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Getting down to the bone

Q: In Joe Biden’s first visit to the Mideast as president, he said the connection between the Israeli and American people was “bone-deep.” Is that another Scrantonism?

A: No, “bone-deep” is not a Scrantonism from President Biden’s early childhood in Pennsylvania. Nor is it an American regionalism. Although the term was first recorded in New England, it has appeared in writing in the US and the UK since the 19th century.

Interestingly, two similar expressions are much older, “to the bone,” which dates back to Anglo-Saxon days, and “skin-deep,” which showed up in England in the early 17th century.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “bone-deep” literally as “to a depth that reaches or exposes a bone” and figuratively as “to the core” or “very deeply.”

When the term first appeared, it was an adverb used figuratively. The earliest OED example, which we’ve expanded, is from a Jan. 28, 1839, letter by H. W. Green, a former editor of The Eastern Argus in Portland, ME, to Francis O. J. Smith, a congressman from Maine.

In response to a letter from Smith to another Maine newspaper, The Frankfort Intelligencer, Green says he’s “branding bone-deep upon your forehead, if the records of infamy already written there have left space sufficient, a word which I would never use in controversy with a gentleman—the word LIAR!”

The dictionary’s next adverbial citation, another figurative use, is from “Modern Logicians,” an 1861 article by Sir William Hamilton in The British Controversialist and Literary Magazine, London:

“The trenchant weapon of the consummate analyst is pointed to the flaw in the mailed armour of his opponents, and he cuts bone-deep into the seemingly secure harness.”

The OED’s first example for “bone-deep” used adjectivally is figurative too. We’ve expanded the citation to give it context:

“We who were in and of the army could feel an instant and bone-deep change in the men around us when it became known that Field-Marshall Lord Roberts was coming out to take command” (The Times of India, June 12, 1900).

The OED says “bone-deep” is “frequently figurative and in figurative contexts.” Most of the dictionary’s examples are figurative.

The earliest literal usage cited is from The Illinois Medical Journal, August 1904: “A bone-deep incision is carried from the femoral vein along the pubic ramus to the origin of the pubic spine.”

As for “to the bone,” the OED defines the expression this way: “right through the flesh so as to reach the bone. Frequently hyperbolical, or in figurative contexts.”

The first Oxford citation, which we’ve expanded, is from an Old English letter by Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham that includes what it describes as the torture of the Apostle John by the Roman Emperor Domitian:

“Domicianus hatte se deoflica casere, þe æfter Nerone þa reðan ehtnyssa besette on þam cristenum, & hi acwealde mid witum. Se het genyman þone halgan apostol & on weallendum ele he het hine baðian, for ðan þe se hata ele gæð in to ðam bane.” (“Domitian, the most devilish emperor after Nero, cruelly persecuted the Christians and reigned over them with torments. He commanded this holy Apostle to be taken & bathed with boiling oil, for hot oil pierces to the bone.”) From Ælfric’s Letter to Sigeweard, written in the late 10th or early 11th century.

The earliest figurative use of the expression in the OED is from The Proverbs of Hendyng, a collection of religious and moral advice written in verse around 1250: “Betere is þe holde loverd þen þe newe, þat þe wole frete and gnawe / To þe bare bone” (“Better is the old lover than the new, who will devour and gnaw to the bone”).

Finally the dictionary defines “skin-deep” as “penetrating no deeper than the skin; on the surface only; superficial, shallow.” When the term first appeared in the early 17th century, it was an adjective used proverbially to indicate the limits of beauty.

The earliest OED citation is from “A Wife,” a poem by Thomas Overbury describing the qualities a young man should look for in a wife: “All the carnall Beautie of my wife, / Is but skinne-deepe.” The poem was published in 1614, a year after the author’s death.

The dictionary’s first literal example describes a schoolchild’s injuries in playground brawls: “His wounds are seldome aboue skin deepe” (from New & Choise Characters With Wife, a collection of sketches by Overbury and others that were published in 1615 along with his poem).

