The name 'Garfield' is most commonly associated with the well-known orange cartoon cat who loves lasagna and has captured the hearts of millions around the world through comic strips, TV shows, and movies. Created by Jim Davis, the character made his debut in 1978 and quickly gained popularity due to his relatable, lazy, but lovable nature. However, the name 'Garfield' has a history that predates the cartoon feline.
The origin of the name can be traced back to English and Irish origins. In English, 'Garfield' is a surname derived from the Old English words 'gar,' meaning 'spear,' and 'feld,' meaning 'field.' The name was given to people living near a field where spears were used or where spears were made. It was also used as a placename in various locations in England, such as Essex and Berkshire.
As an Irish surname, 'Garfield' is believed to have originated from the Gaelic name ' Garbhin,' which translates to 'descendant of Garbhn.' The Irish word 'garbh' means 'rough' or 'rugged,' and 'Garbhn' was a given name used to describe someone with those characteristics.
The name 'Garfield' has been adopted as a given name for boys, albeit not as frequently as the surname or the fictional cat. Some parents choose the name for its vintage charm or as a way to honor a family surname. While it may not be as popular as other names, 'Garfield' holds a certain uniqueness that appeals to those searching for a distinctive name.
In conclusion, the name 'Garfield' is primarily associated with the iconic cartoon cat but has a linguistic background rooted in English and Irish origins. Whether you think of an adorable, lasagna-loving cat or a historical surname, the name 'Garfield' brings its own charm and individuality to those who bear it.
Alice's statement, "I hate Mondays more than Garfield," relies on the shared social knowledge that Garfield, the feline title character of Jim Davis's long-running comic strip, hates Mondays. (See here for visual proof.) Wally must surely share in this knowledge, given that he mentions Garfield's lasagna-appropriating ways in his response. And yet he is intentionally misinterpreting Alice, with the hope that being uncooperative (in the Gricean sense) will mean that she's disinclined to speak to him further.
Wally's willful misinterpretation construes "I hate Mondays more than Garfield" to mean "I hate Mondays more than (I hate) Garfield" rather than "I hate Mondays more than Garfield (hates Mondays)." Thus it's similar to an ambiguous (or meta-ambiguous) sentence we discussed a few years back:
"I love ambiguity more than most people" is of course ambiguous, since it could mean "I love ambiguity more than most people (love ambiguity)" or "I love ambiguity more than (I love) most people." And in the case of some linguists, both of those propositions may have positive truth values.
@Viseguy err, no. It takes place on Monday (18th May). Wally's closing "One day down" means he's succeeded in not needing to talk to Alice until Tuesday. "Four to go" means he needs further similar ruses for the remaining four days of the week.
I don't find that odd; to me, "don't speak to me again until tomorrow" is off in much the same way that *"give the president it" is off, and needs to be rephrased as "give it to the president". If you're dead set against using an absolute time reference, I'd say "don't speak to me again for the rest of the day", but not "don't speak to me again until tomorrow".
Actually, I love ambiguity more than most people would not normally be ambiguous when spoken aloud. The misanthropic reading would have the main accent on people (I love ambiguity more than most PEOPLE) whereas the reading that acknowledges the odd interests of linguists would come out as I love ambiguity more than MOST people. It's probably possible to construct bizarre contexts where those associations of accentual pattern and intended meaning don't hold, but I think in most cases the observation is valid.
Ambiguous date mapping (due to tomorrow vs Tuesday),
When is "This weekend" the same as "Next weekend" and when are they different?
Does "This" get collapsed with the tense in:
"This weekend, I'm going to the car wash." vs "This weekend, I went to the car wash."
But what about "This" vs "Next" in:
"This weekend, I'm going to the car wash." vs "Next weekend, I'm going to the car wash."
This assumes that Latin declines the foreign name Garfield at all; I seem to remember that the Vulgate bible doesn't use case markers with the Hebrew names, which makes ambiguity even easier. But for this kind of comparison, the potential for ambiguity is built right into the language.
Oh for Pete's sakes, Johan, each and every one of us must make judgements about what is in other people's minds all the time! I love Thai food more than does my wife. I love T. H. Green more than most people do. Your objection is megalomaniacal.
