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English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Language Usage Word origin Writing

A tale of two suffixes

Q: I have a question about how suffixes are chosen. Specifically, why did the noun/verb “impact” turn into an adjective by adding “-ful” instead of “-ive”?

A: You’ll be surprised to hear that both “impactive” and “impactful” can be found in standard dictionaries.

Merriam-Webster, for example, defines “impactive” as “having an impact or marked effect,” and “impactful” as “having a forceful impact: producing a marked impression.” It treats both as standard English.

M-W has this “impactive” example (which we’ve expanded) from F. Scott Fitgerald’s 1934 novel Tender Is the Night: “Feeling the impactive scrutiny of strange faces, she took off her bath-robe and followed.”

And here’s the dictionary’s “impactful” example: “Fashion loves a big expansive gesture, but a small one can be pretty impactful, too” (from an article by Mark Holgate in Vogue, Oct. 30, 2017).

The two adjectives were originally formed by adding the suffixes “-ive” and “-ful” to the noun “impact,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The noun is believed to come from the Latin impactus, the participial stem of impingere (to impinge). The OED adds an asterisk to impactus, indicating that it’s “a word or form not actually found, but of which the existence is inferred.”

As it turns out, “impactive” showed up nearly a century before “impactful” appeared in the late 1930s, but the younger term is by far the more popular now, according to Google’s Ngram Viewer, which compares words and phrases in digitized books.

The earliest example we’ve found for “impactive” is from The League’s Convert, an 1847 play by Henry W. Pearson about a king’s daughter who falls in love with a populist leader.

In this passage, she appeals to her lover to make peace with her father: “With philanthropic eye, review our race / As an impactive body, whereof they, / The members, serving the prime good of all.”

However that early literary example seems to be an outlier. The other 19th-century examples we’ve found are in technical works that describe the force of something, such as weight or wind or waves, on various structures.

For instance, the Scottish structural engineer William Fairbairn writes that the weight and speed of trains are “severe tests of impactive force on every structure, whether beams or bridges” (On the Application of Cast and Wrought Iron to Building Purposes, 1854).

As for “impactful,” the earliest example cited by the OED is from The Commentator magazine (June 29, 1939): “The coronation of a pope, the non-stop European crisis—these and kindred events become right-of-way news on radio—more immediate and impactful than even the front page.”

That example also appears in a 2019 post of ours about “impactful,” a word criticized by some language commentators. Although it’s standard English, we think many other words have more impact—“powerful,” “persuasive,” “forceful,” and so on.

As for the suffixes, let’s begin with “-ive,” which the OED says is derived from –ivus, a Latin suffix that formed adjectives when added to the participial stem of verbs (act-ivus, active) or nouns (tempest-ivus, seasonable).

The dictionary says the suffix is generally used in English to form words based on Latin terms with -ivus suffixes or to “form words on Latin analogies, with the sense ‘having a tendency to, having the nature, character, or quality of, given to (some action).’ ”

As for the English suffix “-ful,” Oxford says it’s used to form “adjectives with the sense ‘full of, or (more generally) having or characterized by (what is expressed by the first element)’. Also combined with verbs with the sense ‘liable or tending to —.’ ”

The OED adds that the suffix is derived from the Old English adjective full (“containing or holding as much or as many as possible; having within its limits all it will hold; having no space empty; filled to capacity”).

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots says the Old English adjective ultimately comes from the reconstructed prehistoric Germanic root fulla (full) and the Proto-Indo-European pelə- (to fill).

The OED notes that “in Old English the adjective full, like its cognates in the other Germanic languages, was frequently used as a suffix in combination with a preceding noun.”

In modern English, “-ful” usually combines with nouns derived from Old English or other Germanic languages (“harmful,” “tearful,” “frightful,” “playful,” “skillful”). But it’s also seen with nouns from Romance languages or Latin (“beautiful,” “colorful,” “fateful,” “graceful,” “masterful,” “tactful”).

Why have both “-ful” and “-ive” joined with “impact” to give us the adjectives “impactful” and “impactive”? And why does the more popular, “impactful,” link a prefix derived from Old English to a noun believed to come from Latin?

Why not? English is a Germanic language with many borrowings from non-Germanic languages, especially Latin, either directly or indirectly by way of French. We’ve written several times about this, including a 2018 post, When English met Latin.

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

The first exclamation point!

Q: You wrote recently about the increasing use of exclamation points. When did this overused punctuation mark first appear and who was responsible for it?

A: The exclamation point or exclamation mark first appeared in Medieval Latin in the 14th century, but its parentage is somewhat uncertain.

It was originally called a puncto exclamativus (exclamation point) or puncto admirativus (admiration point), according to the British paleographer Malcolm B. Parkes.

In Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (1993), Parkes notes that the Italian poet Iacopo Alpoleio da Urbisaglia claimed in 1360 to have invented the exclamation point:

“ego vero videns quod exclamativa vel admirativa clausula aliter soleat quam continuus vel interrogativus sermo enunciari, consuevi tales clausulas in fine notare per punctum planum et coma eidem puncto lateraliter superpositum.”

(“Indeed, seeing that the exclamatory or admirative clausula was otherwise accustomed to be enunciated in the same way as continuing or interrogative discourse, I acquired the habit of pointing the end of such clausulae by means of a clear punctus, and a coma placed to the side above that same punctus.”)

The translation is by Parkes, who found the citation in “Di un Ars Punctandi Erroneamente Attribuita a Francesco Petrarca” (“On a Punctuation Erroneously Attributed to Petrarch”), a 1909 paper by Franceso Novati for the Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere.

The passage cited by Novati is from “De Ratione Punctandi Secundum Magistrum Iacopum Alpoleium de Urbesalia in Forma Epistole ad Soctorem Quendam Salutatum” (“On the Method of Punctuation According to the Teacher James Alpoleius de Urbasalia in the Form of an Epistle to a Certain Teacher Salutatum”).

The first actual example of an exclamation point in Pause and Effect is from De Nobilitate Legum et Medicinae (“On the Nobility of Laws and Medicine”), a 1399 treatise by that “certain teacher” mentioned above, Coluccio Salutati, a Florentine scholar and statesman. The slanting exclamation point can be seen here, just after the word precor near the end of the second line:

This is the relevant passage in clearer Latin, with our English translation. It begins with the last three words of the first line:

“Ego temet et alios medicos obteso et rogo. repondete michi precor!” (“I am afraid and entreat you and other doctors, answer me, I pray!”).

As for the English terminology, the Oxford English Dictionary says the “punctuation mark (!) indicating an exclamation” was originally referred to as a “note of exclamation” or “note of admiration.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation uses both: “A note of Exclamation or Admiration, thus noted!” (from The Mysterie of Rhetorique Unvail’d, 1656, by the Anglican clergyman John Smith).

As far as we can tell, the term “exclamation point” first appeared in the early 18th century in a work by a British grammarian, classicist, and mathematician:

“! Exclamation-point is us’d in admiring, applauding, bewailing, &c.” (English Grammar Reformd Into a Small Compass and Easy Method for the Readier Learning and Better Understanding, 1737, by Solomon Lowe).

The term “exclamation mark” appeared a century later. The earliest example we’ve seen is from A Third Book for Reading and Spelling With Simple Rules and Instructions for Avoiding Common Errors (1837), by the American educator Samuel Worcester:

“How long do you stop at a comma? – at a semicolon? – at a colon? – at a period? – at an interrogation mark? – at an exclamation mark?”

The OED’s first example for “exclamation mark” is from A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), by the English lexicographer and grammarian Henry W. Fowler:

“Excessive use of exclamation marks is, like that of italics, one of the things that betray the uneducated or unpractised writer.”

In other words, the overuse of exclamation points that you mention in your question and that we discuss in our 2023 post is apparently nothing new.

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

Speaking of the silent final ‘e’

Q: I’ve long been curious about words that are spelled alike except for a silent “e” at the end: “dot”-“dote,” “fat”-“fate,” “hat”-“hate,” “not”-“note,” “win”-“wine,” etc. I suppose their etymology must be different. Why is their orthography so similar?

A: Your supposition is correct! None of those pairs are related etymologically. Their orthographic similarities are coincidental.

The adjective “fat,” for example, is derived from the Old English fætt and the reconstructed prehistoric Germanic faitjan (to fatten), while “fate” comes from Latin fatum (“that which has been spoken”).

Pairs like this are quite common in English, a big, diverse language with many coincidental similarities. As we wrote in 2018, English is a Germanic language that has absorbed words from dozens of languages (the major source is Latin, either directly or indirectly by way of French).

As for that silent “e” at the end of the words you’re asking about, the usage evolved over the centuries to indicate the pronunciation of a preceding vowel that can have different sounds.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the “e” at the end of a word following a consonant “is almost invariably silent.” And when it’s found in this position, “it has a number of different orthographic functions.”

One of these functions, the OED says, is to indicate “that the vowel in the preceding syllable is (from a historical perspective) long, as in wine (compare win), paste (compare past), where this is not already indicated by a digraph spelling, as in e.g. soonmean.”

In some cases, the dictionary says, the “final e is retained in spelling where a vowel has since become short, as in infiniterapine.”

Oxford adds that the “silent final is usually omitted before suffixes beginning with a vowel.” So the “e” of “dote” and “hate” would be dropped in the gerunds “doting” and “hating.”

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A chorus of exclamation points  

Q: I’m seeing a lot of exclamation points in greetings (“Good Morning!” … “Hello!”) and in expressing gratitude (“Thanks!” or “Thanks!!!”). Is there an overuse of exclamation points? I have a feeling it’s generational, the younger you are the more you use them. Sure would love your opinion.

A: We can’t tell you definitively that the increasing use of exclamation points these days can be attributed to young people. Much of what we read now seems to be overexcited, with exclamation points proliferating on almost every front.

Why the overuse of a punctuation mark that’s supposed to be emphatic to begin with?

It may be that a simple “Hello” in a greeting, followed by a comma or a period, no longer feels enthusiastic enough. Or a simple “Thanks” may not seem grateful enough. So the writer punches it up with an exclamation point—or two or three.

The use of a single exclamation point isn’t wrong in these cases, though it can seem overwrought if no real emphasis is needed.

However, using more than one exclamation point at a time—“Thanks!!!”—is going too far. It’s not good English and it’s entirely out of place in formal usage. (Of course, people don’t always use their very best English, especially in casual use with family and friends.)

In her grammar and usage guide Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English (4th ed.), Pat has a few things to say on the subject:

“The exclamation point is like the horn on your car—use it only when you have to. A chorus of exclamation points says two things about your writing: First, you’re not confident that what you’re saying is important, so you need bells and whistles to get attention. Second, you don’t know a really startling idea when you see one.”

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Is this ‘which’ dead?

Q: I’m curious about this use of “which” in a US Supreme Court opinion from April 30, 1934: “Upon the submission of the cause the appellant made a motion to amend its assignments of error, which motion is now granted.”  I assume “which” is used here to avoid ambiguity. Why isn’t it used that way now?

A: Yes, the relative adjective “which” is being used in that opinion (Dayton Power & Light Co. v. Public Utilities Commission of Ohio) to avoid ambiguity. Although the usage isn’t seen much these days, it does show up at times.

This more recent example is from an April 7, 2020, resolution by the Louisville, CO, City Council on holding electronic hearings during the COVID-19 pandemic under rules set by the Colorado Department of Health and Environment:

“Whereas, also on March 25, 2020, the CDPHE issued an Amended Public Health Order 20-24 Implementing Stay at Home Requirements, which Order has since been updated twice.”

The Oxford English Dictionary says “which” here is a “relative adjective, introducing a clause and modifying a noun referring to (and esp.) summing up the details of the antecedent in the preceding clause or sentence.”

The usage dates back to Anglo-Saxon times, when “which” (spelled huælchuelchwilc, etc.) was originally part of a prepositional phase that modified a noun.

The first OED citation, which we’ve expanded, is from a forged writ composed in the 12th century that purports to be King Edward the Confessor’s recognition of gifts by Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and Lady Godgifu (Godiva) to build a monastery in Coventry in the 11th century:

“For uræ Drihten on larspelle þuss cweþ, Gestrynaþ eow sylfum mid ælmesdædum madme hord on heofonan and wunnunge mid ænglum. For hwilcæ neodlicum þingan icc cyþe eow eallum þæt icc ann mid fulre unne þæt þa ilce gyfe þæt Leofric eorl 7 Godgyfu habbað gegiuen Criste.”

(“For our Lord says in the Gospel, ‘Enrich yourselves with almsgiving, gain a treasure in heaven and a home with the angels.’ For which matter, it is necessary that I make known to you all that I confirm with full consent the gift that Earl Leofric and Godiva have given to Christ in the same way.”)

The OED’s first citation for “which” used similarly by itself, as in your example, is from Confessio Amantis (The Lover’s Confession, circa 1390), a Middle English poem by John Gower. Here’s an expanded version:

“So sit it wel to taken hiede / And forto loke on every side, / Er that thou falle in homicide, / Which Senne is now so general, / That it welnyh stant overal, / In holi cherche and elles where.”

(“So it is well to take heed / And to look on every side, / Ere that you descend to homicide, / Which sin is now so general, / That it well nigh stands over all, / In holy church and elsewhere.”)

We don’t know why this usage is seen less often now, but English speakers have other ways to clarify a sentence like the one you cite.

Here, for example, is a somewhat less lawyerly phrasing of that Supreme Court opinion: “The motion of the appellant to amend its assignments of error is now granted.”