We’ll end with a historical note: Overbury, who was a secretary, close adviser, and friend to Robert Carr, a favorite of King  James I, wrote the poem in an attempt to persuade Carr not to marry Frances Howard, the estranged wife of the Earl of Essex.

She and her family, led by the Duke of Norfolk, are said to have plotted against Overbury, resulting in his imprisonment in the Tower of London, where he died on Sept. 14, 1613. The Essex marriage was annulled 11 days later, and she married Carr, then Earl of Somerset, two months after that.

In 1615, a Yorkshire apothecary’s assistant confessed on his deathbed that Frances Howard had paid him £20 for poison to murder Overbury in prison. She, her husband, and four others were eventually convicted of the murder. The King pardoned the couple; the four others were executed.

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English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Language Phrase origin Usage Word origin Writing

As to ‘as to’

Q: Would you tackle the ubiquitous use of “as to” as the go-to substitute for “about”? I’ve noticed it among the students in my college writing class who are trying to sound “professional” (the current word for “formal” in the lingo of pre-professionals).

A: The phase “as to” has been used since the 14th century by many admired writers—including Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen, and Henry James—to mean with respect to, concerning, or about.

We see nothing wrong with the usage and neither does Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, which says “it is a common compound preposition in wide use at every level of formality.”

The earliest citation for the phrase in the Oxford English Dictionary is from Ayenbite of Inwyt (Remorse of Conscience), a 1340 Middle English translation by the Benedictine monk Dom Michelis of Northgate of a Middle French treatise on morality:

“Þe ilke þet hateþ his broþer, he is manslaȝþe ase to his wylle and zeneȝeþ dyadliche” (“he that hateth his brother, he is a man-slayer as to his will, and sinneth deadly”). We’ve expanded the citation, which is from a translation of La Somme le Roi (“A Survey for a King,” circa 1395), written for the children of Philip III by the Dominican Friar Laurent d’Orléans, the king’s confessor and his children’s tutor.

The usage is ultimately derived from the Old English eall swa (“all so”), an intensification of “so” and an ancestor through “progressive phonetic reduction” of the Modern English “as,” “so,” “also,” “as for,” and “as to,” according to the OED.

As far as we can tell, nobody was troubled by the usage until the early 20th century, when H. W. Fowler complained in The King’s English (1907) about the use of compound prepositions and conjunctions, notably “the absurd prevailing abuse of the compound preposition as to.”

Fowler was especially troubled by the use of “as to” before the conjunction “whether,” arguing that “if as to is simply left out, no difference whatever is made in the meaning.”

But in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), Fowler acknowledged that the phrase “has a legitimate use—to bring into prominence at the beginning of a sentence something that without it would have to stand later (As to Smith, it is impossible to guess what line he will take).”

Other usage writers have criticized “as to” as legalese and wordy as well as redundant before conjunctions like “how,” “why” and “whether.”

However, Merriam-Webster’s Usage notes that the phrase is not legalese and is less wordy than some proposed alternatives, like “concerning” and “regarding.” In fact, M-W says, “If we replace it with about, we have five letters, no space, two syllables. How much have we gained? Nothing.”

Yes, “as to” is often unnecessary, but we’re among the many writers who use it. We feel a phrase like “as to whether” may sometimes be less abrupt or more clear than “whether” itself. Here are a couple of Merriam-Webster examples that we’ve expanded:

“My uncertainty as to whether I can so manage as to go personally prevents me from being more explicit” (from an April 7, 1823, letter by Lord Byron).

“There ensued a long conversation as they waited as to whether waiters made more in actual wages than in tips” (from “May Day,” a short story in Tales of the Jazz Age, 1922, by F. Scott Fitzgerald).

And here are a few of the many M-W citations (some of them expanded) for “as to” used in other ways:

“As to the old one, I knew not what to do with him, he was so fierce” (Robinson Crusoe, 1719, by Daniel Defoe).

