DIPLOMATIC RECOGNITION. In his Books in Canada piece about the birth, death, and resurrection of a Toronto coffee-house, the Bohemian Embassy, Keith Nickson accredited John Robert Colombo as its "cultural attache'' during the early years. The phrase is more apt than he perhaps realized, for he failed to mention the appearance of the Bohemian Embassy, under the listing for consulates, in the Yellow Pages. This moment of accidental glory occurred only in the May 1961 issue, but it attracted enough media attention at the time to provide some useful publicity for that tiny oasis in the "culturally barren" Toronto of30 years ago. The telephone company's ignorance of political geography was not unprecedented, for even Shakespeare in The Winter's Tale regarded Bohemia as a desert country by the sea.
PARALLEL PRINCIPLES. The first issue of Review, a newsletter recently launched by the Ottawa-based North-South Institute as a replacement for two previous serials, describes itself as the organization's principle periodical. Unfortunately, the use of principale in the corresponding French text suggests that the publication is quite unprincipled. Somewhat expensively priced at $5 for a mere eight pages in each official language, Review also plans to include "coverage of research in progress in Canadian organizations working on parallel tracks to ourselves." Is ours intended? It's French to the rescue again, with "travail parallele au notre."
RACISM. The Croatian-born Liberal member of the Ontario legislature who doubted his ability to live next to a Serb was warned by the party leader that "statements which are in any way racist" would not be condoned. Strictly speaking, race refers to the major biological classes of humans, not to nations or other subgroups. Yet racism has become a convenient expression to describe utterances or actions that are motivated solely by the belief that other people, especially those of a different skin colour, are genetically inferior. Despite the modem substitution of more acceptable terms, such as Inuit for Eskimo and Metis for half-breed, there remain certain national identifiers that are sources of everyday words, some of
which are opprobrious in origin. A Croat, for example, proud of a name that gave rise to the elegant cravat, might be reluctant to acknowledge that the word slave derives from Slav, a group to which both Croats and Serbs belong, whether or not they choose to be neighbours. Their own geographical region, which has given us balkanization as a synonym for political fragmentation, also includes Macedonia, whose diversity of people inspired mac6doine, a mixture. A less fortunate example is bugger, which was originally applied to a heretical sect from Bulgaria to whom "abominable practices" were ascribed.
PURPOSEFULLY, PURPOSELY. A report that the prime minister and the provincial premiers were purposefully discussing Canada's economic problems correctly described an action that was both intentionally taken and directed toward a certain objective. In other words, the leaders were meeting on purpose for a purpose. Purposely relates to an act that is not accidental, even though it may lack a clear goal. When a passing motorist fired a shot that grazed the head of one of Jimmy Carter's volunteer helpers, the shooting was claimed to have been "obviously purposeful." Although the motorist may have fired the shot knowingly, with careless disregard of the consequences, the attack was probably not purposeful in the sense of its being aimed at a particular victim. The distinction between purposefully and Purposely is not always easy to draw, for the former adverb includes the latter. Purposely was once a synonym for purposefully and it is still accepted as such by some authorities.
DUDGEON. In a column about the cheque-bouncing revelations in the US House of Representatives, Rod McQueen reported that the House sergeant-at-arms was "in such low dudgeon" at being made a scapegoat for the scandal that his allegation of having been mugged while walking on Capitol Hill was greeted with disbelief. The columnist seems to have been equating dudgeon with credibility, rather than giving the word its ordinary meaning of anger or resentment. Dudgeon, which is usually qualified by the adjective high, has another and now almost obsolete connotation. It describes the wood used to make a dagger handle and, by extension, the weapon itself. Macbeth, addressing the dagger that he thought he saw before him, found "on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood." But perhaps the discredited sergeant, whether in a high or a low dudgeon, did look daggers at his detractors.
POKING FUN. According to the Ottawa Citizen, nearly one-third of the products sold by the national capital's Epoch Condom store are novelty items. Buying our condoms should be fun, say the proprietors. Among their ridiculous rubbers is the Peter Meter, which carries a graduated scale of length on its latex exterior. Peter is a name so closely associated with venery that some parents decline to give it to their sons. Familiarity with the verb peter might also mislead francophones into thinking that the meter records a more unseemly type of measurement.