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Every man and every woman

Q: When you use “every” multiple times in a sentence, do the subjects still take a singular verb? For example, “Every man and every woman is/are entitled to fair pay.” The singular seems right, but can you help me understand why?

A: You can use either a singular or a plural verb when “every” appears one or more times in a compound subject joined by “and,” but the singular usage is more common.

As Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage explains, “When every modifies two or more nouns joined by and, there is mixed usage, at least, in part, because of the rule that compound subjects joined by and are both grammatically and notionally plural.”

However, “every,” the usage guide adds, “tends to emphasize each noun separately,” and “our evidence shows that the singular verb is more common.”

Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4th ed.), edited by Jeremy Butterfield, agrees that when “every modifies two or more nouns joined by and, the verb should, technically, be plural, according to the notion that compound subjects conjoined by and are plural.”

But “the more common pattern is for the verb to be singular,” Fowler’s says. “The principle at work presumably is that the verb agrees in number with the last stated subject.”

An example from Fowler’s: “Every shot, every colour, every prop, and every costume tells its own story” (Oxford English Corpus, 2001).

We’ll add that a search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which compares phrases in digitized books, indicates that the singular usage is much more common.

(Ngram Viewer doesn’t compare phrases longer than five words, so one “every” modifies two nouns in our searches: “every man and woman is” versus “every man and woman are.”)

As for the history of the usage, Merriam-Webster’s says “the possibility of nouns joined by and being considered individually and thus taking a singular verb has been recognized as early as Lowth 1762.”

We found this passage in A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), by Robert Lowth: “But sometimes, after an enumeration of particulars thus connected, the Verb follows in the Singular Number; and is understood as applied to each of the preceding terms.”

The use of singular verbs with “every” compounds was well established long before Lowth’s grammar book. Here’s an example from the late 17th century:

“So every man and every woman is to seek God for themselves; for he hath promised to be found of them that seek, him in uprightness of heart” (Truth Held Forth and Maintained According to the Testimony of the Holy Prophets, Christ and His Apostles Recorded in the Holy Scriptures, 1695, by Thomas Mall).

And here’s a much earlier plural example from a treatise by an English Roman Catholic priest who became an anti-Catholic writer:

“By popish doctrine every man and every woman of lawfull yeeres, are bound vnder paine of damnation, to the said confession” (from Thomas Bels Motiues Concerning Romish Faith and Religion, 1593, by Thomas Bell).

We’ll end with recent examples of the singular and plural usages from the Irish novelist John Banville and the Scottish novelist Andrew O’Hagan:

“As Nietzsche said, every man and every woman is an artist when he or she sleeps—we make up worlds” (Banville, speaking at the Dalkey Book Festival, June 18, 2022).

“Every man and every woman are their own Rosebud, and the web can’t hide it” (O’Hagan, writing in The Guardian, June 17, 2017).

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‘Which, yeah. Whatever.’

Q: Have you noticed that “which” is now being used as a conjunction, as in “The Fed raised interest rates again, which I’m not sure if it’s a good idea”? And no, I don’t mean “which I’m not sure is a good idea,” a usage you referred to in a recent post.

A: The use of “which” as a conjunction has been around a lot longer than you think, but only one of the ten standard dictionaries we regularly consult has an entry for it.

Merriam-Webster says the conjunction is “an introductory particle” used “before a word or phrase that is a reaction to or commentary on the previous clause.” The usage is labeled “informal” (used in speech and casual writing, though not nonstandard).

M-W has an example similar to yours: “This morning we have the monthly jobs report, which who knows if it will meet or beat expectations.”

In that example, “which” precedes a clause. In M-W’s other two examples, it precedes a word or a phrase that stands in for a clause:

“I have a very big reputation in Vancouver for being a sore loser, which, fair enough.”

“The remains had initially been misidentified as those of an ‘enormous, possibly human-eating eagle,’ which … yikes.”

The dictionary says the first known use of “which” in this sense dates back to 1723. It doesn’t cite a source, but M-W may be referring to “Mary the Cook-Maid’s Letter to Dr. Sheridan,” a 1723 poem by Jonathan Swift. Here’s an excerpt:

And now, whereby I find you would fain make an excuse.
Because my master one day, in anger, call’d you goose:
Which, and I am sure I have been his servant four years since October,
And he never call’d me worse than sweetheart, drunk or sober.

The Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, says this “which” is “used in anacoluthic [syntactically inconsistent] sentences as a connective or introductory particle with no antecedent.”

The OED describes the usage as “chiefly English regional, U.S. regional, and nonstandard.” As for us, we’d consider the usage nonstandard until a few other standard dictionaries join M-W and accept it as informal.

Oxford dates this iffy usage from the early 15th century, much earlier than Merriam-Webster’s first dating of “which” used as a conjunction.

The first OED citation is from The History of the Holy Grail (circa 1410), by the English poet Henry Lovelich. In this passage, the blind Mordreins asks Josephes to advise him where to retire:

“I wolde that ȝe wolden Conseillen Me Where I myht ben In place preve, Awey from this peple here that scholen ben trowbled In diuers Manere, whiche that were gret Noysaunce to Me Amonges hem thanne forto be.”

(“I would that ye would counsel me where I might be in a place of privacy, away from these people here that shall be troubled in diverse manner, which that were a great annoyance to me among them for to be.”)

The most recent Oxford citation is from The Ground Beneath Her Feet, a 1999 novel by Salman Rushdie:

“If this is your wish Mr. Standish which I’m offering no opinion then so be it, it’s your call. You change your mind you come and see me.”

In a related entry, the OED discusses a similar, more recent colloquial use of “which” to introduce “a comment, exclamation, etc., in response or reaction to a preceding statement.”

The Oxford citations for this usage resemble some of the M-W examples mentioned earlier.

The earliest OED citation  is from an Aug. 23, 2004, entry on The Food Whore, a now-defunct website: “He wasn’t happy with me. Which, yeah. Whatever.”

The most recent example is a July 31, 2021, comment on Twitter:  “People always talk about how attractive Charlotte is (which, fair point) but Nancy … sigh.”

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Was ‘it don’t’ once good English?

Q: I just finished Little Women, where the use of “don’t” for “does not” is the rule, even in the mouths of educated people. Any comment?

A: In the original text of Little Women, which Louisa May Alcott published in two parts (1868 and 1869), “does not” is contracted as “don’t” as well as “doesn’t,” but “don’t” is used more often, as in this comment from Jo to Mrs. March: “It was an abominable thing, and she don’t deserve to be forgiven.”

As it turns out, “don’t” was the usual contraction of “does not” for more than two centuries, but Little Women was written when the usage was shifting, and many a “don’t” was changed to “doesn’t” in later editions.

As Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary explains in a usage note, “Don’t is the earliest attested contraction of does not and until about 1900 was the standard spoken form in the U.S. (it survived as spoken standard longer in British English).”

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage adds that the use of “don’t” for “does not” had “unimpeachable status” from the 17th century through the 19th.

However, we should point out that some prominent 19th-century writers were hesitant to use “don’t” as an all-purpose contraction, as we’ll show later.

The M-W usage guide’s earliest written example of “don’t” used as a contraction of “does not” is from Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter (1676), a Restoration comedy by George Etherege:

Old Bellair: No matter for that; go, bid her dance no more, it don’t become her, it don’t become her. Tell her I say so.”

But we’ve found several earlier appearances, including this one from a sermon by William Bridge, an independent minister in England:

“If there be a stamp set upon silver, or gold, the mettal remains as it was before: But if a stamp be set upon brasse, it don’t make it silver” (The Works  of William Bridge, Sometime Fellow of Emanuel Colledge in Cambridge; Now Preacher of the Word of God at Yarmouth, 1649).

We’ve seen quite a few examples from the 18th and 19th centuries in which respected writers use “don’t” as a contraction of “does not,” including these:

“I hope so too, but if it don’t, it must be the Lords doing, and it will be marvellous in our Eyes” (A Dialogue Between a Dissenter and the Observator, 1703, by Daniel Defoe).

“Well then, said the Gentleman, I can’t answer for her Negligence, if she don’t; but she will send a Letter to you, Mrs. Jervis” (Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded, 1740, by Samuel Richardson).

“But never mind;—‘God save the king!’ and kings! / For if he don’t, I doubt if men will longer—” (Don Juan, Canto VIII, 1823, by Lord Byron).

“ ‘You needn’t be afraid of him, Jack.’ And the Colonel gave a look, as much as to say, ‘Indeed, he don’t look as if I need’ ” (The History of Henry Esmond, 1852, by William Makepeace Thackeray).

“I like to hear you speak well of your commanding officer; I daresay he don’t deserve it, but still it does you credit” (W. S. Gilbert’s libretto of HMS Pinafore, 1878).

However, some writers were apparently hesitant to use “don’t” as a contraction of “do not.” In Pride and Prejudice, for example, Jane Austen occasionally contracts “do not” as “don’t” in dialogue, but never contracts “does not.”

As for “doesn’t,” M-W Usage says the contraction first appeared in print in the early 19th century, and cites this example from The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), a verse satire by Thomas Moore:

“ ‘This must be the music,’ said he, ‘of the spears, / For I’m curst if each note of it doesn’t run thro’ one!’ ” (The passage refers to the piercing notes of opera music.)

We’ve found several earlier examples, though, including this one from The Dramatic History of Master Edward (1743), by George Alexander Stevens: “Yes; but who reads them for you? your landlord, doesn’t he?”

Although Merriam-Webster online says “don’t” was the standard spoken contraction of “does not” until the 20th century, some well-known 19th-century writers did indeed use “doesn’t” in dialogue. Here are a few examples:

“If you don’t rejoice at it, if it doesn’t make you happy, if you don’t encourage me, I shall break my heart” (Barchester Towers, 1857, by Anthony Trollope).

“ ‘Mr. Dick is a sort of distant connexion of mine—it doesn’t matter how; I needn’t enter into that” (David Copperfield, 1850, by Charles Dickens).

“It doesn’t affect the fate of the nation, so don’t wail, Beth,” Jo says about selling her hair for $25 (Little Women, First Part, 1868).

In the second half of the 19th century, some language writers, especially in the US, began attacking the use of “don’t” as a contraction of “does not” and favoring “doesn’t” instead, according to the linguist Karl W. Dykema.

Dykema cites many of these criticisms in his paper “An Example of Prescriptive Linguistic Change: ‘Don’t’ to ‘Doesn’t’ ” (The English Journal, September 1947). Here are a few:

“I am piteously entreated, by more than one correspondent, to say that ‘he don’t’ is bad English, and therefore I say it. But ‘he don’t’ for ‘he doesn’t’ is, I suspect, an example rather of phonetic degradation than of ignorance or defiance of grammar” (Everyday English, 1880, by Richard Grant White).

Don’t. Everybody knows that don’t is a contraction of do not, and that doesn’t is a contraction of does not; and yet nearly everybody is guilty of using don’t when he should use doesn’t” (The Verbalist, 1881, by Alfred Ayers).

Don’t for doesn’t, or does not. Even so scholarly a divine as the Rev. Dr. Bellows, of New York, employs the vulgarism four times in an article in the ‘Independent’ ” (Words: Their Use and Abuse, 1892, by William Mathews).

Dykema blames prescriptivist American grammarians of the late 19th century for the loss of “don’t” as an all-purpose negative contraction:

“The moral, I hope, is clear: We have through enormous effort accomplished something utterly useless. We have cast out from the standard language a construction which fulfilled the primary function of language—communication—with efficiency and propriety.”

Finally, why did “don’t” become a contraction for “does not” in the first place? The story begins in the 17th century, at a time when all forms of the verb “do” were unsettled, to say the least.

For one thing, “does” and “doth”—both spelled in a variety of ways—were competing for prominence, as M-W Usage points out.

For another, some writers used the bare (or uninflected) “do” as the third person singular. The usage guide cites Samuel Pepys, writing in 1664: “the Duke of York do give himself up to business,” and “it seems he [the king] do not.”

M-W suggests that the use of the uninflected “do” for “does,” as in the Pepys citations, may have influenced the use of “don’t” as a contracted “does not.”

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

What is ‘which’ doing here?

Q: I’m puzzled by this use of “which” on Yahoo Finance: “Oceana Group has seen a flattish net income growth over the past five years, which is not saying much.” Is “which” correct? If so, what is it doing here?

A: The word “which” here is a relative pronoun that introduces a clause referring to an earlier statement. The usage dates back to the 14th century and is standard English.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “which” here is “introducing a clause describing or stating something additional about the antecedent.”

The OED adds that the sense of the main clause is “complete without the relative clause,” so “which” is “sometimes equivalent to ‘and he, she, it, they, etc.’ ”

The earliest Oxford example, which we’ve expanded, is from a Middle English translation of a Middle French treatise on morality:

“He [þe messagyer of dyaþe] ansuereþ, he ne may naȝt zigge bote yef þer by heȝliche clom. Huych y-graunted, þus he begynþ. Ich am drede and beþenchinge of dyaþe.”

(“He [the messenger of death] answers, he may not say anything until he climbs higher. Which is granted. Thus he begins: ‘I am dread and a reminder of death’ ”).

The passage, written in a Kentish dialect of Middle English, is from Ayenbyte of Inwyt (Remorse of Conscience), 1340, by Dan Michel of Northgate, a Benedictine monk. (“Dan” was an honorific for a monk in medieval England.)

Here’s one of many examples we’ve found in Shakespeare: “Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, / Which we ascribe to heaven” (All’s Well That Ends Well, written in the late 1500s or early 1600s).