“Fanny had by no means forgotten Mr. Crawford when she awoke the next morning; but she remembered the purport of her note, and was not less sanguine as to its effect than she had been the night before” (Mansfield Park, 1814, by Jane Austen).

“And so you don’t agree with my view as to said photographer?” (from an April 1, 1877, letter by Lewis Carroll).

“There still remained my relation with the reader, which was another affair altogether and as to which I felt no one to be trusted but myself” (The Art of the Novel, 1934, by Henry James. From a collection of prefaces originally written for a 1909 multivolume edition of James’s fiction).

“When women were first elected to Congress, the question as to how they should be referred to in debate engaged the leaders of the House of Representatives” (The American Language, 4th ed., 1949, by H. L. Mencken).

As Merriam-Webster explains, “As to is found chiefly in four constructions: as an introducer (the use approved by Fowler and his followers) and to link a noun, an adjective, or a verb with following matter.”

The usage guide cites these four examples from conversations of the 18th-century man of letters Samuel Johnson (cited in James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, 1791):

“He would begin thus: ‘Why, Sir, as to the good or evil of card-playing—’ ‘Now, (said Garrick,) he is thinking which side he shall take.’ ” Johnson is speaking here with the actor David Garrick.

“Sir, there is no doubt as to peculiarities.”

“For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.”

“We are all agreed as to our own liberty.”

In the opinion of the M-W editors, “All of the constructions used by Dr. Johnson are still current. You can use any of them when they sound right to you.”

We agree, though some other usage guides have various objections. Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.), for example, says “as to is an all-purpose preposition to be avoided whenever a more specific preposition will do.”

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Rock around the clock

Q: I used to have a coworker who bragged that he “rocked” his opponents in bar fights, meaning he knocked them out or pummeled them. I haven’t heard anyone else use “rock” that way. Is there a history to this usage, perhaps a region where it’s common?

A: English has two etymologically distinct words “rock,” both dating from Anglo-Saxon times: a noun derived from rocca, medieval colloquial Latin for a large stone, and a verb of prehistoric Germanic origin meaning to sway from side to side.

We haven’t found a definite source for the rare fighting use of “rock” you’re asking about, but it may have been influenced by various senses derived from either the noun or the verb. Here’s the story.

When “rock” first appeared in Old English, it was a noun that was part of the compound stanrocca (“stone rock”), a pointed or projecting rock, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from the Latin-Old English Cleopatra Glossaries: “Obolisci, stanrocces.” Obolisci is Latin for “obelisks.”

(The glossaries, held at the British Library, are named for a bust of Cleopatra that sat on a bookcase where the manuscripts were kept in the library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton.)

The noun appears by itself in the next OED citation, which is from the lyrics of an early Middle English religious ballad about Judas, written sometime before 1275:

“Iudas, go þou on þe roc heie up-on þe ston, lei þin heued i my barm, slep þou þe anon” (“Judas, go thou on the rock, high upon the stone, lay thine head in my bosom, sleep thou anon”). From English Lyrics of the 13th Century (1932), by Carleton Brown.

When the other word “rock” appeared in Old English, it was a verb meaning “to move (a child) gently to and fro in a cradle, etc., in order to soothe it or send it to sleep,” the OED says.

The dictionary’s earliest  example, which we’ve expanded, is from a 12th-century homily about the Virgin Mary by Ralph d’Escures, Archbishop of Canterbury:

“On his cildlicen unfernysse, heo hine baðede, & beðede, & smerede, & bær, & frefrede, & swaðede, & roccode” (“In his childhood infirmity, she bathed him, and warmed him, and anointed him, and carried him, and comforted him, and swaddled him, and rocked him”).

John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins says the verb is derived from a prehistoric Germanic base reconstructed as rukk- and meaning “move.” Ayto cites similar words in other Germanic languages, such as the German rücken (“move”) and the Dutch rukken (“pull, jerk”).

