Tram it
Tram
it
In Brief
Figure of speech. As Bloom considers going to see
Alexander Keyes about the ad, he wonders, "Now am I going to
tram it out all the way and then catch him out perhaps. Better
phone him up first." A few moments later, Professor MacHugh
watches Bloom's departure through a window while munching on a
biscuit and comments "softly, biscuitfully to the dusty
windowpane." Both of these striking expressions are examples
of what rhetorical theorists call anthimeria
(occasionally spelled antimeria or antimereia), the
substitution of one part of speech for another.
Read More
Anthimeria (AN-thih-MAIR-ee-uh, from Greek anti- =
against, opposite, instead of + meros = part) is
changing one grammatical "part" into another: using nouns as
verbs (the most common form), verbs as nouns, adjectives as
adverbs, and so forth. English lends itself very readily to
such substitutions, resulting in massive ongoing infusions of
new blood. Verbs like "to contact," "to shelve," "to
classify," and "to google" were once unheard-of. So, no doubt,
were nouns like a fisherman's "catch," a stroller's "walk," a
napper's "sleep," and the sport of "running."
Most of these neologisms bubble up from idiomatic
conversation and either become widely adopted or consigned to
the linguistic trash can. A smaller number are coined by
poets, singers, cartoonists, advertisers, and other writers
and remain preserved in artistic amber even if they do not
become staples of everyday speech. A line of e.e. cummings
reads, "He sang his didn't, he danced his did." Alexander Pope
writes, "Whether the charmer sinner it, or saint it, / If
folly grow romantic, I must paint it." The works of
Shakespeare, who probably practiced the trick more regularly
and boldly than any other writer in English, offer hundreds of
examples, maybe thousands. Lear says that "the thunder would
not peace at my bidding." Hamlet tells the players not to
"outherod Herod." Cleopatra threatens the messenger: "I'll
unhair thy head!"
Bloom's contemplation of whether to "tram it out all the
way" to Keyes's place of business––too far to hoof it,
but he could phone it in––seems like a natural enough instance
of what has become known as the practice of "verbing." (This
term practices what it preaches, since verb is a noun.) On the
other hand, the narrator's "biscuitfully" seems
self-conscious and even bizarrely inventive, turning a noun
first into an adjective and then into an adverb. But once one
decides how to pronounce and to understand the word, the
artifice begins to make some sense. For a person who is
chewing and gazing at the same time, the speed of the looking
tends to slow down to match the pace of the eating.
Anthimeria is one device that Robert Seidman helpfully added
to Stuart Gilbert's list. He cites "tram it" and
"biscuitfully" as examples, but could also have pointed to the
phrase "phone him up"––a verbing (to turn the gerund
back into a noun) that apparently sprang up not long after the
arrival of the telephone.
