Great E-mail, Helen!

Meanwhile, from last Sunday's NY Times magazine (reprinted here for the registration-phobic ):

Enroned

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

I don't want to Enron the American people,'' said the Democrat Tom Daschle, defining the new verb in his next sentence. ''I don't want to see them holding the bag at the end of the day just like Enron employees have held the bag.''

The workers who have been enroned (if we're going to use the name as a general verb meaning ''cheated,'' drop the eponym's initial capital, as we did with boycott and bork) are called Enronites. (This specific group of cheatees takes a capital.)

Other energy-related companies, wrote Bethany McLean in Fortune, ''disclaimed any sort of Enronesque behavior.'' In forming an adjective, -esque strikes me as a more elegant suffix than -ish, as in enronish or the less critical enronlike. (Child- ish is ''puerile, immature,'' always with a pejorative connotation, while child- like is ''innocent,'' always endearing.)

Michael Wolff, a columnist for New York magazine, committed a late hit on Tina Brown when her Talk magazine folded, describing the buzzworthily glamorous editor as ''a little enronish.'' This caused the linguistically savvy Jim Sullivan of The Boston Globe to note that the adjective ''enronish captures the spirit of the big magazine cannonball but not its style. It is clunky. Enronian rolls off the tongue. Someone responsible for large-scale destruction is then an 'enronista.' The process of destruction: enronism. The verb is simply the name, as in 'He got enroned last Thursday.'''

Note the general agreement about the spelling of the verb. The o in Enron is pronounced ah, as in ''on,'' and not oh, as in ''throne.'' When adding -ed after the single n, however, the word appears to invite the pronunciation rhyming with ''enthroned.'' Should we, then, double the n to produce enronned? No. If this has been worrying you, stop worrying. The analogy to follow is that of environ, as in Lincoln's ''I am environed with difficulties'' -- one n, pronounced ah, not oh. To enron has a lot more snap than the unimaginative to enronize.

The suffix on is considered by corporate image makers in the energy and technology fields to be a futuristic syllable -- hence Exxon and Chevron, Raytheon and Micron. In the naming of the merged Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth companies in 1986, the consultants Lippincott &Margulies suggested ''Enteron,'' of Greek origin, which began with the first syllable of ''energy'' and concluded with the slick, with-it on. What's more, a specialized industrial sense of enteron was reported to be ''a pipeline system transmitting nourishment.''

However, when it was pointed out to the directors that the common medical meaning of enteron was ''alimentary canal, intestines, guts,'' company officials hastily demanded that a new name be found evocative of energy and the future but with no suggestion of upset stomach or bowel movement. I confirmed this history of corporate nomenclature in a call to Mark Palmer, a spokesman for the bankrupt company. ''Legend has it,'' he added, ''that they told the naming firm that they had 24 hours to come up with something else or they wouldn't pay them a plug nickel -- and they came up with Enron.'' Palmer seemed relieved that was all he was being asked about.

The namers did not worry about the association with football's end run or the possible play on ''take the money enron.'' In future corporate naming, en- is very likely to be avoided as a prefix, and the suffix -on is off.


He writes a wonderful column. I recommend bookmarking the link for y'all who are deeply interested in modern usage and don't see the brick n mortar version.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/10/magazine/10ONLANGUAGE.html