And the OED cites this modern modern example from James Dickey’s 1970 novel Deliverance: “While I was talking I looked him in the eyes, which was surprisingly easy to do.”

Most of the 10 standard dictionaries we regularly consult include this sense of “which.” Here, for example, is an excerpt from an American Heritage usage note:

“The relative pronoun which can sometimes refer to a clause or sentence, as opposed to a noun phrase: She ignored him, which proved to be unwiseThey swept the council elections, which could never have happened under the old rules.”

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage notes that some language writers once criticized the usage, arguing that “which” should refer to a specific antecedent. But M-W adds that “almost all modern commentators find it acceptable.”

In fact, as shown in one of the examples above, this “which” sometimes introduces a new sentence rather than a clause.

Here’s Pat’s nontechnical explanation of the usage in Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English:

Which Craft

Sometimes we start a statement with which to make a comment on the previous sentence. Which is perfectly all right, if the ideas are connected.

Orson saw himself as larger than life. Which was true, after he gained all that weight.

But which is often used in casual conversation to introduce an afterthought that comes out of nowhere.

He was a great Othello. Which reminds me, where’s that twenty dollars you borrowed?

Conversation is one thing and written English is another. When you write a sentence starting with which, make sure there’s a connection. Which is a rule that bears repeating!

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English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Language Linguistics Usage Writing

You’re doing what?

Q: TV and movie characters are turning the question on its head. “Why is the sky blue?” is now “The sky is blue, why?” My theory is that this linguistic atrocity began with Friends. Your thoughts?

A: The usual way to ask a question in English is to put the wh- word (“why,” “what,” “when,” “where,” etc.) or another interrogative at the beginning: “Why is the sky blue?”

However, the interrogative is sometimes put at or near the end of a sentence or clause to express surprise, ask for clarification, quiz someone, or refer to more than one interrogative. Here are examples:

(1) “You said what?” (2) “They’re coming from exactly where?” (3) “The first quarto of Hamlet was published when?” (4) “Who did what to whom?” All of these uses are standard English.

The words “what” in #1 and #4 and “whom” in #4 are interrogative pronouns that function as objects, while “where” in #2 and “when” in #3 are interrogative adverbs that modify verbs.

Linguists describe the use of an interrogative before a verb (the usual position of a subject in a declarative sentence) as “wh– fronting,” and one after a verb (the usual position of an object or adverb) as “wh– in situ.”

Here’s an example of a declarative sentence that answers the fronted and in-situ questions that follow:

“I [subject] am writing [verb] a short story [object].”

“What [object] are you writing?” (Here, “what” is fronted.) … “You’re writing what [object]?” (Here, “what” is in situ.)

Interrogatives that express surprise or ask for clarification often echo earlier statements. Here are examples:

“I’ll treat you” … “You’ll do what?”

“I just met her” … “You met her where?”

Although wh– interrogatives are usually fronted in English, they’re in situ in some other languages, like Chinese and Japanese. (Linguists use wh– to mean an interrogative even in referring to languages that don’t use the Latin alphabet.)

Getting back to your question, it’s possible that what you hear as “The sky is blue, why?” is actually a declarative sentence followed by a one-word interrogative sentence: “The sky is blue. Why?”

That’s standard English. It’s a more emphatic though less common way of saying, “Why is the sky blue?”

It’s also possible that the use of wh– in situ (putting the wh– word after the verb and at the end of a sentence) may be more common now, especially in movies and on television, where dialogue predominates.

We’ve found quite a few examples in searching the scripts of recent movies. Most of the ones we’ve seen express surprise or ask for clarification.

Here are a few from film scripts that studios posted for 2023 Oscar contenders:

The Banshees of Inisherin. Padraic: “I knocked on ColmSonnyLarry and he’s just sitting there.” Siobhan: “Sitting there doing what?”

Master. Gail (to Jasmine): “So you go back home and then what? Transfer to another college hoping it’ll somehow be different?”

The Fabelmans. Burt: “You already won, Mitts. I surrendered. I’m not taking the bait.” Mitzi: “Who’s baiting who? I said I’d take him for his polio shot the first five times you asked me. Didn’t I?”

Finally, use of interrogatives at the end of a sentence didn’t begin with Friends, the TV sitcom that ran on NBC from 1994 to 2004. It dates back at least to the 19th century and perhaps a lot earlier.

We’ll end with a 19th-century example from Anthony Trollope’s novel Barchester Towers (1857)Septimus Harding is speaking here to his widowed daughter Eleanor about Obadiah Slope’s unwanted proposal:

“ ‘But you’ll tell the archdeacon?’ asked Mr. Harding.

“ ‘Tell him what?’ said she sharply.”

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Let’s liven things up

Q: Are “enliven,” “liven,” and “liven up” equally acceptable? Is one preferred? “Liven up” seems a little colloquial for written communication.

A: The verbs “enliven” and “liven” and the phrasal verb “liven up” are all acceptable English and have been for hundreds of years. The two verbs showed up in the early 1600s and the phrasal verb in the early 1800s.

All 10 standard dictionaries that we regularly consult include the three terms as standard English. Not one labels “liven up” as colloquial, informal, casual, or conversational.

Although “liven up” does strike us as somewhat more relaxed than “enliven,” we wouldn’t hesitate to use the phrasal verb in all kinds of writing.

Some of the dictionaries say “liven” is “usually” or “often” used with “up.” In fact, all the examples for “liven” in the 10 dictionaries include “up”—sometimes directly after the verb and sometimes after whatever is livened (as in “liven it up”).

Although “liven up” is more popular now than “liven” by itself, the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, has contemporary examples for both usages.

The OED notes one significant difference in the use of the three terms: “enliven” is used only transitively (with an object) while “liven” and “liven up” can also be used intransitively (without an object).

The first of the terms to appear in writing was “enliven,” which originally was spelled “inliuen” (“inliven”) and meant “to give life to; to bring or restore to life,” according to the dictionary.

The earliest Oxford citation, which we’ve expanded, is from Contemplatio Mortis, et Immortalitatis (“A Contemplation of Death and Immortality”), 1631, by Henry Montagu, Earl of  Manchester:

“Consider Death originally or in his owne nature, and it is but a departed breath from dead earth inliuened first by breath cast vpon it.”

The OED says “enliven” soon came to mean “to give fuller life to; to animate, inspirit, invigorate physically or spiritually.” The dictionary’s first citation for this sense in from a treatise comparing theological and legal righteousness:

“The Divinity derives itself into the souls of men, enlivening and transforming them into its own likeness” (Select Discourses, 1644–52, by the English philosopher and theologian John Smith).

At the beginning of the 18th century, Oxford says, “enliven” took on the sense of “to make ‘lively’ or cheerful, cheer, exhilarate.” The earliest example is from a treatise on theology and science:

“Their eminent Ends and Uses in illuminating and enlivening the Planets” (The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, 1701, by John Ray, an English naturalist, philosopher, and theologian).

When “liven” first appeared in the 17th century, the OED says, it was used transitively in the sense of “to brighten or cheer, to animate; to bring energy and interest into.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from The New Covenant; or, the Saints Portion, a treatise by the Anglican theologian John Preston, written sometime before his death in 1628:

“Things liuened by the expression of the speaker, sometimes take well, which after, vpon a mature review, seeme eyther superfluous, or flat.”

The verb was first used intransitively in the early 18th century. The first OED example, which we’ve expanded, is from a July 24, 1739, letter in which the English poet and landscape gardener William Shenstone describes a conversation with his housekeeper, Mrs. Arnold:

“ ‘Why, Sir, says she, the hen that I set last-sabbath-day-was-three-weeks has just hatched, and has brought all her eggs to good.’ ‘That’s brave indeed,  says I.’ ‘Ay, that it is, says she, so be and’t please G—D and how that they liven, there’ll be a glorious parcel of ’em.’ ”

When “liven up” first appeared in the early 19th century, the OED says, it was used transitively in the figurative sense of “to give life to, put life into.”

The earliest example given is from “The Angel Message,” a poem in Recreations of a Merchant, or the Christian Sketch-Book (1836), by William A. Brewer:

“Hadst thou a thousand lives to live … and garden-sweat to tinct, / Or Calvary’s gore to liven up the sketch … ’twere vain indeed, / To attempt a lively portraiture of man / Freed from the guilt and power of sin.”

A few decades later, the phrasal verb took on the transitive sense of “to brighten, cheer, animate.” The first OED citation is from the novel  Bellehood and Bondage (1873), by Ann Sophia Stephens:

“If she isn’t too knowing, and don’t put on beauty airs, perhaps it might do. … This girl may liven up the establishment a little.”

Finally, the first Oxford citation for the intransitive “liven up” is from the January 1863 issue of The Continental Monthly: “Thus refreshed, although soaked to the skin, Francesco livened up.”

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

Gentlemen, God rest you merry!

Q: Which is the more traditional version of this Christmas carol: “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” or “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”? I see it both ways, but the one with “you” looks better to me.

A: You’re right—“you” makes more sense than “ye” in this case, as we’ll explain later. In fact, the original pronoun in that early 18th-century carol was “you.”

But that isn’t the only misunderstanding associated with the song. There’s that wayward comma too. Here’s the story.

Beginning in the Middle Ages, English speakers used “rest you” or “rest thee” with a positive adjective (“merry,” “well,” “tranquil,” “happy,” “content”) to mean “remain in that condition.” (The verb “rest” is used in a somewhat similar sense today in the expressions “rest assured” and “rest easy.”)

In the earliest and most common of such expressions, the adjective was “merry,” according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary. And at the time, “merry” had a meaning (happy, content, pleased) that’s now obsolete.

So in medieval English, the friendly salutation “rest you (or thee) merry” meant remain happy, content, or pleased. The OED explains it more broadly as “an expression of good wishes” that meant “peace and happiness to you.”

The form “rest you merry” was used in addressing two or more people, while “rest thee merry” was used for just one. This is because our modern word “you,” the second-person pronoun, originally had four principal forms: the subjects were “ye” (plural) and “thou” (singular); the objects were “you” (plural) and “thee” (singular). The expression we’re discussing required an object pronoun.

The OED’s earliest example of the expression, in 13th-century Middle English, shows a single person being addressed: “Rest þe [thee] murie, sire Daris” (the letter þ, a thorn, represented a “th” sound). From Floris and Blanchefleur (circa 1250), a popular romantic tale that dates from the 1100s in Old French.

As early as the mid-1200s, according to OED citations, “you” began to replace the other second-person pronouns. By the early 1500s, “you” was serving all four purposes in ordinary usage: objective and nominative, singular and plural.

As a result, the usual form of the old expression became “rest you merry” even when only one person was addressed. And it was often preceded by “God” as a polite salutation, with the meaning “may God grant you peace and happiness,” the OED says. The dictionary cites several early examples of the formula:

  • “o louynge [loving] frende god rest you mery.” From an instructional book, Floures for Latine Spekynge Gathered Oute of Terence (1534)by Nicholas Udall. (The English is presented as a translation of the Latin greeting Amice salue.)
  • “God rest you mery bothe and God be your guide.” From Like Wil to Like (1568), a morality play by Ulpian Fulwell.
  • “God rest you merry sir.” From Shakespeare’s As You Like It (c. 1600).

Soon after Shakespeare’s time, we find the formulaic “rest you merry” addressed to “gentlemen.” In plays of the 17th century in particular, it’s often spoken by a character in greeting or parting from friends.

The popular playwright John Fletcher, for example, used “rest you merry gentlemen” in at least two of his comedies: Wit Without Money (c. 1614) and Monsieur Thomas (c. 1610-16).

It also appears in several other comedies of the period, including works by the pseudonymous “J. D., Gent” (The Knave in Graine, 1640), Abraham Cowley (Cutter of Coleman-Street, 1658), Thomas Southland (Love a la Mode, 1663), and William Mountfort (Greenwich-Park, 1691).

In most of the 17th-century examples we’ve found, there’s no comma in “God rest you merry gentlemen.” When a comma does appear, it comes after “merry,” not before: “Rest you merry, gentlemen.”  This is because “rest you merry” is addressed to the “gentlemen.”

In his comedy Changes: or, Love in a Maze (1632), James Shirley has “Gentlemen, rest you merry,” a use that more clearly illustrates the sense of the expression and removes any ambiguity.

This brings us to the Christmas song “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”— the title as given in The Oxford Book of Carols and other authoritative collections. The oldest existing printed version of the song was published around 1700, though the lyrics were probably known orally before that.

As the OED says, “rest you merry” is no longer used as an English expression; it survives only in the carol. But the syntax of the title, the dictionary adds, “is frequently misinterpreted, merry being understood as an adjective qualifying gentlemen.” So the comma is often misplaced after “you,” as if those addressed were “merry gentlemen.”

In fact, the carol originally had no title. The words first appeared, as far as we can tell, in a single-page broadsheet entitled Four Choice Carols for Christmas Holidays with only a generic designation—“Carol  I. On Christmas-Day.” The broadsheet had no music, either; the words were sung to a variety of tunes.

The sheet was probably published in 1700 or 1701, according to the database Early English Books Online. Some commentators have said the lyrics existed earlier, but we haven’t found any documents to show this. The other three songs on the sheet are designated “Carol II. On St. Stephen’s-Day,” “Carol III. On St. John’s-Day,” and “Carol IV. On Innocent’s-Day.”  Here’s a facsimile of the front side, with “Carol I” at left.

“God rest you merry Gentlemen” (without a comma) is the first line of “Carol I,” and it later became used as the title. It appeared as the title in some printings of the carol by the late 1700s.

