"After opening the choice of Word of the Year up to English speakers for the first time in its history, over the last two weeks more than 300,000 people cast their vote.... And the winner is... Goblin mode."

"‘Goblin mode’ – a slang term, often used in the expressions ‘in goblin mode’ or ‘to go goblin mode’ – is ‘a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.’ Although first seen on Twitter in 2009, goblin mode went viral on social media in February 2022, quickly making its way into newspapers and magazines after being tweeted in a mocked-up headline. The term then rose in popularity over the months following as Covid lockdown restrictions eased in many countries and people ventured out of their homes more regularly. Seemingly, it captured the prevailing mood of individuals who rejected the idea of returning to ‘normal life’, or rebelled against the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media...."

So says Oxford Languages (the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary).

Sample quote from The Guardian: “Goblin mode is like when you wake up at 2am and shuffle into the kitchen wearing nothing but a long t-shirt to make a weird snack, like melted cheese on saltines.” 

Here's an Axios article from last April: "Musk's 'goblin mode' is here to stay":

Garner — in the news.

1. "It’s hard not to mythologize Bryan A. Garner. He is the Herakles of English usage.... A selection of sixty-eight items from the Garner Collection is on view at the Grolier Club.... The catalogue for the exhibit has two subthemes. One is a running count of how many parts of speech are defined in each grammar book: anywhere from two (nouns and verbs) to thirty-three (don’t ask). (The traditional number is eight.) The other thread is rivalry and backbiting among authors. In that era, a Grammar was second only to a Bible as a necessary object in a God-fearing household. While the Bible provided moral instruction, the Grammar, as a guide to correct linguistic behavior, might shore up confidence and help one get ahead in the world." — From "Grammar-Nerd Heaven/A new exhibit showcases the surprisingly contentious history of English grammar books" by Mary Norris (The New Yorker). 

2. "Earlier this month, the biographer Blake Bailey was approaching what seemed like the apex of his literary career. Reviews of his highly anticipated Philip Roth biography appeared before the book came out... Now, allegations against Mr. Bailey, 57, have emerged.... His publisher, W.W. Norton... said on Wednesday that it had stopped shipments and promotion of his book.... [In 2015], Valentina Rice, a publishing executive, met Mr. Bailey at the home of Dwight Garner, a book critic for The Times, and his wife in Frenchtown, N.J. A frequent guest at their home, Ms. Rice, 47, planned to stay overnight, as did Mr. Bailey, she said. After she went to bed, Mr. Bailey entered her room and raped her, she said. She said 'no' and 'stop' repeatedly, she said in an interview.... Mr. Garner was horrified to hear Ms. Rice’s account, he said. He added that he and Mr. Bailey do not have a relationship." —  From "Sexual Assault Allegations Against Biographer Halt Shipping of His Roth Book/W.W. Norton, citing the accusations that the author, Blake Bailey, faces, said it would stop shipping and promoting his new best-selling book" (NYT).

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There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

Until this post, "vamoosing" was a hapax legomenon in the Althouse archive.

And until this sentence "hapax legomenon" was a hapax legomenon in the Althouse archive.

I'd never used the word "vamoosing" (or "vamoose") in the entire 14-year archive of this blog until I used it in the previous post— which I did mainly for the alliteration with "value," but also because I really like it — it has a moose! — and had simply never thought to use it before.

I learned the term (and the concept) "hapax legomenon" reading Bryan A. Garner's "Nino and Me: My Unusual Friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia":

"Justice Scalia... was fascinated by the fact that Trump was so outspoken in an unfiltered way, and therefore we were seeing something a little more genuine than a candidate whose every utterance is airbrushed."

Said Bryan Garner, who has an upcoming book, "Nino and Me: My Unusual Friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia." Garner coauthored books with Scalia: "Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges" and "Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts."

Scalia's quote about Trump is getting featured in some news stories, but I'd like to call your attention to 2 other things that I saw in the first few pages of the book, which is all that is visible at the Amazon link.

First: Scalia, teenage heartthrob and, later, the grownup with groupies (click to enlarge):

Second: David Foster Wallace (initially referred to by Scalia as "this man"):

"What I’ve come to realize is that when it comes to The Bluebook, small changes are made for the sake of making small changes."

Writes Bryan Garner, commenting on the new edition — the 20th edition — of the "Uniform System of Citation" law students are supposed to obsess over.

New law students want their predecessors’ work to look obsolete. It’s the theory first elaborated by the social philosopher Thorstein Veblen: planned obsolescence. Veblen postulated that companies deliberately produce consumer goods that will become outdated after limited use so that consumers will have to buy new items more often.

You see the principle at work with smartphone chargers (your old ones won’t work on your new gear), iPod connections (ditto), lightbulbs and even coursebooks. Legal publishers like frequent editions so as to avoid the forgone profits represented by a secondhand market.

And so it is with The Bluebook. Things shift from edition to edition—every five years or so—in response to nothing but the itch of a new crop of law students to leave their mark on their venerated citation guide.

