(1) The inverse of “honorary uncle”. My close friends have 2.5-year-old twins who I see basically ever week. They refer to me as “uncle (Max)”, which I admit just tickles me pink. But what word can I use to describe them? “Nephew” and “Niece” don’t seem to have a “not-actually-related” version…
(2) The combination of luck and skill that often decides sporting events. If someone hits a home run in the bottom of the 9th, it seems trivializing of the enormous skill involved in hitting a baseball to say that he got lucky. On the other hand, it’s obviously not just pure skill, as even Michael Jordan didn’t always make the game-winning shot. You need to have massive skill to be in the right position where you can hope to get lucky.
We need separate personal pronouns that mean “we including you” and “we not including you”. That is, “we” represents two concepts that should each have their own word.
If a player makes a habit of making a hit or a basket when it absolutely must be done, he gets called a “clutch player.” In the NBA, one example was Reggie Miller. When the Pacers needed a last minute shot, they’d set up a play where Reggie had a chance for a 3-point jump shot. The crowd’s counting down the seconds, Reggie gets the ball, and he makes the shot. I’m not sure you could call him a great player, but he was a clutch player. Under pressure, he’d give you 3 points, nearly every time.
On the other thing, maybe they’re virtual niece and virtual nephew. I dunno.
My sister’s best friend had a daughter when she was only 20 and then lost her husband to Vietnam post-trauma depression. This friend became like my third sister and her daughter was my first niece. That is how I referred to her except when it needed clarification, then I would say, my kind-of-sort-of niece. She was a great kid. I use to take her and my actual niece to zoos and museums all the time and occasionally amusement parks. Good practice for my kids.
While we’re at it, let’s see about getting a gender-neutral pronoun to refer to someone in the third person. The awkward “he/she” and “his/her” constructions are bothersome, and substituting “they” and “their”, while more convenient, is gramatically incorrect.
“And/or” has three possibilities “X”, “X and Y”, or “Y”.
In real life I find that it’s much more likely that I want a phrase that means “X” or “X and Y”, but excludes the third option. In other words X is a given, but Y is optional.
“Who’s coming to the party?”
I say: “Me and/or Bob.” Where actually I mean “Me, and Bob might accompany me too.”
I have friends whose son lived in Zambia for a number of years, and they said there is a word in one of the tribal languages spoken there for your kid’s in-laws, so you don’t have to say, “Fritz is my son’s father-in-law” or “Fritz is my daughter-in-law’s father.” You’d say, “Fritz is my ________.” I think that would be a very useful word in English.
It’s just happened again just now. I’m doing a website for a hotel, and the booking form is for X adults and Y children. Clearly you can’t have zero adults, so I need something more formal than “maybe” to join the adults and children bits of the form together. Hmm.
Ohh, here’s something that needs a word. What would you call this behavior?
I have nothing on the schedule today, nowhere to go, nothing to do. My van is getting fixed. I now have the overwhelming urge to go somewhere. If I had the van, I would’ve been more than happy to stay home.
or
A friend of mine really doesn’t want to do anything in general, but now that he had some minor surgery and is supposed to stay off his feet, he is a whirling dervish when it comes to projects.
We need a word that refers to aunts and uncles, collectively. Your father and mother are your parents, your brothers and sisters are your siblings, your sons and daughters are your children, your aunts and uncles are your _____? Also, we need a collective word for nieces and nephews. (I like the “niblings” suggestion, except that it sounds like something I’d put in a bowl for party guests to snack on.)
I think most people would just call that neurotic behavior. Basically, you want what you haven’t got, to quote a song lyric, and as childish and simple as that is, that’s basically it. There’s as many possible expressions of neurosis as there are, say, Seinfeld episodes, but a lot of 'em boil down to wanting what you can’t have (or be).
In the second case you cited, some of the same neurotic “logic” is at work there (he’s been ordered to rest, so now he doesn’t want to), but a more compelling and immediate impetus lies in the psychic effects of going under the knife, with its intimations of mortality – coupled with the pharmacological effects of whatever painkillers he’s taking! Sounds like your friend is enjoying a manic phase. Be a good friend to him and help catch him when he falls into a predictable post-post-op-mania depression/drug withdrawal (or busts his stitches, whichever comes first), won’t you?
If a green Volvo drives by, a second green Volvo may be the next car more often than chance would predict. In a restaurant, you walk by some tables. At the first table they are having ribs. At the next table they are more likely having ribs than any other dish.
In the first example some business that uses green Volvos have just let their salesmen loose. In the second example, the place has good ribs.
There seems to be no word for this repeating of stuff at a level that seems to make a mish-mash of pure chance analysis.
I presume you read the Master’s article on the front page the other day?
When I can’t easily rewrite to get rid of the pronoun altogether, I tend to use “they” or “their,” and fewer and fewer people call me on it. Cecil said (in 1988) it will be accepted in formal writing in a few generations; I’d claim that in many cases it’s acceptable today.
I’m generally a proscriptionist, but in this case there is no word that carries the required meaning, and everyone understands “they” or “their.” Game over, case closed…and I’m pretty finicky about these things. (Admittedly, though, I still try to rewrite to avoid having to do it).