But well into the 19th century the song was sometimes referred to simply as “Old Christmas Carol” (in Sam Weller, a play by William Thomas Moncreiff, London, 1837) or “A Christmas Carol” (in The Baltimore County Union, a weekly newspaper in Towsontown, MD, Dec. 23, 1865).

For the most part, music publishers over the years have printed the title with “you” (not “ye”) and with the comma after “merry,” a form that accurately represents the original meaning. But in books, newspapers, and other writing the title has also appeared with “ye,” a misplaced comma, or both.

Why the misplaced comma? Apparently the old senses of “rest” and “merry” were forgotten, and the title was reinterpreted in ordinary usage. It was understood to mean that a group of “merry gentlemen” were encouraged to relax and be jolly.

The OED’s earliest example of the misconception dates from the early 19th century, where Samuel Jackson Pratt refers to “God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen” as “a time-embrowned ditty” (Gleanings in England, 2nd ed., 1803).

And why the shift from “you” to “ye”?  Our guess is that it represents an attempt to make the carol sound older or more “traditional.” (Not coincidentally, “ye” began appearing in place of “you” in 18th- and 19th-century reprints of those old comedies we mentioned above, as if to make them more antique.)

We’ve found scores of “ye” versions of the carol dating from the 1840s onwards in ordinary British and American usage.

A search of Google’s Ngram viewer shows that “you” versions were predominant in books and journals until the mid-20th century. But in the 1960s, “ye” versions began to rise, and by the ’80s they had surpassed the “you” versions. (Placement of the comma isn’t searchable on Ngram.)

Today, both the “ye” and the misplaced comma are ubiquitous in common usage, despite the way the title is printed by most music publishers and academic presses.

Perhaps the music of the carol bears some of the blame for the wayward comma. While the song has had several different musical settings, it’s now sung to music, most likely imported from Europe, that some scholars believe was first published in Britain in 1796. And the tune doesn’t allow for a pause before “gentlemen,” so the ear doesn’t sense a comma there.

As the music scholar Edward Wickham writes, “The comprehension of whole sentences of text, when sung, relies in part on the perception of how those sentences are segmented and organised.”

“The music to the Christmas carol ‘God rest you merry, Gentlemen,’ ” Wickham says, “makes no provision for the comma and thus is routinely misunderstood as ‘God rest you, merry Gentlemen.’ ” (“Tales from Babel: Musical Adventures in the Science of Hearing,” a chapter in Experimental Affinities in Music, 2015, edited by Paulo de Assis.)

One final observation. All this reminds us of an entirely different “ye” misunderstanding—the mistaken use of “ye” as an article. This misconception shows up in signage of the “Ye Olde Gift Shoppe” variety, an attempt at quaintness that we wrote about in 2009 and again in 2016.

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Why ‘it’s’ means ‘it is’ or ‘it has’

Q: I can’t stand the use of “it’s” for “it has” in writing. When I see “it’s,” I read “it is” and then have to translate this to “it has.” Am I too picky?

A: There’s nothing wrong with using “it’s” as the contraction of “it is” or “it has,” whether in writing or in speech. One can easily tell from the context which sense is meant, and both uses are long established in standard English.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, for example, says “it’s” has two meanings: “1. Contraction of it is. 2. Contraction of it has.” And Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4th ed.) says “its is the possessive form of it (The cat licked its paws) and it’s is the shortened form of it is (It’s raining again) or it has (It’s come).”

In fact, “it’s” has been a contraction of both “it is” and “it has” for hundreds of years, though “it’s” was once the usual form of the possessive adjective and “ ’tis” was the usual contraction of “it is.” Confusing, ’tisn’t it? Here’s the story.

In Old English (roughly 450 to 1150) and Middle English (about 1150 to 1450), the usual nominative or subject form of “it” was hithyt, etc. The usual genitive or possessive form (“its” or “of it”) was hishys, etc. The nominative it was seen only occasionally in Old English, more often in Middle English.

Here’s an early example of the nominative hit in Beowulf, an epic poem that may have been written as early as 725: “hit wearð ealgearo, healærna mæst” (“it stood there ready, the noblest of halls”).

And here’s an example of the genitive his in an Anglo-Saxon herbal remedy: “Gedrinc his þonne on niht nistig þreo full fulle” (“Drink of it, after a night of fasting, three full cups”). From the Old English Herbarium, a 12th-century manuscript at the British Library (Cotton Vitellius C. iii).

(By the way, “he” was he in Old English, “she” was heo or hie, “his” was his or hys,  and “her” was hire.)

Both “its” and “it’s” first came into use as possessive adjectives in early Modern English, probably because the older neuter genitive his was being confused with the masculine possessive his.

(We’re using the term “possessive adjective” here to describe a dependent genitive like “her” or “their,” and “possessive pronoun” to describe an independent genitive like “hers” or “theirs.”)

The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for “its” as a possessive adjective is from a late 16th-century translation of a collection of Latin anecdotes for clerics: “There stands a bedde, its death to tell.” From Certain Selected Histories for Christian Recreations (1577), by Ralph Robinson.

And the first OED citation for the apostrophized “it’s” used as a possessive is from the definition of spontaneamente in an Italian-English dictionary: “willingly, naturally, without compulsion, of himselfe, of his free will, for it’s owne sake.” From A Worlde of Wordes (1611), by John Florio.

Of the two versions of the possessive adjective—with and without the apostrophe—“it’s” was apparently the predominant spelling throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage. (In fact, “her’s,” “our’s,” “their’s,” and “your’s” were also possessives in early Modern English.)

The dictionary cites a half-dozen examples of the possessive “it’s,” including one from a Nov. 8, 1800, letter by Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra. We’ve expanded the citation, which describes the reaction of Austen’s neighbors, the Harwoods, on learning that their son Earle, a marine lieutenant, had accidentally shot himself in the thigh:

One most material comfort however they have; the assurance of it’s being really an accidental wound, which is not only positively declared by Earle himself, but is likewise testified by the particular direction of the bullet. Such a wound could not have been received in a duel.”

We’ll add this earlier one from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2, believed written in the late 1590s and first published in the 1623 Folio: “As milde and gentle as the Cradle‑babe, / Dying with mothers dugge betweene it’s lips.”

As Merriam-Webster explains, “the unapostrophized its was in competition with it’s from the beginning and began to rise to dominance in the mid 18th century.” M-W cites several language authorities to show how the usage evolved.

In A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), Robert Lowth gave “its” as the possessive form of “it.” But in The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), George Campbell gave “it’s.” In Reflections on the English Language (1770), Robert Baker preferred “it’s,” then switched to “its” in the 1779 edition. And in English Grammar (1794), Lindley Murray endorsed its.

As for the “it is” contractions, “ ’tis” appeared about a century before “it’s,” according to citations in the OED.

This is Oxford’s earliest example of “ ’tis” is written without an apostrophe (for the missing “i” in “it”): “Alas, tys pety yt schwld be þus” (“Alas, ’tis a pity it should be thus”). From Mankind, an anonymous morality play written around 1475.

The dictionary’s earliest example with an apostrophe is from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, first published in the 1623 Folio but believed to have been performed in 1606: “If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twer well, It were done quickly.”

Meanwhile, “it’s” had emerged as a competing contraction. This is Oxford’s first example:  “And ambition is a priuie [private] poison, It’s also a pestilens.” From Rewarde of Wickednesse, a 1574 poem by Richard Robinson.

At first, the competition of “ ’tis” and “it’s” was pretty one-sided. A comparison using Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books, suggests that “ ’tis” was the usual contraction of “it is” from the mid-16th century to the mid-19th.

In fact, the early dominance of “ ’tis” was even greater than the comparison shows, since the Ngram results include the use of “it’s” as a possessive adjective as well as a contraction of “it has” and “it is.”

Language authorities in the late 18th and early 19th centuries indicated a preference for “ ’tis.” Campbell, for instance, complains in The Philosophy of Rhetoric about what he considers the misuse of “it’s, the genitive of the pronoun it, for ’tis, a contraction of it is.”

And both Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1775) and Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) include entries for “ ’tis” (but not “it’s”) as a contraction of “it is.”

Getting back to your complaint about the use of “it’s” as a contraction of “it has,” the earliest example we’ve seen for the usage is from the 1623 Folio of King Lear.

In addition to the contraction “it’s” for “it has,” Shakespeare used “it” twice by itself as a possessive: “the Hedge-Sparrow fed the Cuckoo so long, that it’s had it head bit off by it young.”

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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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Imperatively speaking

Q: A sign in the bathroom of the ladies’ locker room says, “It is imperative that nothing but TP is put in the toilet.” Aside from the fact that a couple of other things also go in the toilet, shouldn’t this read “be put,” not “is put”?

A: A sentence like that is referred to as a mandative construction; it demands something. It includes a mandative adjective (“imperative”) that governs a subordinate clause expressing what’s demanded.

The two usual ways to write such a sentence are (1) “It is imperative that nothing but TP be put in the toilet” and (2) “It is imperative that nothing but TP should be put in the toilet.” A much less common and somewhat iffy version is (3) “It is imperative that nothing but TP is put in the toilet.”

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, says a mandative adjective can be followed by (#1) a “subjunctive mandative” clause, (#2) a “should mandative” clause, or (#3) a “covert mandative” clause. The term “covert” here describes a tensed usage with a hidden subjunctive sense.

“Clear cases of the covert construction are fairly rare,” the authors add, “and indeed in AmE are of somewhat marginal acceptability. In AmE the subjunctive is strongly favoured over the should construction, while BrE shows the opposite preference.”

The Cambridge Grammar includes many examples of the three types of mandative construction, including these: (1) “It is essential that everyone attend the meeting”; (2) “It is essential that everyone should attend the meeting”; (3) “It is essential that everyone attends the meeting.”

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Can you break a phrasal verb up?

Q: I often encounter a construction like this: “Senator Stephen A. Douglas pushed through Congress a law overturning the 1820 Missouri Compromise.” Is “pushed a law through Congress” incorrect? It seems crisper, less contorted.

A: Some writers, probably influenced by the old “split infinitive” myth, are reluctant to break up a phrasal verb like “push through,” and this sometimes leads to contorted sentences.

However, we don’t think that’s the issue here. Our guess is that the writer of the passage (“Senator Stephen A. Douglas pushed through Congress a law overturning the 1820 Missouri Compromise”) simply wanted to keep the noun “law” close to its description.

We agree with you that “pushed a law through Congress” is usually more straightforward than “pushed through Congress a law,” but we think the passage is more effective as written.

A phrasal verb, as you know, is made up of a verb and one or more other words, typically adverbs or prepositions: “break up,” “carry out,” “shut down,” “find out,” “give up,” “put off,” “try on,” etc.

There’s nothing wrong with breaking up a phrasal verb as long as it still makes sense: you can “shut down a computer” or “shut a computer down.” It’s a question of style, not grammar.

The phrasal verb “push through,” meaning to carry out something to its conclusion, showed up in late 19th-century writing, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary. The earliest OED example, which we’ve expanded, breaks up the phrase:

“If it is not pressing, neither party, having other and nearer aims, cares to take it up and push it through” (from The American Commonwealth, 1888, by the British historian and statesman James Bryce).

Finally, we’ve written several times on our website about the so-called “split infinitive,” a misleading phrase, since “to” isn’t part of the infinitive  and nothing is being split.

As we note in a 2013 post, when “to” appears with an infinitive, it’s generally referred to as an “infinitive marker” or “infinitive particle.” When an infinitive appears without “to,” it’s described as a bare, simple, or plain infinitive.

On the Language Myths page of our website, we note that writers have been putting words between the infinitive and its particle since the 1300s. It was perfectly acceptable until the mid-19th century, when Latin scholars—notably Henry Alford in his book A Plea for the Queen’s English—objected to the usage.

Some linguists trace the taboo to the Victorians’ slavish fondness for Latin, a language in which you can’t divide an infinitive. The so-called rule was popular for half a century, until leading grammarians debunked it.

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‘Got a screwdriver?’ … ‘I do.’

Q: If I ask a question like “Have you got a screwdriver?” and someone answers, “I do,” it sets my teeth on edge. I extrapolate that to mean “I do got.” Is that answer incorrect, or is it just me?

A: The use of “I do” in reply to “have you got” is a normal and correct construction in English. There is no “rule” against this common usage.

What’s thrown you off is the idiomatic verb construction “have got.” Both the Oxford English Dictionary and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language say “have got” here means “have” (in the sense of own or possess). Oxford calls it a “specialized” usage while the Cambridge Grammar calls it an informal idiom.

So in the type of question you mention, “have got” and “have” are interchangeable. And whether it’s worded “Have you got a screwdriver?” or “Do you have a screwdriver?” the question has several grammatically correct replies, including (1) “Yes I have” and (2) “Yes I do.”

Both of those are elliptical replies, in which the verb is stranded at the end. They might be expanded as “Yes I have [or have got] a screwdriver” and “Yes I do have a screwdriver.”

So as you can see, the “do” in reply #2 is elliptical for “do have,” not “do got.” As the Cambridge Grammar explains, the “got” in the idiomatic “have got” cannot be stranded at the end of a sentence. This means that in an elliptical construction with a verb at the end, an auxiliary like “have” or “do” is used.

Keep in mind that “have you got” is an idiom to begin with, so it’s not unexpected that the common reply—“Yes I do,” or “No I don’t”—should be idiomatic too.