The original cradle-rocking sense of “rock” has given us many other senses, including to shake physically (1300) or psychologically (1881), to disturb or “rock the boat” (1903), to dance to music with a strong beat (1931), and to “rock and roll” (1941).

It’s possible that the sense of shaking someone physically may have influenced the punching and fighting meaning of the verb “rock” that you’re asking about. But we’ve seen no evidence to support this.

Another possible influence is an entirely different verb “rock” that appeared in American regional English at the beginning of the 17th century with a violent slang sense. Derived from the noun “rock,” it meant to throw stones at someone or something—that is to stone them.

The Dictionary of American Regional English says the usage chiefly occurs in the South and South Midland regions, but the earliest DARE example is from a Philadelphia newspaper:

“ ‘Rock him! rock him!’ cried the boys, ‘rock him round the corner’ … The wearer was ‘rocked’ till he turned his cloak inside out” (Public Ledger, Aug. 30, 1836).

The earliest Southern example in DARE is an 1899 entry in a book about the regional dialect of Virginia: “Rock … To throw rocks. ‘You boys stop rocking’ ” (Word Book of Virginia Folk-Speech, 1912, by Bennett Wood Green).

However, we haven’t seen any evidence that the stoning sense of the verb “rock” inspired the fighting usage you’re asking about. In fact, we haven’t found any etymological or slang reference that notes the use of “rock” as to fight or punch.

However, Green’s Dictionary of Slang has two examples for “rock it” used to mean fight, an obscure sense that showed up in the early 20th century.

The first example is from Capricornia, a 1938 novel by the Australian writer Xavier Herbert, set in Australia’s Northern Territory: “Rock it into him, Darkey—you got him now!”

The next Green’s citation, which we’ve expanded, is from the American musical West Side Story (1957), with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Arthur Laurents:

“We’re gonna rock it tonight, / We’re gonna jazz it up and have us a ball! / They’re gonna get it tonight; / The more they turn it on, the harder they’ll fall!”

The word “rock” has many other meanings, as both a verb and a noun, but we’ll end with a fashion sense that evolved in the late 20th century from the original baby-rocking verb.

The OED defines this modern verb as “to wear, esp. with panache; to display, flaunt, or sport (as a personally distinctive style, accessory, possession, etc.).”

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from “Elementary,” a 1987 song by the hip-hop group Boogie Down Productions, with lyrics by KRS-One (Lawrence Parker) and Scott La Rock (Scott Monroe Sterling):

“Watchin’ all these females rock their pants too tight, / Cos there’s no other creative composition on display / That give a full analysis and rock this way.”

A more recent example that we’ve found is this headline from the Daily Mail (London, July 11, 2022): “Kourtney Kardashian rocks edgy black and white leather jacket and thick sunglasses while posing for mirror selfie.”

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Breaking up is hard to do

Q: I thought I knew the rules for hyphenating syllable breaks, but apparently not. For instance, I assumed that “qu” shouldn’t be split since it’s pronounced as a single sound. But my dictionary breaks “equity” as eq-ui-ty and “aqua” as aq-ua. Why?

A: First of all, the rules of hyphenation—that is, for splitting a word that breaks at the end of a line of print or writing—have little or nothing to do with how a word splits when spoken.

The “qu” combo represents not one sound but two (“k” + “w”), and as we’ll explain later, it’s often split, both typographically and phonetically. Our advice is to forget about figuring out the “rules” here, and grab a dictionary that shows both the typographical and the phonetic splits.

When you look up a longer word, you’ll notice that the word is split into divisions in two different ways.

Take the word “accomplishment” as given in Merriam-Webster online. The word is first divided as ac·​com·​plish·​ment, with mid-level dots indicating where it splits for typographical purposes. The word is then divided again for pronunciation purposes: ə-ˈkäm-plish-mənt. 

