From "august" to "August." Why the union is always "strong." Nee nee
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Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today, we're talking about capitalization and the strange phrase, the State of the Union. Have you ever danced with an August partner at an August wedding? Had to polish a piece of Polish silverware? Or eaten lima beans in Lima, Peru?

Let's talk about nymes, words ending in the Greek suffix meaning name, which is usually spelled O-N-Y-M.

You likely learned about three common NIMs in school, synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. But there are many other NIMs out there. In past episodes, we've covered homonyms and their cousins homographs and homophones, acronyms, not to be confused with abbreviations and initialisms, eponyms, contronyms, retronyms, and demonyms.

Well, today we're going to explore one of the more interesting NIMs, the capitonym, a word that changes meaning and sometimes pronunciation when it's capitalized.

Now, let's go back to the examples I gave at the beginning. The word august with a lowercase a means inspiring or worthy of respect, while the capitalized form is the eighth month of the year. But they can be pronounced the same way. An alternate pronunciation for the lowercase form is august.

Then lowercase polish means to rub until shiny, and Polish refers to the country in Eastern Europe. Finally, lowercase lima is a type of bean, while lima, with a capital L, is the capital of Peru. And notice that these last two examples definitely have different pronunciations. So what's up with that?

Well, capitanims are complex creatures. Strictly speaking, words like lowercase cancer, the disease, and capitalized cancer, a constellation and zodiac sign, are homographs, since they're spelled the same but have different meanings. There

They're also homophones because they're pronounced the same. But wait, there's more. More broadly, the two words are also homonyms since they're spelled and pronounced the same. It really depends on how you define the terms.

Some like Polish and Polish and Lima and Lima are also heteronyms. They're spelled the same but have different pronunciations. So, capitanims can do quadruple duty. So, let's just stick with capitanims.

Digital document library Scribd and ProWritingAid offer some categories and examples of capitanims that are useful. For each category, we'll give you some sentences with capitanims that are homonyms and homophones, meaning they're pronounced or written the same or both. In all the following examples, the first instance of the word is lowercase and the second is capitalized.

First, many place names are capital NIMS that are pronounced the same. My teacher said that turkeys are not indigenous to Turkey rising like a Phoenix over the Valley. The Phoenix sun was punishingly hot many months and other capitalized proper nouns in English are capital NIMS. Besides August, we have, I may go to Europe in May and the military March is in March.

Many capital NIMS are eponymous, meaning they are also people's names. For example, the bills are usually paid by my husband Bill. My cat-loving friend is named Cat. I don't want to sue my friend Sue, but her dog bit me. This summer, my cousin Summer is coming home from college. Filet mignon is Grammar Girl Mignon's favorite meal. Sorry, I couldn't resist. And also, not really. I mean, it's fine, but it's not my favorite meal.

Capitonyms can also differentiate between a set of things or objects and a specific example of it, as in, there are many types of Earth on the planet Earth, or there are 200 billion trillion stars in the universe, but the North Star is the most well-known. Many capitonyms are from political, religious, or philosophical terms. For example, I don't go to church every Sunday, but I'm a member of the Episcopal Church.

The candidate doesn't have many liberal views, even though he's from the liberal party. And finally, some capronyms have plain old secondary meanings, like his dad, who is by trade a mason, one who builds with stone, is also a member of the local masons, short for the Freemasons, a fraternal organization. Or a titanic, meaning huge or gigantic, vessel for its time. The titanic suffered a tragic fate.

And here are some examples of capitanims that are homographs or heteronyms. You'll notice that these pairs are all pronounced differently. For example, many place-name capitanims have different pronunciations. People in Reading, Pennsylvania like reading about trains.

Or she's sending a mobile to her cousin in Mobile, Alabama for her new baby. Or it's Rainier at Mount Rainier in the fall. And lastly, the weather was nice in Nice, France. Similarly, because people's names often have unique meanings, some of those capital names are pronounced differently, like the material Jean and the French name Jean and Herb with a silent H, at least in the U.S., and Herb.

For those of you who can't get enough of our new NIMH friend, you can find an extensive list in the online dictionary and language resource Wordnik, and you'll find a link to that in the transcript of this episode.

Now, you true language nerds, guilty, might be wondering if capital NIMS exist in other languages. The answer is yes, but among languages that use capital and lowercase letters, their frequency varies greatly. According to the language closet, in one extreme, German nouns are always capitalized. For example, the capitalized noun laut means sound, but the lowercase adjective laut means loud.

And the capitalized noun Morgan means morning, but the lowercase adverb Morgan means tomorrow. But languages that don't capitalize so many words, like romance languages, can also have capitanims, even if it's not quite as frequent.

In Italian, for example, Mesa with a capital M refers to a particular religious mass, while lowercase mesa means a general mass and is also the past participle of the verb mitra, used as a feminine adjective meaning placed or put. And traveling back to Lima, Peru, lowercase lima means file in Spanish as in a nail file.

Then, in Portuguese, the capitalized country Peru is distinguished from the lowercase Peru, which means Turkey. Finally, capitanims are only obvious in writing, so here are a few things to keep in mind.

