One would hope, but even so I have two misgivings: If use of the word here is not sheer dumb coincidence, then 1) either the writer has fallen into the trap of making easy assumptions about the reader, for not everyone will know of Stram (myself, for one, until you brought it up); just because the reader may have enough interest in sports to read the article, it doesn’t mean they will have any abiding interest in gridiron football or its lore (myself again, in case anyone hasn’t already guessed). Or else 2) the writer came across Stram’s malapropism once upon a time, and without digging any further, naively took it as proper usage, and saved it for such a rainy day.
At this point I’m inclined to agree that it’s probably the former, but the very fact that we’re trying to make sense of it points to careless writing; this is the first time I’ve ever come across “matriculate” used in this way, so it’s not as if it’s famous enough for a writer to hang their hat on as a jocularity. In American sports writing as I know it (any writing, for that matter), normally one doesn’t see this sort of thing without a nod to the source. Even the much more famous sayings of Yogi Berra are not usually flown without passing mention of the man himself. It’s just good form to do so; due attribution is due reverence, you could say. It also assures us that the writer is informed. Without that, on first impression this one simply comes off as not knowing his own language.
Website “journalists” don’t care about their work. Found tonight:
“Michigan and its 125 deluges is the big prize in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primaries, the first pitting former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) head to head in what’s essentially a two-man race. Sanders and Biden are both contesting the state heavily, and the polls are mixed.”
Nor does the matter of natural observation seem worthy of anyone’s concern:
“They believed [unicorns] to be quite large, with really powerful hooves that were single, like a sheep, and not split like the horse.”
This was quoted material within the article in the following link, not from the hand of the article’s author herself. If the quote is accurate - but either way we must mourn - I’m rather surprised that the writer wouldn’t take a moment to point out the well-known and obvious, and the ensuing web of difficulty this written gaffe creates. Whether this was an editorial lapse or we are seeing a misquote, it’s like tumbling in zero gravity: On the strength of the quote alone we’ll never know which hoof, or which animal, in what order, was ever meant. Unless, of course, we are now to believe that sheep and horses have swapped hooves, and natural history must be rewritten.
The article was interesting, otherwise, and for other reasons: Apparently our present general heraldic concept of the unicorn - white, roughly horselike but smaller and gracile, with a white horn like a narwhal’s tusk coming out of its forehead - is only the latest, for the imaginary beast took on many forms throughout history, and some of them were quite different from the noble, refined form we now usually envision. Apparently one was even mouse-sized, if the source is still to be believed.
My company logo from Licorne Publishing (The Cheesecake Cookbook - 1978) & Licorne Enterprises (electric bass cabinets, JBL 15"). Also my guitar (inlay in gold mother-of-pearl, white MOP, abalone) - note the cloven hoofs/hooves, leg feathers, beard. I have seen many representations of unicorns having an appearance closer to goats.
Yes, that’s a strong variant of the theme. Yet whether the appearance is more goatish or horsey, the type of hoof seems to be somewhat optional. But that’s the beauty of imaginary beasts, isn’t it. It gives us this latest popular iteration:
Rainbows and all, and its flesh is probably marzipan. But I rather like this one:
I don’t quite know what to make of the following other than, as writing, it’s more preening than craft:
“Why does it feel like autumn? I am not referring to the weather, which has been almost unseasonably hot in many parts of the country, but to something else one sees venturing outdoors or turning on the television: our great cities emptied out, like clusters of silver birches, save for the tens of thousands of people massed together in stratonic clusters: fallen leaves.”
These are the opening lines from a recent op-ed.
First of all, I had to look up “stratonic”. I’m pretty sure that the author must have meant “stratified”, for fallen leaves cluster (here a weak usage, IMO, but I’ll play along) in strata (layers). All my sources say that “stratonic” should either mean “pertaining to things military”, or even less likely here, “pertaining to the Greek philosopher Strato of Lampsacus” - so it’s a word I’ll definitely make a point of never using, on general principle. But even “stratified” is a misuse, for when people mass together, they tend, like the author’s imagined silver birches, to do so upright, only in less rooted fashion: strata do not mill about. I think we can also dismiss the possibility that he meant social strata. I have no objections to poetic seasoning in a prose work, but even license has limits beyond which lies vapid nonsense. You can’t beat your Muse into submission, never mind with misappropriated gobbledygook like “stratonic”. The rest of my objections are about the opening’s jagged compositional style and indulgence in ill-resolved contradiction, and its nonexistent relationship to the rest of the article - so I’ll leave off here.
