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What may (or might) have been

[Note: This post was updated on April 30, 2020.]

Q: When I taught 8th-grade grammar back in the ’70s, I used to tell my students that “may” meant permission, while “might” meant possibility. Is that no longer the case? I often hear the words used interchangeably now.

A: That’s not the case. There are two issues here. As a modal auxiliary verb (a subject we wrote about in 2012 and 2018), “may” can be used to indicate permission. But “may” is also used—like “might”—to indicate likelihood or possibility.

So when speaking about the possibility of something’s happening, you can use either “may” or “might.” You can say, “I might go,” or “I may go.” Let’s explain this possibility business by quoting a section from Pat’s grammar and usage book Woe Is I (4th ed., 2019):

May is a source of our word maybe, and that’s a good clue to how it’s used. We attach it to another verb (may take or may forget or may have learned, for example) to show that something is or was possible.

We can use might in the same way, attaching it to a main verb to indicate possibility (might take, might have forgotten, might learn). Then how do we know which to choose as our auxiliary, or “helping,” verb—may or might?

Tradition says that what may happen is more possible than what might happen. But never mind. Today most people see little or no difference in the degree of possibility, and that old distinction is largely ignored. In modern English, may and might are interchangeable—almost. Grammarians still recommend might in certain cases.

Here’s what to remember.

• If the sentence has only one main verb (with or without have), you can accompany it with either may or might. Here we’re talking about things that are still possible.

  Hermione may [or might] take the train.

  Hermione may [or might] have taken the train.

  She may [or might] forget her wand.

  She may [or might] have forgotten her wand.

  She may [or might] learn new tricks at the conference.

  She may [or might] have learned new tricks at the conference.

• If the sentence has an additional verb in the present tense (underlined here), you can use either may or might with the other verb. Here again, we’re talking about things that are still possible.

  Hermione thinks she may [or might] take the train.

  She is afraid she may [or might] have forgotten her wand.

  She says she may [or might] learn new tricks at the conference.

• If the sentence has an additional verb in the past tense (underlined here), I recommend using might with the other verb, though may is often seen in informal English. Here we’re talking about things that were possible in the past.

  Hermione thought she might take the train.

  She was afraid she might leave [or might have left] her wand behind.

  She said she might learn new tricks at the conference.

Why use might in speaking of possibilities from the past? Since might is technically the past tense of may, it mixes better with past-tense verbs.

NOTE: Because there’s an “iffy,” hypothetical element in may and might, they’re often used in if statements. Don’t let that throw you. Just follow the rules above about using either may or might when there are other present-tense verbs and might when there are other past-tense ones:  If Hermione goes to the Arithmancy lecture tonight, she may [or might] run into Professor Vector.  If Hermione went to the Arithmancy lecture tonight, she might run into Professor Vector. If Hermione had gone to the Arithmancy lecture tonight, she might have run into Professor Vector.

What Might Have Been

In some kinds of sentences, as you’ve just seen, there’s not much difference between might and may. Here comes one now: Moose might [or may] have flunked the course. Both versions express a possibility: Moose could have flunked.

But sometimes might branches out on its own. It no longer acts like a version of may, so it loses its sense of possibility and becomes negative. This might—often it’s a might have—is about things that are contrary to fact.

Here’s the kind of sentence I mean: Given enough time, Moose might have graduated. This means that in retrospect, he didn’t have enough time, so he didn’t graduate.

When we’re being contrary, we often use might and might have to speak of nonevents—things that “might be” but aren’t, or that “might have been” but weren’t. Here are some more examples of this contrary‑to‑fact might:

“You might have helped me move that heavy armoire,” snapped Moose’s mom. (He didn’t help.) “You might tell me next time you have to miss a test,” said Moose’s professor. (He didn’t tell the prof.) Had Moose gone to class, he might have learned something. (He didn’t learn.) If Moose hadn’t played hooky, he might not have flunked. (He did flunk.)

