Guest Column: Snow speech

I was thinking the other day when the snowstorm was on its way about the Sarah Palin/William Shakespeare nexus, which led my mind to wander. This will make sense later — maybe, no promises; you’re on your own here, the management will take no responsibility if…

Coming storms produce in most of us a curious mixture of emotions, swinging from mania to dread. The mania comes with the happy rounds of preparations and, with a nearly hysterical grin, constantly asking everyone: “You ready for this?” The dread is, of course, the more sensible emotion, considering shoveling, transportation, slips and falls, and power outages.

I once had a colleague who was appalled by the very idea of snow. He took cold weather personally, wearing a watch cap — indoors — whenever temps slid below 50. He was a born and bred Floridian, so we took pity. Another colleague on a business paper never failed to point out after my goofy question and even more disturbing smile that businesses suffered mightily when flakes fell, ending his rant with, “You like snow? Move to Vermont. Leave me alone.”

The mania also is sparked by anticipating the joys of being snowbound, paroled from the prison of routine.

I live in hope of seeing again a wordsmith who was on TV one afternoon mid-blizzard a few years ago. He was getting down from his Suffolk County snowplow just in time to be ambushed by a reporter sticking a microphone in his face, demanding to know the condition of the roads. Startled, he paused, and then said, “It’s tredjadous out here.”

But it got even better, since my poet couldn’t stop using his stormminted word. It was tredjadous on the expressway. Sunrise Highway? Really tredjadous. But the side streets? “Forget it, it’s too tredjadous.”

Making a point, I assume, that if you’re not guarding against treachery, as Shakespeare warned, tragedy awaits.

Now, the uncharitable would say he just got tongue-tangled and couldn’t find a way back to sense. But the bard would have joined me in a toast to this man who had committed a portmanteau, creating a new word out of two old ones. Shakespeare was famous for it. For example, in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” an aristocrat is angry someone has threatened to “infamonize” him, or defame and make him infamous at the same time.

That other wizard of English, Sarah Palin (remember her?), in her very first tweet way back when, portmanteaued by writing “refudiate,” and when called on it she fell back on bardolatry, tweeting, “Shakespeare liked to coin new words, too. Got to celebrate it!” My estimation of Mama Grizzly soared when I heard. Of all the quirks of English, including spoonerisms — we hear ourselves with horror saying the father of our country’s natal day is “Birthington’s washday,” — or mondegreens — mishearing “The girl with kaleidoscope eyes” as “The girl with colitis goes by” — the malaprop is the most common and gets us into the most trouble.

President George W. Bush was a master of the malaprop, as well as the portmanteau: “They misunderestimated me.” He also knew that “America is where wings take dream.”

We’ll cut him some slack, however, because Mr. Bush wasn’t the first president to lose fights with his mother tongue. The poet E.E. Cummings had a one-sentence obituary for President Warren G. Harding: “The only man, woman or child who ever wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors.”

The current occupant of the White House doesn’t drink, but half the time when he opens his mouth you’d swear he’s hammered.

I come from a long line of malapropers. At a gala wedding anniversary celebration for my parents, with the entire clan gathered around, my mother clinked her wine glass with her knife to silence the crowd. “Here’s to you, Bill,” she raised her glass to her beloved.“We’ve been through sick and sin.”

The story is now family legend. But like the man on the snowplow, and remembering my mother’s smile, I’ve never been certain if the hilarious faux pas weren’t just a bit calculated.

Mania, dread, yes, but also snow brings, at least for me, happy memories.

mbroAmbrose Clancy is editor of the Shelter Island Reporter.