News

wclements@globeandmail.com

I shudder at the thought that this may all have been my fault. On July 25, in a column reflecting on the death of newscaster Walter Cronkite and the origin of the word anchorman, later shortened to anchor, I wrote the following: "In a way, it makes sense that an iron object designed to moor a ship to the bottom of the sea should be applied to the linchpin of a team ... [But an] anchor is a dead weight. It keeps the team from moving. It is submerged, out of sight. Say what you will, but that sounds like an odd analogy for a highly visible, elevating presence whose job it is to keep things moving."

Well, as viewers of CBC's The National will know, the show has yanked newscaster Peter Mansbridge from his chair and forced him to stand and wander the studio like the Flying Dutchman. I have no doubt that the change has been in the works for a long time, but, on the off-chance this column played a part in casting the anchor adrift, I feel honour-bound to find a new word to describe Mansbridge's current status.

Has he gone from anchor to buoy, free to bob on the waves even though tied to the studio? (Hey, news-buoy, what's the latest?) If he is moving about without any restraints, perhaps he should be called driftwood. Or, just as 7-Up sold itself as the Uncola, the newly ambulatory anchor might be the un-chor. Further suggestions are welcome at wclements@globeandmail.com.

Shooting by another name

While watching the TV drama Flashpoint, I was struck by a coincidence. Enrico Colantoni, whose résumé includes the role of photographer on the old fashion-magazine sitcom Just Shoot Me!, plays a senior member of the elite police unit that tackles crises in Flashpoint. In other words, he used a flash camera in Just Shoot Me! and has to shoot people in Flashpoint.

Banish negativity

A medical service advertised itself on AM radio in Toronto last month. The commercial said, "When it comes to your health, positive change is always a good thing." I look forward to hearing of those areas of life in which positive change is not a good thing.

First came the roads

A recent column considered the words "profession" and "prostitution," often called the world's oldest profession. Reader Derek Graham, a professional surveyor and land-use planner, couldn't resist a footnote "just to amend your thesis of what is the oldest profession." That honour, he writes, goes to the ancient Roman agrimensores (Latin for land surveyors) or Egyptian harpedonaptae (Greek for "rope stretchers," the folks who used ropes to determine the outline of the bases for the pyramids). "After all, someone had to lay out the course for the engineer to design the road for the streetwalkers!"

The Heene Flew!

After this column reflected on suggestions that H1N1, the other name for swine flu, be pronounced as if it were spelled "hini," readers responded with additional considerations. Chris Kelk and Bill Kummer both note that if the word were pronounced "hee-nee," it would have the same sound as the surname of Richard Heene, the Colorado father behind the "balloon boy" stunt. Kummer writes: "A headline screams: The Heene Flew!" It's a nice coincidence that the name of the son who was supposedly (but not in fact) airborne is Falcon.

Edith Leslie, who wrote the original note about "hini," observes that if the word is pronounced "hinie" with a long "i," it does more than rhyme with heinie, the slang word for buttocks. It also conjures up Freund Hein (Friend Hein), the cozy name for Death coined more than 200 years ago by German writer Matthias Claudius. "That is why I would like to pronounce it heenee," Leslie says.