Only certain kinds of situations lend themselves to a contrary‑to‑fact might. This is the might that refers to possibilities that never came to pass, or that reproaches someone who fails to fulfill an expectation. (Sometimes, the failure is our own, so we reproach ourselves: “I might have known!”)

As for the issue of “can” versus “may” when asking for permission, we wrote a blog item about this in 2017.

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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.

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Article physics

Q: As a youngster, it was drilled into me that the word “the” is pronounced THUH in front of a consonant (i.e., “the car”), but THEE in front of a vowel (“the other car”). Yet lately I hear news anchors use THUH before vowels. Is this now acceptable? Or did these people fail their English courses?

A: The pronunciation of the definite article “the” is determined by the sound of the following word (not merely by the letter the word starts with).

Most of us pronounce “the” with a long “e” before a vowel sound (as in “THEE apple” … “THEE hour” … “THEE umbrella”), and when stressed for emphasis (as in “This is THEE movie to see”).

We usually pronounce it THUH (like the “a” in “about”) before a consonant sound (as in “THUH ball” … “THUH uniform” … “THUH one” … “THUH Europeans” … “THUH hotel”).

Remember, the issue here is whether the following word begins with a vowel or consonant sound, not whether it begins with an actual vowel or consonant.

By the way, this isn’t some arbitrary rule thought up by the language police to make life hard for us. Rather, it has become a rule because it’s the natural way to pronounce “the.”

With most people, this is automatic. It’s much easier to say THEE before a vowel sound than to pronounce two UH sounds in a row (as in “THUH other”).

In other words, THEE and THUH evolved as common practice, and dictionaries list them as differing pronunciations of “the” before vowel and consonant sounds.

These are the standard pronunciations given in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

However, M-W does note that THUH is also heard sometimes before vowel sounds. So that pronunciation, while unusual (and, we think, awkward), isn’t considered incorrect – at least by Merriam-Webster’s.

You didn’t ask, but the indefinite article “a” also has two pronunciations. It’s generally pronounced UH (like the “a” in “about”). But it’s pronounced with a long “a” sound (as in “day”) when it’s stressed for emphasis: “Did you say you had caught AY fish or several fish?”

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Why we suck

Q: I often notice the word “suck” used when I think it’s inappropriate. The comedian Denis Leary, for example, has a book called Why We Suck. And a kid may tell a teacher, “I think Catcher in the Rye sucks.” This makes me cringe. My understanding is that “suck” here refers to oral sex. Am I being priggish?

A: The verb “suck” is very old, dating back to Anglo-Saxon days, and it’s perfectly acceptable in most of its senses.

“Suck” has been in the language since around the year 825, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Its original meaning: “To draw (liquid, esp. milk from the breast) into the mouth by contracting the muscles of the lips, cheeks, and tongue so as to produce a partial vacuum.”

All the other meanings (to suck something or someone dry of money, for example) stem from this one. [Note: A later post on the uses of “suck” appeared on the blog in 2017.]

The OED also lists the oral-sex definition, labeling it “coarse slang,” and dates that usage from 1928. However, Green’s Dictionary of Slang has two citations from the 17th century, including this one:

“O that I were a flea upon thy lip, / There would I sucke for euer, and not skip … / Or if thou thinkst I there too high am plast, / Ile be content to sucke below thy waste” (from The Schoole of Complement, a 1631 play by the English dramatist James Shirley).

Separately the OED lists “contemptible or disgusting” as slang meanings of the word (as in “he sucks” or “it sucks”), and dates that usage from 1971.

Is this negative sense of the word derived from the oral-sex usage? The OED doesn’t indicate that one sense comes from the other. But we assume that the two senses are related.

Are you being priggish? Perhaps. Most dictionaries label the negative usage as slang or informal, though Merriam-Webster says it’s sometimes vulgar.

[Note: This post was updated on April 25, 2020.]