Fowler’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.) says that in answer to a “have you got” question, the “do” reply is a familiar feature of both British and American English. Fowler’s, edited by Jeremy Butterfield, offers this analysis:

“Question: Have you got a spare room? Answer: Yes, we do. This apparently illogical use of do, replacing have as the auxiliary verb, arises because the question implicitly being answered is ‘Do you have a spare room?’ It is a common pattern in AmE and causes less surprise to British visitors than formerly, since it has also become a feature of BrE.”

In ordinary usage, rather than in the idiom, “have got” is the present perfect tense of the verb “get,” with “have” as the auxiliary (as in “I have got infected”). But in the idiom we’re discussing, the OED says, “have got” functions as the present-tense equivalent of “have.”

And “have” in the idiomatic “have got” is the main verb (not an auxiliary). So both grammatically and semantically, “I have got” = “I have.” In fact, the question  “Have you got a screwdriver?” could be rephrased more formally as “Have you a screwdriver?”

(We might add that many speakers find a sentence like “Have you a screwdriver?” to be excessively formal. Americans in particular seem to prefer questions phrased with “do” when there’s a direct object: “Do you have a screwdriver?”)

You might wonder why English speakers started using the idiomatic “have got” in the first place. After all, the simple “have” performed that function for hundreds of years, and still does.

As we said in a 2014 post, there are two theories about the likely origins of this usage, which dates back to Elizabethan times.

One is that the verb “have” began losing its sense of possession because of its increasing use as an auxiliary. Thus “got” was added as an informal prop.

The other theory is that “got” was originally inserted because of the tendency to use contracted forms of the verb “have.” So if a sentence like “I’ve a cat” felt unnatural or abrupt, one could use “I’ve got a cat” instead.

We should mention another familiar idiomatic use of “have got”—the one that means “must.” Here too, the “got” is not essential to the meaning. “I have got to leave” = “I have to leave” = “I must leave.”

And again, a “do” reply to this variety of “have got” question is perfectly acceptable: “Have you got to leave?” … “I do.”

The “have got” that indicates obligation or necessity is followed by a “to” infinitive, like “to leave.” (The other “have got” idiom, the one indicating possession, is followed by a direct object, like “a screwdriver.”) We wrote about this usage in 2010.

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Casting a little light

Q: Living a life in theatre, I cast actors, though I don’t throw them out the window. “Cast” is one of those verbs with the same form in the past and present. Interesting word, and with so many meanings. I could look it up in my Compact OED, but I can’t read the tiny print—even with the magnifier.

A: Yes, “cast” is an interesting verb, but it’s not always the same in the present tense, past tense, and past participle. The third-person present is “casts.” Some similar verbs are “bet,” “cost,” “cut,” “hit,” “hurt,” “let,” “put,” and “shut.”

You’re right that “cast” has a lot of senses, as both a verb and a noun. All of them are derived from the Old Norse verb kasta (to cast or throw), which first appeared in Middle English and took the place of an Old English verb with the same meaning, weorpan, the ancestor of “warp.”

But as the Oxford English Dictionary points out, “cast,” a Scandinavian migrant that replaced an Old English word, “has now in turn been largely superseded in ordinary language and in the simple literal sense by throw,” which began life as the Old English þrawan (thrawan), and originally meant to twist or turn.

Today, the OED says, “cast” has an old-fashioned air when used in its original English sense: “ ‘Cast it into the pond’ has an archaic effect in comparison with ‘throw it into the pond.’ ” But the word “is in ordinary use in various figurative and specific senses, and in many adverbial combinations, as cast about.”

When “cast” first appeared in the Middle English of the early 13th century, Oxford says, it was a verb meaning “to project (anything) with a force of the nature of a jerk, from the hand, the arms, a vessel, or the like.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from Hali Meidenhad (Holy Virginity,) an alliterative homily written around 1230: “Ha cast hire fader sone se ha iboren wes fram þe hehste heuene in to helle grunde” (“As soon as she [Pride] was born, she cast her father from the highest heaven into the deep of hell”).

The OED’s earliest example for the noun “cast” used in the sense of a throw is from the Wycliffe Bible of 1382: “If a stoon he throwe, and with the cast sleeth [slayeth], lijk maner he shal be punishid” (Numbers 35:17-18).

Interestingly, the noun “cast” showed up earlier in a figurative example that likened the Last Judgment to a game of chance where everything is risked on a throw of dice:

“On domesdai be-for iustise, þar all es casten on a cast” (“On doomsday before justice, there all is risked on a single cast”). From Cursor Mundi, an anonymous Middle English poem believed written sometime before 1325.

As we’ve said, the word “cast” has a great many senses, so many that the OED arranges the verb in 13 categories, though some of the usages are labelled archaic, obsolete, rare or dialect:

“I. To throw. II. To throw down, overthrow, defeat, convict, condemn. III. To throw off so as to get quit of, to shed, vomit, discard. IV. To throw up (earth) with a spade, dig (peats, a ditch, etc.). V. To put or place with haste or force, throw into prison, into a state of rage, sleep, etc. VI. To reckon, calculate, forecast. VII. To revolve in the mind, devise, contrive, purpose. VIII. To dispose, arrange, allot the parts in a play. IX. To cast metal, etc. X. To turn, twist, warp, veer, incline. XI. To plaster, daub. XII. Hunting and Hawking senses, those of doubtful position, and phrases. XIII. Adverbial combinations.”

Here are some of the more common uses of the verb that have evolved from its original sense of throwing, along with dates of the earliest OED citations: “cast out” (circa 1200), “cast into prison” (before 1225), “cast a fishing line” (c. 1250), “cast away” (c. 1325), “cast an eye, glance, look, etc.” (c. 1385), “cast off” (c. 1400), “cast aside” (1475), “cast molten metal” (1512), “cast about” (1575), “cast with plaster or the like” (1577), “cast a shadow” (1630), “cast the parts of a play” (1711), “cast some light” (1752), “cast adrift” (1805), “cast a stitch”  (in knitting, 1840), and “cast a horoscope” (1855).

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A sticky question

Q: The verb “stick” seems to have uses that don’t allow conjugation. You can say, “We got stuck in the elevator,” but not “The elevator sticks us.” Are there other verbs with one sense applicable only in the past tense?

A: In a clause like “We were stuck in the elevator” or “We got stuck in the elevator,” the word “stuck” is either a past participle or a participial adjective, depending on the meaning. In either case, “stuck” is a nonfinite verb form, one that isn’t inflected for tense.

When a state or condition is meant, “stuck” is usually a participial adjective in an intransitive clause. When an action is meant, “stuck” is usually a past participle in a passive transitive clause.

The “be” version is used for a condition or an action, while the “get” version tends to be used for an action.

You can expand the two elevator clauses above to make clear that the first refers to a condition (“We were stuck in the elevator all night”) and that the second refers to an action (“We got stuck in the elevator when the power failed”).

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language refers to the past participle in such uses as a “verbal passive” and the participial adjective as an “adjectival passive.”  Cambridge calls the two conditions “stative” and “dynamic.” It discusses “be” and “get” passives in more detail on pages 1429-1443.

The grammar’s authors, Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, cite several examples of adjectives derived from past participles but with special meanings:

“She’s bound to win” … “We’re engaged (to be married)” … “Aren’t you meant to be working on your assignment?” … “His days are numbered” … “Are you related?” …  “I’m supposed to pay for it” … “He isn’t used to hard work.”

For readers who’ve forgotten the terminology, a verb is transitive when it needs a direct object to make sense (“Beverly raises calla lilies”) and intransitive when it makes sense without one (“The yellow ones died”).

A  verb is active when the subject performs the action (“Gertrude grows lupins”) and passive when the action is performed on the subject (“The lupins are grown by Gertrude”).

When an active transitive clause becomes passive, as in that latter example, the former direct object (“lupins”) becomes the subject, and the former subject (“Gertrude”) becomes the object of a prepositional phrase, though the prepositional phrase is not always expressed.

As for the etymology here, when “stick” was originally used to mean fix in place it was an intransitive verb spelled sticiað in Old English. The Oxford English Dictionary says transitive uses “are typically recorded later than their intransitive equivalents and chiefly occur in the passive, as to be stuckto get stuck, etc.”

The earliest intransitive example in the OED is from the Old English Boethius, a translation made in the late ninth or early tenth century of De Consolatione Philosophiae (“The Consolation of Philosophy”), a sixth-century Latin treatise by the Roman philosopher Boethius:

“Gesihst þu nu on hu miclum & on hu diopum & on hu þiostrum horoseaða þara unðeawa ða yfelwillendan sticiað” (“Do you see now in how great and in how deep and in how dark an abyss of sins men of evil vices stick”).

The dictionary’s first citation for “stick” used as a transitive passive is from a letter written on Oct. 4, 1635, by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the English statesman Thomas Wentworth:

“When he saw the man and his horse stuck fast in the quagmire.” (Here “stuck” is a participial adjective.)

The OED’s earliest “be stuck” example is figurative: “It is Natural to men in the wrong to persist, and believe they take Wing when they are deepest stuck in the Mire” (from The Portugues Asia, John Stevens’s 1695 translation of a work by the Portuguese historian Manuel de Faria e Sousa).

And the dictionary’s first “get stuck” citation is from the transcript of an 1899 case before the New York State Court of Appeals: “If the logs get stuck we keep men there with pevies and work them through.” A “peavey” (the usual spelling) is a hooked lumberjack tool.

Finally, we should mention that the verb “stick” took on a bloody sense in Middle English when it came to mean “to impale (a thing) on (also upon) something pointed.” The OED’s first citation is from an anonymous medieval romance:

“And Þe bor is heued of smot, / And on a tronsoun of is spere / Þat heued a stikede for to bere” (“And he beheaded the boar and stuck the head on the end of his spear so he could carry it”). From The Romance of Sir Beues of Hamtoun (circa 1300).

Two centuries later, the verb came to mean “to pin (a person) to a wall, the ground, etc., by running a weapon through his or her body.” The first OED citation is from the Coverdale Bible of 1535:

“And Saul had a iauelynge [javelin] in his hande, and cast it, and thoughte: I wyll stycke Dauid fast to the wall” (1 Samuel 18:11).

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Clause encounters

Q: In retirement, I’m pursuing my interest in grammar. Right now, I’m studying noun clauses, but I can’t figure out the function of these wh-ever question clauses: “Whoever you ask, you get the same answer” … “Whatever you do, don’t lose this key” … “Whoever calls, he must be admitted” … “He’s an honest man, whoever his friends might be.” I’d appreciate any guidance you might give me.

A: These are not, as you suggest, “wh-ever question clauses.” They’re adverbial clauses—more specifically, subordinate clauses that modify a main clause.

This type of clause can begin with a pronoun (like “whoever,” “whatever,” “whichever”) or an adverb (“wherever,” “whenever”). But no matter whether it begins with a pronoun or an adverb, the clause functions as an adverb that modifies a verb or adjective.

When “whoever” is used to introduce a modifying subordinate clause, the Oxford English Dictionary says, it means “if any one at all; whether one person or another; no matter who.” And in similar use, “whatever” means “no matter what” or “notwithstanding anything that.”

So in your four examples, the modifying clauses are the equivalent of “no matter whom you ask,” “no matter what you do,” “no matter who calls,” and “no matter who his friends are.”

The same is true of the other “wh-” words: “whichever,” “wherever,” “whenever.” When they introduce a subordinate clause that modifies a main clause, they’re the equivalent of “no matter which,” “no matter where,” “no matter when.” And their function is adverbial.

Of the four clauses in your examples, three modify verbs: “get,” “lose,” and “admit.” They indicate the manner in which, or the condition under which, some action should or should not be performed. The fourth modifies an adjective (“honest”). It indicates how honest a person is.

Another indication that these are adverbial clauses is that you could substitute a simple adverb (like “regardless,” “nevertheless,” “nonetheless,” “notwithstanding,” etc.) in grammatically similar sentences.

The “wh-ever” words can introduce a modifying clause that’s the grammatical equivalent of these:

(1) A conditional clause (typically beginning with “if” or “unless”): “If you ask anyone, you’ll get the same answer”

(2) A concessive clause (beginning with “though,” “although,” “even though,” “even if,” etc.): “Even though you ask everyone, you’ll get the same answer.”

(3) A disjunctive clause (often constructed with “whether … or”): “Whether you ask politely or not, you’ll get the same answer.”)

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When Mom dies, is it your loss or hers?

Q: When I wrote my mother’s obit several years ago, the expression “we mourn her loss” stopped me, since the loss was ours, not hers. The usage doesn’t make logical sense, but I’m assuming it’s idiomatic and correct. Can you advise?

A: In a usage such as “we mourn her loss,” the pronoun “her” is a genitive adjective, not a possessive.

As we’ve written several times on our blog, the term “genitive” is much broader and includes many categories in addition to possession. So while a genitive construction may look possessive, it doesn’t necessarily imply ownership.

A genitive adjective—whether a pronoun or noun with an apostrophe—can indicate a wide range of relationships, including possession (“the boy’s jacket”); source or origin (“the family’s history”); date (“Wednesday’s mashed potatoes”); type or description (“a women’s college”); part (“the car’s engine”); measure (“a night’s sleep”); duration (“three years’ experience,” “a day’s drive”); or other close association (“a summer’s day,” “a doctor’s appointment,” “his death”).

In the case of “we mourn his loss,” the phrase “his loss,” like “his death,” expresses something associated with him.

Often genitive relationships can be expressed with “of” instead of an apostrophe or a pronoun that looks possessive. For instance, “the history of the family,” “the engine of the car,” “a night of sleep,” “three years of experience,” “a day of summer,” “the loss of him.”

