Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words - Bill Bryson [73]
tarantella for the type of Neapolitan dance. Not to be confused, of course, with tarantula, the type of spider.
target. To most people there are just two things you can do with a target: you can hit it or you can miss it. But for journalists, politicians, economists, and businesspeople, targets are things to be achieved, attained, exceeded, expanded, reduced, obtained, met, beaten, and overtaken. As a consequence, their statements, if taken literally, can become absurd, as here: “More welcome news came with the announcement that the public sector borrowing requirement now appears likely to undershoot its target for the full year” (Times). An archer who undershoots a target will be chagrined. A politician will apparently be pleased. The reader may merely be puzzled.
In practice, target often is the most efficient word for conveying a point, even if the literal meaning is sometimes strained, but it is worth seeing if objective or plan wouldn’t work as well.
Even more worth watching are instances in which target gets mixed up with other metaphors. Philip Howard cites this curious headline from The Times: “£6m ceiling keeps rise in earnings well within Treasury target.”
tautology, redundancy, pleonasm, solecism. Although various authorities detect various shades of distinction between the first three words, those distinctions are always very slight and, on comparison, frequently contradictory. Essentially all three mean using more words than necessary to convey an idea.
Not all repetition is bad. It can be used for effect, as in poetry, or for clarity, or in deference to idiom. “OPEC countries,” “SALT talks” and “HIV virus” are all technically redundant because the second word is already contained in the preceding abbreviation, but only the ultra-finicky would deplore them. Similarly, in “Wipe that smile off your face” the last two words are tautological—there is no other place a smile could be—but the sentence would not stand without them.
On the whole, however, the use of more words than necessary is better avoided, although it can be found even in the most respectable usage guides, as here: “All writers and speakers of English, including these very grammarians themselves, omit words which will never be missed” (Bergen and Cornelia Evans, in A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage). The expression “these very grammarians themselves” is patently redundant. It should be either “these grammarians themselves” or “these very grammarians” but not a combination of the two.
Finally, solecism describes any violation of idiom or grammar. Redundancies, tautologies, and pleonasms are all solecisms.
taxiing for the act of moving a plane into position.
Technicolor is a brand and company name and thus is capitalized.
temblor, not trem-, for an earthquake. It is etymologically related to tremble but lost its initial r while passing through Spanish (as temblar) before finding its way into American English in the late nineteenth century. Note that the word is not always widely recognized in English-speaking countries other than the United States.
than. Three small but common problems need noting.
1. In comparative constructions, than is often wrongly used, as here: “Nearly twice as many people die under twenty in France than in Great Britain” (cited by Gowers). Make it “as in Great Britain.”
2. It is wrongly used after hardly in sentences such as this: “Hardly had I landed at Liverpool than the Mikado’s death recalled me to Japan” (cited by Fowler). Make it “No sooner had I landed than” or “Hardly had I landed when.”
3. It is often a source of ambiguity in sentences of the following type: “She likes tennis more than me.” Does this mean that she likes tennis more than I do or that she likes tennis more than she likes me? In such cases, it is better to supply a second verb if it avoids ambiguity, e.g., “She likes tennis more than she likes me” or “She likes tennis more than I do.” See also I, ME.
that (as a conjunction). Whether you say “I think you are wrong” or “I think that you are wrong” is partly a matter of idiom but