Did you hear the one about the male cow? Is that an oxymoron?

Communication World, April-May, 1997 by Alden Wood

The pullquote in a Boston Globe story about wastewater from a pulp and paper company said, "A Maine mill is the flashpoint in debate over the environmental cost of making paper its whitest." But the fourth-graph lead sentence read "The threatened eagles on the upper Penobscot (River) have become a flash-point in the national debate over the environmental cost of making paper its whitest."

The quote-puller can't have it two ways; he or she should adhere to the writer's wording to preclude knocking the reader off track in the most important part of the story. Also note that the writer describes the threatened eagles as a flash-point while the quote-puller says the mill is the flashpoint. How many flashpoints are we looking at?

I am once again reminded of the enduring advice given me by clearly remembered editor Fred Rushton at the Worcester (Mass.) Sunday Telegram: "Always try to do the right thing, Alden; this will amaze and gratify your readers."

Speaking of editors, would you lay your crayon on anything in this AP item? - "MENDENHALL, Miss. - A man sentenced to 40 years behind bars yesterday apparently wrestled away a gun and killed two sheriff's deputies as they were driving him to prison."

That skinny little I makes quite a difference: American Heritage Dictionary III says wrestle means "1. To contend by grappling and attempting to throw or immobilize one's opponent, especially under contest rules...." The meaning at wrest is "1. To obtain by or as if by pulling with violent twisting movements...."

(While pawing pages in search of those definitions I happened upon the enchanting and new-to-me noun yashmak, which identifies the veil worn by Moslem women to cover the face in public.)

* Here is a Reuters dispatch datelined Houston: "A rampaging heifer ran through a group of school children.... The young female cow broke loose while its student handler was leading it out of a trailer...."

Sometimes called the "The Great Cow Flap," this barnyard solecism is guaranteed to recrudesce whenever a city-slicker writer is obliged to report on a matter involving cows, bulls, steers, heifers, calves, or maybe oxen. In this case the writer provides a fine IPO with heifer being used to describe a "young cow, especially one that has not yet given birth to a calf." (AHD III.) Right on. But the lack of a Levi's gene quickly surfaces in the next sentence: "The young female cow broke loose...."

What if the perpetrator had been a male? Would he be termed a male cow? (You know where this is going, don't you?) No chance; that'd be an oxymoron. All you urban cowpersons pay attention now: a cow is a female bovine; a bull is a male bovine; an ox or steer is a castrated bull; a heifer is a young cow; a calf is a wicked young cow, or bull. All bovines are vegetarians. Perhaps they are trying to send us a message.

* An E-mail from Wilma Mathews, ABC, director, PR at Arizona State, introduces our short section on homophones, those sound-alike pairs or occasionally triplets created solely to madden the likes of you and me. Said Mathews:

"Just found this in the Tempe Daily News Tribune: 'A lot of people, I think, they lose things and chock it up to experience...." "Chock?!" Chalk it is.

Oh yes, spelling by ear won't seem to go away. Even words as common as dirt may inexplicably get turned around. Please study the following ad copy written for a prominent men's store in Boston: "We are pleased to announce the arrival of the Holiday neckware collection from Salvatore Ferragamo." And this, from the Boston Sunday Globe magazine: "Browsers like Netscape - the softwear tools we use to cruise the World Wide Web...."

It's not always easy to pay total attention to business, but it's far less easy to explain how come you printed underware for underwear, or neckware for neckwear, and especially softwear for you-know-what-ware.

A national television review of the miniseries Asteroid mentioned that "a group of scientists had to wrack their brains for a solution." The verb that means to strain one's gray matter is rack.

A common homophonic miscue appears in this sentence in a story about the town of Hull, Mass.:

"At that time, steamboat lines were bringing hoards of summer visitors to Hull...."

Noun hoard means a secret supply, perhaps a "hoard of chocolates" one conceals from a sweets freak. Verb hoard means to build the stash. Noun horde means a throng or swarm of sometimes unruly people or other critters, e.g., locusts.

Among other persistent sound-alikes: principle/principal; predominant/predominate; team/teem; pare, pear, pair; pedal/peddle; mantle/mantel; mitigate, militate; and auger (a tool)/augur (an omen).

Have you hugged your dictionary today?

Alden Wood, APR, lecturer on editorial procedures at Simmons College, Boston, Mass., writes and lectures on language usage. He is a retired insurance industry vice president of advertising and public relations (his E-mail address is awood@vmsvax.simmons.edu).