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

On heroes, edible and otherwise

Q: Am I wrong to be irritated at the overuse of the term “hero”? I think of a hero as someone who does something heroic – say, running into a burning building to rescue a child. Instead, I’ve seen newspapers call Super Bowl champions “heroes.” If we cheapen the term, what do we use for true heroism?

A: We think you’re right. In fact, here’s what Pat says on the subject in her grammar and usage book Woe Is I:

hero. There was a time when this word was reserved for people who were … well … heroic. People who performed great acts of physical, moral, or spiritual courage, often risking their lives or livelihoods. But lately, hero has lost its luster. It’s applied indiscriminately to professional athletes, lottery winners, and kids who clean up at spelling bees. There’s no other word quite like hero, so let’s not bestow it too freely. It would be a pity to lose it. Sergeant York was a hero.

[Note: This passage was updated to reflect the entry in the 4th edition of Woe Is I, published in 2019.]

So here we’re on your side, though we suspect it’s the losing side.

We might add, however, that the word “hero” has long been used to describe heroic acts that aren’t quite as dramatic as running into a burning building to rescue a child. Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing, or standing up for what you believe in, can also be heroic.

In Homer’s day, the Greek word heros referred to a man “of superhuman strength, courage, ability favoured by the gods,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The word had that sense when it entered English in the 14th century, but by the 16th century it came to mean an illustrious warrior, one who does brave or noble martial deeds.

In the mid-17th century, however, the term was already being used more loosely to describe not only a brave warrior but a man who exhibits firmness, fortitude, or greatness of soul “in any course of action, or in connexion with any pursuit, work, or enterprise,” according to the OED.

A 1661 citation, for example, refers to Galileo and other astronomers as “illustrious Heroes.”

More recently, of course, the usage has become even looser. A 1955 citation refers to “an Italian hero sandwich,” which the OED describes as “U.S. slang, a very large sandwich.” Some might consider eating one a heroic act.

Buy our books at a local store, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com.

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Slang Usage Word origin

For better or verse

Q: I work with a lot of boys and find it interesting to hear so many of them say things like “I will verse you in a game of Pokémon.” I find it annoying to hear “verse” used to mean compete, but I have come to realize that I am witnessing the evolution of the word “versus.”

A: It’s interesting that you bring up the use of “verse” as a verb. We’ve gotten many emails from parents over the years asking where this came from.

One North Jersey father, for instance, has written that his kids use constructions like “We are versing the Yankees today.” And no, they weren’t reading poetry to the Yankees!

The usage is an apparent adaptation of “versus,” as you suggest, and to “verse” here means to play or challenge or go up against.

As it turns out, this isn’t such a new phenomenon. In fact, the kids who first used “verse” for compete are now grown up. The linguist and lexicographer Benjamin Zimmer has traced the usage back to the 1980s.

Here’s a citation from the Feb. 20, 1984, issue of the New York Times: “To verse: High school slang meaning to compete against another school’s team, as in ‘We’re going to be versing the Brown Bombers next week.’ From the preposition ‘versus.’ ”

You can see how this might have happened. Imagine a sportscaster saying, “Tonight at 8, Boston versus Cincinnati.” To many ears, the preposition “versus” sounds like a verb, “verses,” as in “Boston verses (that is, plays) Cincinnati.”

Now imagine a child passing on the news: “Hey, Dad! Tonight Boston verses Cincinnati.” Thus a new verb is born.

There’s already a recognized verb “verse” that means to study or acquaint oneself with some subject, as in “I’m well versed in such-and-such,” or “He’s versing himself in geometry.”

The verb “versify” means to write verse. And The Dickson Baseball Dictionary (3d ed.), by Paul Dickson, notes a historical use of the noun “verse” as a synonym for “inning.”

The use of the verb “verse” to mean compete has made it into only one of the standard dictionaries we usually check, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see it in others.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) describes the usage as slang, and says it means “to play against (an opponent) in a competition.”

American Heritage adds that it’s probably a “back-formation from VERSUS taken as verses in such phrases as Boston versus New York.”

[Note: This entry was updated on July 14, 2016.]

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation
And check out our books about the English language.

Categories
English English language Grammar Usage Word origin Writing

Is it the floor or the ground?

Q: I was waiting on hold to speak with you on WNYC, but I never made it on the air. I wanted to comment on the use of “floor” vs. “ground.” My husband, in particular, has a pet peeve about the use of “floor” outside where it should be “ground.”

A: Others have asked the same question recently, so this must be a trend!

Normally, the floor is what you walk on inside a building, and the ground is what you walk on outside. I too find it jarring to hear the words “floor” and “ground” used interchangeably.

But many people do this. Not only do they refer to the floor as the ground, but they call the ground the floor. At least so far, standard dictionaries maintain the distinction between the two words.

“Floor” was an archaic word for “ground” centuries ago. And according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “floor” has been used in the game of cricket to refer to the ground (but this must be an uncommon usage, since it doesn’t currently appear in any standard British dictionaries).

At any rate, those examples would hardly explain such a usage in American English.

We occasionally refer to the “floor” of the ocean or of the forest, and so on, but in ordinary usage, a “floor” is part of a building or other structure.

In Spanish, suelo means both ground and floor, but I can’t see any connection with the increasing use of the two words as interchangeable terms in English.

The phrase “ground floor,” of course, refers to the floor of a building closest to the ground. And the expression “getting in on the ground floor” means joining a venture at an early, advantageous time.

If I find out anything more, I’ll put it on the blog, so stay tuned!

Buy our books at a local store, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com.

Categories
English English language Grammar Usage

Should Snow Patrol lie or lay?

Q: I hope you can settle a household dispute. There’s a song by Snow Patrol with the lines “If I just lay here / Would you lie with me and just forget the world?” My mother, a former English teacher, says the first line is yet another grating misuse of “lay,” and it should be “If I just lie here.” I don’t know what this construction is (the subjunctive, maybe?), but it seems right to me.

A: This isn’t a subjunctive issue. It involves an “if” clause followed by a conditional clause.

In a normal sequence of tenses, when the second verb is in the simple conditional tense (“would lie”), the first verb can be either in the simple present (“I lie”) or the simple past (“I lay”).

So that Snow Patrol lyric, from the song “Chasing Cars,” would have been grammatically correct either way.

The fact that the verb is “lie” does complicate things. It’s a minefield! But let’s imagine the same construction using different verbs.

Here are parallel examples using the simple present for the first verb: “If I run, would you run?” … “If I eat, would you eat?” … “If I go, would you go?”

And here are parallel examples using the simple past for the first verb: “If I ran, would you run?” … “If I ate, would you eat?” … “If I went, would you go?”

Of course, there is a subtle difference in meaning. The present tense (“If I lie/run/eat/go,  would you …”) implies “If I do it right now.” But the use of the past tense (“If I lay/ran/ate/went,  would you …”) in this context implies a theoretical time in the future, perhaps only minutes away. 

Assuming that the past tense is what the lyricist intended, the meaning is quite clear. But who says lyricists should use perfect English anyway?

In the words of Ira Gershwin, “It ain’t necessarily so.” (And one of my favorite songs is Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay.”)

