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Nov
24
Quickie (Phraseology, day 17)
2008 at 12pm Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
The Q chapter in Phraseology is short and sweet, so today’s entry will be a quickie. I’m hoping to post my review of Things the Grandchildren Should Know later today, and I read Anita Shreve’s new novel Testimony yesterday and will have a review of that coming this week. After a relatively slow week last week, it’s nice to feel like I’m back on pace.
Quotation marks are the youngest punctuation marks in the English language, at about 300 years old. I wonder how old air quotes are….
Quote unquote dates from the 1930s and has its origin in the oral formula for quotation marks in dictation. Does it bother you when people say “quote unquote?” For some reason, it really irks me. Can’t they just find some other way to let me know they’re quoting the person directly? Or is it just me?
The is irony in that quantum leap in physics is the minimum possible change, and in popular use, it means a big change or jump in concept. In Book Lady parlance, it also refers to cheesy 80s TV with Scott Bakula. Remember?
The quick and the dead means “the alive and the dead.” I remember being really confused by that phrase whenever I heard it in church as a kid.
A day beginning a new season or quarter is a quarter day.
And more on punctuation: when early scholars wrote in Latin, they would put the word questio, “question,” at the end of a sentence to indiate this; an abbreviation eventually gave way to a symbol.
Quadrille paper is paper marked out with (usually small) squares. Is that the same thing as graphing paper?
What are you up to this Monday?
Click here for more Phraseology fun, and don’t forget to check this post if you want to pick up an ARC I don’t have time to read.
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Quantam Leap was such a good show when it was on. Ah…the memories.
I used to love watching reruns of that cheesy show.
Quadrille paper is a subtype of graphing paper—so named for its (commonly) four boxes to the inch. Other graphing paper can look funkier, like log paper.
Why don’t people just use air quotes instead of saying “quote unquote?” Either way, I reserve the right to smack said people upside the head for being so imbecilic!
The earliest noted air quotes were demonstrated in the late 1920′s. See, we think we’re innovative, but we’re really just stealing ideas from earlier generations!
Air quotes irk me too, and besides, they don’t work on the phone.
Ah, Quantum Leap. That’s what I needed on this Monday was a picture of Sam and Al. And I never knew the true meaning of the “quick and the dead.” I’m sure I’ve used it wrong. Now I feel like an ass
I’m totally guilty of doing the air quotes — at least once a day. I can’t help it! Short of shouting out something for emphasis, it’s the easiest way for me to let you know I don’t QUITE believe what I’m saying . . . as in, “People think Megan’s blog is ‘crazy.’”
I didn’t watch a lot of non-kids’ TV in the 80s, so I totally missed Quantum Leap… so that picture looks to me like Cavil from Battlestar Galactica and Captain Archer from Enterprise. Still sci-fi, though!
[...] discussed air quotes earlier this week, and it turns out that quotes made with finger gestures are also called scare quotes. Wonder [...]