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Graduate degrees

Q: Shouldn’t the graduates of a coed institution be “alumnae,” not “alumni”? My understanding is that “alumni” is the plural of “alumnus,” and “alumnae” pertains to both male and female graduates. Thanks for your help.

A: A group of alumnae is not a mixed group. Here’s the deal with all those alums:

“Alumnus”: singular, for a male graduate

“Alumna”: singular, for a female graduate

“Alumni”: plural, for either male graduates or males and females together

“Alumnae”: plural, for female graduates only

The term “alums,” which I used above, dodges the gender issue (as does the singular “alum”).

The short form “alum” is considered “informal” by The America Heritage Dictionary of English Usage (4th ed.), but Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) lists it without comment.

Interestingly, both the short and long forms entered English in the 17th century, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, the long one in 1645 and the short one in 1683 (spelled “alumn”).

But the short version seems to have fallen into disuse, according to the OED citations, and didn’t show up in print again until the early 20th century.

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An exception proves the rule?

Q: Can you help me understand how an exception can prove a rule? I’ve often heard it said that this expression made sense at one time when the word “prove” meant to test rather than to confirm absolutely. Is that correct?

A: The old saying “the exception that proves the rule” does seem nonsensical. If there’s an exception, then it should disprove the rule, right? Many word lovers have turned themselves inside out in an attempt to explain this seeming contradiction.

But the word “proves” isn’t the key to the problem. (Contrary to statements in several reference books, “proves” here does indeed mean proves, not tests.) The key is the word “exception,” which English adopted from French in the 14th century.

When the word (spelled excepcioun) showed up in Chaucer’s writings in 1385, it meant a person or thing or case that’s allowed to vary from a rule that would otherwise apply.

That sense of the word led to the Medieval Latin legal doctrine exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis (exception proves the rule in cases not excepted), according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

By the 17th century, the Latin expression was being quoted in English as “the exception proves the rule” or variations on this. And the exception, the OED tells us, was something that “comes within the terms of a rule, but to which the rule is not applicable.”

If all students in a school are required to attend gym class, for example, that’s the rule. If a kid with a sprained ankle is excused from gym, then the exception made for him proves that there’s a rule for everybody else.

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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 OED’s 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.

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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!

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Multiple choice

[Note: An updated and expanded post about “multiple” appeared on Aug. 15, 2018.]

Q: Would you indulge me by discussing the overuse of “multiple”? It’s not attractive, nor does it save syllables. What’s wrong with good old “many”? I’m all for a varied vocabulary, but some of these fad words become so ubiquitous that variety doesn’t even come into the picture.

A: Not only does “multiple” not save syllables, but it adds one. In our opinion, a good writer avoids words that are longer than need be. Shorter is often more beautiful, too, as in this excerpt (which we’ve quoted before) from Yeats’s “When You Are Old”:

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.

While we find “multiple” a bit clunky, there’s nothing wrong with the word. It’s been used as an adjective since the mid-17th century to refer to many people or things.

But “many” is much, much older, going all the way back to Anglo-Saxon times, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Let’s skip the Old English citations in the OED and go directly to Shakespeare for an example.

Here’s Guildenstern (of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern notoriety) speaking to King Claudius in Hamlet (1604):

We will ourselves provide:
Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your majesty.

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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.]

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An article of faith

Q: I have a pet peeve about the italic notes under magazine pieces translated from other languages – e.g., “Translated from the Japanese by so-and-so.” Why is “the” necessary? Shouldn’t it simply say, “Translated from Japanese by so-and-so“?

A: In English, the definite article “the” has often been used in an idiomatic way with the names of things that wouldn’t appear to need an article (or could use the article “a” instead). For instance:

● With names of seasons, directions, and natural phenomena: “in the spring”; “I hate the cold”; “face the north,” and so on.

● With diseases: “she has the flu,” “have you had the measles?”