Note the difference in the two divisions. The first two syllables aren’t split the same way for writing and for speaking.

The difference is even clearer with the kind of suffixed words that break one way in print and another in speech.

For instance, “ending” is hyphenated as end·​ing but pronounced EN-ding. And “orally” is hyphenated as o·​ral·​ly but pronounced OR-uh-lee. The suffixes “-ing” and “-ly” are separate syllables for hyphenation purposes, even when they’re spoken along with a preceding consonant.

As for words spelled with “qu,” we haven’t found any authoritative explanation for when the letters are split typographically and when they’re not. But after consulting several standard dictionaries, we can give you an idea of the usual conventions.

(1) When “q” comes between two vowels—as it usually does—the hyphen can either precede or follow the “q,” regardless of the spoken stress or the vowel value (long vs. short) of the preceding syllable.

  • Written words in which the hyphen precedes the “q” include “aquarium” (a·quar·i·um) … “aquatic” (a·quat·ic) … “acqueous” (a·que·ous) … “equal” (e·​qual) … “equator” (e·qua·tor) …“equestrian” (e·ques·tri·an) … “equidistant” (e·qui·dis·tant) … “equip” (e·quip) … “equinox” (e·qui·nox) … “obloquy” (ob·lo·quy) … “sequester” (se·ques·ter).
  • Written words in which the the hyphen follows the “q” include “aqua” (aq·ua) … “aqueduct” (aq·ue·duct) … “aquiline” (aq·ui·line) … “equable” (eq·ua·ble) … “equity” (eq·ui·ty) … “equitation” (eq·​ui·​ta·​tion) … “equitable” (eq·ui·ta·ble) … “iniquity” (in·iq·ui·ty).

(2) When “c” precedes “q,” the hyphen divides the two consonants even though they’re pronounced together: “acquaint” (ac·quaint) …  “acquiesce” (ac·qui·esce) … “acquire” (ac·quire) … “acquit” (ac·quit). In speech, such words have just a vowel as the first syllable.

We’ve taken all of those “qu” examples from two standard American dictionaries: American Heritage online and Webster’s New World College Dictionary (5th print ed.). We used those dictionaries because they show where a hyphen would theoretically go after a single letter, something you’re interested in knowing.

However, the question of hyphenating a word like “equal” (e·qual) is merely academic. In real life, no typographer would break a word and start a new line after only one letter. As any editor, proofreader, or compositor knows, you never strand (or “orphan”) a first letter at the end of a line.

That’s why Merriam-Webster doesn’t show hyphenations after a single opening letter, even if the letter is pronounced as a separate syllable. M-W’s entry for “equal,” for example, leaves the headword whole and undivided. It splits only the pronunciation, which it gives as ˈē-kwəl. The message: The word is left whole in writing but is spoken in two parts.

Three M-W editors explain all this in a “Word Matters” podcast that ends with a discussion of hyphenation conventions. And they note that in practice, few people today need to know how a word should break at the end of a line because word processing programs do it for us.

This may be why fewer and fewer dictionaries today offer hyphenation guides, especially dictionaries that are published solely online. Even those that do offer hyphenation guides may differ in these matters.

For instance, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a British source, disagrees with a couple of the American hyphenations cited above.

Where the American dictionaries have e·qui·nox, Longman has eq·ui·nox; where the Americans have eq·ui·ta·ble, Longman has eq·uit·a·ble.

So choose your dictionary and don’t try to suss out the “rules.”

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The invisibilized man

Q: A young man I mentored uses the term “invisibilization” in a Fulbright study about unauthorized migrants transiting Costa Rica. At first I was taken aback by the usage, but now I believe it may be a brilliant term for dismissing a group of people. Your thoughts?

A: “Invisibilize” and “invisibilization” have been around for some time (the verb since the 1840s and the noun since the 1930s), but they haven’t made it into the 10 standard dictionaries that we regularly consult. Nor are they among the 600,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference.