I'm not convinced that law students feel a desire to "leave their mark" with changes in citation form. Anyone who is meticulous about citation form ought to feel bad about changes that make older volumes of the journal different from the new. The most important thing about form is consistency. Pick a form and then stick to it. I have various things like that on this blog, certain punctuation, capitalization, and grammatical preferences that have been established. The interest in formal consistency now vastly outweighs all the various factors that went into the original decision. For example, I capitalize "Justice" but not "judge." And in a sentence like "The five men blew their nose," I am never going to change that "nose" to "noses," no matter how many times Meade says "Shouldn't that be 'noses'?" I just say, "That's that thing again," meaning that's that point of grammar I resolved long ago.

I wish Death Cab For Cutie had followed my grammatical preference in the lovely song "I Will Follow You Into The Dark," which has the great, but flawed, line: "If Heaven and Hell decide/That they both are satisfied/Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs." If it were "Illuminate the no on their vacancy sign," listeners would be spared the no's/nose homophone. Each afterlife domain has only one sign, and each sign has only one no that can be illuminated when there is no vacancy, so the singular makes sense and avoids confusion. I learned that long ago from a teacher who knew it was better to say to us students "Use your head," not "Use your heads."



But back to "The Bluebook." I think Garner got closer to the truth when he said "Legal publishers like frequent editions so as to avoid the forgone profits represented by a secondhand market." When you're an editor, you have to resist stepping on the writer's stylistic choices. But I'd just like to say, I'd never have written the sentence like that. Garner is using that verbose, 19th century style of rhetoric that W.C. Fields made fun of in the early 20th century. And in doing so, he's making it easier to overlook the truth — what I think is the truth — that is lost in the musings about the psychology of cite-checking law students. I'd have written: The new editions of The Bluebook are a scheme to extract money from students, and students not only pay for new books, they pay in the time and effort it takes to learn the piddling new rules.

"Three neologisms by @DavidLat that I've defined for Black's Law Dictionary (10/e): 'bench-slap,' 'judicial diva,' and 'litigatrix.'"

Tweets Bryan A. Garner. (And David Lat responds: "I can die now; my life's mission is complete!")

"There’s the kind of boneheaded explanation, which is that a lot of people with PhDs are stupid..."

"... and like many stupid people, they associate complexity with intelligence. And therefore they get brainwashed into making their stuff more complicated than it needs to be," said David Foster Wallace in an old interview.

I think the smarter thing to say is that in many tight, insular communities—where membership is partly based on intelligence, proficiency and being able to speak the language of the discipline—pieces of writing become as much or more about presenting one’s own qualifications for inclusion in the group than transmission of meaning. And that’s how in disciplines like academia—or, I’ve read some really good legal prose, but when it’s really, really horrible (IRS Code stuff)—I think that very often it stems from insecurity and that people feel that unless they can mimic the particular jargon and style of their peers, they won’t be taken seriously and their ideas won’t be taken seriously. It’s a guess.

More of that sort of thing in "Quack This Way: David Foster Wallace & Bryan A. Garner Talk Language and Writing," a newly published book.

Judicial opinions are "poorly written, legalese-riddled," and "read like over-the-top Marx Brothers parodies of stiffness and hyperformality."

Says Bryan Garner, trying to figure out why lawyers write so badly.

The poor lawyers! They are trying to sound like the lawyers who were trying to sound like lawyers who were trying to sound like lawyers who were... etc.

The stakes are high and the desire to sound professional and learned overcomes a native speaker's capacity for natural speech.

But there's also the problem that the arguments judges and lawyers are putting together are full of gaps. Clear speech would make that obvious.

Bryan Garner defends the book he wrote with Justice Scalia against the attack by Judge Posner...

... and Posner responds to the attack. Posner's response begins:

Bryan Garner’s letter repeats criticisms by the National Review blogger Ed Whelan, a former Scalia law clerk who is the head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, an extreme conservative think tank preoccupied with homosexuality (which Whelan believes is destroying the American family), abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and other affronts to conservative theology.

Why is that a good way to begin the response? Garner's essay ends:

Edward Whelan has demanded that Judge Posner run a prominent retraction and apology. That would be gratifying, since reputations can be marred by such a high‑profile literary rampage. But I’m not holding my breath.

It's a dispute about the methodology of legal interpretation, but it's devolved into something that seems oddly personalized.

When Justice Scalia called up Bryan Garner and said "You know, Bryan? I miss you."

Garner — who'd co-written “Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges” with Scalia — said, "Well, I miss you, too, Nino. You know, there’s a cure for that. Let’s start the second book.’”

The second book is “Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts.”

There's also this from Garner:

“I have it on good authority,” he conceded in one peek under the robes, “that when appellants to the U.S. Supreme Court spend eighty per cent of their time looking at Justice Kennedy,” who has gained a reputation as the divided Court’s swing vote, “it’s annoying.” He waited a beat. “To the others.”

To Scalia. And now — after the Obamacare case — he'll have to put up with lawyers looking at Roberts.

"The descent into social rancor over judicial decisions is largely traceable to nontextual means of interpretation..."

"... which erode society's confidence in a rule of law that evidently has no agreed-on meaning."

A quote from Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner, from their new book "Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts," which is reviewed at the link above and available for sale here.