● With some titles: “the Reverend,” “the Honorable,” etc.

● With musical instruments: “she learned to play the piano,” “lessons on the viola.”

● And, finally, with the names of languages: “translated from the Spanish,” “borrowed from the German.”

Once the use of “the” with a language was much more prevalent than it is today. Here are two old citations from the Oxford English Dictionary: “Let not your studying the French make you neglect the English” (1760). And “Every advantage that … a complete knowledge of the Arabic could afford” (1795).

The OED says people use “the” with languages in an elliptical way – that is, they’re mentally deleting part of a longer phrase. Examples: “translated from the Spanish [version]” … or “from the [original] German” or “from the Japanese [language].”

At any rate, it’s not a mistake. It’s just a custom. Some people (and publications) adopt it and some don’t. And readers just accept this idiomatic “the” as, let’s say, an article of faith.

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A murder of crows

Q: When my wife and I grew up in Monmouthshire in the UK back in the ’40s and ’50s, a common collective noun for crows was “murder,” as in “a murder of crows.” Please comment on the origin of this usage.

A: The term “murder” was used to describe a flock of crows as far back as the 15th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (Here’s a spine-chilling version from 1475: “A morther of crowys.”)

But the OED cautions that this usage is “one of many alleged group names found in late Middle English glossarial sources.” In other words, it might have been some glossary writer’s fanciful invention, rather than a legitimate expression in common use in the 15th century – like “gaggle of geese” or “pack of dogs.”

But why a “murder”? The OED suggests this is an allusion to “the crow’s traditional association with violent death” or “its harsh and raucous cry.” If you’ve ever heard dozens of agitated crows in full cry, it really does sound as if they’re yelling bloody murder.

This whimsical usage, which apparently died out after the 1400s, was revived in the 20th century, but as far we can tell it has never been commonly used in reference to a group of birds.

We’ve done some birdwatching over the years and have never heard birders use those terms in a serious avian discussion.

The first modern citation in the OED comes from 1939, but the usage was undoubtedly popularized by its appearance in An Exaltation of Larks (1968), a compendium of “nouns of multitude” by James Lipton.

Some of the group nouns (they’re called terms of venery) in that book and its successors are actual archaic terms.

The one in the title, for example, dates back to the 15th century. “A exaltacion of larkes” (from Debate of the Horse, Goose, and Sheep, circa 1440, by John Lydgate).

Others (like “parliament of owls”) are more likely to be modern inventions, though “parliament” has been used since the 14th century for a congregation of things: fowls, birds, fools, bees, women, masts (on a ship), and rooks, according to the OED.

The dictionary’s earliest example is from the title and opening line of “Parlement of Foules,” a poem by Chaucer, believed written around 1381.

The poem, which describes a gathering of birds to choose mates, begins this way: “Here begyneth the Parlement of Foules”

Interestingly, the OED’s first recorded example of “Valentine’s Day” also appears in that poem:

“For this was on seynt Volantynys day / Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make” (“For this was on Saint Valentine’s Day / When every bird comes here to choose his mate”).

But the association of “parliament” with owls didn’t appear until much later. The earliest example we’ve found is from “Chicago a Thousand Years Hence,” a 19th-century poem by James Newton Matthews.

The poem, which describes a crumbling cathedral, appeared in the June 12, 1886, issue of The Current, a Chicago weekly magazine. Here’s the relevant passage:
Look on it now! the stately edifice,
That once was palpitant with prayer and praise,
Re-echoes to a parliament of owls,
That perch, by night, upon the shattered stones.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) includes many collective nouns for animals under its entry for “flock.” But keep in mind that some of them are found only in very old compilations and may have had little or no existence aside from these lists.

Since Lipton’s very popular book and its successors appeared, the naming of groups of things has become something of a game with his many fans. While these inventions aren’t legitimate historically, some of them are quite imaginative and even beautiful. A favorite of mine: “a chandelier of hummingbirds.”

