2/28/2005
The Elephants of ANWR: An Introduction
Bill Walsh, in the Elephants of Style, discusses a variety of bete noire's of American English. While he never defines the word elephant in this context, its use goes well beyond a simple animal pun, not that there's anything wrong with that. It takes on the meaning of that lumbering pachyderm that needs to be acknowledged before we can move on: the Elephant in the Room.
Further there is the expression White Elephant, which Webster defines like this:
Something requiring much care and expense and yielding little profit; any burdensome possession. [Slang]It is in this sense that I discuss the Elephants of ANWR. Vis-a-vis a mushing together of these expressions we have:
lumbering pachyderms of half-truth requiring much care to perpetuate, and of little or no actual value.Here, I would like to distinguish an Elephant and a Canard. A canard is an out-and-out deception. From webster:
An extravagant or absurd report or story; a fabricated sensational report or statement; esp. one set afloat in the newspapers to hoax the public.Now that we know our elephants from our canards, and rest assured we will meet both along the way, let us begin.
file under: ANWR
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