Language Corner
by Evan Jenkins

Last Updated 2/12/00

Relevant, as in Middle East

There's an old name for the lands just east of the Mediterranean --"Levant" -- that can avoid some trouble with a couple of much more commonly used words.

One article applauded a "very strong, revelant message to the people." Another deplored the "devilishly clever labels on a collection of random, irrevelant scenes."

Typos both, maybe, and an easy slip to make. But a database search suggests that a widespread switching of middle syllables -- "vel" replacing "lev" -- is going on out there. That strong message, if the writer was right, was "relevant." Those scenes, by contrast, were "irrelevant."

To avoid the misspellings, it may help to think of "relate," to which the meanings are, as it were, related. But that will carry us only as far as the "l" in the correct spellings (a critical place to reach, though). So "levant," with the appropriate prefix, may be the best mnemonic. And there are extra showoff points for working it into conversation.

Addenda at "Fused Participle" and "The Police"

Nowhere to Go But Up
It wasn't clear in any of these examples what the writer and editor meant, because the math they used doesn't exist.

An expert, we were told, said a proposed power plant "would use 150 times less cooling water per kilowatt that neighboring older plants." Multiplying anything by a positive number like 150 can only increase the amount we're dealing with. Maybe the expert meant the new plant would use one one-hundred-fiftieth as much water. Or maybe not.

Rates of cancer from air pollution, another article said, vary widely, with New York City "four times the national average" (okay so far) and one rural county "five times below the average." If we multiply by five we don't end up "below" anything. "One fifth of the average," maybe? Why make the reader guess?

A report on a survey of news practices said tough interviewing was "down 160% over two years." But nothing can go down more than 100 percent; once it drops that far, it's gone. That one was caught in the editing, and the final phrasing omitted numbers. But reductions, decreases and declines of more than 100 percent, which are impossible, are nonetheless reported with distressing frequency.

The confusion about percentages can extend to increases, too. We need to remember that starting with a rise of 100 percent, the numbers are a little tricky. A 100 percent increase doubles what we started with; 200 per cent triples it; 300 percent quadruples it , and so on to 1,000 percent, which is 11 (not 10) times the original number. (CJR, Jan./Feb. 2001)

Think M, as in Money
"... a military career remains popular in part because an officer's renumeration is better..."

"With better renumeration for doctors, it is natural..."

"... the salary would be a drop in the renumerations bucket."

"Renumeration," reasonable as it may look, is not a word in standard English. What's wanted in those examples is "remuneration," with the "m" first, not the "n." It's often just a fancy word for "pay," as it seems to be in the first example. But the word is usable when we need to cover other forms of reward -- bonuses, stock options, and so on -- as in that "bucket."

The reversing of the consonants -- NUM instead of the correct MUN -- is puzzling. But it is fairly common, especially, it seems, in outlets of the British persuasion.

There is also a verb coinage, "renumerate." That one is sometimes given a different twist -- to mean to list or recount, one by one. That's apparently what a prominent politician had in mind when he said, "I won't go back and renumerate" examples of bad legislation. But the word for such a process is "enumerate."

Come to think of it, maybe that's where the trouble started. If we can enumerate, we can have enumerations, and we can re-enumerate, which spawns re-enumerations, and from there it's only a step...