[Note: This post was updated on Dec. 24, 2022, Dec. 31, 2023, and Jan. 1, 2024.]

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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.]

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Heavens to Betsy!

Q: I saw the expression “Heavens to Betsy” in the paper the other day and it reminded me of my late, dearly beloved mother, who used to use it at least once a week. Where does the expression come from, and who was Betsy?

A: Word sleuths have long asked themselves the same questions about “Heavens to Betsy,” an exclamation of surprise, shock, or fear.

All they’ve been able to learn is that the expression can be traced to 19th-century America. But “Betsy” herself remains stubbornly anonymous. As the Oxford English Dictionary comments: “The origin of the exclamation Heavens to Betsy is unknown.”

The earliest published reference found so far, according to the OED, comes from an 1857 issue of Ballou’s Dollar Monthly Magazine: “ ‘Heavens to Betsy!’ he exclaims, clapping his hand to his throat, ‘I’ve cut my head off!’ ”

Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Dictionary of Quotations, found this hyphenated example in an an 1878 issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine: “Heavens-to-Betsy! You don’t think I ever see a copper o’ her cash, do ye?”

And the OED has this one from a short-story collection by Rose Terry Cooke, Huckleberries Gathered From New England Hills (1892): “’Heavens to Betsey!’ gasped Josiah.” (“Betsy,” as you can see, is spelled there with a second “e.”)

The OED says the word “heaven,” used chiefly in the plural, has appeared since the 1500s in “exclamations expressing surprise, horror, excitement, etc.” It’s frequently accompanied by an intensifying adjective, Oxford adds, as in “good heavens,” “gracious heavens,” “great heavens,” “merciful heavens,” and so on.

In later use, the dictionary says, “extended forms” have included “Heaven and earth,” “Heavens above,” “Heavens alive,” and “Heavens to Betsy,” which it says originated and is chiefly heard in the US.

Some people have suggested that the exclamation was inspired by the Minna Irving poem “Betsy’s Battle Flag” (about Betsy Ross) or the nickname of Davy Crockett’s rifle, Old Betsy, but language authorities have debunked these ideas.

In a posting to the American Dialect Society’s mailing list, the etymologist Gerald Cohen has suggested that Betsy Ross may indeed have inspired the expression even if the Irving poem didn’t. He adds that “Heavens to Betsy” may be an elliptical way of saying “may the heavens be gracious to Betsy.”

As for any more definitive explanation, we can’t offer one. This is one of the many language mysteries that we simply have to live with.

It’s even possible that the expression referred to nobody in particular, and that “Betsy” was used simply because it was a familiar feminine name. The generic use of names isn’t uncommon in such expressions, as we’ve written in posts about “Tom, Dick, and Harry”  and “Johnny-come-lately.”

The lexicographer Charles Earle Funk, in his appropriately titled book Heavens to Betsy!, says he spent “an inordinate amount of time” on this problem before deciding that it’s “completely unsolvable.”

[Note: This post was updated on Jan. 23, 2018.]

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Nerds of America

[Note: This post was updated on Sept. 24, 2020.]

Q: I was listening to a discussion on WNYC about the word “nerd” and began thinking of when I first heard the term. I’m a baby boomer and don’t remember encountering it in grammar school, high school, or college. I believe I first heard the word on the TV show Happy Days. Did I miss something or did “nerd” originate on the sitcom?

A: You must have had your mind on other things. Happy Days was on the air from the mid-’70s to the mid-’80s, but the word “nerd” (sometimes spelled “nurd” in its early days) originated in the United States in the early ’50s.

That’s about the only thing certain about “nerd.” Its origin has been much disputed and we may never know the real story.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “nerd” as a “mildly derogatory” slang term for “an insignificant, foolish, or socially inept person” or one “who is boringly conventional or studious.” The word nowadays also has a more specific meaning, the dictionary adds: “a person who pursues an unfashionable or highly technical interest with obsessive or exclusive dedication.”

