An evocative noun in reference to old-fashioned desk ink wells dipped into by quills or ink pens – an inkhornist is a pedant of words, while the phrase smelling of the inkhorn refers to be being excessively pedantic with language or grammar. But how does it shape up in song?
Is this a derogatory term? Not necessarily, as the protection of correct language, punctuation is an honourable pursuit, but perhaps it’s the style and tone in which it is carried out which is key. So then, a few song related examples, often done so with humour.
Who better to start with then, than the wordplay of Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit, with a bit of train and bus pedantry on National Shite Day?
“I finally managed to reach the station
Only to find that the bus replacement service had broken down
After wondering to myself whether or not it should actually be called a train replacement service...”
Father John Misty, aka Josh Tillman, is always one to play with detail, and on The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apartment, he focuses on a female acquaintance’s loose use of an overused word ...
I just love the kind of woman who can walk over a man
And I mean like a goddamn marching band
She says, “Like, literally music is the air [she] breathe[s]”
And the malaprops make me wanna fucking scream
I wonder if she even knows what that word means
Well, it’s “literally” not that
Barton Carroll meanwhile gets tense, that is in the grammatical Past Tense sense , but by contrast the woman in his life, who incidentally dumps him even more of inkhornist herself and gains her master’s degree. Barton remains attracted to her because she’s so sharp, while he admits his grammatical shortcomings:
Now if I ask what's wrong
You say, "It's not you, it's me"
And if I ask who's him?
You say, "It's not him, it's he."
My sentence composition is so far from refined
My participles dangle
Like a fish on a line
And finally, a parody within a parody by a giant of comedy songs and Weird Al Yankovic with Word Crimes, who covers the annoying hit Blurred Lines with some apostrophe work:
Say you got an "I","T"
Followed by apostrophe, "s"
Now what does that mean?
You would not use "it's" in this case
As a possessive
It's a contraction
What's a contraction?
Well, it's the shortening of a word, or a group of words
By the omission of a sound or letter
Want to pedantically shared further examples of the inkhornism? Feel free to share anything more in relation to anything whether in music or wider culture, such as from film, art, or other contexts, in comments below.
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