InDefinition - 40

forebearance, n. putting up with one's elderly relatives

[With thanks to AC.]

Sean Hill (@sean_hill) says

Author Margaret Atwood says Twitter, internet boost literacy

Peerless.

Adventures with Mother

Toward the end of one lesson for example, [Maxim] told me that he had to leave ten minutes early - and then proceeded to spend the entire ten minutes unravelling the tortuous logic of how his early departure wasn't actually depriving me of any violin instruction.

- Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventure with Russian Books

Last night I had a similar experience with my mother, who told me that I didn't have time to go for a run because dinner was 'very nearly ready'. We debated the matter for at least ten minutes, and then I went out anyway and ran very fast. Dinner was served 30 minutes after I got out of the shower.

'Don't think!'

Instruction given by those who don't dare to those who couldn't anyway.

Literary maxim

Write about what you know.

And then lie.

Touching bottom

Those lucky enough to get a ticket for A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Rose in Kingston last year will have been treated to his Bottom...

- Helen Hawkins, in The Sunday Times Culture

Hyphens: 2

1) Contrary to appearances, the actual title of this book is Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine. I can live without the second hyphen (third, actually); but the first is kind of critical. Of course, you might well argue that a) there is a fun ambiguity at work here, and b) the hyphens are somehow cunningly implied by the variable fonts deployed (you would get extra points for attempting b); but, a)i) the tiger in question is evidently not white and ii) anyway the title on the inside cover makes it clear the hyphens are necessary, and b)i) no they're not and ii) even if they were basically nobody would get that. Also,

2) Given that I have heard Nagra quizzed - albeit very stupidly - as to the grammatical felicity of the title of his first collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover!, you'd think he (or his publishers) might have been a bit more careful this time round.

Hyphens: 1

Murakami's works have been dismissed by critics as apolitical and a-historical...

- Jay Rubin, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words

Book of the year?

I am indebted to what appears to be a blooper in the Times Christmas Books round-up for pointing me in the direction of something I feel I ought to have read. Joe Dunthorne's 'book of the year' is Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist. Alas for quality journalism, this book - I now discover - did not come out this year, or even last - not in hardback, anyway. And there was not legitimate reason for the plug to be in the middle of the 'sports' section. Still, it looks, as Dunthorne avers, like a cracker.

[On a doubly-related note, time was if you looked up either of my articles on the Spectator website you got a note saying 'No further articles by Joe Dunthorne.' This unexplained mystery has since been rectified.]

Inquiry

When an American writes

a dispute played out between American and British researchers in the pages of the London Journal of Scientific Inquiry* 

how can we be certain he does not think this is pronounced 'ink-wirry'?

[cf. Médecins Sans Frontieres; Unter den Linden; Afrikaner Werstandsbeweging.]

--
* fictional. Ben Greenman, Superworse

Really (really) good-looking

When people say 'She's a good-looking woman,' they usually mean 'She used to be a good-looking woman.'

- Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Keystroke twins - 9

cup-cake
cup-able

Overheard

from the fitting rooms at Bluewater:

Careful with Humpty Dumpty. You don't want to break him!

'Of course...'

In the following example(s)

You're right, of course, about the Socratic method/the price of fuel/the fact that wanking does not in fact cause blindness in teenage boys.

does the additional 'of course' make one's concurrence more or less patronising?

Too far

I woke up this morning wondering if an alembic was really what I thought it was.

(It is.)