If both words require capitalization, like at the beginning of a sentence, be sure to add context to make it easier to understand. And sometimes words are mistaken for capitanims when they're really just words that require capitalization or not, depending on how they're used. For example, seasons are lowercase, just like their noun and verb counterparts, like fall from grace or spring into action. But

but they are capitalized when they're part of a formal name, like the Winter Olympics. Next, specific academic courses are capitalized, like Biology 101, Sociology 201, but we don't capitalize general areas of study, like Biology Major or Sociology Class. And finally, professions or titles are lowercase when used in the general sense, like Family Doctor or the group's President.

but capitalized when referring to specific people with their name, like Dr. Squiggly or President Aardvark. So now you're armed with another NIMH to go with acronym, retronym, and more. What are some of the other captain NIMHs you've seen? Let me know on Blue Sky or in the YouTube comments. That segment was written by Susan Herman, a retired multidisciplined language analyst, analytic editor, and instructor for the federal government.

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We're coming up on the time of year when the President of the United States gives the State of the Union address to Congress. I got this message from Kate on LinkedIn about the assessment we pretty much hear every year. The State of the Union is strong. She says it feels redundant. The Union is what's strong. So why not just say that? The Union is strong. Why do we need the State of the Union? Even if we're not sure what the State of the Union is,

Even though she realizes it's never going to change, she wants to know why we say it this weird way. Well, thanks for the question, Kate. Until I started researching this, I didn't realize that it's only called the State of the Union Address the second, third, or fourth years of a president's term. The first year, since the president has barely been in office, it's called the Inaugural Address.

Presidents didn't always do it that first year, but Ronald Reagan did it in 1981, and presidents have been doing it their first year ever since. And don't blame Kate for getting it wrong. She actually asked this question last year, so it would have been the State of the Union Address. Sorry it took me so long to answer.

So this presidential update to Congress is actually mandated by the U.S. Constitution, which says the president, quote, shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the State of the Union, unquote. It doesn't have to be a speech. For many years, presidents submitted written reports. And it doesn't have to happen in January or February, but it does have to happen from time to time.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to actually use the phrase state of the union in one of his speeches in 1934. And Gerald Ford was the first to use the phrase the state of the union is in 1975. But then he actually said, not good.

I'm imagining that he got to the statement by thinking something like, I'm giving the address where I'm supposed to update Congress on the State of the Union. Well, the State of the Union is not good. Then in 1983, Reagan was the first president to say the State of the Union is strong.

And again, as with giving the inaugural address, subsequent presidents thought Reagan was on to something, and they have described the State of the Union with some form of the word strong in 29 of the next 33 speeches. So even though it was Ford in 1975 who started the trend of saying the State of the Union is something or other, it sounds like old-timey language to me.

For example, I can imagine reading something in a novel from the 1800s, like, the state of his situation was loathsome. And even though the phrase state of the union comes from the Constitution, you'll also see that both the phrases the state of the and the state of his were much more common in the 1800s than they are now, if you do a Google Ngram search.

Since archaic language tends to survive particularly well in ritualistic places, such as songs and prayers, and in legal documents, such as contracts and laws, it's not super surprising that presidents would be drawn to working in a phrase that appears in the Constitution. So thanks for your question, Kate. You're right that it would be much more direct to just say the union is strong.

But if tradition holds, we're going to keep hearing from presidents that the state of the union is strong no matter what happens. Finally, I have a familect from Anna Maria.

Hi, Mignon. My name is Anna Maria Vona. I live in Philadelphia. Last name is V as in Victor O-N-A. That's Vona. I have a little familect story. It's hard to describe this. Usually when a girl goes all out and does everything like perfect, like things on Pinterest, Instagram,

that everything is just perfect, or you do a party with the theme and you take it to the nth degree. My little sister used to call it nee-nee, like N-E-E dash N-E-E. Like, it's also nee is when you see an obituary. It's, you know, Anna Maria DeFelice, Anna Maria Vona Nee DeFelice.

Chief Lisa Antonio, that was my maiden name. So in that respect, knee-knee was something my little sister made up when she was probably about seven or eight. And we would point to our knee and kind of with our index finger and kind of move it around and go knee-knee. So if you did like your Christmas wrapping paper was just like perfect and it's a candy cane maybe.

pattern and you put candy canes on top, that would be like me, me or having mostly used for parties.

decorating, you know, decorating cakes, just doing it to the nth degree. And it's also a hallmark of what we did in our family. And we would always try to outdo each other, especially around the holidays. And we'd go, nee, nee, nee. And then a couple years ago, during the pandemic, I was driving and I saw a license plate that said, nee-nee, N-E-E-N-E-E. So I

I don't know if that was someone else's family act, but it certainly was a hit when I texted it to my family and we all got a good laugh. So that's my little story. The next time you see a friend maybe doing everything just like perfect and just say, "Neen, Neen." And that was how we conveyed over the top stuff.

Thank you. Bye-bye. How funny. Thanks a lot, Anna Maria. If you want to share the story of a word you use with your family or friends that's just an insider thing that nobody else would know, your familect, you can send it to me through a voice chat on WhatsApp, or you can call the voicemail line at 83-321-4GIRL. And both of those are in the show notes.

Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Davina Tomlin in marketing, Holly Hutchings in digital operations, Dan Feierabend in audio, Brandon Goetsches, director of podcasts, Morgan Christensen in advertising, and Nat Hoops in marketing, who is a diehard Kansas basketball fan. And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl, and author of the tip of day book, The Grammar Daily. That's all. Thanks for listening.

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