The Snow Patrol lyric is complicated by a lot of red herrings. The biggest and reddest, of course, is the verb “lie,” since the separate verb “lay” is identical to the past tense of “lie” and often confused with it. I’ve written about “lie” vs. “lay” before on the blog.

The word “here” is a mini-herring, since it seems to imply the present tense. And the use of “just” is another little red fishie, since it has two meanings: “recently” (which muddles the tense issue) and “simply.”

That’s why I eliminated the herrings in the simplified examples above.

One more note, however, about the use of the conditional “would.” This time we’ll use the verb “sing” to illustrate the correct sequence of tenses:

Present: “If I sing, would you sing?”

Past: “If I sang, would you sing?”

Past perfect: “If I had sung,  would you have sung [conditional perfect]?”

Note that in both past and present tenses, the simple conditional is appropriate for the accompanying clause. (There is no “past conditional.”)

The conditional can only be simple (“would sing”) or perfect (“would have sung”).

With that, I’ll go. Or, as the Snow Patrol song “Run” puts it, “I’ll sing it one last time for you / Then we really have to go.”

[Note: This post was revised on Dec. 12, 2014.]

Buy Pat’s books at a local store, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com.

 

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Language Linguistics Word origin

Quiddity

Q: Could you tell me where “quid,” the British slang term for pound sterling, comes from? I’ve read online that a paper mill in the town of Quidhampton or the Latin expression quid pro quo may be the source of the term.

A: Lexicographers aren’t certain how we got the word “quid,” a British monetary term that originally referred to a gold sovereign or guinea, and later meant one pound sterling.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that perhaps it comes from the Latin word quid (in this case meaning “what”), “reinterpreted to refer to (monetary) means or wherewithal.” If so, then your comment about quid pro quo isn’t far wrong.

The OEDs first recorded reference to the word comes from a pornographic tract by the pseudonymous Peter Aretine, Strange Newes from Bartholomew-Fair (1661): “The fool lost his purse, but how he knew not; for the reckoning being suddainly brought in, his Quids were vanisht.”

As for pounds, guineas, and sovereigns, here’s how they accumulated.

The “pound” (punda in Old English) was originally so called because it was worth a pound weight of silver, and was valued at 20 shillings.

The “guinea” was an English gold coin, made between 1663 and 1813, originally worth 20 shillings. It was so called because it was made of gold from Guinea.

The first version of the gold “sovereign” was coined in the 1500s and 1600s; a later gold sovereign worth one pound or 20 shillings was minted beginning in 1817.

Why a sovereign? Because it was imprinted with the image of the reigning monarch.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com.

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

Are we seeing “more” more?

Q: I’ve noticed that newscasters are increasingly using “more” and “most” instead of comparatives and superlatives, as in “more ugly” or “most ugly” instead of “uglier” or “ugliest.” I anticipate that before long we’ll be hearing “more big” or “most big” instead of “bigger” or “biggest.” Would you speculate about this?

A: I don’t see any evidence that the adverbs “more” and “most” are replacing the “er” and “est” word endings.

Comparatives like “uglier” (instead of “more ugly”) and superlatives like “ugliest” (instead of “most ugly”) are incredibly handy language tools.

They’re so handy that the “er” and “est” suffixes aren’t likely to be threatened by an increase in the use of “more” and “most.”

If newscasters are indeed resorting to “more” and “most” instead of using comparatives and superlatives, it may be because they’re not sure how to pronounce the “er” and “est” versions.

But relax – those versions are here to stay.

Here’s a little history.

We’ve been using the “er” and “est” suffixes to make comparisons since the earliest days of English, and it’s a practice handed down from ancient Indo-European.

The Old English endings were originally spelled differently than they are today: ra for the comparative, and ost (sometimes est) for the superlative.

Taking the word “old” as an example, the Old English forms were eald (“old”), yldra (“older”), yldest (“oldest”). And taking “hard” as another, the forms were heard (“hard”), heardra (“harder”), heardost (“hardest”).

Which brings us to another set of Old English words: micel (meaning “great” or “big”), mara (“more”), and maest (“most”).

While “more” and “most” (or their ancestors) were around since the earliest days of English, it wasn’t until the early 1200s that we began using them as adverbs to modify adjectives and other adverbs in order to form comparatives and superlatives – that is, to do the job of the suffixes “er” and “est.”

For a few centuries, usage was all over the place. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for even one-syllable words to be used with “more” and “most,” according to The Origins and Development of the English Language, by Thomas Pyles and John Algeo. The authors cite the frequent use of phrases like “more near,” “more fast,” “most poor,” and “most foul.”

And multi-syllable words were used with “er” and “est,” like “eminenter,” “impudentest,” and “beautifullest.” Pyles and Algeo say there were even “a good many instances of double comparison, like more fitter, more better, more fairer, most worst, most stillest, and (probably the best-known example ) most unkindest.”

How about today, though? Is there a hard-and-fast rule about when to use “more” and when to use “er”? Not exactly, but there are common conventions.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the use of “more” is “the normal mode of forming the comparative” with “most adjectives and adverbs of more than one syllable, and with all those of more than two syllables.” A few single-syllable words (like “real,” “right,” “wrong,” and “just”) also normally form comparatives this way instead of with “er” suffixes, according to the OED.

Sometimes, however, “more” is used with one-syllable and two-syllable words that normally would end in “er,” like “busy,” “slow,” “true” and so on. Why? Here’s how the OED explains it:

“This form is often now used either for special emphasis or clearness, or to preserve a balance of phrase with other comparatives with ‘more,’ or to modify the whole predicate rather than the single adjective or adverb, especially when followed by than.”

So, we might choose “much more humble” instead of “much humbler.” Or we might say “so-and-so’s voice was more quiet but no less threatening.” Or “that’s more true than false.” Or even “his feet are more big than ungainly.”

So far, we’ve talked about “more” as an adverb modifying an adjective or another adverb to form a comparative (as in “more determined,” “more bitterly,” “more correctly,” “a more just society,” and so on). But it has other uses too:

(1) As a pronoun (as in “I want more,” “more of an athlete,” “there’s more where that came from,” “what’s more,” and so on).

(2) As an adjective (as in “more’s the pity,” “the more fool you,” “more pizzazz,” “more calories,” etc.).

And here’s a little sidelight: Until the early 1600s, “more” was often contrasted with “mo,” another Old English hand-me-down. “More” was used with quantities of one thing, while “mo” (or “moe”) was used with plural nouns.

In The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, the lexicographer R.W. Burchfield notes that “the more/mo distinction dropped out during the 17th century and survives only in some regional forms of English.” He points out the two versions in Shakespeare, from The Tempest (“is there more toil?”), and The Winter’s Tale (“let’s first see moe ballads”).

I could go on with the history of “most,” but I think you’ve had enough. No more!

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation.
And check out our books about the English language.

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Phrase origin

Two index fingers pointing

Q: Can you write about “such that”? I assume you’ve seen this recent-seeming locution (at least to me) used in the following way: “She knew the English language very well, such that she wrote a whole book about it.”

A: Writers often use “such,” followed by a clause starting with “that,” to say something about one thing by referring to something else. As in, “His height was such that he had to have his clothes custom-made.”