Viseguy errs, yes. Often. Thanks for setting me straight. I probably couldn't parse it correctly because the older I get, the shorter my attention span for snark. And there's so much of that around these days, isn't there?
@ MIchael Watts:
OK, I didn't know that about the Latin ablative. TIL something!
My main experience is with Albanian, which does generally decline foreign names, at least in speech, and biblical Greek which uses the declined article with names. AFAIK the ambiguity is impossible in both.
Being unAmerican, I read the first pane literally.
Having no idea what's in any cat's head, let alone a cartoon cat I'm not exposed to daily ('the funnies' ceased in Australian daily newspapers years ago), I assumed one popular strip about human deadweights was having a go at another about a feline deadbeat.
Charles Garfieldis the author of the widely acclaimed "Peak Performance" trilogy: PeakPerformers, Team Management, and Second to None. Together,the three books -- which focus on high-performing individuals, teams,and organizations, respectively -- are a blueprint for managers pressuredto continuously improve while doing more with less. Garfield's workas a computer analyst and leader of a team of engineers, scientists,and support staff on the Apollo 11 project first led to his discoveryof the dynamics of peak performance. For over thirty years, Garfieldhas conducted a continuous study of business high achievers and theircompanies. As founder and CEO of Shanti Project, a volunteer organization,he inspired service excellence for peak performers of another kind:patients and families facing life-threatening illness. For his workwith Shanti, Garfield was named "National Activist of the Year." Garfield is thecofounding editor (along with Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard) of theexecutive newsletter Executive Excellence, is a strategy adviserto business leaders, and is one of the country's most-requested publicspeakers. He is a clinical professor at the University of CaliforniaMedical School in San Francisco and is CEO of the Charles Garfield Group,a consulting and educational firm specializing in organizational strategiesfor superior service, quality, and performance. Educom Review:You have spent a significant portion of your career studying peakperformance in individuals and organizations. What do you mean by "peakperformance," and how has it evolved over the years? Garfield:Through the 1980s, a peak performer referred to an enterprising, creativeindividualist. In my book Peak Performers (1986), I spelled outsix capacities or aptitudes of high achievers: missions that motivate,results in real time, self-management through self-mastery, team buildingand team playing, course correction, and change management. By the time mynext book, Second to None, was published (1992), my focus hadshifted to organizational redesign, and the definition of a peak performerhad changed from the enterprising individualist to the fully participatingpartner. The people who were peak performers had the ability to collaboratein cross-functional and self-directed teams. They had an understandingof interdependent systems, of networks of people connected by sharedvalues. That turned out to be a much more important capacity for highachievement in the 1990s than it was earlier. Educom Review:Are the enterprising individualist and the fully participating partnertwo different people, or has the peak performer actually evolved? Garfield: Thepeople who insist on purely individual strategies and yet have to workin rapidly changing interdependent systems, like corporations and otherorganizations, are often struggling badly. They don't collaborate wellbecause they haven't valued or developed that capacity. They need tosee that teamwork is necessary, that strategic alliances are necessary,that cross-functional work teams are necessary, and that redesigningthe corporation is necessary. All of those factors speak to the samereality: "If my end of the boat sinks, so does yours. And so we hadbetter learn how to work together at a very high level of competence,not just give lip service to it." Some have adapted well to this reality,some haven't. Educom Review:Are there examples of this new, evolving peak performer? Garfield:Oh, yes. My book Second to None is dedicated to these people.Entire businesses have become aware of this changing reality. We'removing toward an understanding of organizations as living systems, aninterdependent paradigm. Unless people are teamed to win within ourenterprises, nothing much will happen. World-class quality, superiorservice, high-performance sales, and high-achieving management all dependon superior collaborative skills. We must developprocesses based on the deep-rooted belief that we are all in this together.Unless we are linked by shared values, shared mission, shared vision,and a deep-rooted sense of collaboration, we can't win. We've thrownaround words like teamwork, collaboration, and interdependencefor years. But we have built organizational systems based on individualeffort. Our nation prizes individual success above all else. I'm notsaying that such individualism is wrong or irrelevant or that we haveto avoid it. I'm saying that the new peak performer needs to understandboth individual effort at the highest