Wednesday November 21, 2007
Impossible pairs
By STEPHEN KAU
THERE are words that, when paired with other words, conjure up a physically impossible occurrence/ scenario. Consider this snippet taken from a recent television news report in Sydney:
“Six teenagers were seriously injured in a horrific smash last night, when their car collided with a huge gum tree on Quakers Road in Marayong in Sydney’s far west.”
The word “collision” is defined as an accident involving two or more moving objects, usually vehicles.
Now, you show me a tree that can uproot itself in order to head for a crash with a car ... and, listen, mates, let’s take this miracle on the road to make millions from our travelling circus!
It’s not possible for any vehicle to have a collision, per se, with a tree, lamp-post, powerline/ telephone pole, fire hydrant, parked vehicle, street sign or anything else that is stationary.
What that TV newsreader should have said was “... when their car hit a huge gum tree ...”. Simple, direct, correct.
Next, how many times have you heard/read a movie review in which the critic pointed out that “the plotline centres around the hero’s ...”?
Cannot be done, this business of “centring around”. Something can centre ON, or CIRCLE/REVOLVE around, something else. But “centre around”? ... Oh, please!
Here is another impossibility:
“The audience’s response to the superstar tenor’s performance was so thunderous, their applause literally brought the house down.”
“Literally” means the actual action/result of something described. So it’s just too bad those members of that audience inadvertently killed themselves by clapping so loud, the theatre walls collapsed and the ceiling and roof smashed them, poor dears!
Clearly, the speaker’s attempt to capture the excitement of the concert merely showed his literal ignorance.
If you feel you must use “literally”, then use it relevantly. For example:
“The crane at the construction site could not carry its heavy load. The cable snapped and literally a tonne of bricks fell on the cement mixer.”
Fair enough – there could have been 1,000kg of the building blocks.
One more contradictory common phrase: “If and when that happens.”
Undoubtedly, you have heard this many times, too. But though common usage has made it acceptable, it is still a contradiction. “If” implies uncertainty whereas “when” refers to inevitability. For those who insist on being pedantic, we should say “if, or when, it happens”.
Others who are even more pedantic, however, would argue that “if and when” is correct, on the grounds that, today, many common short phrases contain the preposition “and” solely to link two contrasting nouns/pronouns/adjectives/adverbs.
Examples include day and night, life and death, heaven and hell, his and hers, high and low, slow and steady.
All I can add is that if, or rather whenever, somebody centres on a topic that revolves around the idea that inanimate objects in the real world can move by themselves like their computer-generated counterparts in movies, well, I would find that totally unpalatable, like chalk and cheese.
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