Scuttlebutt

Scuttlebutt is the only thing free in the modern era.

— Ugwu Kelvin

Before there was water-cooler talk, there was scuttlebutt.

An 18th-century nautical term, a scuttlebutt was a cask of drinking water kept on deck for the crew.

Scuttlebutts had a gaping hole, so sailors could dip a cup into them. They would often gather around the ship's scuttlebutt to gossip.

The word compounded scuttle, meaning a "hole in a ship," and butt, meaning a "barrel."

Scuttle was a 15th-century term derived from the Spanish escotilla, meaning "hatch."

In battle, when a captain preferred to sink rather than surrender his vessel, he would order sailors to "scuttle the ship" by cutting holes in the hull.

The nautical term bore no relationship to the inland scuttle, meaning "dish," "cup," or "bucket." The inland word was a 14th-century borrowing from the Latin scutella, meaning "platter."

By the 19th century, shipboard rumors came to be known collectively as scuttlebutt, the maritime version of fake news—the lies rival newspaper publishers accused each other of printing in the 19th century.   

Inland rumors, on the other hand, when they didn't appear in newspapers were spread through the grapevine in the 19th century. In America, at least.

No sooner than Samuel Morse invented the telegraph (1844) did a company named Western Union string thousands upon thousands of miles of telegraph wire across the country. 

Americans thought the company's labyrinthine handiwork resembled a grapevine, and telegraph messages were said to arrive "through the grapevine."

During the Civil War, when a soldier wanted to vouch for a suspect rumor, he'd say, "I heard it through the grapevine," meaning "it must be true." 

Rumors themselves soon came to be known collectively as grapevine (or what the British would call humbug).

Now that you've heard them, be sure to share these facts with colleagues—on line or at the water cooler.

Flailing About

Johnson has been flailing about desperately.

— New York Magazine

The cognitive dissonance Republican Senator Ron Johnson suffers would pain an intelligent man, according to New York Magazine. Nonetheless, Johnson must wonder how he can call the louts who assaulted the Capitol on January 6 "tourists."

"Johnson has been flailing about desperately in search of a resolution to this contradiction," the magazine says.

The verb flail, meaning to "whip," is an 11th-century word that originally meant to "thresh" or "winnow." 

Knight wielding a "flail"

A flail was a Mediaeval farm tool made of wood and leather. Its name was borrowed from the Latin name for the same tool, flagellum, from which we also get the verb flagellate, meaning to "flog."

When we see a flail today, we think of knights doing battle, but the flail was never a weapon. 

Mediaeval artists merely convinced us it was.

By depicting flail-wielding knights in illuminated manuscripts, medieval artists led later viewers to imagine that these wily cavalrymen must have used flails to terrorize foes. 

But, the "flails" wielded by knights were actually goads—wood-and-rope cattle prods that somewhat resemble flails. Knights used goads to prod their horses.

Medieval flail

The spiked iron "flails" in museum collections today are in fact simulacra: 19-century copies of a 10-century weapon that never existed.

So when you read that Johnson is "flailing about," don't think of knights of old. 

To flail about means to "whip around," to "engage in erratic movements."

Paperwork

What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.

— Pearl Bailey

I'm awash in paperwork thanks to a surgery back in December. 

Letters, notices, statements, receipts, affidavits, invoices and those curious cryptograms known in healthcare as "EOBs." Scores of EOBs.

"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming," Wernher von Braun said.

Healthcare is a lot like rocketry.

A surgeon can repair a shattered ankle, but it might not be worth the paperwork.

There's one area of society where we can turn paperwork into a positive, however.

Law enforcement.

Cops often overlook crimes because "it's not worth the paperwork" to process the suspects.

Congress should pass a new law quintupling the paperwork required to process Black suspects.

The Paperwork to Overwhelm Police Officers (POPO) Act would do more to cure systemic racism in law enforcement than any defunding program.

Congress, you listening?

The people demand it.

The American Forest & Paper Association should, too.

Above: Clip Art. Print by Adam Hilman.

Against the Grain

He who goes about to reform the world must begin with himself.

― Ignatius of Loyola

I often hear people say they're proud troublemakers, eager to go "against the grain."

In our narcissistic age, we've gotten that Elizabethan idiom backwards.

In Shakespeare's day, to go "against the grain" meant to resist not the herd's instinct, but your own; to act in ways contrary to your own desires; to be a spartan, not a contrarian.  

