Not Quite Right ... Kinda Wrong ...

Did you ever learn that you'd sort of misunderstood the definition of a word? That you'd been using it if not incorrectly then at least inaccurately for, oh, most of your adult life?

I don't like to admit it, but ...

Okay, not all that long ago I wrote in this space about how I'd long mispronounced the word patent when it means obvious.

That was not my fault--not initially. The British pronounce it to rhyme with latent (long a), and I learned the word in 12th grade (1961-62) when I played the Judge in Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury at Hiram High School. In one of the Judge's songs ("When I Good Friends Was Called to the Bar") he bellows "It is patent to the mob that my being made a nob / Was effected by a job ...." Here's a YouTube link to a guy singing "my" song ...

Hiram High School
November 1961

Because we were being so very "British" in our production, we pronounced words as we heard them on the D'Oly Carte Opera Company recordings we listened to in preparation. And I'd never heard anyone of my friends (or anyone else) say "patent" (meaning "obvious"), and so I assumed patent was one of those heteronyms I've been writing about in my other blog (Daily Doggerel): words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently and with different meanings (i.e., bass meaning a large stringed instrument, bass meaning a fish).

Link to the very recording we listened to--now on YouTube.

Anyway, since 1962-ish I've been saying "patent" to rhyme with "latent," and I discovered not all that long ago that in America ("We're Number One!") we say "patent"--just like the thingy you get for a new invention.

Oops.

Okay, I know that I wrote about this before--but when you've discovered yet another flaw in yourself, it's always ... healthy ... to temporize and tergiversate (a word I learned years ago via Wm. F. Buckley, Jr.!).

And so I have.

And here's my latest goof-up ...

My word-of-the-day tear-off calendar yesterday featured temerity--a word you hear in sentences like this: "I can't believe you have the temerity to talk to me like that!"

Now, I don't mispronounce the word; no, what I've done is kind of ... misunderstand (and thus misuse) it. I always thought it meant something like, you know, "I can't believe you have the courage/daring to talk to me like that!"

Not quite.

My calendar tear-off says it means 1. unreasonable or foolhardy contempt of danger or opposition; 2. a rash or reckless act.

So, I‘m not totally wrong, right? Kind of in the ballpark? Sort of? (Be generous ...)

Oh, well. To err is human and all that ... And, it seems, there are times (too many times) when I am very human ...