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains in its entry on “his” used in genitive constructions: “In some cases the objective genitive is expressed periphrastically by of him (e.g. ‘his defence, I mean your defence of him, was well conducted’).”

In its entry for the noun “loss,” the OED includes a sense that’s been around since the early 15th century: “The being deprived by death, separation, or estrangement, of (a friend, relative, servant, or the like).” The OED adds that in context, “loss” often means “the death (of a person regretted).”

So this sense of “loss” is used in two ways. The “loss” can be associated with either the survivors (“Frank’s widow still mourns her loss”) or the dead (“Frank’s widow still mourns his loss”). Both of those are genitive constructions, but here we’ll concern ourselves with the second kind, in which “his loss” means “the loss of him” (that is, “his death”).

Most of the OED’s examples for this use of “loss” are genitive constructions with “of.” This is the earliest: “For los of frendes or of any þynge [thing].” From Instructions to Parish Priests, by John Myrc (also known as John of Lilleshall), probably written before 1420.

And here’s a mid-17th-century “loss of” example: “Ther be many sad hearts for the losse of my Lord Robert Digby.” From James Howell’s Epistolæ Ho-elianæ, Familiar Letters Domestic and Forren (1645). Epistolæ Ho-elianæ is also a genitive construction and means “Letters of Howell” in Latin.

This OED example shows “loss” modified by the pronoun “whose”: “[Died] John Case Browne, esq. whose loss will be severely felt … by the whole neighbourhood.” From a death notice in the Monthly Magazine, London, June 1798.

Elsewhere in the dictionary there are other examples, from the 18th century onward, of “loss” modified by pronouns that look like possessives (“her loss,” “his loss,” “their loss”). But in these cases, the pronouns refer to the dead, and the constructions are genitive rather than strictly possessive:

“But Posterity will do Her Justice, and perhaps the present Age may live to regret Her Loss.” A reference to the late Queen Anne in “English Advice, to the Freeholders of England” (1714), a political tract by Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester.

“His Adventures gave Life and Subsistency to the Colony, and his Loss was their Ruin and Destruction.” A reference to the death of Capt. John Smith, from The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia (1747), by William Stith.

“Though motherless, though worse than fatherless, bereft from infancy of the two first and greatest blessings of life, never has she had cause to deplore their loss.” A reference to the orphaned heroine’s parents in Fanny Burney’s novel Evelina (1778).

We’ll end with an example from Tennyson’s “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington” (1852): “Let the bell be toll’d … / And the volleying cannon thunder his loss.”

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Three degrees of separation

Q: How does one refer to the first degree of an English adjective or adverb? If the second degree is comparative and the third is superlative, may the first degree be called descriptive?

A: The degrees of English adjectives and adverbs are (1) positive, (2) comparative, and (3) superlative. Here, “positive” doesn’t have its ordinary meaning (the opposite of negative). In the grammatical sense, “positive” means basic or primary.

This is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines “positive” as a term in grammar: “Designating the primary degree of an adjective or adverb, which expresses simple quality without qualification; not comparative or superlative.”

The dictionary’s earliest example of “positive” as a grammatical term is from a 15th-century treatise by an English schoolmaster:

“Þe [The] positif degre … be-tokenyth qualite or quantite with outyn makyng more or lesse & settyth þe grownd of alle oþere [other] degreis of Comparison.” (From a 1434 work cited in “John Drury and His English Writings,” by Sanford Brown Meech, published in the January 1934 issue of Speculum, a medieval studies journal.)

As you know, many adjectives and adverbs change degree by inflection—that is, with a change in form. In this case, suffixes are added: “-er” for the comparative and “-est” for the superlative.

For instance, “little” as an adjective of size has the usual degree forms: “little/littler/littlest.” Similarly, the adverb “hard” has the degree forms “hard/harder/hardest.”  Here they are in sentences:

“He’s little (positive adjective), but he works hard” (positive adverb) … “He’s littler, but he works harder” (comparatives) … “He’s the littlest, but he works the hardest” (superlatives).

However, not all adjectives and adverbs work this way. Many aren’t inflected, as we wrote on the blog in 2018. To change degree, adverbs (like “more” or “less”) are added to them.

An adjective like “popular,” for example, would become “more/less popular” (comparatives), “most/least popular” (superlatives). An adverb like “easily” would become “more/less easily” (comparatives), “most/least easily” (superlatives).

There are also irregular adjectives and adverbs, where the positive, or primary, degree changes completely in the comparative and superlative. The most familiar of the irregular adjectives are “good” and “bad.” The gradations in degree are “good/better/best” and “bad/worse/worst.”

And some common irregular adverbs are “much,” which has the degree forms “much/more/most,” and “little,” which as an adverb has the degree forms “little/less/least.” Here they are in sentences:

“They were much offended” (positive) … “They were more offended” (comparative) … “They were most offended” (superlative). Here the adverbs modify an adjective, “offended.”

“He cared little about money” (positive) …  “He cared less about money” (comparative) … “He cared least about money” (superlative). Here the adverbs modify a verb, “cared.”

And speaking of “much” and “little,” they can be not only adverbs but adjectives of quantity. In that case, the adjectives can have the same degree forms as the adverbs: “much/more/most” and “little/less/least.”

Examples: “He has much/little money” (positive) … “He has more/less money” (comparative) … “He has the least/most money” (superlative).

Similarly, the adverb “well,” like the adjective “good,” has “better” and “best” as its comparative and superlative: “Your solution works well, his works better, but mine works best.”

By the way, you’ll notice that superlatives are often preceded by “the,” as in “He’s better, but you’re the best.” In its entries for many superlative adjectives and adverbs, the OED says they’re “frequently” or “chiefly” or “usually” accompanied by “the.”

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Why ‘any other’ doesn’t mean ‘any’

Q: I become a little apoplectic (alright, my husband would say very apoplectic) whenever I hear or read “any other” illogically cropped to “any,” as in this passage from Timothy Snyder’s newsletter: “Russia has done more for the cause of nuclear proliferation than any country in the world.” Am I being needlessly pedantic?

A: No, we don’t think you’re being pedantic. That sentence from the Yale historian’s newsletter is dissonant to us too, though it doesn’t give us apoplexy.

The comparison is off-kilter because it contrasts an individual entity (“Russia”) with a group it belongs to (“any country in the world”). The two have to be exclusive for the comparison to make sense: “Russia” vs. “any other country in the world.”

Faulty comparisons like that one aren’t rare. And they don’t cause misunderstandings as long as we know—as we do with that example—what the writer intends. He doesn’t mean to imply that Russia isn’t a country.

However, not all comparisons using “any” instead of “any other” are as easy for a reader to interpret. Some can be ambiguous and leave us wondering. We’ll make up an example:

“She is better qualified than any European candidate.” If we don’t know anything about the person, we might assume she’s not European. But if she is European, this is a misleading comparison that should read, “She is better qualified than any other European candidate.”

What purpose does “other” serve here? It separates the individual from the group, allowing for a legitimate comparison.

Not many usage guides comment on this. An exception is Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4th ed.). The editor, Jeremy Butterfield, says that comparisons using “any” can be marred by “a fine net of illogicality.”

He uses this example, then corrects it: “a better book than any written by this author (read any others).”

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The poop about a mass noun

Q: I came across your “waste paper” posting online, but it didn’t answer a question that’s been puzzling me. Which is correct, “bodily waste” or “bodily wastes”? I’m referring to the undigested food eliminated by human beings.

A: When “waste” refers to an unusable or unwanted byproduct, such as “bodily waste” or “industrial waste,” it’s usually a mass or uncountable noun, one that doesn’t typically have a plural form (like “air,” “knowledge,” “water,” etc.). However, the plural is sometimes used to make clear that different kinds of waste are intended.

We’ve seen written examples of both “bodily waste” and “bodily wastes,” but the “waste” version is much more common in comparisons done with Googles’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks digitized books, and the News on the Web corpus, a database from online newspapers and magazines.

“Waste” is also a mass noun when it refers to the unnecessary use of resources, as in a “waste” of time, money, electricity, and so on. And “wastes” is a mass noun in plural form when it refers to a large, barren area, such as the “the icy wastes of Antarctica” or “the arid wastes of the Sahara.”

Interestingly, the noun “waste” had that barren sense when it first appeared 800 years ago. As John Ayto explains in his Dictionary of Word Origins, the “etymological notions underlying waste are ‘emptiness’ and ‘desolation.’ ” Ayto says the source of the English word is the classical Latin vastus (empty),  which has also given English “vast” and “devastate.”

When the noun entered Middle English around 1200, it meant an “uninhabited (or sparsely inhabited) and uncultivated country; a wild and desolate region, a desert, wilderness,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The first OED citation is from the Trinity Homilies at the University of Cambridge:

“Ac seðen hie henen wenden, atlai þai lond unwend and bicam waste, and was roted oueral and swo bicam wildernesse” (“But it’s true that after they [the old tillers] left, the land lay idle and untilled and became a waste, and took root all over and so became a wilderness”). The citation is from a homily on the Assumption of Mary that compares the sinful world to a field not tilled.

The OED, an etymological dictionary, notes that an even older, now obsolete adjective had a similar meaning in Old English: “Of a place: uninhabited and uncultivated; wild, desolate, waste.” The Anglo-Saxon term (woeste, woste, wæste, etc.) comes from prehistoric Germanic, but it’s ultimately derived from the same Indo-European root as vastus, the Latin source of “waste.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation for the Anglo-Saxon adjective is from Psalm 69:25 in the Vespasian Psalter, an eighth-century illuminated manuscript written in Latin as well as Old English:

Fiat habitatio eorum deserta, et in tabernaculis eorum non sit qui inhabitet. Sie eardung heara woestu & in geteldum heara ne sie se ineardie” (“Let their dwelling place be desolate [deserta in Latin and woestu in Old English], and let no one dwell in their tents”).

Getting back to the noun “waste,” its sense of a “useless expenditure or consumption, squandering (of money, goods, time, effort, etc.)” appeared in late 13th-century Middle English. The dictionary’s first citation is from The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester (1297), an account of early Britain: “Wiþ so gret prute & wast & so richeliche” (“With such great pride and waste and so richly”).

The sense of “waste” as trash, including an unusable or unwanted byproduct, was recorded in the early 15th century. The earliest OED example is from Libeaus Desconus (1430), a Middle English version of a romance about Gingalain, son of King Arthur’s knight Gawain:

“For gore, and fen, and full wast, That was out ykast” (“For all the filth and dung and waste that was cast out”). The Middle English wast here means trash, while both gore and fen could mean either filth or dung.

Interestingly, the OED entry for the noun “waste,” which hasn’t been fully updated since 1923, doesn’t include an example in which the unwanted byproduct sense refers to the undigested food eliminated by the human body.

As far as we can tell from a search of digitized newspapers and books, the excretion sense of “waste” first appeared in the 19th century. Here’s an example that we found in a medical textbook:

“There is a direct sympathy between the stomach and the rest of the body, by means of which the stimulus of hunger becomes unusually urgent where the bodily waste has been great, although a comparatively short time has elapsed since the preceding meal” (from The Physiology of Digestion, 1836, by the Scottish physician Andrew Combe).

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‘On the TV’ vs. ‘on TV’

Q: “We watched the game on the TV” sounds non-standard, while “We listened to the game on the radio” sounds perfectly fine. Why does “the” seem wrong when applied to TV, but OK when applied to radio?

A: The use of the definite article in fixed expressions like those is arbitrary and idiomatic. For example, you can listen “to the radio” or “on the radio,” but you communicate “by radio” and work “in radio.”

As Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum explain in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, “A number of fixed expressions require the definite article. In such cases, it is largely arbitrary that the definite article is required rather than a bare noun (and often both are possible).”

Huddleston and Pullum note the use of “the definite article in expressions concerned with devices and institutions for the transfer of information, even though it is the activity or action that is relevant rather than the device used on a particular occasion.”

They cite “listened to the radio” and “spoke to her on the telephone,” where the definite article is necessary, but note that “the article is optional” in “watch something on (the) television” and not used in “watch (some) television.”

Searches with the News on the Web corpus, which tracks newspapers and magazines on the Internet, indicate that “on television” (91,933 hits) is much more popular than “on the television” (9,635). Nevertheless, dictionaries consider both versions standard English.

The wording of  Merriam-Webster’s entry for the usage, “on (the) television,” indicates that the article is optional.

M-W defines the expression as “broadcast by television” or “being shown by television or in a television program.”

The dictionary includes these examples: “What is on the television tonight?” and “There’s nothing (I want to watch) on television right now.”

The authors of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, Randolph Quirk et al., say the definite article is used in expressions like “the newsthe radiothe televisionthe paper(s)the press, etc., referring to aspects of mass communication.” But they add that “with television or TV, there is also the possibility that the article will be omitted.”

Quirk includes these among his examples: “Did you hear the ten o’clock news?” …  “What’s on the radio this evening?” … “What’s on (the) TV this evening?”

As we said at the beginning, the use of “the” in such expressions is idiomatic and arbitrary. Like you, we find “on TV” more natural than “on the TV,” but both versions are standard.

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What’s ‘done’ doing here?

Q: In some Southern dialects, one hears the perfect tense expressed with “done” in place of the auxiliary “have.” Example: “We done ate” instead of “We have eaten.” And “done been” forms an emphatic remote perfect tense. Example: “We done been ate.” I have always assumed this is Gullah influence, but perhaps you can give further insight.

