Oh yes, they want you. They want your kiss, they want to feel your hot breath, they want – not there, you insensitive lout! Put your mouth on this one!
Now that I have your attention – hey, come back here, I’m not finished – allow me to provide three important homophone hints. Just three, I figure that’s all we have time for before you all sneak away to what you fondly believe are more important pursuits than LANGUAGE. I’ll do some more the next time word abuse makes me crazy enough actually to write a diary. I’ve got a list... Read on --
- EKE and EEK. Very timely because of our current focus on Democratic delegate count. You EKE out a victory. EEKING out a victory is endearing but wrong (and don’t give me that crap about the living language; I’m on a roll). "Eek" is only appropriate when one sees a small mouse (for a rat, "Sh*t!" is more common). "Eke" means to barely scrape together enough to get by. Mr. Emmet claims that the Ekes were a primitive tribe who had such tenuous resources that altruism was completely unknown to them. However, Google and Oxford don’t recognize this etymology and I’m forced to conclude that Mr. E. has once again been harvesting his rich fantasy life after too many years as a faceless bureaucrat.
- REIN/REIGN/RAIN. You REIN in your surrogates, or you give free REIN to your surrogates. These are horseback-riding images. You don’t give free REIGN to anybody, especially any politician. We’re a nation of laws, remember? And anybody who uses "rain" in these contexts just isn’t paying attention and has to repeat fourth grade English with Mother Callista.
- TOE/TOW. You TOE the line, as in McCain and Romney standing on the same stage and smiling and waving and even touching shoulders although they loathe one another with the fire of a thousand suns, because party unity requires it. It means you put your TOE on the indicated line (think of field sobriety tests, if you’ve ever, uh, had to do that). People are always saying "TOW the line," which is a lot less endearing than "eeking out a victory," if you ask me. I can only suppose they’re thinking of Humphrey Bogart pulling The African Queen down the Limpopo or whatever river it was. But he was towing the BOAT, not the LINE. Towing the LINE without the boat attached to it would’ve been easy and he would have noticed those leeches right away, let me tell you.
That’s all for today. I trust that you will take these words to heart, and that the next time they let you back in bed with them, you’re a more sensitive partner.