Steve Kass

In a few hours, and despite the free dinner, I won’t be attending “Is a Roth Right for You?”

On account of my zip code, probably, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney invited me to call or email Jacqui to reserve my place at the free event with limited seating, which I didn’t. In addition to dinner, I’ll be missing the guest speaker, who as far as I can tell is the world’s sole “Vice President of Value Add and Retirement Marketing.”

“Value Add,” you ask? So did I, and I looked it up.

According to Steve Bloemer, value add is “your company’s unique blend of products and services, and how those are perceived by your prospects and clients.” He adds that “Among the value adds I envision as important for a web hosting provider, infrastructure, 24×7 support and hands-on expertise rank high.” Steve, an “Inside Sales Manager” at Hostirian elaborates. “Would two 20AMP circuits per rack be a value add, or simply norm? If you offer business class shared web hosting plans, would that be a value add? Certainly, value adds are competition driven.”

Steve Bosserman (no relation) hyphenates it and explains, “Value-add dominates our economic scorecard,” and “The concept of value-add also plays a role in information technology and data services.” He refreshingly admits that “Here, though, the meaning is vague.”

Susan M. Heathfield penned a short article on About.com, writing that “your value add moves beyond activities or actions performed and illuminates, instead, the actual contributions you made to your organization’s success.”

The Urban Dictionary is more straightforward. Its #1 definition is “A business euphemism for “the reason I’d like you to think I’m useful.””

Unfortunately, or not, I can only coin, not uncoin.

HTH,

Steve

Today’s new word is mispostrophe.

mis·pos·tro·phe / mɪs ˈpɒs trə fi /

noun 
Mispostrophe refers to the misuse of punctuation, specifically of the apostrophe (’). Mispostrophe can refer to a spurious apostrophe, a word containing a spurious apostrophe, or the incorrect usage of the apostrophe. The fourth word of this sentence contains a mispostrophe: “The town’s recent immigrant’s voted overwhelmingly against the lottery, yet the will of the manier natives prevailed.”; “He entered the MENS restroom without even noticing the sign’s mispostrophe.”

Origin:
2010: intentional coinage by Steve Kass (http://www.stevekass.com).

Related forms:

mispostrophecate, mispostrophecation

anapostrophe: Mispostrophe of missing apostrophe. (“Dont smoke here.”)
dyspostrophe: Mispostrophe of misplaced apostrophe. (“Wer’e closed Mondays.”)
surpostrophe: Mispostrophe of spurious apostrophe. (“Apple’s on sale.”)

Inspired by Jonathan Coulton, who tweeted this confectionery mispostrophe.

Today’s word is manier.
man·i·er / ˈmɛn i ɛr/

adjective 
Comparative form of many. More numerous; more; of greater number: The town’s recent immigrants voted overwhelmingly against the lottery, yet the will of the manier natives prevailed.

Origin:
2010: intentional coinage by Steve Kass (http://www.stevekass.com).

Related form:
maniest: superlative form of many. Most numerous; most; of greatest number.

A recent numerical expedition led me to these summary statistics from a 2009 Pew survey on Religion and Public Life.

Looks like a typo to me. At a glance, the breakdown by age seems inconsistent with the aggregate result.

Most (about 85%) of the survey participants fell into one of the three oldest age groups, all of which favored gay marriage at a lower rate than the general population. The 65+ crowd, numbering 507, favored gay marriage at a rate a full 17 points lower than the rate for all ages combined. Although young’ens favor allowing Adam¹ and me (or Autumn and Eve) to get married legally, and they smile with approval at a rate almost 20 points higher than the rate for all ages combined, there are too few of them (only 283) to balance out the manier² old grumps and middle-aged semigrumps.

I have no reason to suspect the Pew folks of vulpigeration, so I tried to find an honest basis for these apparently contradictory figures.

Pew’s full report on survey question Q146a revealed one potential source of slop: the number under “Favor” seems be the sum of two individually rounded percentages: one for “Favor” and one for “Strongly Favor.” The actual survey instrument included both possible answers. Therefore, 39% could mean anything between 38% and 40%. Survey percentages are routinely rounded, but one expects 39% to mean somewhere between 38.5% and 39.5%.

Even allowing for extra slop, the numbers don’t agree. Here’s a tabulation (using the increased slop allowance) that gives the minimum and maximum numbers of favorers in each age group and (by summing) the minimum and maximum number of favorers among those in any age category.

According to these numbers, between 34.8% and 36.8% of 1,980 respondents would be cool with my marrying Adam legally.

According to Pew’s summary chart (at the top), though, between 38% and 40% of 2,010 responses, or between 764 and 804 people, answered “Favor.” That’s quite a bit higher than the breakdown figures show, and even if the 30 people in no age category (who presumably withheld their age or were under 18) all favored gay marriage, the maximum (and an unlikely maximum, because it would require all the rounding and missing information to be skewed favorably) number of favorers is 759.

As another plausible scenario, I calculated a Total percentage based on the age breakdown but weighted according to the actual histogram of age in the U.S. Still no dice. If anyone has an idea, let me know.

¹ For the record, I’m currently Adamless and available

² manier, adjective. Comparative of many; more numerous. To be coined presently. Many and numerous are synonyms; if things can be more numerous, I see no reason they can’t also be more many, or manier.

Neither of the preëminent historians of our age, Google and Bing, document any previous use of the expression “precipice of embarrassment.” I hereby lay claim.

When used to modify an adjective, the English word “otherwise” means “in (all) other respects,” but it almost always highlights a contrast. For example, “A bone in my filet de dorade was the only bump—and a small one—in the otherwise excellent gastronomic journey we enjoyed at El Patagón Goloso.” The filet wasn’t perfect, but everything else was. (was / wasn’t)

Earlier this evening, I wanted a word like “otherwise” that didn’t highlight a contrast. For example, suppose El Patagón Goloso’s dorade was the best I’d ever eaten, and the rest of the meal was also excellent. After a description of the dorade, “otherwise” doesn’t work. “Otherwise, the meal was excellent” suggests that something (whatever was previously mentioned) about the meal was not excellent. The only solutions seem to me too long or a bit awkward: “In all other respects, however, the meal was excellent.” or “The meal was otherwise excellent as well.”

Stuck without a word, I made one up: “alsowise.” I think it’s useful, not only as an answer to the analogy AND:BUT::?:OTHERWISE.

Want my attention? Misspell something. Better yet, point out a misspelling with “[sic].” Even better, sicize an invasive misspelling.

Barry Petchesky sicized “miniscule” in a recent and alsowise fine Deadspin article on Paul Shirley’s Haiti fumble. Despite the fact that—as Barry put it—“Deadspin has long been [the] go-to source for professional athlete penis,” and despite the fact that Barry was on Jeopardy! last year, somehow I didn’t know Deadspin from Adam or Barry from Steve. I’m glad Barry captured my attention, and I’m happily spending this evening with him at home. Thanks, Barry!

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Today’s word is sicize.
sic·ize, sic·ise / ˈsɪ saɪz/, / ˈsɪ kaɪz/ (or sick·ize, sick·ise / ˈsɪ kaɪz/)

transitive verb
to indicate that something is a verbatim quote by using the word “sic”; Some British journalists sicize American usage; some do not.

Origin:
2010: intentional coinage by Steve Kass (http://www.stevekass.com), influenced by the words parenthesize, laicize, and sicked (past tense of sic). 

Related forms:
sicization: the act of sicizing
sicizy: / ˈsɪ sɪ zi/ a rhetorical device, specifically, the use of sicization in order to deprecate or ridicule

I hope you’ll join me next week, when the word of the day will be intertelligible.