Sentences like this may sound a bit redundant to the modern ear. Why not “He was so tall that he had to have his clothes custom-made”?

This “such that” construction, according to the grammarian George O. Curme, is evidence of an “older English fondness for double expression,” with “such and that pointing as with two index fingers to the following explanatory clause.”

The word “such” in sentences like these can have either of two meanings:

(1) “of such a kind” (adjective), as in “Her illness was such that she couldn’t work.”

(2) “in such a way” (adverb), as in “She trembled such that she couldn’t work.”

The adjectival construction has been widely used for the last thousand years, right up to the present day. Examples date back to around 1100, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. We’ve found them in the 1200s, 1300s, and 1400s, but in most of these the only recognizable words are “such that,” so we won’t bother to quote them!

Here’s a citation from Shakespeare’s Henry IV (1597): “Yea, but our valuation shall be such / That every slight and false-derived cause, / Yea, every idle, nice and wanton reason / Shall the king taste of this action.”

But the adverbial construction has been rarer, and some now consider it incorrect. In the sentence you cite – “She knew the English language very well, such that she wrote a whole book about it” – the “such that” construction is being used in an adverbial way.

In this case, “such that” answers the question “How well did she know English?” The sentence is definitely awkward. Better: “She knew the English language so well that she wrote a book about it.” Whether this “such that” usage is grammatically acceptable is a matter of opinion.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) accepts the adverbial “such that,” meaning in such a way, giving as an example “related such that each excludes the other.”

But the usage panel of The American-Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) rejects this sentence: “The products are packaged such that users can pick the components they need and add capabilities over time.”

Perhaps “in such a way that” would be less jarring to modern ears.

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation
And check out our books about the English language.

Categories
English language Grammar Usage

Get around much anymore?


Q: I see lots of “anymore” as opposed to “any more” these days. What’s correct?


A: These are two different usages, and each is standard English. They’re both used here: “I can’t take any more of this movie. I guess I just don’t like Rogers & Hammerstein anymore.”

“Anymore” is an adverb meaning “any longer” or “now,” as in “I don’t live there anymore.” It’s often seen in negative contexts like that one.

The phrase “any more” is most often used to talk about quantities of things. “Would you like any more dessert?” … “I don’t care for any more, thank you.”

People often ask about another sense of “anymore,” one that used to be termed a dialectal usage (that is, not standard English). In this sense it means “nowadays” or “these days” in a positive statement.

Here are a few examples: “I prefer to take the bus anymore”; “She wears black anymore”; “Jobs are getting scarce anymore”; “The days are getting shorter anymore.”

That usage is no longer termed dialectal in either The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) or Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.). Both say it’s widely heard in many regions of the US.

For example, it’s very common in the Midwest, and I heard it all the time when I was growing up in Iowa.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Usage Word origin

To incent and incense

Q: I recently saw an interview with Carly Fiorina, who kept using the words “incent” and “incenting.” My dictionary has never heard of these forms of “incentive.” Is my dictionary out of date? Or is Ms. Fiorina inventing words?

A: We’ve found “incent” in four standard dictionaries, though two of them (Collins and Oxford Dictionaries online) describe it as an American usage, and Collins adds that it’s “not standard.”

However, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) list it without comment (that is, as standard English).

“Incent” is what’s known as a back-formation, in this case formed from “incentive.” As you might suspect, it means to provide an incentive or to incentivize.

Although “incent” hasn’t been accepted wholeheartedly by all standard dictionaries, it’s been around for more than a century and a half.

The Oxford English Dictionary‘s first citation for the word appears in an 1840 issue of the Rover, a New York literary weekly:

“Incented by the stupid ambition of an ignorant mother, she thought that the purse of the one was far superior to the heart of the other.”

The next OED citation, dated 1898, is from a British source, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates: “The noble Lord went so far … as to charge … Mr. Tilak with incenting to murder.”

Back-formations are pretty common in English. Examples of verbs that began as back-formations from nouns are “diagnose” (from “diagnosis”), “escalate” (from “escalator”), “baby-sit” (from “babysitter”), and “curate” (from “curator”).

Among back-formations that are frowned upon by some commentators are “incent,” “administrate” (from “administration”), “enthuse” (from “enthusiasm”), “liaise” (from “liaison”), and “orientate” (a mid-19th century back-formation from “orientation,” which itself is derived from a verb, “orient”).

Not every word you find in dictionaries is pleasing to every ear. We, for example, find “administrate” unnecessary since the older “administer” is a perfectly good word.

Though “administrate” doesn’t have any more syllables than “administer,” it’s longer and newer, which may be its attraction for people who enjoy using bureaucratic language.

An example of a back-formation that’s out there but not (yet) in standard dictionaries is “adolesce” (from “adolescence”), as in “He hasn’t finished adolescing yet.”

[Note: This post was updated on July 6, 2016, at the suggestion of a reader.]

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation.
And check out our books about the English language.

Categories
English English language Expression Grammar Language Usage Writing

Plea agreement

[Note: A later post on this subject was published on May 7, 2021.]

Q: Which is correct: “plead” or “pleaded” guilty? I hear these used interchangeably on the evening news. What’s up wid dat?

A: The usual past tense and past participle of the verb “plead” is “pleaded,” but “pled” is a common variant in American English, especially in legal usage.

In addition, two of the five standard American dictionaries we regularly consult (Merriam-Webster and Webster’s New World) include “plead” (pronounced as “pled”) as a less common variant.

So y0u should be hearing either “pleaded” or “pled” on the evening news as the past tense or past participle. However, some talking heads are apparently mispronouncing “plead” when it’s used in the past, and should be pronounced as “pled.”

All five standard British dictionaries we consult include only “pleaded” as the past tense and past participle, though some note that “pled ” is an American variant.

[This post was updated on April 26, 2021.]

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage Word origin

Finishing touch

Q: I’m hoping you might comment on what I see as the widespread abuse of a verb tense in instructions: “When you are finished Step One, etc.” Shouldn’t it be “When you HAVE finished Step One, etc.”? I’d like to see this abuse finished – that is, lights out! But maybe I’m missing something here because I’m seeing it all the time.

A: No, I think you’re right on the money. It would naturally be incorrect to say “When you are finished step one….” (And no, I don’t believe in unnecessarily capitalizing “step one,” as many instructional manuals do.)

Here are a few of the correct ways one might write this thought: (1) When you are finished with step one…. (2) When you have finished step one…. (3) When you have completed step one…. (4) When you have done step one….

The verb “finish,” by the way, dates back to around 1350, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. I couldn’t find a single example of the construction you cited in the OED’s 40 published references for “are finished.”

Here’s a citation for “finish” at work in the 1697 Dryden translation of Virgil’s Georgics: “He call’d, sigh’d, sung: his griefs with day begun, / Nor were they finish’d with the setting sun.”

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

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

Are we losing “-ed” adjectives?

Q: Have you noticed the death of the “-ed” adjective? I see lots of signs that say “ice tea” and people talk about “mix tapes.”

A: No, we haven’t noticed the death of the “-ed” adjective, though some words that began life with the suffix are often seen without it.