If you've ever used a plane, you know that to go "against the grain" isn't just hard: it's impossible.

But try we must. 

The Catholic priest Ignatius of Loyola, who died only eight years before Shakespeare was born, urged his followers to try through the injunction agere contra, Latin for "act against."

Whatever it is you intend to do, Ignatius preached, resist your first instinct. 

Go against the grain.

We're advised today to "go with our gut," but in Ignatius' time that idea was thought dangerous. 

Your gut is too selfish. It leads you away from just acts. It leads you away, people thought, because human nature has been robbed of justice, thanks to Original Sin.

The source of this notion was the "universal teacher" and church doctor Thomas Aquinas. 

Aquinas taught that our "fallen nature" is in every regard still uncorrupted except in the area of justice. 

Left to our own devices—our gut instincts—we're always going to act unjustly, thanks to Adam and Eve. Because they defied God, the instinct for injustice is baked into human nature. It manifests in our worst habits and most insidious impulses.

Given our narcissistic bent, we could all use a little of Ignatius' advice to agere contra. 

Imagine how much better off we'd be if, rather than performing a "gut check," we checked our gut.

Addicts would get sober. 

Fat people would lose weight. 

Lazy people would contribute. 

Killers would lay down their handguns. 

The wealthy would pay taxes. 

Politicians would speak truths. 

Cynics would take heart. 

Mean people wouldn't suck.

I hope to go against the grain and put a little agere contra into daily practice myself.

You with me?

Verbosity

Verbosity wastes a portion of the reader’s life.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In the midst of Britain's "darkest hour," Winston Churchill paused to write a one-page memo scolding his war cabinet ministers for verbosity.

"Clarity and cogency can be reconciled with a greater brevity," he told one of them. "It is slothful not to compress your thoughts."

That memo, entitled "Brevity," is one of Churchill's most famous.

It demanded that all ministers and their underlings avoid "officialese" in writing, and keep all memos brief—no more than a page long.

Brevity, Churchill promised, would save readers time—time better spent outsmarting their Nazi adversaries.

Churchill singled out pompous and clichéd gobbledygook as particularly wasteful.

"Let us have an end of such phrases as these: 'It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations,' or 'Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect,'" Churchill wrote. 

"Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational."

Brevity, Churchill promised, would not only save the government time, but "prove an aid to clear thinking."

Churchill was right, on both counts. 

Concise usually is precise—provided you avoid clichés.

I once had a boss who traveled a lot. 

When responding to draft sales copy or ideas and suggestions from me while she was out of town, she'd send me extremely concise emails.

But they consisted of nothing but clichés like "Off brand," Wait, what?'' and "Meh."

Concise, but not precise.

I always had to await her return to the office to learn what she expected me to do. 

She both wasted my time and set back my projects.

Clichés are fine when you have nothing but praise or approval to offer. "Lovin' it!" for example. "Good stuff!" Or, my favorite, "Boffo!"

Clichés are also fine when you can't help out. "Sorry, haven't a clue." "Sorry, not in my wheelhouse. "Sorry, no can do." (Churchill, for example, telegrammed FDR asking for help with the evacuation of Dunkirk. FDR replied simply, "Good luck.")

If you want to be a good boss or colleague—a helpful, thoughtful one—take the time to write concise, but precise, directions. 

"Ask Legal to review the entire contract one more time before you send it to the customer. The sales guy changed a lot of our boilerplate. Not sure that's kosher. Ask for it back within 24 hours."

"Make the subhead the major headline. It's stronger. And add a call to action."

"Ask Meghan whether she wrote code for another client that calculates shipping costs. You can just plug her code in. But be sure it can handle Euros."

In The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies, Australian philosopher David Stove argued that verbosity is more than long-windedness and muddled thinking.

Verbosity reflects a grotesque "character defect;" a trait he calls "pathology of thought."

Verbosity, Stove says, signals "a simple inability to shut up; a determination to be thought deep; a hunger for power; and fear—especially fear of an indifferent universe."

I've certainly observed that character defect during my career.

The best bosses I've ever had were also succinct and enviable writers; the worst were inarticulate psychopaths who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. 

The memos they produced were long, flatulent and inscrutable. 

The next email you write, please, take a few moments to edit yourself. Kill the clichés. Get to the point. Be specific. Then trim every third word. 

Your reader will thank you.