This is today's mind-boggling question: Is it possible to "berate" a corpse?
The question evolves from a news item from Baghdad on May 3. It appeared in The Seattle Times: "The body of one of Saddam Hussein's top lieutenants was kicked and berated after U.S. forces transferred it into Iraqi custody ..." (italics added).
To berate, as every reader of this column knows full well, is "to scold or condemn vehemently and at length." It's a lovely verb. But was it the best verb for the occasion? Maybe yes, maybe no. Let us revel once more in the riches of English.
On the mild side, the captors could have admonished, chastised, rebuked, reprimanded or reproved their late and unlamented enemy. It was perhaps a little late merely to reproach or remonstrate. No! The occasion called for a verb more vigorous. The passive captive more likely was castigated, reviled or upbraided. But what the corpse was, it was vilified! It is remarkable how one may engage in animadversion, not to mention objurgation. All it takes is a good thesaurus.
We're talking verbs in this space today. They are the muscles of language, just as nouns are the bones and this is a metaphor for dropping. A reporter for the Birmingham (Ala.) News brightened an otherwise pedestrian story in June. A land investment company had purchased a 13,000-acre plantation in Union Springs: "The property," said the News, "fetched close to its asking price of $35 million."
Fetched! What a lively verb! The reporter could have written that the property "sold for" or "went for" or "brought" or even "drew" nearly $35 million. The unexpected "fetched" was a pimento in the olive.
What's your position on "wiggle," "wriggle" and "waggle"? The Seattle Times reported last April that a Kirkland man died when he tried to "wiggle" his way out of a stalled elevator. The Washington Post reported the efforts of a Redskin tailback to "wriggle" through holes against the New York Giants. In USA Today, eyebrows "waggled" when President Bush kissed his secretary of state.
The distinctions here are almost as fine as frog's hair. The lexicographers trace "wiggle" to the 13th century, "wriggle" to the 15th. They appear to be substantially synonymous. Both mean "to move to and fro with short, quick, jerky, writhing motions." It may be that earthworms wriggle and wet babies wiggle. Or vice versa. Webster's New World adds a further definition for "wriggle," which is "to make one's way by subtle or shifty means; to dodge, equivocate."
"Waggle" is clearly a different matter. It is chiefly what one does with a 7-iron before hitting a new ball into the lake. The 15th-century "waggle" also has this virtue: It leads the curious reader or writer to look up the verb in the big Oxford English Dictionary.
Thus one is led not only to "wangle," but also to such useful nouns as "wangrace," a thin sweetened gruel given to invalids; to "wanhap," a misfortune; to "wanland," the waning of the moon; and to "wanluck," a misfortune. I would have guessed that "wannabe," meaning a person who aspires to be someone else, is much older than 1981, but that's what Merriam-Webster says. The lesson here is never to leave a lexiconiphobe alone with the OED.
Nothing remains to be said about wiggle, wriggle and waggle except that the different pelvic motions of the professional ecdysiast were pioneered, so to speak, by the belly dancers of Babylon. Their choreography was fully reported by Ovid in his "Ars Amatoria," though not in the translation usually available to high school seniors. Their loss!
(Readers are invited to send dated citations of usage to Mr. Kilpatrick in care of this newspaper. His e-mail address is kilpatjj@aol.com.)
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