BACKYARD

            I’m writing this on the 4th of July, a day of many backyard barbecues. But where are these barbecues held? In the back yard!

            And where does the backseat driver drive? In the back seat.   

            In both cases, the two-word version is a noun phrase and the combined word is an adjective, and, in both cases, the noun phrase is accented on the second word while the adjective is accented on the first syllable.

            There is no backyard or backseat – or frontyard or sideyard or frontseat. These words should be kept separated when used as nouns.

            The same thing happens when a verb phrase is changed into a noun. We had to bail out the banks, an action that is referred to as a bailout. When used as a verb, it should always be two words.

            There was an ad on my website yesterday, presumably targeted at politicians. “How do I find & turnout my voters?” it asked. People turn out to vote. The total of those who do is the voter turnout.

MISNOMER

            This word simply means “wrong name” or “not the correct word in this context.” It is not, as some people seem to think, a synonym for “misconception” or “fallacy.”

            The prefix “mis-“ means wrong, or incorrect, as in “misspelling.” The “nomer” part of the word is related to the word “name” and such words as “nominate,” “nomenclature,” etc.

            “Calling an orangutan a monkey is a misnomer,” is a correct use of the term.

            “The belief that humans cause climate change is a misnomer,” is incorrect. It’s also wrong, but that’s just my opinion. Grammatically, the sentence would be correct if “fallacy” were used.

THESE KINDS

            About three years ago I started hearing people using the phrase “these kinds of things,” and, like so many phrases, this one went viral. I’m sure some people used this construction in the past, but all of a sudden everyone seemed to be doing so.

            In most situations, “this kind of thing” is quite adequate. To have “these kinds of things,” you must have at least two sets of things.

            Examples are obviously necessary:

            “We’ve had floods in just about every state along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. I don’t know how people cope with these kinds of things.” (There was more than one flood, but no other disaster or difficulty was mentioned. This is a case of simply “this kind of thing.”)

            “In the last year, people in the Midwest have had to deal with drought, then extremely cold weather, then excessive rainfall, and now flooding of record proportions. I don’t know how they cope with these kinds of things.” (You could make a case for this one, but “this kind of thing” would work just as well – the set being the various disasters enumerated.)

            “Not only have Midwesterners had to deal with drought, extreme cold, excessive rainfall, and record flooding, but now several state legislatures have passed measures reducing aid to displaced persons. I don’t know how they can cope with these kinds of things.” (There are definitely two separate classes of things in this example, and the construction “these kinds of things” might be appropriate.)

            It’s a minor point, perhaps, but recently it has gotten worse. Now I keep hearing people say “these kind of things.” I can only shake my head as smoke wafts from my ears. There is no conceivable excuse for putting those words together.

AMERICAN

            In the 2007 Miss Teen USA contest, the finalist from South Carolina was asked why she thought it was that a fifth of Americans couldn’t find the United States on a world map. Her answer was mind-bogglingly incoherent and thus hilarious, and the YouTube video of it has racked up 50 million hits (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww). I must add that her smile was quite winning.

            What seemed to bother most people about her answer was her use of the term “U.S. Americans,” as if this were a stupid tautology. Nobody seemed to mind that she called the country where we’ve been fighting for a decade “The Eye-rack.” Twice.

             Well, I don’t think she was all that wrong in specifying which Americans she meant.

            There are (according to Wikipedia) fifteen countries or territories in South America, with a combined population of almost 400 million people. In North America, there are 43 countries and territories (including Central America and the Caribbean), with a total population of about 542 million.

            The United States of America (heavy on the “of”) is just one country with about a third of all those people.

            Yes, I am saying Canadians are Americans, too – as are Mexicans, Falkland Islanders, Brazilians, and even (gasp) Cubans.

            And yes, I realize that if you say you’re an American almost anywhere in the world, the hearer will assume you mean you’re from the United States. Katharine Lee Bates probably didn’t have Tierra del Fuego in mind when she wrote “America the Beautiful,” although the shining seas she speaks of meet down there.

            It’s just that I appreciate accuracy, and I resent those who seem to think everyone on the other side of an imaginary line is somehow inferior.

            Lyndon Johnson was famous for beginning his presidential addresses with “My fellow Americans,” and many of his successors have done the same, but I appreciate Barak Obama for ending his addresses with “…and may God bless the United States of America.” Perhaps he is sensitive to our usurpation of the word from our neighbors.