Associate Provost in the Boston Globe!

Alex Beam’s end-of-the-year column in the G Section of the Boston Globe of Dec. 20 found room, while talking of mail he had received over the past year, to mention one reader’s snarky editorial comment:

Joel Relihan, a classics professor at Wheaton College, called me out for using the invented adjective “demi-chiasmatic’’ in a recent column, about Paul Krugman’ s observation that Newt Gingrich is “a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.’’ The adjective should be “chiastic,’’ Relihan wrote, “and it would be better to have the Greek prefix hemi- with a Greek word. As it stands, it looks like a non-Greek-student’s idea of what a Greek adjective should look like.’’

Touche.

Relihan adds, “I wrote back to thank him for mentioning me. I confessed that I was hoping that I would find my way into one of his columns.  I concluded by saying that I had lived in Massachusetts for almost 19 years but now, after such a nice mention in such a prominent column, I could finally say, ‘I have arrived.’ “