Wrap Artist
Sometimes something wrong hangs around in the language for so long that you just figure it's easier to accept it than to fight it, because everyone does it and you won't win in the long run anyway.
The irreplaceable boingboing.com linked to a set of oddball cartoons from 1905 amd 1906 called "The Outbursts of Everett True", which is exactly what the cartoons were. This one demonstrates that people have been using the manifestly illogical term "straightjacket" for quite a while now, at least a hundred years. I think the careful writer would never use it, but can we keep calling it wrong after all this time? Is it still worth fighting for the correct term? Should we just move on to other things, more winnable battles like subject-verb agreement?
As you've been conditioned to expect by now, "straight" comes from Latin...no, it doesn't. That's a total lie. It's actually a purely English word, evolved from a Middle English word meaning "to stretch", because something straight is something that's stretched to its full length, no kinks or bends. "Strait", on the other hand, really is from Latin; in this case, from "stringere", "to draw tight", obviously the source of "stringent" and "astringent", and more distantly related to "string" and (even more estranged from the family) "strangle". A strait is a narrow channel of water; straitened circumstances are those which are stressful and trying because one's options are so narrow.
Now; how could "straightjacket" possibly make any sense? It clearly couldn't. "Straitjacket", on the other hand, is so sensible it brings tears to your eyes. But the two words sound identical, and "straight" is the commoner word, and so it's the one that got compounded in many, perhaps most, people's spelling. It's so usual nowadays that dictionaries don't even give it a second thought, and spell-checkers routinely list both versions. And, in fact, back in the days when spelling was a free-for-all and you could encounter multiple spellings of a word, sometimes in the same document, "straight" did evolve as an alternate spelling of "strait", alongside "streight", "streyt", and "stryte", among many others. This spelling is now considered not an alternate spelling but entirely obsolete, just as those others are. And yet, according to the dictionaries and to popular usage, "straightjacket" is unquestionably part of the language.
Really, though; it's still wrong.
The irreplaceable boingboing.com linked to a set of oddball cartoons from 1905 amd 1906 called "The Outbursts of Everett True", which is exactly what the cartoons were. This one demonstrates that people have been using the manifestly illogical term "straightjacket" for quite a while now, at least a hundred years. I think the careful writer would never use it, but can we keep calling it wrong after all this time? Is it still worth fighting for the correct term? Should we just move on to other things, more winnable battles like subject-verb agreement?
As you've been conditioned to expect by now, "straight" comes from Latin...no, it doesn't. That's a total lie. It's actually a purely English word, evolved from a Middle English word meaning "to stretch", because something straight is something that's stretched to its full length, no kinks or bends. "Strait", on the other hand, really is from Latin; in this case, from "stringere", "to draw tight", obviously the source of "stringent" and "astringent", and more distantly related to "string" and (even more estranged from the family) "strangle". A strait is a narrow channel of water; straitened circumstances are those which are stressful and trying because one's options are so narrow.
Now; how could "straightjacket" possibly make any sense? It clearly couldn't. "Straitjacket", on the other hand, is so sensible it brings tears to your eyes. But the two words sound identical, and "straight" is the commoner word, and so it's the one that got compounded in many, perhaps most, people's spelling. It's so usual nowadays that dictionaries don't even give it a second thought, and spell-checkers routinely list both versions. And, in fact, back in the days when spelling was a free-for-all and you could encounter multiple spellings of a word, sometimes in the same document, "straight" did evolve as an alternate spelling of "strait", alongside "streight", "streyt", and "stryte", among many others. This spelling is now considered not an alternate spelling but entirely obsolete, just as those others are. And yet, according to the dictionaries and to popular usage, "straightjacket" is unquestionably part of the language.
Really, though; it's still wrong.
posted by pyramus | 12:00 AM
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