For example, the use of “damned” as an adjective to express disapproval or add emphasis showed up in the late 16th century, while “damn” used in this sense didn’t appear until the late 18th century and is now much more popular.

The loss of the “-ed” ending here is is no surprise. The fact is that “-ed” can be awkward to pronounce before a consonant. This can sometimes lead to its loss in writing. For example, “ice cream” and “iced cream” both appeared in the 17th century, but only the “d”-less version has survived.

As for the chilled tea served over ice, both “iced tea” and “ice tea” showed up in the 19th century (the version with “d” in 1839 and one without it in 1842, according to citations in theOxford English Dictionary). You can find both versions in standard dictionaries now, though the suffixed one is far more popular.

A search of the News on the Web corpus, a database of online newspaper and magazine articles published since 2010, shows that “iced tea” is five times as popular as “ice tea.” And the longer version is even more popular in a search with Google’s Ngram viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books up until 2008. 

In short, the “-ed” adjective is alive and well in writing, though it’s often dropped in speech. We’re used to hearing things like “corn beef,” “mash potatoes,” “grill cheese,” “chop liver,” and “whip cream,” but people generally preserve the “-ed” endings in writing these noun phrases.

As for the compilation of music from multiple sources, it’s usually “mixtape” now, though it was “mix tape” when it showed up in writing in the 1980s and has sometimes been “mix-tape,” according to our searches of newspaper databases. It has seldom been written as “mixed tape.” The word “mix” in the compound “mixtape” is an attributive noun—one used adjectivally.

[Note: This post was updated on July 12, 2019.]

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation.
And check out our books about the English language.

Categories
Grammar Usage

One of these days

Q: In yesterday’s blog entry, “Several interpretations,” there is an error in the last sentence. It should read: “This is one of those words that HAS to be interpreted.”

A: The sentence you mention (“This is one of those words that have to be interpreted”) is correct. But we can understand your confusion. A lot of people are confused by sentences with “one of the,” “one of these,” and “one of those” constructions. In some cases, the verbs that follow are singular; in other cases, they’re plural. Here’s how Pat explains the difference in her grammar book Woe Is I:

(1) If “that” or “who” comes before the verb, it’s plural: “He’s one of the authors who SAY it best.”

(2) If not, it’s singular: “One of the authors SAYS it best.”

In the first example, “one” is not the subject of the verb “say.” The subject is “who,” which is plural because it refers to “authors.” In the second example, the subject is “one.”

If you’re still uncertain, turn the sentences around in your mind and you’ll end up with the correct verbs: “Of the authors who SAY it best, he is one.” … “Of the authors, one SAYS it best.”

We hope that helps.

[Update, Sept. 28, 2016: We have substantially revised our opinion on the proper verb to use in constructions like “one of those who” and “one of the few that.” Usage commentators now acknowledge that while a plural verb is technically correct, there are times when a singular verb may be preferable. See our latest post on the subject.]

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation
And check out our books about the English language.

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Word origin Writing

Continuing education

Q: I am curious about the words “continual” and “continuous.” Is there a difference between them and when should each one be used?

A: Many usage guides make this distinction: “continual” means going on regularly or frequently but with breaks in between; “continuous” means going on steadily and without interruption. Bryan A. Garner, in Garner’s Modern American Usage, offers a trick for telling them apart—imagine that the “ous” ending is short for “one uninterrupted sequence.”

These days, however, so many people use the two words interchangeably that the distinction may someday be lost. In fact, a case can be made that the difference between “continual” and “continuous” has never been quite as clear-cut as the sticklers insist.

The word “continual,” for instance, has been used to mean both continuing without interruption and repeated with brief interruptions since the 14th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The 17th-century newcomer “continuous,” the OED says, means uninterrupted or unbroken.

Both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) define “continuous” as uninterrupted, but they say “continual” can mean either uninterrupted or recurring regularly.

Because people use both to imply without interruption, it’s better to use “repeated” or “intermittent”  instead of “continual” to describe something that starts and stops.

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation
And check out our books about the English language.

Categories
English language Grammar Usage

Quoth the maven: “Anymore”?

Q: I was surprised to encounter the positive use of “anymore,” as in this sentence: “They’ve started talking funny anymore.” I was further surprised to learn that it’s a known usage with a history.
 
A: In its primary sense, “anymore” is an adverb used in a negative statement to mean any longer or from now on.

Take these two sentences: (1) “I don’t drive.” (2) “I don’t drive anymore.” The first implies that the speaker has never been a driver. The second implies that he once was a driver but is no longer. So in that case “anymore” has provided additional information.

There’s a secondary sense of “anymore” that used to be considered dialect (that is, not standard English). In this sense, it means “nowadays” or “these days” in a positive statement. Here are a couple of examples: “I take the bus anymore”; “She wears black anymore.”

This second usage is no longer termed dialect in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.). Both say it’s widely used in many regions of the US.

The two definitions are listed in American Heritage as No. 1 and No. 2 respectively. Ditto in Merriam-Webster’s. M-W notes that while the second meaning originated in the Midwest, it’s now widespread across the U.S., with the exception of New England.

For example, it’s common in the Midwest, according to American Heritage. This makes sense, since I grew up in Iowa and heard it routinely: “I get headaches anymore”; “We hay that field anymore”; “The days are getting shorter anymore.”

Old dictionaries list it as dialect in positive constructions. Not so in new dictionaries. Thus does language change.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Categories
English language Etymology Grammar Usage

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

Q: As a teacher of English as a second language, I’ve wondered about the use of the “tag” question “aren’t I?” at the end of a sentence, e.g., “I’m right, aren’t I?” One ought to say, “I’m right, am I not?” but doing so sounds too formal for ordinary conversation. The problem, of course, is that “aren’t I?” uses the plural verb “are” with the singular subject “I.” It feels like the grammatical equivalent of a pebble in one’s shoe. So, what’s a grammarian to do?

A: Let’s get rid of that pebble. “Aren’t I?” is correct, standard English.

“Am,” of course, is the proper first-person singular form of the verb “to be.” But in the negative interrogative, where the subject and the auxiliary verb are inverted, “aren’t I?” replaced “amn’t I?” over the years because of the awkwardness of the regular negative form “amn’t.”

The “m” in “amn’t” was dropped early on for reasons of euphony. Earlier spellings (like “a’n’t I?” and “an’t I?”) were eventually replaced by “aren’t I?” – but only in the interrogative. One would never say “I aren’t going.”

These days “amn’t” is heard mostly in certain dialects in Ireland and Scotland, according to the linguist David Crystal. In informal English, of course, the infamous “ain’t” is heard both in statements and in questions.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Language Linguistics Phrase origin Pronunciation Spelling Uncategorized Usage Word origin Writing

Do you pronounce ‘t’ in ‘often’?

Q: I just discovered your site and I plan to return often. Oh, that reminds me – it makes me crazy to hear people pronounce the “t” in “often.”

A: The word “often” can be pronounced with a silent “t” (the more common pronunciation) or with an audible “t.” How “correct” is the second pronunciation? That depends on the dictionary you consult.

Both are correct, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).

However, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) treats the version with the audible “t” as a variant that occurs in educated speech but is considered unacceptable by some. [Update, May 25, 2018: The online edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary has dropped that label and now has the word “nonstandard” before the second pronunciation.]