level and collaborative effortat the highest level. Educom Review:Does the individual-effort paradigm limit performance? Garfield:Sure. It limits quality. It limits service. If you don't get along withthe person you are serving, you are simply not going to provide excellentservice. So this "us vs. them" paradigm limits quality, service, performance,speed, innovation -- all the things we have identified over the lasttwo decades as being critical to success in a global economy. At thehighest level of productivity, all of those things are best served bya collaborative model that values both individual and team effort. Educom Review:Why do people perform better in peak-performing teams than they wouldindividually? Garfield:Because they have coworkers with whom they can brainstorm and innovate.Most innovation is collaborative, despite the fact that we still believethat Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and a few chosen people in theback room are coming up with major breakthroughs all by themselves.If I have colleagues to brainstorm with, if I have people on whom Ican rely for facts and strategies and tactics, and if we're all partof the same team pulling in the same direction toward shared missionsand goals, then we'll see what I saw on the Apollo 11 project,one of the greatest collaborative efforts in history. Educom Review:What strategies do you suggest to enhance peak performance? Garfield:There is no quick fix. There is no one perfect program, no one rightway. You have to come up with a system that constantly gets refinedand tailored, with innovation being the norm. You are constantly inthe design and redesign mode. I offer flexibleblueprints in my speeches, ones that we can adapt or adopt, test orignore completely. The strategy depends entirely on the fit betweenthat blueprint and the organization's needs. When we are serious aboutthe radical redesign of processes with an aim toward quantum leaps inperformance, flexibility is central to our success. Today there is toomuch change, flux, and fluidity to be rigid, to pretend that there isonly one right way. In fact, there is no single right way that you canimpose on any organization, no one canned quality or service programthat you can expect to work for everyone. Educom Review:What should organizations do first? Garfield:Organizations begin the process of transformation by addressing somebasic questions: What is our company's vision of the future? What valuesguide our actions as we move toward achieving our vision? What kindof organization do we want to create? Also, what business are we reallyin? What are our mission and goals? Educom Review:Are there signs that an organization is moving in the direction of transformation? Garfield: Yes.The organization adopts a fluid, flexible structure that accommodatesrapid change and generates continuous innovation. A new thinking isevident within the organization, a mindset that eschews the "one rightway" of doing things and that embraces change and reconciles oppositepoints of view. Educom Review:For many years, you've talked about having a sense of mission. Is thatmore important than ever? Garfield: Yes.The mission of the individual needs to align with the mission of theteam, which needs to align with the mission of the organization. Infact, I would take it further -- the mission of the organization needsto align with the mission of the society in which it is embedded andthe mission of the planet to which we are all indebted.Educom Review:Why is it hard for people to keep that big picture in their heads? Garfield:Most of us are dealing with a chronic state of present shock, tryingto get through the day. But everybody can ask, "To what degree is mymission in line with the mission of my organization?" If it isn't aligned,you're in for problems. If it is, your career will more likely prosper.Peak performers keep both the bird's eye and the worm's eye view inmind -- to think globally, and act locally. This is just as importantin managing a career or team as it is in managing an organization. Educom Review:Suppose you have a high degree of mission alignment; will that makea significant difference in the meaning and quality of your life? Garfield: You canbe maximally aligned, but if your work does not have a deep meaningand purpose for you, if you don't have a deep sense of appreciationand gratitude for what you are contributing and a deep sense of pridein what you do and what your organization does, then the quality ofyour life and work will suffer. I see that too much, unfortunately.That's what demotivates people -- the absence of meaning, purpose, andpride. The most powerfulhuman motivator of all is the desire to be proud of ourselves in thepursuit of something we care about deeply. Some day, we in businesswill learn to tap the same creative wellspring of human motivation andspirit that gets tapped in causes that human beings hold most dear.Then our best energies will be unleashed in pursuit of aims valued byorganizations and by the people who work in them. We will then havea far more ennobling view of business and work -- a view that allowsus to see our efforts as powerful contributions to the life of our nationsand to the life of the natural environment on which we depend.
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