September 19, 2002: Issue 36
SIM STYLE: Is a bathroom without a tub a full bath?
Yes, if it has a shower. We no longer use the term 3/4 bath in SIM. A powder room, or half bath, consists only of a toilet and a sink. A full bath also includes a shower or a tub or both, and may include many other amenities.
GRAMMAR: More Idiom Soup
Do you know these idioms? Explanations are by Paul Brians, a Washington State University English professor.
• Deep-seated (not “seeded”)
The expression has nothing to do with a feeling being planted deep within one, but instead refers to its being seated firmly within one’s breast:
“My aversion to anchovies is deep-seated.” Compounding their error, most people who misuse this phrase leave the hyphen out. Tennis players may be seeded, but not feelings.
• Beyond the pale (not “pail”)
In medieval Ireland, the area around Dublin was within the limit of English law, everything outside being considered as wild, dangerous territory. The boundary was marked by a fence called “the Pale” (compare with “palisade”). The expression “beyond the pale” came to mean “bizarre, beyond proper limits.”
• Sleight of hand (not “slight”)
“Sleight” is an old word meaning “cleverness.”
• Row to hoe (not “road”)
Out in the cotton patch, you have a tough row to hoe. This saying has nothing to do with road construction.
• One and the same (not “in”)
The old expression “they are one and the same” is now often mangled into the roughly phonetic equivalent “one in the same.” The use of “one” here to mean “identical with each other” is familiar from phrases like “Jane and John act as one.” They are one, they are the same.
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