American Heritage has an interesting usage note after its entry for “often.” During the 15th century, it seems, English speakers stopped pronouncing some sounds within consonant clusters, making the language easier to articulate. Examples include the “d” in “handsome” and “handkerchief,” the “p” in “consumption” and “raspberry,” and the “t” in “chestnut” and “often.”

With the rise of public education and people’s awareness of spelling in the 19th century, according to the dictionary, sounds that had become silent were sometimes restored. This is what happened with the “t” in “often.”

You might be interested in knowing that “often” was originally just “oft,” and “oft” was commonly used as a prefix in word combinations that are archaic and unrecognizable today.

Even a word like “oftentimes,” which appears in modern dictionaries, seems dated and has musty, quaint overtones. It’s also a term that drives people crazy because of its apparent redundancy. But in fact, the words “oftentime,” “oftentimes,” and “oftime” date back to the early 1400s, and “ofttimes” was first recorded in the 1300s, so they have a venerable history.

[Note: This post was updated on May 25, 2018.]

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation.
And check out our books about the English language.

 

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Linguistics

Stormy weather

[An updated and expanded post about “nor’easter” appeared on the blog on March 2, 2015.]

Q: Where does the word “nor’easter” come from? Is it short for “northeastern”? I live in Brooklyn and we recently experienced a nor’easter.

A: The word “nor’easter” is a contraction of “northeaster,” which is a noun meaning a strong northeast wind or a storm with heavy winds from the northeast.

The prevailing opinion among American broadcast and print journalists, who choose the contraction “nor’easter” by a wide margin over the longer version (just check Google), seems to be that “nor’easter” represents a regional New England pronunciation. This seems to be a myth, however. Many linguists and a great many coastal New Englanders insist that no such pronunciation existed in the region, and that locals have always pronounced the word without dropping the “th.”

According to the University of Pennsylvania linguist Mark Liberman, “nor’easter” is a “literary affectation.”

The earliest published reference to “nor’easter” in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from an 1837 translation of an Aristophanes comedy, The Knights: “Slack your sheet! A strong nor’-easter’s groaning.” The English poet Alfred Austin (he was poet laureate from 1892 to 1913) used both “nor’-easters” and “sou’-westers” in his writing, according to the OED.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Language Linguistics Usage Writing

The great divide

Read Pat’s review in the New York Times today of two new language books.

—————

Speech Crimes

By PATRICIA T. O’CONNER

Get a few language types together, and before long someone will bring up the great divide between the preservers and the observers of English, the “prescriptivists” and the “descriptivists” — those who’d rap your knuckles for using “snuck” versus those who might cite Anglo-Saxon cognates in its defense.

The truth is that the divide isn’t nearly as great as it’s made out to be. Most grammarians, lexicographers, usage experts and linguists are somewhere in between: English is always changing, but that doesn’t mean anything goes.

Ben Yagoda, the author of “When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It,” is with the right-thinking folks in the middle. His book, an ode to the parts of speech, isn’t about the rights or wrongs of English. It’s about the wonder of it all: the beauty, the joy, the fun of a language enriched by poets like Lily Tomlin, Fats Waller and Dizzy Dean (to whom we owe “slud,” as in “Rizzuto slud into second”).

If you’re old enough to have learned the parts of speech in school, you probably think of them as written in stone. Not so. The nine categories are arbitrary and shifting. Nouns get verbed, adjectives get nouned, prepositions can moonlight as almost anything.

Yagoda, who teaches English at the University of Delaware, agrees that the categories are artificial, but he’s smitten with them anyway. Each member of the “baseball-team-sized list” (adj., adv., art., conj., int., n., prep., pron. and v.) gets its own chapter. Don’t overlook the surprisingly entertaining one on conjunctions — yes, conjunctions — with its riffs on the ampersand (“the more ampersands in the credits, the crummier the movie”) and the art of “ ‘but’ management.” No word is too humble for Yagoda, who can get lexically aroused by the likes of “a” and “the.”

Read the rest of the review on Grammarphobia.com. And buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Language Linguistics Pronunciation Spelling Usage Word origin

Is pronunciation your forte?

Q: How is the word “forte” pronounced in this sentence: “Pronunciation is not my forte”? I usually hear people say “FOR-tay,” as in the Italian word for loud. Shouldn’t it be “fort,” as in the French word for strength? Has FOR-tay become acceptable through wide usage?

A: You’re right about the noun “forte,” meaning a strong point. It comes from French and by tradition should be pronounced like “Fort” Knox. The other pronunciation, FOR-tay, is a musical term, meaning loud, and comes from Italian. (In Italian it’s also an adjective meaning strong.)

Be that as it may, the two-syllable version is so entrenched, doubtless because of the Italian influence, that dictionaries now accept it. In fact, the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) overwhelmingly prefers the FOR-tay pronunciation, though FORT is also standard English.

Be advised that some sticklers will turn up their noses when “forte” is pronounced with two syllables, but many more people will respond with a “Huh?” when it’s pronounced with one.

So which pronunciation should you pick? A usage note in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) offers this advice: “You can take your choice, knowing that someone somewhere will dislike whichever variant you choose.”

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation.
And check out our books about the English language.

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Grammar

Growing pains

Q: Please pass judgment on the use (or rather abuse) of the word “grow” in a phrase like “grow a business.” Is this a legitimate use of the verb “to grow,” according to formal standards of usage (if indeed such standards continue to exist at all)? Of course one can grow flowers (transitive) or grow tall (intransitive), but my ear is thrown by the idea that one can grow a business.

A: The transitive use of “grow,” as in “grow crops,” is well established, as you point out. The Oxford English Dictionary lists published citations dating back to 1774. (A transitive verb needs an object to make sense: He grows dahlias. Intransitive verbs make sense without one: The dahlias grow.)

But this newer transitive use of “grow” applied to nonliving things (as in “grow the economy”) seems to have emerged during the 1992 presidential election, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Many (though not all) language authorities frown on a usage like “grow our business,” including 80 percent of American Heritage’s Usage Panel.

Nevertheless, the dictionary’s editors say in a note, “these usages have become very common and are likely to see continued use in business contexts.”

Another widely used dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, is more accepting. It recognizes without comment the use of “grow” in the sense “to promote the development of” and gives as an example “start a business and grow it successfully.” So in the view of the M-W editors, this usage is now standard English.

Speaking for ourselves, we hope this remains corporate jargon and doesn’t become more widely used. Even worse, though, is the phrase “grow down,” as in “I promise to grow down the deficit.” Anyone capable of speaking in such a way should grow up.

[Note: This entry was reviewed and updated on Aug. 4, 2014.]

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage Word origin

Who put the “X” in “Xmas”?

Q: I haven’t seen the word “Xmas” much for the last few years, probably because of all the attacks on it as part of a secularist plot against Christmas. In any case, what is the origin of “Xmas” and how did an “X” come to replace “Christ”?

A: Anybody who thinks “Xmas” is a modern creation that represents the secularization and/or commercialization of Christmas should think again. The term “Xmas” has been around for hundreds of years and “X” or “Xp” stood in for “Christ” for many hundreds of years before that.

