Sunday, January 17, 2010

careen



I'm sure we've all heard, read and probably even occasionally used this one. "The delapidated old truck careened down the highway at breakneck speed," would be an example of the way I'd think of its usage. To my mind, this would be a vehicle that was coming along at a crazy, ill-controlled pace, probably wobbling from side to side as it came.

But early on in my reading of David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas, I came upon this sentence: "An Indian war canoe is being careened on the shore." This sentence could mean just about anything, except that careen can not mean what it means in my sentence above. There is another careen of this type in this section of the book, which of course, I can't now find, but somehow between the two of them I've imagined it to mean something like "carved out". However, from just this sentence it could as easily be "decorated" or even "stored".

Mitchell is nothing if not verbally adroit, so this fictional diary excerpt, supposedly written at about the time of the California Gold Rush, I am sure uses careen accurately for that era, and for all I know, this one as well. It would very much surprise me if the two careens were not related. But how did we get from the war canoes to the hurtling truck?


"Careen" means to turn a ship--or in this case, a canoe--on its side, usually to clean, caulk or otherwise repair the hull. The word stems from the Latin carina, which means "hull" both in the nautical sense and in the (probably earlier) sense of a nutshell. In fact once definition I read calls it 'half a nut shell, and that makes for a visual image which at least to me shows the connection between the two meanings pretty clearly.





But "careen" also had another nautical meaning--that of a ship leaning to one side as it sails in a strong wind. It seems pretty clear to me how this second meaning grew out of the first, and our current idea of lurching or swerving from side to side came in turn out of this secondary meaning.

However, a controversy arises! Some etymologists get very frustrated by this use of the word careen when they are sure people are actually mixing it up with "career", which in one of its senses means "to gallop, run or move at full speed". You can read about this argument at what looks like a very good, if opinionated word usage site here.

My own intuition would be that the two words have been to some degree conflated. I base this finding on the highly unscientific evidence that it sounds exactly like something I would do.

Finally, my web wanderings took me to this lovely site, where careen, or at least carina becomes part of the cosmos itself. Reading through the way many things in many languages connect back to one simple word gives me a sense of language as a very far-flung gorgeous net indeed.

33 comments:

  1. Careen vs. career poses an interesting problem for we copy editors who once believed that our newspapers took us seiously. Once a word is used wrongly often enough, anyone who uses it correctly is regarded as eccentric.

    Here's a usage note from the dictionary.com Web site:

    "The implication of rapidity that most often accompanies the use of careen as a verb of motion may have arisen naturally through the extension of the nautical sense of the verb to apply to the motion of automobiles, which generally careen, that is, lurch or tip over, only when driven at high speed. There is thus no reason to conclude that this use of the verb is the result of a confusion of careen with career, "to rush." Whatever the origin of this use, however, it is by now so well established that it would be pedantic to object to it."

    My v-word is, appropriately, latin
    ================
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  2. Nice little picture that of the car and the highway. Reminds me a bit of that bit in North By Northwest when Cary Grant is drunken made to drive home along the LI shore facing death at every hair pin.

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  3. Peter, I take your point, but I am not necessarily convinced that careened is being used incorrectly.
    Latin? It's like the word verifier is trying to speak to us from beyond the veil.

    Adrian, I like it too, and it exactly fits my image of the word. I am however waiting for the day that I get one of those cease and desist messages from someone I inadvertently swiped it from. Well, I mean I swiped it intentionally, but not with thought of malice or gain.

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  4. Unfortunately, this etymological question becomes even more pressing in a time of high unemployment when careers are careening when they should be careering.
    Sincerely,
    Randolph

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  5. Seana, may I suggest "foundering" vs. "floundering" as the subject of a future post?
    ================
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  6. Randolph, that is all too true. I expect the two will be hopelessly tangled from here on in.

    Peter, I will keep foundering vs. floundering in mind, although I do think I know the difference. Sounds more like a copy editor's nightmare to me.

    Although where 'floundering' really comes from is intriguing.

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  8. Oh, Randolph--I didn't know that that was you.

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  9. Foundering vs. floundering is indeed a copy editor's nightmare. They mean different things, but they are rarely used literally, and they can describe, metaphorically, similar phenomena.

    I undestand that a scandal could break out if you made a post on "Confessions of Ignorance" and were later found to have known that the word meant. Your credibility would be shot; no one can survive scandal in America.
    ==============
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  10. Nice post as always. There's this gorgeous Indian film actress called Kareena Kapoor, who's kind of ruling the roost nowadays, and it may be (cattily) said that she she has careened from one boyfriend to the next (both actors separated by two decades) in her career.

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  11. Yes, Peter, the reputation of this blog must be guarded at all costs.

