the buzz log

Elegiacal. Vivisepulture. Appoggiatura. Yeah, those seem tough to spell. But what about Susan Boyle, the name of our president, and the trademark of a U.S. train system?

Elementary school kids the world over are gathering this week for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Thanks to documentaries, plays, movies, and the sheer spectacle of kids dismantling words bigger than the average person's entire vocabulary, the Bee even gets coverage by the likes of Sports Illustrated. Plus, lots of online attention: "spelling bee" terms have seen a collective 3,304% increase on Yahoo! Search, with a heartening chunk fueled by kids under 12.

All we have to say to the competitors, besides good luck, is: Wait until you grow up, when you'll have to deal with hundreds and thousands of new names and concepts every day. Forget spelling the name of the late Sri Lankan rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran: In the Search box, misspellers have savaged the first and last name of our own U.S. president ("barack oboma," "barak obama"), mangled the identity of radio show host Rush Limbaugh ("rush limba," "rush limbaug"), and abused the names of most of the "American Idol" contestants ("adam lamberg" for Adam Lambert). Good thing "Idol" voters just had to text numbers.

Hope—and good intentions—are not lost: Always spiking are searches for "spelling games," "spell check," "spell check technology," and oodles of dictionaries, both English and other. Below is a roundup of words, both recent and perennial, that can pose a struggle, and links to their proper spelling.

Recent Orthographic Abuses of the English Language on Yahoo!, Past 30 Days

• Swan Flu (for Swine Flu)
• Susan Boil (for "Britain's Got Talent" contender Susan Boyle)
• Brack Obama (for U.S. President Barack Obama)
• Sonia Sotomeyer (for Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor)
• Rachel Ray (for Food Network host Rachael Ray)
• Paperview boxing (for cable programming pay-per-view boxing)
• Amtrack (for train system Amtrak)
• Wallmart (for retailer Wal-Mart)
• Farrah Faucet (for actress Farrah Fawcett)
• Rod Steward (for singer Rod Stewart)
• Arlene Specter (for Senator Arlen Specter)
• “Dancing With the Starts” (for ABC reality competition Dancing With the Stars)
• Bea Author” (for the late comedian Bea Arthur)
• Brittany Spears (for singer Britney Spears)
• Chris Allen (for “American Idol” winner Kris Allen)
• Configure worm (for computer virus Conficker worm)
• Mysapce (for MySpace)

Filed under: News, Languages, Spelling

Hillary Clinton had it before Barack Obama won the Iowa Caucus. Obama ran with it for five days, until Clinton tripped him up in New Hampshire. Then, she lost her grip after Super Tuesday and he ploughed through before stumbling at the hurdles of Texas and Ohio.

We're talking "momentum," of course. Actually, pundits have been talking about it so much that "momentum" itself has come under scrutiny, as in this overview from NPR. A peek in Search unearths a 10% uptick in the term. Of course, the rise could be due to homework lessons rather than politically piqued curiosity, given follow-up Web forays into physics sites.

Still, considering the complete lack of "momentum" in Search this same time last year, it's tempting to attribute the acceleration to its ping-pong use in presidential campaign reporting. Plus, a handful of online queries have examined "obama momentum" and, more recently, "stop obama momentum ahead."

University of California professor and linguist Geoffrey Nunberg says that within the pages of The New York Times, the word is twice as common now than 50 years ago. Moreover, the phrase "'political momentum' appeared more often in 2004 than in the whole first first half of the 20th century." (NYT used the phrase about eight times, but you get the drift.)

This presidential election year will probably incinerate that record. Given the back-and-forth tug between Clinton and Obama, however, is the "momentum" usage even correct? Walter H.G. Lewin, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, doesn't object to the colloquial appropriation.

"I have no qualms with it," he says. "It's a wonderful way of using the word. It has practically the same meaning as picking up speed." Literally, of course, momentum has something to do with being a product of mass and velocity, and something about a vector, but Lewin sees no reason to sully the "beauty of language" with scientific literalism.

Ask the linguist, however, and Nunberg points out that when media uses momentum, they're implying the probabilities of one win increasing the chances of another. One wouldn't say, for instance, "It rained yesterday, so rain has momentum," he says. In the Clinton-Obama race, "to use momentum is to misrepresent the political reality."

Point taken. So might there be a better analogy to use in the next eight months? Odds, perhaps, like in "who's got a better shot of going ahead," Nunberg says, or who will get more media attention. Otherwise, "there's nothing to say about it." Sounds like time to learn about the conservation of momentum.

Filed under: Politics, Languages, Hillary Clinton, Physics, Elections, Barack Obama