A: The word “done” has many roles in American regional English, especially in the South and South Midland, and among the Gullah of the coastal Southeast. However, lexicographers use different terms than yours to describe this regional usage.

The word “done” functions as an adverb, an auxiliary, or the infinitive “do” in expressions like the ones you’ve cited, according to the Dictionary of American Regional English.

However, the adverbial use is “not always clearly distinguishable” from the auxiliary usage, the dictionary explains.

DARE says “done” is being used adverbially “to emphasize the attainment of a state or completion of action” in this passage:

“Then she begun to sing again, working at the washtub, with that singing look in her face like she had done give up folks and all their foolishness and had done went on ahead of them, marching up the sky, singing.” From William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying (1930).

The dictionary says “done” is acting as the auxiliary “have” in this citation: “You just done made up your mind that you ain’t going to be no good to me.” From Richard Wright’s novel Lawd Today! (completed in 1935 and published posthumously in 1963).

And here’s a DARE example, which we’ve expanded, for “done” used in place of the bare (or “to”-less) infinitive “do” in Gullah, a creole language found among African-Americans of the Lowcountry of Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas:

“I come mighty nigh marryin him mysef one time. E use to beg me so, but I’m glad now I didn’ done it.” From the novel Scarlet Sister Mary (1928), by Julia Peterkin.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites an obsolete use of “done” as an auxiliary in Scottish English. The OED says the auxiliary “done” here is used periphrastically (by a combination of words) to add tense to a bare infinitive that would otherwise need to be inflected.

In this example, the OED says “done” is “a periphrastic auxiliary” that turns the bare infinitive “discuss” into a past participle: “As I afore, haue done discus” (“As I before have discussed”). From Tract Concernyng the Office and Dewtie of Kyngis, Spiritvall Pastoris, and Temporall Ivgis [Judges] (1556), by William Lauder.

And in this example, “done” turns the bare infinitive “invent” into a past participle: “And many other false abusion / The Paip hes done invent” (“And many another false abuse / The Pope has invented”). From a 1578 poem collected in John Graham Dalyell’s Scotish Poems of the 16th Century (1801).

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When ‘only’ is apt to be dismal

Q: Recent weather stories have referred to catastrophic floods that “will only become more common” and heat waves “expected to only intensify in the years ahead.” What is “only” doing in those sentences?

A: Here “only” is an adverb meaning “inevitably,” and it’s often used in forecasting something bad. Those two examples are dismal forecasts, contrary to what one would wish, and at the same time seen as certainties.

Standard dictionaries define this use of the adverb in varying ways, but all imply both the certainty of the result and its contrary or negative nature.  In fact, some split their definitions of “only” to separate the two notions.

For instance, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language says “only” here can have these meanings: “a. in the last analysis or final outcome; inevitably,” as in “actions that will only make things worse”; and “b. with the negative or unfortunate result,” as in “received a raise only to be laid off.”

And Merriam-Webster has these meanings: (1) “in the final outcome,” as in “will only make you sick”; or (2) “with nevertheless the final result,” as in “won the battles, only to lose the wars.”

The adverb is often used with verbs that are either modals (like “will,” “would,” “can, “could,” etc.) or are in the infinitive. Your examples illustrate each usage: “will only become more common” and “expected to only intensify.”

The Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological dictionary based on historical usage, discusses these adverbial uses of “only” among those that emphasize “the contrary nature of a consequence.”

In one such use, Oxford says, the adverb is “frequently” used with a modal verb or infinitive to mean “inevitably although contrary to intention or desire.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is from a 17th-century sermon and shows “only” followed by an infinitive: “serving only to make a servant more disposed & more able too, as well for the plotting as the acting of villany” (from a collection, King Davids Vow for Reformation, by the Anglican clergyman George Hakewill, 1621).

And the OED’s next citation, from later in the century, has “only” plus a modal verb: “This unlimited power of doing anything with impunity, will only beget a confidence in kings of doing what they list” (from Justice Vindicated, by Roger Coke, 1660). Here the archaic verb “list” means wish, desire, or choose.

The dictionary’s most recent example, from a show-biz memoir, is in a description of Robert Redford: “He is very into incognito so he sports lots of scarves and mufflers and hats and shades, which only make him look more Redfordish” (You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, 1991, by Julia Phillips). In that sentence, “look” is an infinitive.

The other use of “only” that emphasizes “the contrary nature of a consequence” also originated in the early 17th century, according to the OED.

In this case, the adverb is “followed by a dependent infinitive clause” and means “with no other consequence or result than.” And that consequence is sometimes unexpected, surprising, or ironic.

This is the OED’s earliest citation: “He recouerd [recovered] … only to be made more miserable” (from The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, a prose romance by Lady Mary Wroth, 1621).

We still use the adverb in that same way. This is the OED’s most recent example: “Cursing Rachel and Jeff for having stolen me away from the detention centre … only to bring me to this dungeon” (from By the Sea, a novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah, 2001).

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Categorically speaking: in, into, by

Q: Are these sentences correct? (1) “My articles are organized into categories.” (2) “My articles are organized by category.” I’m sure the first is. I think the second is too, but I don’t know why “category” is singular, since I assume there are multiple categories.

A: We’d use “in” for your first example. We think it’s more idiomatic in a passive construction, though not necessarily more correct: “My articles are organized in categories.”

But we’d prefer “into” with an active construction: “I organized my articles into categories.” Why? Perhaps because “into” expresses movement or action, and has since Anglo-Saxon times.

As for your second example (“My articles are organized by category”), we’d leave it as is. Why “category” when there are likely multiple categories?

When the preposition “by” is used in the sense of traveling, paying, communicating, organizing, and so on, it’s generally followed by a mass (or non-count) noun, one that’s always singular in form and doesn’t have an indefinite article or a number as a modifier.

Here are a few examples: “Did you get there by train?” … “She paid by check” … “I’ll send them by email” … “He lined up the class by size.”

Of course nouns like those (“train,” “email,” “check,” and “size”) can be used in other situations as count nouns—nouns that can be singular or plural: “I sent you an email explaining that the two checks were in the mail.”

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An ‘or’ … or more?

Q: I find the use of “or” confusing before the last item in a complicated list. For instance, “when shareholders have different consumption preferences, information, tax bases, or investment horizons.” Readers expect “and,” but have to stop and rethink the passage when they get to “or.” Why not put another “or” earlier in the series to help them?

A: We don’t find that passage confusing, but if we did we wouldn’t add an “or” to the series. An extra “or” would make the writing bumpy and might in fact confuse readers.

If you feel that series or another is hard to read, it would be better to add “or” before each item and delete the commas: “when shareholders have different consumption preferences or information or tax bases or investment horizons.”

If a writer (or speaker) believes that clarity requires repetition of the conjunction before each item in a series, then it should be repeated. The writer’s ear should indicate whether that would be helpful.

But otherwise the repetition isn’t required. Commas can be used instead. The only requirement is that a conjunction (“and” or “or”) be used before the final item.

Finally, as we’ve written many times on the blog, we believe a final comma before the conjunction is helpful.

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Let’s be negative

Q: Your recent “Let’s you and him fight” article brings to mind another expression, “don’t let’s,” as in “Don’t let’s go to the movies.” Do you know the origin of that construction?

A: There are three ways of making the contraction of “let us” negative: “(1) let’s not,” (2) “don’t let’s,” and (3) “let’s don’t.”

As the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage explains, #1 is “widely used,” #2 is “chiefly found in British English,” and #3 is “typical of speech and casual writing” in American English.

Some language writers have criticized #3 as nonstandard because the “let’s” in “let’s don’t” cannot be read as a contraction of “let us” (it functions as a single word introducing a negative first-person plural imperative phrase, such as “let’s don’t go”).

Technically, according to The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, “let and ’s have fused syntactically as well as phonologically, and are no longer analysable as verb + object: they form a single word that functions as marker of the 1st person inclusive imperative construction.”

So is the American usage legit? We say yes. It’s standard informal English in the US. The Oxford English Dictionary agrees, labeling it “U.S. colloquial.” A colloquial usage, the OED says, is “characteristic of or proper to ordinary conversation, as distinguished from formal or elevated language.”

As for the etymology, “let’s not” was the first of these negative usages to appear in English. The earliest example we’ve found is from Volpone, a satirical play by Ben Johnson that was first performed in 1605: “And, reuerend fathers, since we all can hope, Nought, but a sentence, let’s not now despaire it.”

The first example we’ve found for “don’t let’s” is from the mid-19th century: “Don’t let’s have any deception” (from The Love Match, an 1845 novel by the English author Henry Cockton).

The “let’s don’t” version appeared a decade later. The earliest OED example contracts it in an odd way: “A shabby trick! Let’s do n’t” (from Blondel, an 1854 play by George Edward Rice based on a legend about Richard the Lionheart and his minstrel, Blondel).

The first example we’ve found with the usual “let’s don’t” spelling is from an essay in an American magazine: “ ‘Now let’s don’t talk and be jolly,’ would give us no very high idea of the social qualities of the most respectable people” (“Thoughts About Talking,” by “A Lady of Augusta, Georgia,” Scott’s Monthly Magazine, February 1866).

The Merriam-Webster usage guide, in defending “let’s don’t,” cites this example of its use by “one of the most resolutely literary men” of the 20th century: “In all events, let’s don’t celebrate it until it has done something” (from a letter written Jan. 26, 1918, by the New Yorker critic and commentator Alexander Woollcott).

We’ll end by citing a less literary, more political source: “So our crowd said, ‘Let’s do it,’ and their crowd said, ‘Let’s don’t’ ” (from remarks by President Bill Clinton at a  Democratic National Committee luncheon on July 24, 1999, in Aspen, CO).

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It’s ‘along’ story

Q: In David Copperfield, Mrs. Gummidge uses an odd construction to blame herself for Daniel Peggotty’s readiness to visit the pub: “I am sorry it should be along of me that you’re so ready.” She’s apparently using “along of” to mean “because of,” a usage I’m unaware of. What’s going on?

A: English has had two different “along” words. The usual one today is a preposition or adverb with various lengthwise and accompanying senses. The other is an archaic adjective that survives in regional dialects and is the source of the usage in the 1850 novel by Charles Dickens.

Both words are very old, dating back to early Old English, but they’re not etymologically related, and weren’t originally spelled alike.

The Anglo-Saxon ancestor of the more common “along” was andlang, a preposition, adjective, or adverb with many of the term’s modern senses, including alongside, next to, over the length of, and parallel to.

The ancestor of the archaic or dialectal “along” was gelong, an adjective meaning belonging to, depending on, or as a result of (the usage in David Copperfield).

Originally andlang, according to John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins, referred to “extending a long way in the opposite direction.” It was “a compound formed from and-  ‘against, facing’ (whose original source was Greek anti-  ‘against’) and lang  ‘long.’ ”

“The meaning gradually changed,” Ayto writes, “via simply ‘extending a long way,’ through ‘continuous’ and ‘the whole length of something’ to ‘lengthwise.’ ”

At the same time, he says, “the and- prefix was gradually losing its identity: by the 10th century the forms anlong and onlong were becoming established, and the 14th century saw the beginnings of modern English along.”

As for the other word “along,” now archaic and dialectal, Ayto says its Old English ancestor, gelong, was formed from “the prefix ge-, suggesting suitability, and long, of which the notions of ‘pertaining’ and ‘appropriateness’ are preserved in modern English belong.”

In Middle English, the term was spelled ilongylongallang, and alonge. The “along” spelling showed up in the 1600s, perhaps influenced by the spelling of today’s more common “along.”

In later use, the Oxford English Dictionary notes, the less common “along” was “usually perceived as a special use of” the more common one.

Here are OED citations for early Old English appearances of andlang and gelong (we won’t include examples for all the senses of the two Old English words):

“Her for se here up þurh þa brycge æt Paris & þa up andlang Sigene oþ Mæterne oþ Cariei” (“A.D. 887. This year the army went up through the bridge at Paris and then up along the Seine to the Marne and then to Chézy”). From an entry for the year 887 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A, Parker Library, Cambridge.

“Þæt wæs swiþost on ðæm gelong þæt Hasterbal swa late fleah for þon þe he elpendas mid him hæfde” (“That was mostly the result of the failure of Hasdrubal [brother of Hannibal] to flee with his elephants”). The Old English Orosius, an early Old English translation of Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII (History Against the Pagans in Seven Books), circa 400, by Paulus Orosius.

Getting back to your question, the now dialectal “along” (from gelong) has lost most of its original senses in modern English. As the OED explains, it appears “only in weakened use as a compound preposition, with of (also occasionally onwith, etc.)” and means “because of, on account of, owing to.”

The dictionary’s earliest “along of” citation is from an anti-Roman Catholic broadside, or flyer: “What a damn’d Journey have you made me take, Allong of you, and Mother-Churches sake, Been tost [tossed] at Sea.” (“The Catholick Gamesters or A Dubble Match of Bowleing,” 1680, by the printmaker and polemicist Stephen College.)

And this is Oxford’s earliest example with the modern spelling: “ ’Tis all along of you that I am thus haunted” (from The Fool of Quality; or, The History of Henry, Earl of Moreland, 1766, a novel by the Irish writer Henry Brooke).

Finally, here’s the most recent OED citation: “It was along of the din you were making that I came to see if he was hurting you” (from Missy, a 2008 novel by the Scottish author Chris Hannan).

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Plead, pleaded, and pled

Q: You had a recent post about the use of “lead” for “led.” What about the use of “plead” for “pled”? I see that in print every once in a while.

