Andy’s Wordshop

Draught or draft? This is the difference between British and American spellings of the same word, and the American version is more practical as it gives you the pronunciation of both words. Whatever the sense in which it is used though, the meaning is always connected with the idea of pulling. Consider draught/draft beer: the traditional way of getting beer out of a barrel in the pub cellar is not by polluting it with gas, but by means of a piston in a vertical tube operated by the bar staff pulling a tall pump handle behind the bar to lift the piston full of beer up to the tap. So čapované pivo would literally be ťahané pivo in England. Then think about ice-hockey players who are drafted into an NHL team, and again you get the idea that they are pulled into the new team. In fact I think the Slovak word is lanariť…

Tricky Words in this week‘s OVI

Executive. The basic meaning of this word is “somebody who produces a result”, or otherwise “somebody who causes things to be done”. So a company executive is a higher-sounding expression for manager, i.e. somebody who leads other people in doing some work. The difference suggested by these words is that managers organize and persuade people, whereas executives snap their fingers and get things done. The upshot is that executives tend to be top managers in corporate nomenclature, which is possibly what has led to the translation of konateľ spoločnosti as company executive. Unfortunately this would mean that USSK has around 60 konateľov, which is obviously not true, so I suggest that konatelia spoločnosti should be called “company officers”.