However, the collaborative dictionary Wiktionary has entries for both terms. It defines “invisibilize” as “to make invisible; to marginalize so as to erase the presence or contributions of.” And Wiktionary defines “invisibilization” as “invisibilizing,” which it says is the verb’s present participle and is a term chiefly used in sociology.

We should add that “invisibilizing” is both a present participle (as in “that word was invisibilizing us”) and a gerund, a verb form that acts as a noun (as in “invisibilizing is a form of oppression”).

Although these term are often seen in scholarly writing by social scientists, they haven’t made the transition from academese to ordinary English, which is why they aren’t yet in standard or etymological dictionaries.

When the verb appeared in writing in the 19th century, it meant to hide. The earliest example we’ve seen is from a play first performed in London: “Where shall I invisibilize myself? Is there no friendly cupboard, or chimney, or coal-cellar?” (from Like Father, Like Son, an 1840 farce by R. J. Raymond).

As far as we can tell, the sociological sense of the verb was first recorded in the second half of the 20th century. The earliest example we’ve seen is from a book by an American sociologist about racism and sex:

“Historically, when black men and women came in contact with white men and women, whatever the occasion, the blacks had a fixed role to play, a rigid, docile way to act, in order to nullify (‘invisibilize’) the sexuality of their presence” (Coming Together: Black Power, White Hatred, and Sexual Hang-ups, 1971, by Calvin C. Hernton).

Since then, “invisibilize” has been used in many areas (gender, politics, fashion, music, religion, etc.) to mean exclude, ignore, erase, or dismiss.

The composer Ned Rorem, for example, has used it in discussing music and poetry: “Music, being more immediately powerful, does tend to invisibilize all poems except bad ones” (from Critical Affairs: A Composer’s Journal Unbound, 1970).

As for “invisibilization,” the earliest example we’ve seen is from God in a Rolls Royce: The Rise of Father Divine, Menace or Messiah? (1936), by John Hoshor.

The author writes that Father Divine, an African-American religious leader, coined terms “such as physicalate, omnilucent, intutor, invisibilization, contagionized, begettion,” and so on.

Interestingly, Father Divine appears to have used the verb “invisibilize” to mean disappear when the police came to arrest him in Milford, CT, in connection with a violent incident at his headquarters in Harlem. Here’s an account of the arrest from the April 23, 1937, issue of The New York Times:

“When the police of the Connecticut town found him, Father Divine first tried to ‘invisibilize’ himself behind the furnace. When that failed, he raised his right hand and said: ‘Peace, it’s wonderful.’ ”

Getting back to “invisibilization,” the sociological sense of the noun appeared a few decades later: “Many of the women reported a progressive sense of invisibilization as their graduate careers continued” (from Sex, Ethnic, and Field Differences in Doctoral Outcomes, a 1975 PhD dissertation by Lucy Watson Sells).

The usage reminds us of a sense of “disappear” that English borrowed in the 1960s from desaparecer in Latin American Spanish: to cause someone to disappear by arrest, abduction, or murder.

The OED’s earliest citation is from a Pittsfield, MA, newspaper: “One day, without explanation, he ‘was disappeared’ to Czechoslovakia, say reliable Cuban sources” (The Berkshire Eagle, Oct. 16, 1965).

The usage also prompts us to mention the use of “cancel” to mean boycott or withdraw support from those promoting unacceptable beliefs. The dictionary’s first example is from the script of a crime film: “Cancel that bitch. I’ll buy another one” (New Jack City, 1990, written by Thomas Lee Wright and Barry Michael Cooper).

And the first Oxford citation for the noun phrase “cancel culture” is from an Oct. 28, 2016, tweet by @unicorninkkon: “I hate cancel culture until I want to set things on fire!”

Will the OED ever add “invisibilize” and “invisibilization”? Perhaps, but only if more English speakers use them and give the usage greater visibility.

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