I am a little bit like Winnie-the-Pooh in that sometimes I feel like “a bear of very little brain.” That must be why I find it so confusing when people say things like “Do you mind if we come in?” — for example, detectives at someone’s door on “Law & Order” — and the person being asked replies, “Yes,” and lets them all in.
Shouldn’t the answer have been “No, I DON’T mind” if he lets them in? Or else “Yes, I mind” when he slams the door in their face instead?
Am I the only one who gets confused? If I were one of those detectives, I’d still be on the doorstep trying to figure out whether I was being allowed in or not. Of course, in most of those police shows, they already have a warrant so they’re going on in regardless.
Or do I mean “irregardless?”
“‘Irregardless’ isn’t even a word, Judy!” cries The Grammar Snob.
“Yes, I’ve heard that,” I reply. “But guess what? People use it anyway! Which is why dictionaries like Merriam-Webster list it anyway because somebody will use it and somebody who hears it might not know what it means and want to look it up.”
“You mean someone of very little brain?”
“Exactly.”
It seems to me that the English language loves to construct little traps like that for the unwary speaker — or listener — to fall into. For example, take a sweater that’s busy unraveling, thanks to your forgetting to put it in mothballs last winter.
When you can finally take it to the dry cleaner, you ask, “Do you have somebody who can ravel this?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because “ravel” and “unravel” both mean the same thing — undoing it.”
“Is that you, Grammar Snob? Since when did you become a dry cleaner?”
“Since the pandemic. Anyway, what you need is someone who can reweave this, but it’s expensive.”
“Thanks, I’m good.” Which means “No thanks, I’m NOT good.”
Let’s take another language trap: How do you say that something is the opposite of flammable? Would you say it’s “inflammable?”
“No, that means the same thing as flammable!” says Grammar Snob, all inflamed. “Why are you still in my store anyway?”
“I’m just so glad to see you,” I say peaceably. “But what should I say then for the opposite of ‘flammable?’”
“You say, “This thing won’t burn,” says Snob. “But I wouldn’t believe it about that sweater — with or without the mothballs all winter.”
“You know what?” I say. “I could care less!”
“You mean, you COULDN’T care less!” Grammar Snob shouts at me. “What’s happened to you? You used to shout at the TV right along with me, whenever someone else said that.”
“I know,” I said. “I can’t be bothered about grammar these days.”
My husband loves to exploit these ambiguities.
Whenever I am so foolish as to ask him to make me a cup of coffee, he grins and says, “Poof! You’re a cup of coffee!”
“You keep doing that!” I complain. “You drive me crazy!”
He replies, “If you insist.”
And as he likes to say every Valentine’s Day, “Darling, I can’t do enough for you.”
Does that mean that his attempts will be bottomless and never-ending? Or that he won’t even try? As a Bear of Very Little Brain, I am confused.
His favorite bit from “Saturday Night Live” is a long-ago sketch where Ed Asner, as a nuclear energy plant manager about to retire, tells his colleagues, “Just remember — you can’t put too much water in a nuclear reactor.”
Of course, the reactor soon goes haywire, and his panic-stricken colleagues begin asking each other, “What did he mean by that? Did he mean you can keep putting water in because no amount is too much? Or did he mean DON’T put water in, because that would be wrong? WHICH ONE DID HE MEAN?”
The sketch ends with Asner relaxing on a beach, looking out at the ocean, with a giant mushroom cloud blossoming up into the horizon behind him.
I tell my husband I’m going to get us a dictionary for these kinds of ambiguities.
He replies, “Go right ahead. I will waste no time in reading it.”