    I did not know that people often confuse foundering and floundering, so that would be the angle. The real question in writing these things is whether there is enough intriguing in it for me to take the time. Because really, why bother otherwise?

    v word=wincess, one definition of which might be, an overly sensitive young royal.

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  12. Sucharita, cattily is probably always the right tone to take when talking about film stars. And thanks for yet another usage of the word.

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  13. Wincess is one of the highlights of my day this far.

    You're right; foundering vs. floundering might be more a copy editor's nightmare than a question of general interest.

    I was going to suggest flounder (the fish) as a mnemonic device, but apparently it and the verb flounder have different origins. Now, there's a subject ...
    ==============
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  14. Now, see Peter, that actually does intrigue me. Don't give it away, though.

    v word=mermeth, which is of course a drug addled mythological sea creature.

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  15. I actually had in mind what linguists delightfully call "false friends" -- words from different languages that appear to be cognate words but are not.
    ==============
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  16. Dear Seana:
    I think an exploration of "foundering" versus "floundering" as Peter suggests would definitely be in order...If you do, may I offer a possible theory on how "flounder" came to stand in for "founder?" I am recently back from sea and had the opportunity of watching someone fish for flounder during my outing. Flounder as you likely know are very flat fish and when brought aboard tend to flop around in a particularly uncontrollable and slippery way (all fish tend to do this, but my sense is that flounder are even better at causing havoc on deck than most). In any case, I would suggest that this erratic behavior combined with our natural inclination to malapropism might have helped cause the confusion. I am quite grateful for having stumbled upon your site, a repository of rich thought hiding under the instructive guise of ignorance!
    Sincerely,
    Randolph
    PS Another perennial bee in Yours Truly's bonnet is the ongoing war between "reticence" and "reluctance"

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  17. Seana

    Well I guess I was wrong about Randolph's doggie book being a crock of shite wasnt I?

    Randolph is funny.

    In my defence I did say that I hadnt read it.

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  18. Randolph, apparently we've been under the same misapprehension about flounder. I'll get back to you. And, ahem, Dog at Sea, welcome aboard.

    Yes, Adrian, it seems you were wrong for once. Although I don't think you said it was a crock of shite, I think you just told Peter you were going to have him quietly assassinated. Which is not quite the same thing.

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  19. Help! My careen is foundering.

    Now, you just keep acting that way, Adrian, and no one will get hurt. It would be shame if your little girls got a note in the mail one day telling them their daddy hates doggies, wouldn't it?
    ==============
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  20. As long as your career isn't floundering, you'll be okay.

    I think the kids already have guessed that he doesn't like possums.

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  21. I should think that the ongoing war between reticence and reluctance is a low-intensity conflict.
    ==============
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  22. Seana

    True murder is not necessarily book criticism.

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  23. His career floundered, proving that he was small fish after all; initial success was only a fluke.

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  24. Marco, punning in a non-native language must be one of the highest forms of acquisition, so I can only imagine what you do with Italian.

    No, actually I can't.

    I had another idea in mind for the next post, but flounder and maybe founder it is.

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  25. Punning is the lowest form of humor in one's own language but the highest in another's.

    Makes you think, doesn't it?
    ==============
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  26. You might like to now that a story I edited tonight used the word "foundered" (with respect to Martha Coakley's candidacy in Massachusetts). Her candidacy may have floundered, but in the end, it did, indeed, founder.

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  27. If she had just floundered a bit more, she might not have foundered. I hope this doesn't turn out to be as dire a change as I think it might be.

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  28. It's also been my experience that careering/careening is a UK-American difference. Look in British novels and you'll see "careering" and you'll see "careening" in American novels. As a Brit myself I was naturally taught that "careering" is correct! But I suppose you could say that both are correct, in their own contexts.

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  29. Yes, I believe there is really some overlap in usage at this point, whatever the formal right way is. And you're right--I don't think Americans use the word career as a verb much. At least, I don't. Although I think it may have been more common in the past--maybe more British influence?

    Thanks for your comment, ubikcan.

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  30. I noticed your post when I was double-checking the def. of 'Careen' for an article (I, too, was uncertain whether it should be 'Career' but I've decided that my bus did, in fact, 'Careen')

    In the West Indies, several ports are called 'Carenage' (French pronunciation) or 'Careenage' ... and I believe that the same word is used on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. I have always assumed that it's French Patois in origin. It certainly means 'Harbour' or 'a place where boats are brought out of the water for repairs' in common usage in that part of the world, which is why you found it in reference to an Indian canoe.

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  31. Thanks for taking a moment to stop and comment here, Nan, and for adding a little extra lore around the word. Good luck with the article!

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  32. Also, my understanding after all of this is that if your bus was swaying from side to side it was careening, while if it was hurtling headlong it was careering. But there's no reason why it couldn't be doing both!

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