Long ago, in the bar of the Hotel Vesuvio in Naples, Italy, I interviewed the international vice overlord Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who had been freed from jail and deported in return for having the longshoremen's union protect the New York docks from Nazi sabotage. I asked how it felt to be identified always as international vice overlord, and he came back sarcastically with a title he preferred: "political football."
Stylists call a description that becomes closely associated with an individual a "bogus title." Thus, we have late-night talk-show host David Letterman; consumer advocate Ralph Nader; Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling; and in case you've forgotten him, fugitive financier Robert Vesco.
New York Times editors frown on this lazy practice and instruct reporters to use an article in front of the apposite (syntactically equivalent) phrase, which preferably goes after what it apposes. The article the is used when the person is famous or infamous: "the real-estate tycoon Donald Trump" or "the international vice overlord Lucky Luciano." When the person is of little note, the article a will suffice: "Robert Vesco, a fugitive financier."
These days, one bogus title stands out from all the rest: "domestic diva Martha Stewart." Earliest use I can find is in a 1993 New York Times review of a Bridgehampton, New York, motel run by the "daughter of domestic diva Martha Stewart." Five years later, The Boston Globe wrote, "Domestic diva Martha Stewart showed President Clinton how to `do lunch' yesterday."
Though Stewart has sometimes been titled home-decorating queen, when she became embroiled in stock-trading charges, the alliterative bogus title took over. Fortune magazine noted "the domestic diva's legal crisis," and Business Week reported, "The embattled domestic diva laments her current situation."
Bogus titles are lapses into journalistic shorthand. I promise never to begin a memoir with "Seated in a Naples bar, political football Lucky Luciano complained ...."
DABBLING DIVA
Sing out the question: What has happened to the word diva?
Rooted in the Latin for "goddess," the Italian import is defined in Webster's New World as "a leading woman singer, especially in grand opera." The OED agrees, choosing "distinguished" for "leading" and adding an Italian synonym, "prima donna." Comes now the latest word from the lexies, in the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster: "a usually glamorous and successful female performer or personality (a fashion diva) especially a popular female singer (pop divas)."
You've come a long way, Lillie Langtry. In 1883, "the Jersey lily" (who was an actress, not a singer) was described by Harper's Magazine not only as "famously beautiful" but also as "the latest diva of the drama." Before that, in 1851, The Living Age magazine applied the Diva title, capitalized, to Jenny Lind, "the Swedish Nightingale," who was a singer.
In its current vogue sense, diva, like prima donna, is still applied to women, but no longer only to singers. She can be a cultural diva, in the sense of "arbiter" or "exemplar," or a sports diva, like a member of the D.C. Divas of the National Women's Football Association. "Divas such as linebacker Tessa Nelson," wrote The Washington Post last month, "a 35-year-old grandmother from Baltimore and the team's leading tackler, are living their childhood dreams."
No matter what the field, the connotation is that of the temperament of stardom or the arrogance of celebrity. This meaning was expressed in the negative by a fan of the country singer Martina McBride to the Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Beth Rucker: "She hasn't gone the diva route. She seems really down to earth."
The word in this sense indeed has gained a pejorative connotation, even in Italy. At this year's Biennale exhibition in Venice, the famed female chimpanzee Lala -- star of the film Bongo Bongo -- failed to pass a spelling test and threw a tantrum.
"Chimpanzees are very strong animals," said the show's producer, according to an Australian newspaper. "You cannot mess with her. She is a true diva."
WORDS FITLY SPOKEN
Looking for a good language aphorism in the new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying and Quotation, I found this from Proverbs 25:11 in the King James translation of the Hebrew Bible: "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver."
That translation clanks in my ear. The singular subject ("a word") is likened to a plural object ("apples ... in pictures"). The lexicographer Sol Steinmetz informs me that "a free hand is necessary to make the verse comprehensible and logical to the modern ear."
I suggested, "Words fitly spoken are like apples of gold," and Sol said, "That was clearly the intent of the Hebrew author of Proverbs." So that's fixed.
While we're at it, let's take a look at the jarring disagreement of subject and verb in the King James Version of the New Testament's Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death."
Paul the Apostle wrote that in Greek. The translators in the 1611 English edition followed a rule of proximity: The noun (sin) closest to the verb determines the verb (is). This misleading rule seems to sing, "When I'm not near the noun I agree with, I agree with the noun I'm near."
But the subject of "the wages of sin is death" is the plural wages, not the singular sin. The translators fell into the trap of "blind agreement," matching the verb to sin or to death, the predicate nominative (which, I explained only a few years ago, in a column you missed, is the noun following a linking verb that restates the subject)
Greek scholars will say that there is no linking verb in the original Greek and that the King James translators had every right to pick an English verb form matching the nearest noun (the singular sin) as well as the following object (the singular death).
But it is jarring to the modern ear. I went through a half-dozen other translations until I hit the New English Bible, published in 1961: "For sin pays a wage; and the wage is death." That may be a tad stern morally when taken out of context, but linguistically it's right on the button.
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