Help with English

"Upbeat" is a musical term, referring to an unaccented beat. In orchestral music, the conductor's baton comes down to identify the accented beat--which in traditional European music was almost always the first beat in every measure, or the first and third beats in more intricate dance music. So that beat became known as the downbeat and the symmetrical unaccented beat, when his baton was up, was the upbeat.

Dictionary.com insists that in the postwar jazz era musicians incorporated the word into their slang to mean "happy," simply because (according to the dictionary's editors) it simply sounds like a happy word.

I think they overlook the fact that syncopation was always one of the primary characteristics of jazz: accenting beats in a non-standard pattern. By the late 1940s when this word became popular, songs in which the rhythm-defining beat was the third one of the measure instead of the first (or the second and fourth instead of the first and third) were becoming familiar. This culminated in the rise of rock'n'roll, a form of jazz in which the accent is always on the upbeat, becoming the backbeat, as it soon came to be called, although perhaps not quite correctly since a backbeat is supposed to be a secondary beat, not primary.

Rock'n'roll was cheerful, fast, irreverent music in the 1950s. Its heavily and often intricately syncopated rhythm accented the upbeats, and this new way of dancing out of time energized the teenagers of that era, who would soon, in turn, bring new energy to the country's culture and politics. This soon-dominant form of music was both upbeat in its technical rhythm and upbeat in its spirit.

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The origin of the words "bebop" and "bop" make an interesting and related story. In the postwar era many musicians from Cuba and other Spanish-speaking countries emigrated to New York City, where they formed a hotbed of musical experimentation and development. Salsa, for example, was invented in New York. Latin-American bandleaders used to shout, ¡Arriba, arriba! to encourage the band to play even "hotter." Americans picked it up, but mispronounced it as "rebop." This quickly became "bebop," and eventually just "bop."

Arriba means "up" in Spanish.

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Yeah... but... This is a play on words. "Wiz" is an alternative spelling of "whizz" or "whiz," a slang noun that has the meaning you cite. It comes from the verb "to whiz," which means to move very quickly and efficiently, or to make a "whizzing" noise typical of fast-moving objects. A whiz is somebody who moves so quickly that he always does great work and finishes early. When he runs by he's going so fast that you hear a whizzing noise like a Frisbee.

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But in this case, "wiz" is also an informal abbreviation of "wizard." Since the movie being discussed is a re-make of the 1939 movie "The Wizard of Oz" (one of our most famous and beloved films, starring Judy Garland, made from a book written in 1900 by L. Frank Baum--it has been made into several movies, stage productions, animated features and even videogames but this is still the most popular), using "wiz" as a double-entendre is an attempt at cuteness.

What he means is that the movie is a "whiz," quickly becoming very popular and earning a lot of money for the studio.

No. In fact, this sentence is sloppy English. If we're talking about a simple sequence of events, we might say: "American history is punctuated by wars. The Revolution came first, the War of 1812 came second, the Civil War came third, the Spanish-American War came fourth ..." et cetera.

But if we're talking about a competition, we use the idiom come in. So in an auto race we'd say: "The Ferrari came in first, the Porsche came in second, the Chevrolet came in third, and the Toyota came in last."

Movie attendance and box office receipts comprise a competition, so he should have said, "Jack the Giant Slayer" came in second, not "came second." Once again, I suspect that this writer is not a native speaker of English, and that this is unedited writing, such as a blog. If you want to learn proper English, please read newspapers and magazines, not the crap on the internet! (Except mine, of course.

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So if the Ferrari came in first, and the Porsche was so much slower that it still had five laps to go, then we would say "it came in a distant second," or "very distant" as in this quotation. There's no reason for the "a," it's just an idiom so you have to learn to say it that way.

But if we're just saying that someone came in behind, there's no number there so we can't put in "very distant." A "very distant behind" would be Jennifer Lopez's butt at the opposite end of a football field.

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That is a slang word that we musicians use. It means one single professional performance, or a short series. "I can't go to the movies with you on Saturday night, my band has a gig in Baltimore." It's also a verb: "Boots Randolph was the greatest saxophonist in rock'n'roll. He gigged with almost every famous band."

Justin Bieber had to cancel his gig because of illness.

Musicians' slang often seeps out into common vernacular. As a consultant I've said, "I have a teaching gig in Minneapolis next month."

I keep telling you to use Dictionary.com. That word is in there. Why do you not do it???

It's about as common as "vehement." Everybody understands both words, but they might not have reason to speak them very often.

"Implacable" means, literally, "incapable of being placated." In other words, impossible to appease or pacify. Intractable, inflexible, it's said of somone who won't compromise. You have to either give in and let him have his way, or shoot him.

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Both "implacable" and "placate" come from the Latin verb placare, "to appease." In turn, this verb comes from placere, "to please." Our words "please," "pleasure," "pleasant," etc., come from this same source.

 

No. It's just the opposite! It's very, very, very likely, but it has not been confirmed. It could still turn out not to be true.

 

No. "Reveal" implies that you were hiding something. "Unveil" means that everybody already knew you had it, they just hadn't seen it personally and didn't know the details. It was "behind a veil."

Yes. I would suggest that "upbraid" might imply a more formal kind of criticism, such as a manager putting an employee on probation for making a very expensive mistake, whereas "rebuke" might not have any serious consequences.

