As a new sub-editor at Flow in the midst of preparations for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ kick off, I have quickly had to become an expert in trademark law.
Or at least in the use of the superscript TM. In the land of FIFAdom, where we are hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ accompanied by celebratory Fan Fests™ and you’ve got to show the utmost caution about where you put certain logos and how many flags you’re flying, you had better learn FIFAspeak.
I’ve already found myself using the official FIFA website as a kind of a dictionary or style guide. Is quarter-finals one or two words? Group matches or Group Stage Matches? Second Round or Round of 16? This is the art of balancing what is right with the “What would FIFA say?” rule.
I’ve had to learn the hard way the difference between Fan Parks and Fan Fests™, World Cup and FIFA World Cup™. And why our country gets trademarked for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ is a-whole-nother story.
This TM might be little, but it’s tricky, and you can’t just use it any-old-how.
Which got me thinking about another tricky little term. It’s the only word in English to begin with our love-it-or-hate-it trademark.
Tmesis.
Yes. There it is. I’ve checked it already. No vowels are missing. Tmesis, from the Greek temnein (“to cut”), from which we got dichotomy, entomology and atom, is a kind of cutting. Tmesis is a linguistic phenomenon in which one word cuts into the other, making it the centre of a word sandwich.
Abso-blooming-lutely, as Pygmalion’s Eliza Doolittle would say.
Even authors who ’enry ’iggins couldn’t accuse of improper English have been partial to a little forked tongue, particularly phrasal tmesis. Vladimir Nabokov, in his controversial tale of Humbert Humbert, speaks of “the Old and rotting World” (Lolita, p85). The Bard, in turn, thinks on the dead “how dearly ever parted” (Troilus and Cressida, III.iii, line 101.)
What an appropriate word for a time when we’ve just celebrated so many ribbon-cuttings of new stadia and a host of firsts: first World Cup on the African continent; the first inaugurated with a concert (staged last week Thursday at Orlando Stadium); the first conducted to the blare of vuvuzelas.
Whichever way you cut it, this tournament is going to be legen-wait for it-dary!