A Dictionary of Cont..

meat 296
word and the noun it qualifies, as in a year-old
child. In this case, the form without s is generally
preferred, as in a two-year-old child. A
plural form is sometimes heard here, as in a twoyears-old
child. This is not literary English but
it is acceptable in the United States. No apostrophe
should be used here.
When a time word is not followed by a noun,
the plural form must be used in speaking of
more than one, as in a child two years old and
he has been away two years. In the case of time
words, the use of the singular form in constructions
of this kind has not been standard for four
or five centuries. It occurs in some of Shakespeare’s
plays but only “in the language of low
persons.”
The adjective old is often used in literary English
as the object of a preposition, as in a child
of a year old, at ten months old. This construction
is condemned by some grammarians, but it
is a standard English idiom.
QUANTITY
Names for measures of quantity, such as ton,
gallon, teaspoon, are also nouns and are usually
joined to other nouns by of, as in a ton of bricks,
u smidgin of salt. The singular form, but not the
plural, may be used as the first element in a
compound, as in a five-ton truck, a ten-gallon
hat. In any other construction, measures of capacity
require the plural form when speaking
of more than one, as in ten gallons of gas. But
measures of weight can always be used in the
singular with a numeral, as in three ton of coal.
In the United States the plural form is more
usual, as in three tons of coal. But the singular
form is preferred in Great Britain and is acceptable
in this country.
See the individual words and full; -ful. For
the use of the a in five dollars a visit, ten cents
a ton, see nouns as adverbs.
meat. A peculiarly American use of the word
meat is to attach it to the name of the animal
whose flesh is being considered as food. Crab
meat, for example, is standard (Crab meat is a
delicacy of which one easily tires. She was very
fond of crab-meat salad). Turkey meat is, perhaps,
questionable and hog meat is definitely
regional, its use being confined, for the most
part, to the mountainous regions of southeastern
United States. Horse meat (or more often
horsement), designating in some contexts, formerly
more common than now, what is fed to
horses, now generally means the edible flesh of
the horse. In this one instance the usage is accepted
in England.
meat and drink in the metaphorical sense of spiritual
sustenance (Such praise was meat and
drink to him) is a clich6, to be avoided.
Mecca is a city in Saudi Arabia. It was the birthplace
of Mohammed and is the spiritual center
of Islam to which every devout Mohammedan
hopes some day to make a pilgrimage. Hence it
has come to mean a place which constitutes a
center or goal for many people, but even in this
extended sense it is better to confine it to a place
to which people wish to go for some high or
solemn purpose or which represents to them
deep aspirations. It is all right to say Paris is the
Mecca of most sophisticated young American
artists. It is journalese to say Miami Beach is the
midwinter Mecca of well-heeled New Yorkers or
Palm Springs is the Mecca of the elite of Hollywood
and all who want to be seen in public with
them. And like all metaphors it cannot be used
in any sense that conflicts ludicrously with its
original sense. The writer who said that Rome is
the Mecca of all good Catholics may have meant
well but his statement would seem offensive to
millions of Roman Catholics.
mechanical. See equipment.
Medes and the Persians, laws of. As a term for
something fixed and unalterable, the laws of the
Medes and the Persians is hackneyed. Its use in
English is due to its being referred to in two
separate passages in the Old Testament (Esther
1:19 and Daniel 6:8) though very few who
employ the clich6 have any longer a knowledge
of that fact.
media in the sense of all of the means by which
products may be advertised-newspapers and
magazines, radio, television, billboards, etc.
(B. T. Babbitt Co., making a major switch in
media strategy, has scheduled an intensive newspaper
campaign this fall for its new household
cleaner, Bab-0 with Bleach) is a jargon word
that will probably have to be accepted as standard
in time. Some word is necessary in the
advertising world to describe collectively all of
the ways of advertising and this quite natural
extension of medium in its meaning of an agency
or instrument is too firmly established now
to be easily dislodged. See also medium.
mediocre means middling, neither good nor bad,
ordinary, average, commonplace. In a democracy
such words ought to be regarded as commendatory
but they are not. Every man likes to
regard himself as superior to others and a word
which says one is like most other men is regarded
as derogatory. Mediocre in common
usage certainly carries a pejorative implication.
It does not mean bad, but it definitely means
poor, feeble, and inferior. Very mediocre, though
often heard, is not standard. You cannot apply
an intensive to the ordinary or average. Of
course those who do apply it no longer think of
the word as meaning average but poor and hence
feel their intensive is justified. But until this
sense of mediocre is accepted as standard-as in
time it well may be--the use of an intensive is
improper.
meditate. See contemplate.
medium. The plural is mediums or media. The
Latin plural is used correctly in the rather ponderous
expression media of mass communication.
This is sometimes shortened to mass media.
The new form is then frequently treated as a
singular and given a new plural, mass medias.
Other Latin plurals, such as agenda and candelabra,
have become English singulars in this way
and that of itself would not be enough to condemn
the new term. This is particularly true
since the form medium is regularly used in connection
with supernatural matters. The real difficulty
with mass medias is that mass has here lost