But don’t blame secularists. Blame the medieval scribes who used the abbreviations while copying Old and Middle English religious manuscripts.

In the the Oxford English Dictionary‘s first recorded example, “Christmas” is written as Xpes mæsse (Christ’s mass) in an Old English entry for the year 1021 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

“And se eorl Rodbeard her oð Xpes mæsse forneal mid pam cynge wunode” (“And Earl Robert stayed here [in Westminster] with the king [William II] almost until Christmas”).

The Xp at the beginning of Xpes mæsse comes from the Greek letters Χ (chi) and ρ (rho), the first letters of the word for “Christ” in ancient Greek, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ or χριστoς (christos, anointed one).

In a Middle English citation dated around 1380, “X” alone stands for Christ in a homily by the English theologian John Wycliffe: “X betokens Christ.”

So for ten centuries, books and diaries and manuscripts and letters routinely used “X” or “Xp” for “Christ” in words like “christen,” “christened,” “Christian,” “Christianity,” and of course “Christmas.”

The OED’s earliest example for the exact spelling “Xmas,” which we’ve expanded, is from an early 18th-century letter  by an English landowner to a son who was away at school:

“I hope you will eat at Xmas some roast beef out of the old kitchen” (from John Buxton, Norfolk Gentleman and Architect: Letters to his son 1719-1729, edited by Alan Mackley and published by the The Norfolk Record Society in 2005).

One other point. Although the St. Andrew’s Cross is shaped like an “X,” there’s no basis for the belief that the “X” used in place of “Christ” is supposed to represent the cross on Calvary.

[Note: This post was updated on March 9, 2023.]

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation.
And check out 
our books about the English language.

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage Word origin

The evolution of “peruse”

Q: I have always used the word “peruse” to indicate a skimming through. But I was recently told that the word actually refers to a thorough reading, which, according to the dictionary and to my surprise, is correct. Was I ever right? (I have heard others use “peruse” to indicate a skimming through.) What is the word’s history?

A:  You’re quite correct in your use of “peruse.” It’s true that the most commonly accepted meaning today is to read thoroughly. But in the last decade or so [see our note at the end], the sense in which you use the wordto skim through, glance at, or briefly consulthas seen a revival and has made great gains. It’s considered acceptable in many standard dictionaries and hovers on the edge of respectability in others.

First, some history. “Peruse” comes from an old word in Middle English, “perusen,” which meant to use up.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest reference dates to the late 15th century, when the word meant to go through or examine a number of things one by one, or to use up or wear out something. It has meant to read thoroughly or examine in detail since the early 16th century.

But that’s not all it has meant. As the OED adds, the verb has also been used to mean “to look over briefly or superficially; to browse,” as well as simply “to read.”

Oxford notes that despite the claims of some modern dictionaries and usage guides, “peruse has been a broad synonym for read since the 16th cent., encompassing both careful and cursory reading.”

“The implication of leisureliness, cursoriness, or haste is therefore not a recent development,” the dictionary adds.

The OED’s citations include this quotation by Samuel Johnson, from The Idler (1759): “Whatever is common is despised. Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused.”

According to Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.), the word “has a long literary history with many fine shades of meaning.”

These are among the current definitions given in Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged:

(1) “to examine or consider or survey (something) with some attention and typically for the purpose of discovering or noting one or more specific points :  to look at or look through fairly attentively”;

(2) “to look over or through (something) often in a casual or cursory manner”;

(3) to “read.”

Merriam-Webster’s has a worthwhile usage note on “peruse,” which we’ll quote:

“It was a more ordinary word in the past than it is now, although it still has considerable use. About 1906 a writer on usage decided that peruse could mean only ‘to read with care and attention,’ for what reason we do not know. In time this opinion was echoed by a number of commentators, right down to the present. Peruse has indeed been used in the ‘careful and attentive’ sense, but writers almost always signal that meaning with a modifier.”

The dictionary cites such usages as “with heed peruse,” “attentively peruse,” and “peruse thoroughly.”

At least one dictionary hasn’t yet caught up with the explanation in the OED.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) defines the word as meaning “to read or examine, typically with great care.” The use of the word to mean “to glance over” or “skim” is labeled a “usage problem.”

American Heritage elaborates in a usage note:

Peruse has long meant ‘to read thoroughly,’ as in He perused the contract until he was satisfied that it met all of his requirements, which was acceptable to 75 percent of the Usage Panel in our 2011 survey. But the word is often used more loosely, to mean simply ‘to read,’ as in The librarians checked to see which titles had been perused in the last month and which ones had been left untouched. Seventy percent of the Panel rejected this example in 1999, but only 39 percent rejected it in 2011. Further extension of the word to mean ‘to glance over, skim’ has traditionally been considered an error, but our ballot results suggest that it is becoming somewhat more acceptable. When asked about the sentence I only had a moment to peruse the manual quickly, 66 percent of the Panel found it unacceptable in 1988, 58 percent in 1999, and 48 percent in 2011. Use of the word outside of reading contexts, as in We perused the shops in the downtown area, is often considered a mistake.”

But even that last usage is now accepted by Merriam-Webster, as noted above. The dictionary’s examples include “peruse the museum” and “shoppers perusing saris.”

In recent years, more dictionaries have endorsed your use of “peruse.”

For example, the definition in the Cambridge Dictionaries online has “to read or look at something in a relaxed way” as well as “to read carefully in a detailed way.” And the Collins English Dictionary online (both British and American editions) has “to browse or read through in a leisurely way” alongside to read or examine with care; study.” 

At least one dictionary lists yours as the only definition. The Macmillan Dictionary, in its American and British online editions, defines “peruse” as meaning “to read something.”

[Note: This posting was updated on Dec. 25, 2014.]

Categories
English English language Expression Grammar Phrase origin Usage

“Woe is I” vs. “Woe is me”

Q: I love your book, but I have a question about the title. How come it’s Woe Is I and not Woe Is Me or Woe Am I? Is there a reason?

A: I chose the title Woe Is I to poke fun at hypercorrectness—that is, incorrectness used in the mistaken belief that one is being  ultra-correct. (A good example is a sentence like “Give your seat to whomever needs one.”)

In the case of the book’s title, the butt of the joke is the old rule of English grammar (now considered excessively formal) that required the nominative case after the verb “to be.” (Example: using “It is I” instead of “It is me” or “It’s me.”) I wanted to show how ridiculous we sound when we go overboard in the name of correctness.

As I wrote in the preface to the second edition, “the expression ‘Woe is me’ has been good English for generations. Only a pompous twit—or an author trying to make a point—would use ‘I’ instead of ‘me’ here.”

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English language Grammar Usage

Is it “fewer” or “less”?

Q: Which is correct: “Less than five percent of the people came” or “fewer than five percent of the people came”?

A: Strictly speaking, “fewer” should refer to plural nouns (“fewer kittens”) and “less” to singular nouns (“less milk”).

But with percentages (say, “five percent of the people”), the answer isn’t so black and white. I think (and Bryan A. Garner’s Dictionary of Modern American Usage agrees) that in this case “less” is better. To me, “the people” is closer to a collective mass noun than to a collection of individuals counted up. So I’d suggest “less than five percent of the people.”

