cashier t.v.

/ca•sheer/

Cashier, as a transitive verb, means to "dismiss from a position of command or authority, esp. with disgrace."* Late 16th C.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary cites this example from W. S. Maugham:

He'd been kicked out of the Officer's Club at Warsaw and cashiered because he he'd been caught cheating at cards.

The word recently made an apt appearance in a Time magazine movie review of Joel and Ethan Coen's 2008 film, "Burn After Reading":

In the suburbs of Washington — the city of spies — lust, greed and chance trip up a cashiered CIA analysis (John Malkovich), his doctor wife (Tilda Swinton), a federal marshal (George Clooney), a lovelorn gym employee (Frances McDormand) and her oafish accomplice (Brad Pitt, in the sharpest, sweetest comic role of his career." ("The Coen Brothers' Post-Oscar Thriller," Movies, Sept. 8,2008.)

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Synonyms for cashiered include dismiss, boot, bounce, can, discharge, drop, free, sack, eject, expel, oust.**

Common command verbs that do the authoritative work of cashiering a subordinate are scram, beat it, piss off (mainly British), f--- off, and my favorite, a nautical term from the early 17th century: Avast!

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As a noun, cashier means something else entirely. It refers to a person, "one who has charge of cash or money, esp. one who superintends monetary transactions, as in a bank."**

The noun phrase cashier's check designates "a check drawn by a bank upon its own funds and signed by its cashier."**

Since the noun and verb share the same spelling, one might wonder whether these cashiers derive from the same source and thus share some sort of affinity? The answer is "No," as phrase etymologists William and Mary Morris explain in their usual clear, simple, personable style:

The two words are not the same, since they come from different routes into English. The first cashier — the one you'll see at your friendly local supermarket, where she's more likely to be called a "check-out clerk"— gets her name from the French cassier, meaning "money box." The second cashier — ("As the result of the court-martial, the colonel was cashiered from the service") comes from Old French casser, "to discharge or annul," and that came from the Latin quassare, "to shake or break into pieces. (115-116)***

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The noun version of cashier is cashierment, as in "Mr. Trump makes all decisions concerning staff: recruitment, development, retirement, cashierment."

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Sources:

* Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Fifth Edition, 2002.

** The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000.

*** Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

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mewl

☛ From The Shorter OED, 5th Ed.

mewl

Imitative

A. Intrans. verb

1 Especially of an infant: cry feebly, whimper — Late Mid. E.

2 mew verb (as from a cat)

B. Noun

A thin cry, a whimper — Mid 19 C.

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☛ From The New Century Dictionary (1940)

mewl: To cry as a young child: as, "The infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms" (Shakespeare's "As You Like It," ii. 7. 144).

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Recent Use:

[Minnesota U.S. Senate candidate Norm Coleman] lost to a man who starred in the movie "Stuart Saves His Family," as the simpering self-help guru who mewled the daily affirmation "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!"

From "Enter Laughing: Senator Franken's long journey," — John Colapinto, The Political Scene, The New Yorker, July 20, 2009, 28.

Al Franken on SNL, as

Stewart Smalley

Fans of "Saturday Night Live" know that the hero of the film "Stuart Saves Family" is Stuart Smalley, the

"simpering self-help guru"confected by Al Franken during his days as a comedian but who is now the junior senator from Minnesota. He defeated defeating Norm Coleman by 312 votes, finally, after a number of recounts, on June 30th. of this year.

The word is frequently used the participial form, as in Shakespeare's memorable rhyme mewling and puking.

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What about mewler? Is that a word?

I got to wondering if the OED referenced a derivative noun mewler, which I would understand to mean an annoying person who tends to whine and pule (the latter of which is mewl in its "literary" mode). The OED does cite mewler but marks it as obsolete and rare.

I say we rise up to revive mewler, using it to describe whiny political commentators on cable news programs: "Did you hear those crooning mewlers from the old Wall Street complaining on Fox News about Obama's reform proposals?"

As noted in other postings, a word invented for a specific occasion or situation, such as my mewler, is known among word mavins as a nonce term.

