LEND ME YOUR EAR: WE TRY TO BE FAIR

While we are still pondering the meaning of "politically correct" and doing our best to avoid discussions about "affirmative action", trend setters are thinking up new buzz words. At this writing, "fairness" appears to be winning the popularity contest. Experts have announced that "fairness" will solve all the problems of the free and not-so-free world.

"Whoever said life would be fair?" is an oft-quoted cliche, but think of all the new words and expressions "fairness" is likely to trigger. Additions are probably mushrooming without our help.

Meanwhile, let us make a little dent in the list of new or uncommon terms already awaiting our attention. "Antiphrasis" is one that hasn't made our dictionaries but appeared on a word-a-day calendar. The definition, as given, is "the humorous or ironic use of words in a sense opposite to their conventional use." For example, a beanpole of a man might be nicknamed Fatty, or a fat lady called Tiny. The combination of anti with phrase makes sense to us, and we herewith accept it as valid. Seems only fair.

Also from the calendar, we've listed "philistic." This term refers to the class or world of cultural boors. A "boor" is someone who is rude or crude, as distinguished from the "bore" whose chief purpose is to produce yawns. "Cultural boor" is actually an oxymoron, so perhaps we could apply it to our counterculturally-inclined. Fair enough?

Some weeks before Desert Storm, we read that the territories of Iraq and Kuwait were "coterminous." I thought the word was "con terminous, but dictionaries list "coterminous" and "conterminous" variants of each other. Both mean having the same boundary. Kuwaitis might not agree this is fair, but from the standpoint of terminology, what could be fairer?

In the May 13 issue of Time, the author of an article titled "Fantasy's Reality" startled us with "Kongfrontation." This hapless creation was used to describe the steam and energy effects generated by the cast of a movie at Universal Studios. The playwright estimated that their "Kongfrontations" would heat up to 100 homes a day. One player announced she was "wierded" out by the character playing Orlando. This verbalization tickled my funnybone. But Kongfrontation? No way!

"No way" is also the general response to Paul Greenberg's verbalizing the noun "suicide." In a reference to the Russian poet Serge Esenin, the columnist wrote: "He called his homeland the new Nazareth, and ~`suicided' at the age of 30 in 1925." So feeble an effort should have suicided itself and been buried alongside the poet. Lazarus, meet Serge!

Which leads us straight to our next word: anthropocentric. This is a dictionary term that seems to be gaining ground among cosmologists and theologians. John Updike used it in a review of a book no, a tome titled ORIGINS: THE LIVES AND WORLDS OF MODERN COSMOLOGISTS, compiled by scientists Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer. Updike averred that cosmology in recent years has been given "an anthropocentric turn." This five-syllable adjective regarding man as the central fact or final aim of the universe keeps creeping into discussions about the big-bang theory and creationism, and rumor has it that even Pope John Paul II and some noted prelates are being influenced by the idea.

But the subject is entirely too deep for our purpose, so we are closing on a lighter note. An article about children's art work published in a recent New Yorker featured some delightfully fresh sounds coming from the typewriter of a creative reviewer. We learned that children's TV was making "upbeat squitter of the female presenters of the art" while her (the reviewer's) clothes dryer was chuntering and her typewriter "chittering on to the end of a line."

The program, as well as the art work, originated in London, and the lady and her typewriter sounded veddy veddy British meaning one incorrigible Anglophile was doubly entertained. Was this fair?