There are intelligent arguments for “fewer,” but “less” would be my choice, since percentages suggest quantity rather than counted individuals.

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

Can you cut the mustard?

[Note: This post was updated on May 26, 2021.]

Q: Where did the phrase “can’t cut the mustard” come from? It doesn’t seem to make any sense to me.

A: The phrase “cut the mustard” originated in late 19th-century America. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as “slang (originally U.S.),” and says the noun “mustard” here means “something which adds piquancy or zest; that which sets the standard or is the best of anything.”

The OED says the the phrase and its variants mean “to come up to expectations, to meet requirements, to succeed.” The variant phrases “to be the mustard” or “to be to the mustard” are also defined as “to be exactly what is required; to be very good or special.”

The dictionary’s earliest recorded use of “cut the mustard” is from a Texas newspaper, in an article about legislative debate:

“They applied several coats of carmine hue and cut the mustard over all their predecessors” (Galveston Daily News, April 9, 1891).

The same newspaper used the phrase again the following year: “Time will reveal that he cannot ‘cut the mustard’ ” (Sept. 12, 1892).

The OED cites these early uses of other “mustard” phrases, also from North America.

“For fear they were not the proper mustard, he had that dog man sue him in court for the balance, so as to make him prove the pedigree” (The Log of a Cowboy, 1903, by Andy Adams).

“Petroskinski is a discovery of mine, and he’s all to the mustard” (You Can Search Me, 1905, written by George Vere Hobart under the pseudonym Hugh McHugh).

The OED suggests that “to be mustard,” when used to describe a person, might be compared to the expression “hot stuff.” An example: “That fellow is mustard” (from Edgar Wallace’s 1925 novel A King by Night).

However, somewhat similar “mustard” expressions were used much earlier in British English. According to the OED, “strong as mustard” (1659) and “hot as mustard” (1679) meant “very powerful or passionate,” while “keen as mustard” (1672) meant “very enthusiastic.”

Why the “cut” in “cut the mustard”? Nobody seems to know for sure. But we can offer a suggestion.

In the late 19th century, just before “cut the mustard” was first recorded, the verb “cut” was used to mean “excel” or “outdo,” according to OED citations.

The earliest OED example is from the April 13, 1884, issue of The Referee, a British sporting newspaper: “George’s performance … is hardly likely to be disturbed for a long time to come, unless he cuts it himself.”

So perhaps to “cut the mustard” is to surpass mustard—that is,  to be even more mustardy than mustard itself.

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Subscribe to the blog by email

Enter your email address to subscribe to the blog by email. If you’re a subscriber and not getting posts, please subscribe again.

 

Categories
English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Uncategorized Usage

Why is a police officer called a “cop”?

Q: I’ve heard that the word “cop” (for policeman) comes from “constable on patrol.” Am I right?

A: The noun “cop,” meaning a police officer, isn’t an acronym for “constable on patrol” or “custodian of the peace,” as some have suggested over the years. It comes from a verb, “to cop,” meaning to seize or nab, which subsequently gave rise to the noun “copper,” meaning a person who seizes or nabs. The noun “copper” was later shortened to “cop.”

According to the Dictionary of Word Origins (by John Ayto, Arcade Publishing), the noun “copper” is what’s called an agent noun, formed from the verb “to cop.” It is thought to come from Old French (“caper”) by way of Latin (“capere”), meaning to seize or take. It’s also the root of our word “capture.”

The noun “copper” was first used to refer to a police officer in 1846, according to other sources I’ve checked. The noun “cop” is a shortened form that dates to 1859.

Categories
English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Uncategorized Usage

Is it “gantlet” or “gauntlet”?

Q: Sometimes I see “gantlet” and sometimes I see “gauntlet.” Which one is correct?

A: The old “gantlet/gauntlet” distinction is rapidly being lost, since dictionaries these days are increasingly regarding them as interchangeable.

“Gantlet” originally came from a Swedish word similar to “lane,” and referred to the parallel lines involved in an old form of military punishment. Someone forced to “run the gantlet” was made to run between parallel lines of his colleagues, who would hit him with clubs or switches as he passed.

A “gauntlet” (French word) was a heavy, armored glove worn by a knight. As a challenge to fight, the knight would toss his glove to the ground (“throw down the gauntlet”). The opponent accepting the challenge was said to “pick up the gauntlet.”

Most dictionaries now accept the spelling “gauntlet” for both of those meanings. There’s still a technical term “gantlet” used in railroading, though.

Categories
English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage

Using ‘myself’ for ‘I’ or ‘me’

[Note: An updated post about “myself” and other “-self” words appeared on Aug. 27, 2018.]

Q: I wonder about “myself.” It seems to me to be a pretentious way of not saying “me,” as in “thank you for having my wife and myself on your program.” Is it proper, preferred, or pretentious?

A: It’s definitely not preferred. Some people probably think “myself” is more elegant than “me” in a sentence like that. If so, they’re misinformed. The use of “myself” here is not incorrect, but there’s no reason to avoid “me.”

Language authorities today accept the wider use of “myself” in place of “I” or “me,” but some traditionalists still insist that “myself” should only be used for emphasis (“I made it myself”) or to refer to a subject already named (“He beats up on himself”).

In addition, good writers often use “myself” or “himself” or “herself” deep into a sentence when the ordinary pronoun would almost seem to get lost. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Here at Grammarphobia, we prefer to use “myself” (and the other reflexive pronouns, “herself,” “themselves,” etc.) primarily in those traditional ways, not to replace ordinary pronouns (“I/me,” “she/her,” “they/them,” “he/him,” and so on) for no good reason.

In short, you can’t go wrong if you follow this simple rule: if you can just as well substitute an ordinary pronoun, then don’t use a “-self” word.

We suspect that some people rely on “myself” because they’ve forgotten—or never learned—how to use “I” and “me.” Faced with the decision (“I” or “me”?), they resort to “myself” as a fallback position.

But as we said, this isn’t a grammatical mistake, just perhaps a stylistic choice, and one that may not be preferable.

Categories
English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Uncategorized Usage

“A while” and “awhile”

Q: I know there’s a difference in the way one uses “awhile” and “a while,” but I can’t remember what it is. Is it correct to say “for a while” or “for awhile” – and, just for fun, where does “while” come from?

A: “Awhile” is an adverb meaning “for a time.” (The “for” is inherent in the word, so “for awhile” would be redundant.) “A while” is a noun phrase meaning “a period of time.” You could correctly say “We sat awhile and spent a while talking.” Or, “When he called a while ago, we talked awhile and laughed for a while.”

More than a little confusing, aren’t they?

“While” comes from a prehistoric Indo-European root meaning “rest” or “repose,” and it entered Old English from Germanic sources. It is a noun (for “period of time”), a conjunction (meaning “during the time that”), and a verb (to “while” means to spend time idly). I’ll take a crack at a sentence with all three: “For a while, he whiled away his time by eating while watching TV.”

Categories
English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Uncategorized Usage

A female version of “avuncular”

Q: A caller asked you on the air if there’s a feminine equivalent to “avuncular.” The Oxford English Dictionary lists “materteral” as meaning “characteristic of an aunt.” It comes from the Latin “matertera,” which refers to a mother’s sister. That’s consistent with “avuncular,” which means “characteristic of an uncle.” It comes from “avunculus,” which refers to a mother’s brother.

