Category: Usage

Q: It seems to me that the phrase “fall on one’s sword” has been overused and watered down to the point of meaninglessness. At one time it meant to commit suicide, but it’s now used to describe a minor mea culpa. The public editor at the New York Times, for example, recently referred to the sports editor’s acknowledgement of a mistake as “falling on his sword.”

A: The practice of committing suicide by running oneself through with a sword is thousands of years old—probably as old as swords themselves. 

The English expression “to fall on one’s sword” is much younger, naturally, but it’s difficult to say just when it first showed up. We do know that it appeared in the first English translation of the Bible, in the late 14th century.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that in Bible translations, to “fall on” a sword means “to throw oneself upon” it.

The OED gives an example from the 1382 Wycliffe translation of the Bible: “So Saul caught his swerd and felle vpon it.” A 1611 version of the Bible has “Therfore Saul tooke a sword, and fell upon it.”

In Virgil’s Aeneid, written in Latin in the first century BC, the lovelorn Dido, queen of Carthage, does away with herself in this grisly manner, stabbing herself with Aeneas’ sword as her horrified attendants look on.

When Sir William Mure translated Dido and Aeneas (the early books of the Aeneid) into English in about 1614, he wrote: “Her Dams attending see their mistris fall / On piercing sword.”

Here’s another 17th-century citation, from Sir Robert Stapylton’s 1647 translation of Juvenal’s Sixteen Satyrs: “He converted his fury upon himself, and … fell upon his own sword.”

Similarly, Plutarch’s Lives has a passage describing how Brutus handed his sword to his friend Strato, then “he fell on the point, and died.” (From an 1832 translation by John and William Langhorne.)

For a later example, here’s Richard Le Gallienne, writing in From a Paris Garret (1936), a collection of columns written for the New York Sun:

“Vatel … committed suicide by falling on his sword … because the ‘roti’ at the twenty-fifth table was wanting.” (The reference is to a 17th-century chef who took his job too seriously.)

These days, “to fall on one’s sword” doesn’t necessarily mean to commit suicide. It can mean to sacrifice one’s career and livelihood in admitting an error, like an executive or other public figure who resigns in shame.

A more watered-down usage—meaning simply to accept the blame or responsibility for something—has recently emerged.

That’s how Arthur S. Brisbane, the Times’s public editor, used the expression in his Dec. 26, 2010, column.

It’s our opinion that with this new usage, the phrase loses a lot of its edge (no pun intended).

Check out our books about the English language

Q: In a recent blog post, you wrote: “Interestingly, there may be a connection here (however, tenuous) with the verb ‘schmooze.’ ” The word “interestingly” could be replaced by “happily,” “sadly,” “frankly,” etc., and no one would complain. But if it were replaced by “hopefully,” hackles would be raised. I’m interested in your thoughts.

A: The adverb “hopefully” has been hotly debated among usage authorities for the last 50 years or so. We devoted a section of our book about language myths, Origins of the Specious, to the subject.

There are two schools of thought here:

The first school believes that “hopefully” should modify only a specific verb, and that it should have the meaning “in a hopeful manner.” (Example: “He prayed hopefully for rain.”)

The second believes that “hopefully” can modify an entire sentence, and that it can have the meaning “it is to be hoped that.” (Example: “Hopefully it will rain.”)

We’re in the second camp. If you don’t mind our cribbing from our own book, here are a few passages from Origins of the Specious:

“It’s hopeless to resist the evolution of ‘hopefully.’

“Usage experts used to insist, and many traditionalists still do, that there’s only one correct way to use ‘hopefully’—as an adverb meaning ‘in a hopeful manner.’ (‘Did my horse win?’ Nathan asked hopefully.’) It’s a hanging offense, the sticklers say, to use it to mean ‘it is hoped’ or ‘let us hope.’ (‘Hopefully he won,’ Nathan said.) The word ‘hopefully,’ the argument goes, should modify a verb, not a whole sentence.

“Oh yeah? Writers have been using adverbs to modify entire sentences for hundreds of years. In fact, the first complete English translation of the Bible, the Wycliffe version of about 1382, uses ‘plainly’ (it was spelled ‘pleynly’ then) as a sentence adverb. Here’s the passage in modern English: ‘Plainly this is my infirmity, and I shall bear it.’

“Many other adverbs have been used in the same way by respected writers. Jane Austen in Mansfield Park (1814): ‘Luckily the strength of the piece did not depend upon him.’ Thomas Carlyle in The French Revolution (1837): ‘Happily human brains have such a talent of taking up simply what they can carry, and ignoring all the rest.’ Charles Darwin in an 1847 letter: ‘Oddly, I was never at all staggered by this theory until now, having read Mr. Milne’s argument against it.’ Virginia Woolf in a 1939 diary entry: ‘Mercifully we have 50 miles of felt between ourselves and the den.’

