. In my example you’ve only the two to choose from which makes identifying “he” much simpler. What if I had written about Don, Ted, and Dave from HR?

“Dave told Don that he may be forced to fire Ted if he cannot resist those great kitten videos while on the clock. He said he’d heard that he might seek counseling for his problem.”

In the first sentence we’ve referred to both Don and Ted as “he” but only after using their respective names to identify them. In the second I am theoretically still writing about Ted except that the sentence doesn’t make sense if he is the only subject.

As the entire raison d’être of pronouns is their ability to stand in for nouns so that you need not use a name over and over in your writing, I’d never advocate avoiding them. You’d end up with something like this:

“Dave told Don that Don may be forced to fire Ted if Ted cannot resist Daft Punk mash-up videos at Ted’s desk. Don said Don had heard that Ted was going to Daft Rehab.”

Who wants to read that sort of garbage, let alone write it?

You must remember that your audience doesn’t have the inside knowledge you do of the situation, fictional or factual. When you write you already know who acts, who feels what, and who speaks to whom. If you’re on fire with creativity you may not notice how often you substitute pronouns for names. Cast an eye over what you’ve written and consider whether your readers can tell the difference between Ted and Don in any given sentence. You’ll be doing all of you a favor.

If I May, If I Might

If I may, I’d like to explore the infinitesimal difference between may and might. In this case, I don’t see a “wrong” way to use one word in place of the other so much as I harbor a curiosity about why there are two such words. I retrieved my enormous dictionary and found the following definitions. I’ve abbreviated them to the salient points.

May: be allowed to or capable of, be likely to (to some degree), or to be obliged to (in matters of contract or statute). For purposes of brevity, I am ignoring “may he reign in health for a century” uses and the completely irrelevant definitions.

Might: the past version of may, in bygone days, and something less likely to happen than what you may do. Again, I’m ignoring uses and parts of speech that range away from my point.

Consider this sentence: Don may be forced to fire Ted if he cannot resist the temptations of YouTube while at work. I’ve heard that he might seek counseling to curb his addiction.

The difference between may and might lies in the degree of likelihood. It seems Don has seriously considered firing Ted but the video-watching fool doesn’t sound ready to admit he’s got a problem. I may paint my house green and I might add purple trim. I’m much more likely to find a pleasing shade of vermilion than I am to combine it with aubergine. I certainly am capable of doing both (though I may not like living with the results).

I may stop writing before I beat you over the head with another example for fear you might choose not to return. Yikes!

Making Sense of Oxymorons: A Writing Prompt

I received one of those obnoxious chain mails filled with clip art and Comic Sans font in seven colors and eight sizes. I’d been forwarded this one in particular several times because it purports to contain oxymorons. Of course is contains nothing of the kind but I (mostly) appreciate that people think of me when they see jokes about the English language.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, an oxymoron is a phrase that contradicts itself. I’ve most often heard “military intelligence” cited as an example but I find that to be unkind to the gents who actually do sneaky things for the armed forces and who often show some scary smarts.

I’ve been sitting here attempting to create an oxymoron of my own and for some reason I now want to open a coffee shop called The Speedy Turtle. I seem to recall reading an article about the fastest sloth as well. But I was having trouble thinking of a really good example.

Then I thought about the example given in my dictionary of “legal murder”, which took me in two directions: right back to military intelligence and to the Wild West and the idea of a deputized outlaw. Could you have a gentle bully or a terrifying bunny (Monty Python notwithstanding)?

And so I thought that might make an interesting writing exercise: pair two contradictory terms and write a story to explain how both apply to a character. I don’t expect you to post results here, of course, but if you do write something based on the idea I’d love a link. If you’ve got a good example of an oxymoron please do share.