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entr' acte

noun

[an•TRACT']

1. The interval between two acts of a play, or

2. A dance, piece of music, or interlude performed between two acts of a play. (Webster 3)

Synonyms: interlude, intermezzo (Italian)

In Use:

[Film director Christian Nolan's] Caped Crusader, Christian Bale (who also starred in Mr. Nolan's entr'acte between the Batman films, "The Prestige"), recalls how "people would kind of laugh" when they heard that he and Mr. Nolan were taking Batman seriously.

The sentence comes from an article by David M. Halbfinger in the Film section of the New York Times of March 9, 2008 titled "Batman's Burden: Darkness and Death."

The article describes the swift rise of film director Christian Nolan into the "top tier of mainstream filmmakers." His work includes two Batman films,"Batman Begins," which appeared in 2005 to moderate success at the box office but to critical acclaim for the director, and Mr. Nolan's follow-up to that film, "The Dark Knight," which opened on July 18, 2008.

Stated simply, between Mr.Nolan's "Batman Begins" and its sequel "Batman's Burden: Darkness and Death," he directed a sans-Batman entr'acte titled "The Prestige."

Film Director Christian Nolan

The New York Times Company

Copyright 2007

Given the syntax Halbfinger has initiated, it is hard for this writer to imagine a word or phrase other than entr'acte to satisfy the needs of the clause containing it. One could hardly substitute with grace and economy such phrases as "non-Batman film." "film interrupting the Batman series," "film devoid of the Caped Crusader," "departure from Batmania." Perhaps the reader knows of a suitable substitute.

Besides fitting into the syntactical need of Halbfinger's subordinate clause, entr'acte — a term of dramatistic and cinematic jargon — rises to support the global persuasive intent of the essay, namely, to invite readers to think of Nolan's films not just as popular entertainment, but most assuredly as high cinematic art as well.

Post Script:

This posting is dedicated to my friend and former colleague Ann H., who sought me out and found me on Facebook. Good to be back in touch with one who loves English and teaching! May she and all of my readers benefit from Words Worth as it resumes publication (with a word a week).

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arrogate

www.|design.com

The Arrogator

A nonce term

coined by your editor

ar'ro-gate tr.v. — -gat-ed, -gat-ing, -gates.

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» to usurp,
» to appropriate, assume, or claim (to oneself) unduly or without justification.
Mid 16th century. — Shorter OED 5th Ed.

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» In use:

[President George W.] Bush has arrogated the power to imprison men without charges and browbeat Congress into granting an unfettered authority to spy on Americans. ("Barack Obama for President," Editorial, New York Times, 23 Oct. 2008.

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» Cognates: —ar'ro-ga'tion n. —ar'ro-ga'tive adj. —ar'ro-ga'tor n.

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» Usage Note: arrogate and abrogate are sometimes confused.

Abrogate means to abolish (a law or custom) by authoritative or formal action; annul, repeal. Henry VIII abrogated Welsh customary law. Whereas arrogate, means, to usurp. You should not arrogate to yourself all of the credit for today's victory. (Wikipedia's "List of commonly misused English words" — http://en.wikipedia.org; and Dictionary of Modern American Usage, Brian A. Garner. New York: Oxford U. Press, 1998.)

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» A memorization tip:

It takes willful arrogance to arrogate to oneself something that is properly not one's own [emphasis added]. Not surprisingly, both arrogance and arrogate derive from the same root, arrogat, the Latin stem of arrogare, to claim for oneself (Shorter OED 5th Ed.). — B.J.

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sclerotic

The tough, white, fibrous

sclerotic coat covering the eyeball

mar.-apt.com

skl-ROT-ik.

Rigid, hard, unyielding,

In use:

In willingly taking up the two-edged sword of maverickism; in spelling out his frequent flights against the sclerotic, cosy two-party establishment; in zinging that “big-spending, do-nothing, me-first-country-second Washington crowd”; in the new media adulation of his smoothly delivered acceptance extravaganza, [Senator John\ McCain stiffly stole the clothes of change. — William Safire, “The Maverick Ticket,” New York Times, Sunday Opinion, Sept. 7, 2008.

Derivation: skleros, Greek = hard.

In the dictionaries:

• adj. Unmoving, unchanging, rigid (Shorter OED 2002). Mid 20 C.