“Words like ‘plainly,’ ‘luckily,’ ‘happily,’ ‘oddly,’ ‘curiously,’ ‘surely,’ ‘strictly,’ ‘seriously,’ ‘certainly,’ and more have been used as sentence adverbs for centuries without upsetting anybody. Yet, remarkably, people seem to have drawn the line at ‘hopefully.’ Why? Logically, there’s no good reason. But the answer may lie in the relative newness of its appearance as a sentence adverb.”

As we go on to say in Origins, the usage was apparently introduced in 1932 by the New York Times Book Review, and nobody seemed to mind at the time. “Hopefully” appeared from time to time as a sentence adverb over the next thirty years without exciting much notice.

Then in the early 1960s, we write, the usage suddenly took off and started appearing everywhere:

“There’s something about a new usage—especially a popular one—that makes sticklers cranky, and ‘hopefully’ really cranked them up. All hell broke loose in 1965, when the Saturday Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Times denounced this terrible new menace. (The Times had no doubt forgotten the word’s parentage.) Thus began what the lexicographer R. W. Burchfield has called ‘one of the most bitterly contested of all the linguistic battles fought out in the last decades of the 20th century.’

“On one side were the traditionalists who condemned the practice. On the other side were nearly all the people who actually used the language. Over the years, most usage manuals and style guides have come to believe that it’s illogical to condemn the use of ‘hopefully’ as a sentence adverb, but they still warn writers against the practice because of all the naysayers out there.”

We conclude that “ ‘hopefully’ has long since earned its right to be a sentence adverb. It’s so widely accepted because no other word does the job quite as well.”

Check out our books about the English language

Q: “Panini” and “biscotti” are plurals in Italian, but I often hear them as singulars in English. When words like these are relatively recent additions to English, what are the proper singulars and plurals?

A: As of this writing, “biscotto” and “panino” are the singular forms; “biscotti” and “panini” are the plurals.

So say both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

But stay tuned. We wouldn’t be surprised if “biscotto” and “panino” went the way of “graffito.”

Why? Because more and more people are treating the plural forms as singular and using them with singular verbs.

When Pat is in New York for her monthly WNYC broadcasts, she regularly has lunch at an Italian kiosk in Grand Central Station. The lunch counter serves both panini and biscotti. But customers generally ask for “a panini” or “a biscotti.” 

When a foreign word sneaks into English, it becomes an English word and acquires a life of its own. The word may keep some or all of its foreign flavor, at least for a while, but it may not.

Many foreign words adopted into English have lost the plural inflections they had in their parent languages.

Spaghetti, for instance, is a plural in Italian, but we don’t say, “These spaghetti are delicious.” Similarly, Italian plurals like zucchini and fettuccine are treated as singulars in English.

The word “graffiti,” too, comes from an Italian plural but it’s more commonly used as a singular in English. More people say “graffiti is” than “graffiti are.” We had a blog entry about graffiti a couple of years ago.

Furthermore, once new words are adopted they generally form their plurals in the usual English way.

For example, when you and a friend both want a cappuccino, you don’t tell the barista at Starbucks that you want “two cappuccini.” You ask for “two cappuccinos.”

That’s why we hear people speak of “biscottis” and “paninis”—hence re-pluralizing those originally plural words.

You ask about “proper” usage. The process of Anglicization doesn’t happen overnight, if it happens at all.

As we often say, English is a work in progress, and common usage is what influences lexicographers to update their dictionary entries generation after generation.

So until things sort themselves out, you can’t do better than to consult the most recent dictionaries. And, as we say, stay tuned.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Why does cooking something “from scratch” mean making it from the most basic ingredients?

A: To bake a cake “from scratch,” as you say, means to make it without using a prepared mixture of ingredients.

You’re probably puzzled by the usage because it originated not in cooking, but in the sporting world. Here’s the story.

The noun “scratch” has had several different meanings in sports terminology, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The oldest, dating back to the 18th century, was “a line or mark drawn as an indication of a boundary or starting-point.”

In boxing, for example, “scratch” was “the line drawn across the ring, to which boxers are brought for an encounter.”

That’s where we get phrases like “to come up to (the) scratch,” and “to toe the scratch.” A fighter who “comes up to scratch” is ready and able to box.

But another meaning of “scratch,” the OED says, is “the starting-point in a handicap of a competitor who receives no odds,” a usage first recorded in 1867.

And, of course, the word is often used in the phrase you ask about, “from scratch,” which the OED says means “from a position of no advantage, knowledge, influence, etc., from nothing.”

Here’s the OED’s first citation for the phrase, from Bicycle Journal in 1876: “Mr. Tom Sabin, of the Coventry Bicycle Club, has won, during last week, three races from scratch.”

And here’s a figurative usage, from The Economist  in 1936: “Nazi Germany, starting her rapid re-armament ‘from scratch’ in 1933, was fortunate enough to have a surplus capacity in all sections of her heavy industries.”

We didn’t see any citations in the OED for the phrase used in the culinary sense.

The earliest one we could find in the New York Times archive was from a Dec. 10, 1946, article about preparing economical meals.