A: You’re right. But the OED lists only a single published reference to the word, from 1823, and calls it “humorously pedantic.” Until it shows up in more dictionaries, not many people are likely to use it. It’s not completely useless, however, as long as we can use it to answer the question, “What’s a word meaning ‘aunt-like’?”

By the way, one listener suggested creating the word “aunticular” and another listener suggested “tantatious” as feminine versions of “avuncular.”

Categories
English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Uncategorized Usage

“In like Flynn”

Q: I couldn’t get through to WNYC in time to comment on your discussion about the expression “in like Flynn.” It’s a reference to the extraordinary political staying power of Edward Flynn, chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party from 1922 until his death in 1953.

A: Thanks for writing, and for listening. There’s much conflicting evidence about the expression “in like Flynn,” and as of this writing, we don’t have a definitive answer.

The most common explanation, which may be erroneous, is that the expression originated in February 1943 in reference to Errol Flynn’s acquittal on charges of statutory rape. He had been indicted in late 1942, the trial took place in early 1943, and he was acquitted by a jury that February. Supposedly the phrase “in like Flynn” was an allusion to his legendary ability to misbehave free of consequences. In other words, he got away with it.

The problem with this theory is that the expression predates Flynn’s rape trial. During the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40, an official was quoted as telling a party of people who were to receive passes for a show, “Your name is Flynn … you’re in.” And a columnist in the San Francisco Examiner in early 1942 wrote: “Answer these questions correctly and your name is Flynn, meaning you’re in. …” (Of course, the actor had been a household name since “Captain Blood” in 1935, so these could have been roundabout references to him.)

A competing theory, advanced in a New York Times article a couple of years ago, is that “in like Flynn” originated as a reference to the Bronx Democratic machine politician Edward J. “Boss” Flynn (1892-1953), whose candidates always won. Flynn’s heyday was the 1930s. However, there’s no solid evidence that he’s the source.

The etymologist and researcher Barry Popik, whom I consulted about this problem, is dubious about both theories. He notes that there could even be a connection with Flynn’s Detective Weekly, a popular magazine in the 1920s and 1930s. But until there’s better evidence, we just can’t say.

Leonard Lopate’s explanation may be closer to the truth. Perhaps “in like Flynn” is yet another example of serendipitous rhyming slang that was already in existence and happened to attach itself to popular figures of the day.

Categories
English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Uncategorized Usage

“Yous” or “youse”

[Note: This post has been updated several times to report comments from readers.]

Q: As a native New Yorker of Italian-American descent, I have always been plagued by the term “yous.” I stopped using it many years ago during my freshman year at college when a dorm mate from Beacon Hill grabbed me by both shoulders and shook me vigorously while proclaiming, “ ‘Yous’ is not a word, God-dammit!”

I’ve accepted this but, in the interest of regaining some dignity, I do have a theory about its origins. New York is a city of immigrants who, like my grandparents, may have learned the English language but may have also retained some of the grammar of the home country. In English we express the plural of “you” with “you two” or “you three” or, in Katie Couric’s case, “you all.” But in Latin languages it is expressed with one word that, literally translated would be “yous” (for example: vous in French or vosotros in Spanish).

I therefore think that “yous” is almost a kind of creole for Italian-Americans rather than a sign that we have a strong aptitude for being a loan shark. Does this theory make sense or is my wife correct when she tells me I have much too much time on my hands?

A: You may have too much time on your hands, but there are worse things to do with it than think about the language! At least (presumably) this preoccupation keeps you off the streets.

As you say, modern English, unlike some other languages, has only one form of “you” for both singular and plural. (This wasn’t always the case, as we’ve written before.) It’s been suggested by some linguists that “you-all,” “you-uns” (a Pittsburgh expression) and “yous” or “youse” actually originated as attempts to differentiate plural “you” from singular “you.”

We can see that this might be a natural response on the part of immigrants (and not just Italians) whose first languages had both singular and plural forms.

Another reader has e-mailed us about the same thing, suggesting that there’s a connection between Irish immigration patters and the use of “youse” in this country:

“The use of the word ‘youse’ as a plural of ‘you’ is almost universal amongst the people of Derry,” she writes. “They also use the word ‘youse-uns,’ as an emphatic form, with remarkable frequency.”

[Notes: Another reader wrote on April 19, 2018, to comment that Irish has a plural form of “you”: sibh (plural of ). This reinforces the notion that the use of “youse” and such forms has a connection with Irish immigration.

And a reader in Britain wrote on April 18, 2021, with this comment:

“ ‘Youse’ might definitely be linked to Irish immigration. People say that in Coventry (UK) a lot. It was about a third Irish the middle of the last century. Also, people don’t use it much in the surrounding area.” We replied that Pat was currently reading a mid-19th-century novel by the Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu, set in a rural village just outside Dublin. In dialogue, most of the forms of “you” that are addressed to plural auditors by working-class speakers are written as “yez.”]

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation.
And check out our books about the English language.

Categories
English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Uncategorized Usage

“Career” vs. “careen”

Q: One of my bugbears is the word pair “careen” and “career,” particularly in the meaning of “lurch.” I learned in school that “careen” had the meaning “lurch,” among others. If a vehicle or person veered wildly out of the prescribed route, the word “careen” described what had happened. I now hear and read, however, the word “career” being used in that sense, as in, “The car careered off the highway.” While I have not taken the time to find examples, I believe that The New York Times now uses “career” in the sense of “lurch.” Do you have any background on this issue? Thanks for any information.

A: Traditionally, usage guides have said that to “careen” means to tilt or tip over and to “career” means to rush, perhaps recklessly. This is a distinction that every copy editor in the United States knows by rote, but also one that nobody BUT a copy editor ever observes.

In practice, most people use “careen” to describe a vehicle lurching or running out of control. Copy editors always change this to “career,” which understandably looks very odd to the ordinary reader. Dictionaries of course reflect common usage, which is why they almost unanimously accept interchangeable meanings for these words.

Many stylebooks for the lay reader, including Bryan A. Garner’s Dictionary of Modern American Usage, still make the old distinction and recommend “careering out of control,” not “careening.” The newest edition of the New York Times Stylebook also continues to maintain the distinction.

When I wrote my book “Woe Is I,” I deliberately omitted “careen-vs.-career” from my chapter on commonly confused words, because I felt that it had become almost pedantic to insist on a distinction that most people and dictionaries no longer recognize.

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation.
And check out our books about the English language.

Categories
English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Uncategorized Usage

Why isn’t there a “fire” in “fiery”?

Q: A friend in my writing group asked this question and i wonder if you
have an answer: If “fire” is spelled f-i-r-e, why is “fiery” spelled the way it is?

A: The Old English word “fyr” (fire) was transcribed into Middle English as “fier.” (The Old English letter y, representing a long “i” sound, was written as “ie” in the Middle English version of the word.)

The Modern English spelling “fire” didn’t become firmly established until about 1600, but a trace of the old spelling survived in the adjective “fiery.”