The first published citation for “nerd” in the OED is from an article in Newsweek (Oct. 8, 1951): “In Detroit, someone who once would be called a drip or a square is now, regrettably, a nerd.”

[Update: The Newsweek quotation suggests that the word was already attracting notice, at least in Detroit. In fact, the author and Yale Law School librarian Fred Shapiro spotted this slightly earlier example in the Detroit Free Press: “If the person in question (formerly known as a square) is really impossible, he’s probably a ‘nerd’ ” (Oct. 7, 1951).]

The OED mentions one plausible origin and several others that are more doubtful.

The plausible one suggests that “nerd” was inspired by a fictional character of the same name in a Dr. Seuss book, If I Ran the Zoo, published in 1950. The Nerd in the children’s book, according to the OED, was “depicted as a small, unkempt, humanoid creature with a large head and a comically disapproving expression.” That sounds pretty nerdlike.

Less likely, the OED says, are suggestions that “nerd” is an alteration of “turd” or that it is back-slang for “drunk” (which contains the letters n-u-r-d) or that it is derived from the name of the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s dummy Mortimer Snerd.

Here are some “nerd”-related word formations, from Green’s Dictionary of Slang and the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang: the adjectives “nerdy” (1960s) and “nerdly” (1990s) are self-explanatory; the verb “to nerd” (1980s) means to study, but “to nerd around” (1970s) is to goof off; a “nerd magnet” (1980s) is a woman who attracts nerds; a “nerd pack” (1980s) is a pocket protector for holding pens.

We don’t recall hearing “nerd” during our school careers, either (Stewart, class of ’63; Pat, ’71). But we remember the type—the guys who spent all their spare time in the library or lab, didn’t party or do drugs, studied like fiends, got great grades, and went on to become zillionaires in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street. We think they got the last laugh.

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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.]

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Is “trepidatious” a word?

Q: I hear people use “trepidatious” to mean fearful or anxious, but I can’t find it in my dictionary and my spell-checker tells me it’s wrong. Is “trepidatious” a word?

A: Yes, it’s a word, though it’s more common in the US than in the UK. Six of the 10 standard dictionaries we regularly consult recognize the adjective.

All five American dictionaries include it as standard English. However, it’s found in only one of the five British dictionaries, Lexico (the former Oxford Dictionaries Online), which describes the usage as informal. All 10 dictionaries include the noun “trepidation.”

The Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, defines the adjective as “apprehensive, nervous; filled with trepidation.” The dictionary says it originated with the addition of the suffix “-ious” to either trepidāt-, the past participial stem of the classical Latin verb trepidāre (to be alarmed), or to the root of the English word “trepidation.”

Although the usage is more popular in the US than the UK, the first OED citation is from an early 20th-century British novel about colonial India:

“Hilda looked up from the papers she had been busy with as he entered—in fact, made a guilty and trepidatious attempt at sweeping them out of sight” (The Sirdar’s Oath: A Tale of the Northwest Frontier, 1904, by Bertram Mitford, a member of the aristocratic and literary Mitford family).

The earliest American citation in the OED is from the May 18, 1940, issue of the Circleville Herald, an Ohio newspaper: “A trepidatious Europe today remained tense, worried, fearful, for the outcome of what military men predict will be the greatest battle in the history of the world.”

The much older noun “trepidation” ultimately comes from the Latin trepidāre. When it first appeared in the early 17th century, the OED says, “trepidation” referred to agitation in the scientific sense:

“Massiue bodies … haue certaine trepidations and wauerings before they fixe and settle” (from Of the Proficience and Aduancement of Learning, Diuine and Humane, 1605, by Francis Bacon).

Two decades later, the noun took on its modern sense of “tremulous agitation; confused hurry or alarm; confusion; flurry; perturbation,” according to the dictionary.

The earliest citation is from another work by Bacon: “There vseth to be more trepidation in Court, vpon the first Breaking out of Troubles, then were fit” (The Essayes or Counsels, Ciuill and Morall, 1625).

Some sticklers have objected to the use of the relatively new adjective “trepidatious,” but we see nothing wrong with it. The linguist Arnold Zwicky, who uses the term himself, wrote a strong defense of the adjective in a Nov. 17, 2004, post on the Language Log.

[Note: This post was updated on Feb. 19, 2020, to reflect newer dictionary information. Posts on “trepidatious,” “trepidant,” and “trepidated” also appeared in 2015 and 2017. ]

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A tough row to hoe

Q: I’m always hearing people say “a tough ROAD to hoe.” Hoeing a road is probably illegal, and using that expression should be illegal too. What are your thoughts?

A: We don’t know if hoeing a road is illegal, but an asphalt road must be a mighty tough road to hoe. The correct expression is, of course, “a tough row to hoe,” and it refers to hoeing rows on a farm. To have a “tough” or “hard” or “long” or “difficult” row to hoe means to have a daunting task to perform.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the correct expression is of American origin and dates back to the early 19th century. The first OED citation is from the March 24, 1810, issue of the New-York Spectator:

“True, we have a hard row to hoe—’tis plaguy unlucky the feds have taken him up.”

And here’s an example from An Account of Col. Crockett’s Tour to the North and Down East, an 1835 book by the frontiersman Davy Crockett: “I know it was a hard row to hoe.”

Interestingly, the “road” version of the expression showed up soon after Crockett’s book. The earliest example we’ve seen is from the Dec. 3, 1842, issue of the Daily Atlas (Boston).

A farmer, describing his long journey to take wheat to market, writes: “ ‘Truly you have a hard road to hoe,’ you will say; ‘why don’t you sell your wheat nearer home?’ ”

We sympathize with you, but we think substituting “road” for “row” in the expression is a misdemeanor and doesn’t deserve hard time. Definitely no more than an hour on a road crew!

A few years ago, the linguists Geoffrey Pullum and Mark Liberman came up with the term “eggcorn” to describe such a substitution. (The term comes from the substitution of “egg corn” for “acorn.”)

[Note: This post was updated on Dec. 19, 2017.]

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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.

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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.”

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Paint the town red!

[Note: This post was updated on Oct. 13, 2023.]

Q: My girlfriend and I have been arguing about the expression “paint the town red.” I’ve heard that it comes from ancient times when the Roman Legions used to wash the walls of conquered towns with the blood of the defeated people. My girlfriend is skeptical. Who’s correct?

A: Sorry, but we’re with your girlfriend on this one. We’ve found no evidence that the Romans routinely painted the walls of captured towns with the blood of conquered people.

Roman society depended heavily on slavery, and the Romans tended to enslave rather than massacre conquered people (see accounts by Livy, Josephus, and the modern historian K.R. Bradley of the conquests of Carthage, Jerusalem, Epirus, and so on).

At any rate, it’s hardly likely that Roman atrocities would be the source of “paint the town red.” The expression is relatively recent. The earliest published examples date from the 1870s.

Another widespread explanation is that the expression originated in 1837 when the Marquis of Waterford and a bunch of rowdy friends literally painted some public spots red in the English town of Melton Mowbray. That’s doubtful, since the earliest recorded examples appeared decades later—and in the United States, not Britain.

So where did “paint the town red” come from? The expression originated in the United States, according to the Oxford English Dicitonary, which defines it as “to enjoy oneself flamboyantly; go on a boisterous or exuberant spree.”

Bonnie Taylor-Blake, a neuroscience researcher with an interest in word sleuthing, found the earliest example we know of in a Nebraska newspaper and reported it to the Linguist List in October 2023. Here’s the quotation:

“Therefore we say, the day is not far off in the future, when all the Iowa roads will run their trains into Omaha’s mammoth depot, and in that day, as Harry Deuel says, ‘we’ll paint the whole town red and sing the hallelujah chorus’ ” (Omaha Daily Republican, July 31, 1874; Harry Deuel was a prominent Omaha citizen).

The coinage took off in the following decade. We’ve seen a couple of examples from 1880, and dozens from later in the ’80s.

Here’s the OED’s first reference: “He gets on a high old drunk with a doubtful old man, and they paint the town red together” (Semi-Weekly Interior Journal, Stanford, KY, March 10, 1882).

We haven’t seen any published examples that explain why the color red was used rather than, say,  green or blue or orange. There are a few modern theories, but none very plausible and none supported by any evidence. A full explanation may never be known.

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Assure, ensure, and insure

Q: I am a puzzled editor. I cringe every time I see the word “insure” used in a non-financial sense in respected publications. I am under the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that “insure” should be used in regard to finances, and “ensure” in a more abstract and wider sense. I would appreciate any light that you can shed on this.

A: In the US, both “ensure” and “insure” can mean to make certain of something, but “insure” is preferred in the commercial sense (to issue or take out insurance). All five American standard dictionaries that we regularly consult agree on this, while the five British dictionaries we consult describe it as standard in the US.

Nevertheless, some usage and style manuals insist that “insure” should be used only in the financial sense.

A third verb, “assure,” is often confused with “ensure” and “insure.” In both the US and the UK, “assure” means to set someone’s mind at rest, though it’s sometimes used in the UK to mean underwrite financial loss.

All three verbs—“assure,” “ensure,” and “insure”—have their roots in a Latin word for “safe” or “secure.” 

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[Note: This post was updated on April 21, 2020.]
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Did Mencken coin “bloviate”?

Q: I see the word “bloviate” whenever I pick up a newspaper. I’ve heard that it was created by H. L. Mencken in reference to Warren G. Harding. Is there more to the story?

A: The earliest example we’ve seen for “bloviate” appeared in an Ohio newspaper in the late 1830s and referred to the oratory of William Allen, a US congressman, senator, and governor from the state:

“We commend the fol’owing to the rapt perusal of all who ever had the high honor and exquisite pleasure of hearing Mr. Wm. Allen bloviate in the Court-House of this county, or on the stump in any of our highly favored precincts” (from The Scioto Gazette, March 8, 1838).

The passage was brought to our attention by Ken Liss, who comments about etymology, among other things, on his website and Twitter.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “bloviate” as “to talk at length, esp. using inflated or empty rhetoric; to speechify or ‘sound off.’ ”

In an etymology note, the dictionary says “bloviate” probably comes from combining the verb “blow” with the “-viate” ending of words like “deviate” and “abbreviate.”

The OED‘s earliest example, which we’ve expanded, is from the Oct. 14, 1845, issue of The Huron Reflector in Norwalk, OH:

“Peter P. Low, Esq., will with open throat reiterate the slang of the resolution passed by the County Convention, and bloviate about the farmers being taxed upon the full value of their farms, while bankers are released from taxation.”

“Bloviate” is a wonderful word—the very sound of it suggests terms like “blowhard” and “windbag.” It’s one of those humorous mock-Latin formations (like “absquatulate” and others). But as you can see, it didn’t originate with Mencken.

The word was a favorite of President Warren G. Harding, who was a native of Ohio and something of a bloviator himself. Mencken, who couldn’t stand Harding’s writing, describes it this way:

“It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.” (From a 1921 article in the Baltimore Evening Sun entitled “Gamalielese.” Gamaliel was Harding’s middle name.)

Because Harding is associated with the word “bloviate,” and because Mencken criticized Harding’s blowhard writing style, some sources may have mistakenly credited Mencken with inventing the term “bloviate.” But as we’ve said,  it goes back much further than that.

[Note: This post was updated on Feb. 15, 2022.]

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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.

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