• adj. Hard, firm, applied especially to the outer membrane of the eye-ball; pertaining to sclerosis.
• noun. the outermost membrane of the eyeball (Chambers Etymological Dictionary, 1966.). Late Middle English.

[The term Sclera, with its line indicator,

appears in the drawing's upper left quadrant.]

"The Sclera is opaque and makes up 5 sixths of the outer layer of the

eyeball. It is visible between the eyelids as the white of the eye."

(www.best4glasses.co.uk/images/eyeball)

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Comment:

Most users of American English rarely see the word sclerotic, much less use it, as does William Safire so effectively above in his characterization of the "cozy two-party establishment" in Washington.

Why effective? Because the original medical sense of sclerotic denotes the hardness of the outermost layer of the eyeball. Thus with a word-wise wink, Safire, ever the word-meister, describes the modern American political party with the subtle yet apt metaphoric image of the human eyeball — tough, white-hued (pure?), slick, smooth, and ever-shifting (shifty?) as it peers upon the American political scene.

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A Tangential Add-on:

Speaking of the eyeball as an image with potential entailments relative to the human condition, you are invited to click the tab below to read a short deferential piece devoted to America's preiminent eyeball: Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Transparent Eyeball" in his philosophical text Nature:

Standing on the bare ground,— my head
bathed by the blithe air, & uplifted into
infinite space,— all mean egotism
vanishes. I become a Transparent
Eyeball!

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"Transparent Eyeball"

by Christopher Pearse Cranch

"While not exactly an image of Emerson, the "transparent eyeball" based on Christopher Pearse Cranch’s caricature of a passage from Nature, is famously associated with him" (Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, cas.sc.edu/engl/emerson ).

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Emerson

snark v.

t. verb

to find fault with, to nag

At the end of the 19th century, the word snark — as a verb (more about the noun form later) — carried two meanings, one of which was — and continues to be — to find fault with, to nag.

In her New York Times OP-ED piece of July 20, 2008, "Ich Bin Ein Jet-Setter," Maureen Dowd makes apt use of snark to describe the tone of a comment posted by an aide to presidential hopeful John McCain on the blog called The Politico. The context concerned candidate Barack Obama's visit to Europe during the last week in July of 2008.

Dowd first describes the political environments in Europe and America:

Even if Obama is treated as a superstar by W.-weary Europeans, some Obama-wary Americans may wonder what he is doing there, when they can't pay for gas, when the dollar is the Euro's chew toy, when Bud[weiser] is going Belgian and when the Chrysler Building has Arab landlords.

Her next paragraph presents the snarky quotation from the ready-to-rile McCain aide:

I don't know that people in Missouri are going to like seeing tens of thousands Europeans screaming for The One," a McCain aide snarked to The Politico.

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Snark in a second sense

t. verb

to snore or snort

Earlier in the Nineteenth Century, the Shorter OED tells us, people used snark as a transitive verb to mean snore or snort, no doubt because of its onomatopoetic effects.

noun, nonce

The word converts naturally into a nonce-noun:

I can't sleep! You're driving me nuts — what with that endless nasal droning you punctuate so punctiliously with all manner of gurgles and gaggs, snorts and snarks.—B.J.

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The adjectival derivative you read above, snarky, first appeared in the early 20th century, as did a second adjectival form, snarkish, as well as the adverb snarkily and the noun snarkiness — all worthy of use in appropriate settings.

So there's lots of room for invention with the root snark:

"Reginald, you, with your feigned sophistication, your words come scented in overtones snarkish, but the words of your roughneck bodyguard, Buck, they're stark snarky." (Why not add a rhyme?)

The most striking characteristic of conversation with any member of the Hightower family was its edge of keen snarkiness.

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But the root word snark did not make its first appearance in English as a raspish verb: rather it arrived — with no little publicity — as a playful noun, more precisely as a "nonsense word invented by Lewis Carroll in The Hunting of the Snark (1876)."

Snark, as a noun, in the Carrollian sense, signifies a "fabulous animal. Also an elusive truth or goal." (Shorter OED).

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Finally, here for the sheer nonsense of it, a couplet extempore:

Sir. Gallablab was a snark and windy knight,
His moods and words engendering sleep or fright.

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