"Bone of contention" is a metaphor, referring to two dogs contending or fighting over one bone. So it means something that two people, countries, companies, etc. are arguing over because there's only one so only one of them can have it.

"Growing bone of contention" is a stupid phrase and as an editor I would have sent it back for a rewrite. Bones don't grow once they're dead and cooked!

Besides, to say that the bone is growing is to imply that the thing the two parties are fighting over is becoming larger. But what the writer probably meant to say is that the object of the fight is the same size, but the fight is becoming more hostile and violent. It would make more sense to call it a bone of growing contention.

 

That's because it's not a real word. Nonetheless, we often build adjectives out of nouns and verbs by adding -y: healthy, windy, rainy. Sometimes we have to double the final consonant to prevent a short vowel from becoming a long one: funny, gabby, iffy.

So we all understand what "scammy" means, even though it's not a real word.

 

To "take something with a grain of salt" is an idiom. It means that you regard it as a lie, a joke, a mistake, a metaphor, an exaggeration, etc. In other words, you don't take it seriously.

Both Swedish and Dutch have very similar idioms.

There is more than one possible source.

• 1. Pliny the Elder, a Roman philosopher and military officer in the 1st century CE, wrote of a recipe he discovered for an antidote to a particular kind of poison. One of the ingredients in the recipe was one grain of salt. Therefore any threat to use this poison was to be "taken with a grain of salt," and not regarded as important.
• 2. Pompey, a Roman leader who lived about 125 years before Pliny, also used one grain of salt in the treatment of poison. But he was trying to make himself immune to poisons by deliberately ingesting small doses of poisons--a bit like the vaccinations used in modern scientific medicine. The salt was not part of the treatment; it was merely added to the poison to make it easier to swallow.
• 3. The Latin word salis means both "salt" and "wit." The phrase cum grano salis could be translated as "with a grain of salt," but it could also mean "with a small amount of wit," i.e., "not to be taken seriously." Our idiom may have been passed down in its original form from the Romans, but translated incorrectly.

 

This is an example of euphemism. The original form of this statement is "I don't give a damn." Although the word "damn" has strong connotations, its actual force is minor: it's just a word.

If you're really angry about something, you might go out and try to do something to change it. Or you might write a letter to your Congressman. But if all you do is say, "Oh damn it" (or "dammit" as it's often spelled in colloquial writing), you are exerting the absolute minimum effort to express your dissatisfaction. The only thing you could do that would have even less impact would be to wait until you get home and complain to your dog.

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So to say, "I don't give a damn," means that the thing, event, condition, etc., is so unimportant to you that you're not even going to waste the energy of saying "dammit." It's a statement of dismissal or comtempt.

Although today most Americans, young and old, male and female, urban and rural, use "strong language" freely, there was a time when it was considered very rude. When I was a boy in the 1950s, women didn't say "damn" in public, and you never heard the word on radio or TV or in song lyrics. The euphemism "darn" was often used: "Darn this traffic, I'll be late." "I don't give a darn about what my husband thinks, I'm going out with the girls tonight." The compound "gosh-darn" was a stronger euphemism for "god-damn."

"Darn" got a little boring so people used other words. "I don't give a hoot" became popular because of the slang meaning of "hoot": a critical attitude. "I don't give a hoot" carries the specific connotation, "This isn't important enough to even bother complaining."

People also say, "I don't give a fig." In the 1970s "damn" was too mild for us so we started saying "I don't give a f**k." "Fig" is probably a euphemism for "f**k."

To yank means to pull quickly and forcefully, perhaps unkindly. To yank your dog out of the trash can means that you want him to immediately stop spreading the trash all over the lawn and you don't care if it's a little painful for him. If your shower curtain is tangled on the rings, you might yank on it in frustration, with the possible outcome that instead of loosening it, it will come off the rod and fall on the floor. To yank your money out of a bank means that you want it all right now and you don't care if you'll lose a month's interest: you're worried that the bank will collapse, or perhaps the entire economy.

Yes. This will have a cascade effect. When people see other people yanking their money out, they'll be worried that the bank is unsoundly managed and they might lose their own money. So they run down and withdraw their money too, which only makes the situation worse. This is what happened in 1929, one of the initial causes and effects of the Great Depression: a death spiral. Today bank deposits are insured by the government up to $100K per person per bank, so bank runs are very rare in the USA.

However, the Euro Zone doesn't have a single central bank and it has no centrally managed economy. So it is possible for the various countries to experience severe crises that threaten the stability (and even the survival) of the union. These are metaphorically called flare-ups.

If you're extinguishing a fire, for a long time there will be glowing embers and lots of heat, but the scene will be reasonably safe. But if there's a good-size piece of wood that you didn't notice, it might catch and produce new flames. This is a flare-up, and you might have to go back and put some more effort into damping it down. We use the term metaphorically. If a war is more-or-less over and the two sides are observing a truce while they try to create a treaty, but suddenly new fighting breaks out in a distance province, we call that a "flare-up."

This is horrible writing. "To come to a head" is a vernacular phrase for suppuration, a wound maturing to its worst phase when it begins to seep pus. It is used as a metaphor for any nasty business that finally reaches a particularly ugly and inconvenient stage. "A rather sudden head" was intended to mean that the financial crisis reached this stage much more quickly than expected. But breaking up the idiom like that, and inserting new words in the middle of it, simply makes it more difficult to understand. It would have been much better to write, "It could bring the crisis... to a head rather suddenly."