Friday, October 10, 2014

word of the day: demotic

The word of the day is demotic:

1. of or pertaining to the ordinary, everyday, current form of a language; vernacular:
a poet with a keen ear for demotic rhythms.
2. of or pertaining to the common people; popular.
3. of, pertaining to, or noting the simplified form of hieratic writing used in ancient Egypt between 700 b.c. and a.d. 500.

Greek dēmotikós popular, plebeian, equivalent to dēmót (ēs) a plebeian 


"Using a demotic word like boogie precludes formal adherence to rules, except for comically incongruous effect:

"There wasn't a single item in my close that I could don with impunity, nor was there a shoe in which it would be seemly to boogie...

"Demotically speaking, we take our liberties.  How often do you expect to hear 'Whom do you think you're kidding?'?  Here again, it's the first word in the sentence - isn't that enough to give it at least a quasi-subject status?  But whom is (or is not) being kidded, and is the object (however the wide of the mark) whom someone is rhetorically failing to fool.  Still, with all those boggled attempts, we begrudge the subject its total dominion over the nominative case.  And maybe if someone's being kidded, or not, he/she has in the process acquired immunity to the prescribed case - and can go on to the next challenge: Who(m) do you think you are, anyway?"

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed

No comments: