Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say (XII)

By Segun Omolayo

We must have shared with you before the story of a friend who asked this columnist to meet him at a place he described as “adjacent the state hospital.” It turned out that what he meant was opposite the state hospital.

But that was after sweating for 15 minutes searching in vain for him and working the phone forlornly, as the networks were forever unavailable. And when eventually found, the ptofessor-friend went livid, hollering: “But I told you to find me adjacent the state hospital.”

Letting him know that he had said what he hadn’t meant, that adjacent meant by the side of, not opposite, he said, o ti o (no o!). It took consultations on the mobile phone dictionary to convince him of the meaning of the adjective adjacent.

That is how important it is to ensure you choose the appropriate words, terms, phrases and expressions to convey your messages accurately, without the kind of stress the two friends went through because of the malapropian mistake of wrongly using one word for another.

So, we will converse some more on the imperative of always saying what you mean and meaning what you say. As usual we will use live examples of how one writer or another has fallen short. Take a critical look at the statement below:

• At the onset of the radio programme, the land commissioner emphasized the increase in land disputes.

“Misused in this statement is the noun onset in place of the more appropriate word outset. Because this error is now a pandemic, we should explain the difference between these words and in their respective usages.

Onset means “the beginning of something, especially something unpleasant: the onset of disease/old age/winter” (Oxford Advanced Lerner’s Dictionary, Eighth Edition, as cited in “Pop” Errors). Outset, on the other hand, is defined simply as “the start, beginning” (Webster’s Universal Dictionary & Thesaurus).

And there is an idiom deriving from it, which runs thus: “at/from the outset,” meaning “at/from the beginning of something” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, as also cited in “Pop” Errors). The similarity in the meanings of the two words notwithstanding, we should note that onset is associated with something unpleasant, whereas outset is not.

This difference is what conditions the usage, and because of that, it is never correct to apply onset as used in the sentence, as a radio programme is nothing unpleasant. Here goes the correct usage:

• At the outset of the radio programme, the land commissioner emphasized the increase in land disputes.

We will take another example still involving onset and outset, viz:

• At the onset of the meeting, the superintendent expressed gratitude to the security agencies.

Just as a radio programme cannot be an unpleasant thing, a meeting cannot also be ordinarily considered as something unpleasant. So, onset is not appropriate in respect of the beginning of a meeting.

It is simply the same mistake made in a different setting. We hinted a long time ago that it is the nature of common mistakes (pop errors) that we all tend to make the same mistakes in different ways. Regarding the instance of a meeting, the correct usage is:

• At the outset of the meeting, the superintendent expressed gratitude to the security agencies.

The more mindless and careless writers get in the choice of words, the more outrageous their errors tend to become. Otherwise, why should someone write a bewildering sentence such as the following?

• Some residents of the city were made homeless when their houses were raged in the ongoing road construction.

Here is what our writers’ companion, “Pop” Errors, has to say about the above bizarre construction: On close scrutiny, the use of the word raged in this sentence pops off as one of those strange inventions that malapropism tends to produce.

The writer leaves the reader guessing, drawing from experience and common sense, that he is perhaps talking of destruction of houses, using raged instead of razed. To raze is “to completely destroy a building, town, etc. so that nothing is left.”

We should thus substitute the word raged with razed. And, indeed, the word destroyed or demolished, either a simpler or more familiar word, should deliver the message considerably better. See the correction below:

• Some residents of the city were made homeless when their houses were demolished in the ongoing road construction.

Sometimes, the love of bombasts can complicate otherwise simple communication, as in:

• The families agreed to avail the land documents for the technical appraisal.

To be sure, there are better ways of communicating the intended message of the above statement. It is a matter of correct diction, that is, appropriate words or terms that convey meaning easily and accurately. As used in the above sentence, the word avail is sheer malapropistic bombast, conveying no meaning.

“Available synonyms indicate that it is a comical and confusing misuse for another more appropriate word. Here are some of the synonyms: benefit, fill, fulfill, meet, profit, satisfy, serve, suffice and work (Roget’s Thesaurus as cited in “Pop” Errors), none of which can convey the meaning intended – just like avail itself.”

We will therefore simply replace avail with the verb provide and “see the meaning pop up:”

• The families agreed to provide the land documents for the technical appraisal.

In the correction, there can’t be any doubt about the meaning of the message.