A: The usual past tense and past participle for the verb “plead” is “pleaded.” That’s the only standard form in British English and the most popular one in American English.

All ten of the standard dictionaries we regularly consult (five American and five British) recognize “pleaded” as a past tense and past participle. All the American dictionaries also recognize “pled,” and three of them include “plead” (pronounced as “pled”).

However, some usage writers have complained since the mid-19th century about the use of “pled” and “plead” for the past and past participle of the verb “plead.”

In Vulgarisms & Other Errors of Speech (1869), Richard Meade Bache writes: “Plead, mispronounced pled, is frequently used for pleaded; as, ‘He plead (pled) guilty to the indictment.’ The sentence should be, ‘He pleaded guilty to the indictment.’ ” He gives “pleaded” as the only past and past participle.

In Dictionary of Errors (1905), Sherwin Cody offers this advice: “Say, ‘He pleaded guilty’ (not ‘pled’ or ‘plead’).” And in A Desk-Book of Errors in English (1906), Frank H. Vizetelly writes, “The spelling of pled for the past is not warranted, and is a colloquialism. Careful speakers use pleaded.”

As for now, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says, “Both pled (or plead) and pleaded are in good use in the US.” It adds that “pled” is “fully respectable” in American English “in spite of occasional backward-looking by a commentator or two.”

The online Merriam-Webster standard dictionary says in a usage note that “pleaded” is the more popular usage today, both inside and outside the courtroom:

“In legal use (such as ‘pleaded guilty,’ ‘pled guilty’), both forms are standard, though pleaded is used with greater frequency. In nonlegal use (such as ‘pleaded for help’), pleaded appears more commonly, though pled is also considered standard.”

As we’ve said, three US dictionaries (American Heritage, Merriam-Webster, and Webster’s New World) include “plead” as a variant past and past participle. Nevertheless, we’d avoid it, since the usage is unusual and could be confusing.

When the verb “plead” appeared in Middle English (borrowed from Anglo-Norman), it was spelled various ways, including plaide, plaidi, and pledde. The OED’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, is from The Owl and the Nightingale, a poem believed written in the late 12th or early 13th century:

“Þeȝ we ne bo at one acorde, / we m[a]ȝe bet mid fayre worde, / witute cheste, & bute fiȝte, / plaidi mid foȝe & mid riȝte” (“though we two are not in accord, we can plead better with fair word, without strife & fight, with togetherness & right”).

The past and past participle were also spelled in different ways in Middle English, including pladd, pladde, and pleyd. The “pled,” “pleaded,” and “plead” spellings appeared in early Modern English (the first two in the 1500s and the third in the 1600s).

Here are the earliest OED citations for the three spelling that are seen today:

“The canon law … which is dailie pleaded” (from a 1587 edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles, a collaborative history of England, Scotland, and Ireland).

“And with him to make part against her, came Many graue persons, that against her pled” (The Faerie Queene, 1596, by Edmund Spenser). We’ve expanded the citation.

“St. Augustine plead it in bar to Celer’s action of unkindnesse against him for not writing sooner” (The Alliance of Divine Offices, 1659, by Hamon L’Estrange). The passage is from a section comparing practices of the Church of England to those of the early Christian church.

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Is ‘graffiti’ a verb?

Q: Is it becoming acceptable to use “graffiti” as a verb? I recently encountered a sign that read “Do Not Litter / Do Not Loiter / Do Not Graffiti.”

A: Yes, “graffiti” is a verb. Five of the ten standard dictionaries we regularly consult (Cambridge, Collins, Lexico, Merriam-Webster, and Merriam-Webster Unabridged) recognize “graffiti” as both a verb and a noun.

Merriam-Webster, for example, defines the noun as “usually unauthorized writing or drawing on a public surface” and the verb as “to draw graffiti on” or “to deface with graffiti.”

The verb showed up in print a few decades ago, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence.

The OED’s definition of the verb is “to cover (a surface) with graffiti, apply graffiti to; also, to write as graffiti.” The dictionary’s earliest example is from a newspaper in southeastern England: “The material has a wood bark finish which is very difficult to graffiti” (South Oxfordshire Chronicle, Nov. 20, 1987).

As for the noun, English borrowed it in the 19th century from Italian, where graffiti is the plural of graffito (a little scratch). In English, “graffiti,” plural of “graffito,” originally referred to drawing or writing that was scratched on ancient walls or other surfaces.

The first OED citation, which we’ve expanded, uses the plural and refers to marks at the site of a Neolithic tomb on Mainland, the main island in Scotland’s Orkney archipelago:

“The slight scratching of many of the Maeshowe Runes, and the consequent irregularity and want of precision in the forms, and also, no doubt, in the orthography and grammar, of what, it must be remembered, are mere graffiti” (Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, 1863, by Daniel Wilson).

In the mid-20th century, according to the OED, “graffiti” first appeared in print as a singular mass noun—like “writing,” “art,” or “vandalism”—for “words or images marked (illegally) in a public place, esp. using aerosol paint.”

The dictionary’s first example is from the July 27, 1961, issue of The New York Times: “The slogans were scratched out … in the never-ending battle between those who write and those who remove graffiti.”

Here’s an early example we’ve found that’s more obviously singular: “the graffiti is passable—‘Norman Norell Is A Yenta’ ” (New York magazine, Sept. 1, 1969).

Most of the standard dictionaries we use say the noun “graffiti” can now be either singular or plural, but it’s usually a singular mass noun. The dictionaries say the singular “graffito” is usually limited to archeological or other technical writing.

The OED and many standard dictionaries also include “graffitied” as an adjective meaning covered with graffiti, and “graffitist” as a noun for someone who writes or draws graffiti. The first Oxford citation for the adjective, which we’ve expanded, refers to a school in Buffalo, NY:

“I came across a graffitied bulletin board in a guidance office that was a combination of ribbing and signifying. Under the graffiti ‘Hoes of Buffalo sign here’ were five names.” (From Ribbin’, Jivin’, and Playin’ the Dozens: The Unrecognized Dilemma of Inner City Schools, 1974, by Herbert L. Foster.)

The earliest OED example for “graffitist” is from the New Statesman (Dec. 2, 1966): “His gift is to bring out the scholiast—or the graffitist—in the reader.” A scholiast was an early commentator who made marginal annotations in ancient literature.

The next example refers to an artist inspired by graffiti: “For Pop Master and one-time graffitist Claes Oldenburg, the blossoming graffiti are like a dream come true” (New York magazine, March 26, 1973).

We’ll end with an Oxford example of “graffiti” used as a singular mass noun in Ed McBain’s 1977 mystery Long Time No See: “The graffiti was oversprayed—Spider 19 giving way to Dagger 21, in turn giving way to Salazar IV, so that nobody’s name meant a rat’s ass any more.”

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‘Summoned’ or ‘summonsed’?

Q: I’m curious about the police use of “summonsed.” Is this an example of a verb made out of a noun? Should it not be “summoned”? Or “issued a summons”?

A: The use of “summons” as a verb is not unusual or new. Since the 1600s it’s been a term used in law for ordering an appearance. (Etymologically, as we’ll explain later, the verb means to warn or advise.)

Here’s how the Oxford English Dictionary defines it: “to order (a person) to appear before a court or other judicial authority at a specified time; to issue writ of summons against; to serve with a summons.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is from a witch trial held in Essex County Court at Salem, Mass., on June 28, 1659:

“John Godfrey … shall be legally summonsed thereunto” (cited in Salem Witchcraft , 1867, by Charles W. Upham). Godfrey was charged with being a witch, but later won defamation suits against his accusers.

The dictionary has examples of the verb from every century since the 1600s onward. Here’s one from each century.

“A woman had but to summons her seducer before the judges” (1780, in the English clergyman Martin Madan’s Thelyphthora, a treatise advocating polygamy).

“Say another word, and I’ll summons you” (1839, in Charles Dickens’s novel Nicholas Nickleby).

“The snakey bastard, chasing you off like that. He ought to get summonsed” (1958, in Alan Sillitoe’s novel The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner).

“Occasionally they summonsed people for not having lights on their bicycles at night” (2005, in the Irish writer John McGahern’s Memoir, published in North America in 2006 as All Will Be Well).

The verb “summons,” as the OED says, was derived from the earlier noun “summons,” which originally meant an official order to appear or assemble before some authority. The noun had been borrowed into English around 1300 from French (somonse).

The more familiar meaning of a “summons” today, “an official writ that orders a person to appear in a court of law,” began appearing in the later 1300s, according to Oxford.

Both the noun and the verb “summons” were preceded by the simpler verb “summon,” which came into English from French in the 1200s. Its ultimate source is Latin, summonere (or submonere), derived from monere (to warn or advise).

In classical Latin, summonere meant “to advise privately,” the OED says, but in post-classical times it took on more official meanings, including to command an appearance in court or at an assembly.

At first, the English verb “summon” also had an official flavor, as in some kind of warning to appear. Its earliest meaning, according to Oxford, was “to call authoritatively for (an official group, parliament, council, etc.) to gather or assemble.”

And very early on, around 1300, to “summon” had the same meaning as the later “summons.” It was defined, the OED says, as “to order (a person) to appear before a court or other judicial authority at a specified time; to issue a writ of summons against.”

But less legalistic uses of “summon” also began to emerge: to call for someone or something to come, as in to “summon” help (c. 1300); to muster or rouse, as in to “summon” one’s courage (1581); to conjure, as in to “summon” a ghost or spirit (1619); to evoke or call into existence, as in to “summon” an image (1679).

It may be that those broader and less official senses of “summon” created some ambiguity or confusion with its legal meanings. If so, that ambiguity could have influenced the development of the narrower and more specific verb “summons” in the 1600s. At any rate, “summons” now has a distinct meaning in common usage, and we’d rather be “summoned” than “summonsed” any day!

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Lie and lay: the flip side

Q: My English teacher in the ’60s taught me the difference between “I lie” and “I lay.” It now makes my blood curdle to hear people refer to “a lay down” or “the lay of the land.”

A: We’ve written several times on the blog about the verbs “lie” and “lay,” including a post in 2011. However, the nouns “lie” and “lay” are a different species altogether. In the usages you mention, they’re interchangeable.

Both “lie of the land” and “lay of the land” are correct noun phrases meaning how something lies or is laid. And both a “lay-down” and a “lie-down” are correct as nouns meaning a nap or a rest.

You don’t have to take our word for this. The Oxford English Dictionary says those expressions—both versions of them—represent legitimate uses of the nouns “lie” and “lay.”

We’ll discuss the longer expression first. “Lay of the land,” as we briefly mentioned in a 2006 post, is the more common version in American English, “lie of the land” in British English.

All five of the standard American dictionaries we regularly consult include “lay of the land”; two of them also list “lie of the land,” labeling it a British variant. The five standard British dictionaries we use all include both versions, with four of them labeling “lay of the land” an American usage.

In either form, this is a centuries-old idiom that can refer to the topography of a landscape (the literal sense) or to a condition or state of affairs (the figurative sense).

The “lie” in this expression, the OED says, means the “manner of lying; direction or position in which something lies; direction and amount of slope or inclination.” Used figuratively, the dictionary says, it means “the state, position, or aspect (of affairs, etc.).”

And the “lay” in the expression is defined as “the way, position, or direction in which something is laid or lies (esp. said of country),” or the “disposition or arrangement with respect to something.”

The dictionary’s earliest recorded example, from the late 17th century, shows the “lie” version (spelled “lye” here): “Nott to alter the proper lye of the Land.” (Minutes of a meeting in Hartford on April 4, 1697, allowing a “Sider house” to continue operating on town property as long as the land was not further altered. From the Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society.)

The expression doesn’t appear again until the mid-19th century—this time with “lay”—in a work of Henry David Thoreau: “I did not know the exact route myself, but steered by the lay of the land.” (From “The Allagash and East Branch,” an essay probably written before January 1858 and published posthumously in 1864 as part of The Maine Woods.)

In subsequent uses, both versions appear, according to OED citations:

“Washington, from the lie of the land, can hardly have been said to be centrical at any time” (a comment on the nation’s capital in Anthony Trollope’s North America, 1862).

“The frequent lay of the land in the tea districts … is alternate stretches of low land suitable for rice, and high land fitted for tea” (The Tea Industry in India, by an English planter, Samuel Baildon, 1882).

“The corn rows follow the lay of the land on the contour and the land is strip-farmed” (The Baltimore Sun, Sept. 8, 1943).

“To show the newcomer the lie of the land without confusing him with details” (The Story of Art, a history by Ernst Hans Gombrich, 1950).

Similarly, both “lay-down” and “lie-down” are legitimate nouns. The OED defines a “lay-down” as “an act of lying down, a rest,” and the equivalent of a “lie-down,” which in turn is defined as “a rest (on a bed, etc.).”

The dictionary’s earliest example is a “lie” version, from the mid-19th century: “I should be very glad of a lie down but cannot” (from a letter written Oct. 13, 1840,  by Harriett Mozley and published in Newman Family Letters, 1962, edited by Dorothea Mozley).

The earliest “lay” example is from the late 19th century: “Nothing but ‘dub’ fights by novices, with now and then a deliberate ‘lay down’ ” (National Police Gazette, May 26, 1897).

Here are examples of each, used in the sense of a brief nap:

“Yes, Aggie, you go an’ ’ave a lie-down, see, and you’ll be all right” (Four One-Act Plays, by St. John Ervine, 1928).

“What you want is a nice lay-down and a cupper tea” (Busman’s Honeymoon, a 1937 mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers).

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