In discussing processed foods, the author notes that in the city “the old-fashioned style of cooking—from scratch, as it were, without frozen or canned products—is on the wane.”

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I keep hearing the unnecessary use of the word “necessarily,” as in “It’s not necessarily true.” Am I linguistically blind or does “necessarily” add something to “It’s not true”? I’m a foreigner and English isn’t my first or even second language.

A: English speakers have found the adverb “necessarily” to be a handy word since it entered the language around the year 1400.

It’s been used to mean unavoidably, compulsorily, indispensably, predictably, intrinsically, inevitably, and so on.

But the negative version you’re asking about—“not necessarily”—isn’t quite the opposite of any of those senses.

The Oxford English Dictionary says this negative construction is “used as a non-committal response to a question or suggestion.”

This usage, the OED says, indicates that “what has been said or suggested is not true in all respects or without qualifications.”

So when English speakers say something is not necessarily true, they mean it’s not entirely true. That’s not the same as saying flatly that it’s not true.

The OED’s earliest published reference for this usage is from Thomas Hardy’s 1886 novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. In chapter 20, Lucetta asks Elizabeth-Jane to be her companion.

“I am no accomplished person,” Elizabeth-Jane says. “And a companion to you must be that.”

“O, not necessarily,” Lucetta responds.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I had a thought while reading your “Wha’ happen?” post. Didn’t Fred Willard’s character use the expression as a catchphrase in A Mighty Wind? I doubt, though, that the film was of sufficient popularity to credit for a change in language.

A: You’re right—we overlooked the Fred Willard angle in our “Wha’ happen?” blog entry.

Willard delivered a comic riff on “Wha’ happened?” in a scene from A Mighty Wind (2003), a “mockumentary” by Christopher Guest, the director who gave us Best in Show and This Is Spinal Tap.

While the phrase didn’t originate with the film (we heard it long before 2003), we can’t resist recapping the scene.

The film’s plot revolves around a reunion of several veteran folk-singing acts, one of which is managed by Mike LaFontaine (played by Willard), owner and founder of Hi-Class Management.

Touted as “THE South Florida talent agency,” the company specializes in booking acts for cruise ships.

LaFontaine’s claim to fame is that he once starred in a 1970s sitcom called Wha’ Happened?

As LaFontaine says in the film, “Every time something’d go wrong, I’d look at the camera and say, ‘Hey! Wha’ happened?’ … But it only lasted a year, and that’s good because that’s how you establish a cult.”

At one point during LaFontaine’s interview, the camera cuts to a fake front page of Variety, which proclaims: “ ‘WHA’ HAPPENED’ DUMPED due to total lack of interest.”

Any readers of the blog who are interested can catch Willard’s performance on YouTube.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Why do people on the East Coast “make” a party whereas those in the Midwest “give” or “throw” or “have” a party? I’m from the Midwest, like Pat, but I now live in NYC.

A: Yes, Pat is a former Iowa girl who used to detassel corn in the summer to help with her college expenses. The two of us now live on the East Coast—in rural New England.

As for your question, the Easterners we know also give, throw, and have parties. We don’t recall any making of parties in our neck of the woods. Maybe we should get out more.

The verb “make,” by the way, is very old, dating to the early days of Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons. There are similar words in Old Swedish, Old Icelandic, Old Saxon, and other early Germanic languages.

And, of course, we’ve been making all sorts of things—houses, ships, coffee, movies, fires, money, war, peace, and silk purses.

We’ve even been making parties since as far back as the 14th century. But those early “parties” referred to matches or tournaments or games, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In the early 18th century, the expression “make a party” was another way of saying “make up a party,” as in “Let’s make a party at cards.”

We don’t find the exact usage you’ve asked about in the OED. But it’s alive and well on Google (what isn’t?), and not limited to East Coast party givers.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Although “public” and “private” are opposites, “publicize” and “privatize” aren’t. Is there any particular reason the forms developed such different meanings? And what would be the opposite of “privatize” in the business sense?

A: You’re right that the adjectives “public” and “private” have generally described opposite things since they showed up in English in the late 14th century.

Here, for example, is the first definition of “public” in the Oxford English Dictionary: “In general, and in most of the senses, the opposite of private adj.”

And this is the earliest definition of “private” in the OED: “Restricted to one person or a few persons as opposed to the wider community; largely in opposition to public.”

The word “public” comes from the Latin publicus (pertaining to the people), according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology.

It’s usually seen in the sense of affecting, open to, maintained by, or devoted to all the people or the community as a whole.

The word “private,” Chambers says, is derived from the Latin privatus (apart from public life, deprived of office, belonging to an individual).

The verbs you’ve ask about—“publicize” and “privatize”—are relative newcomers. The first didn’t show up until the 19th century and the second until the 20th century.

The word “publicize,” in its earliest sense, meant “to bring to public notice or attention; to make generally known,” according to the OED.

But it later took on another meaning that we’re all familiar with: “to give out information about (a product, person, etc.) for advertising or promotional purposes.”

Both of those meanings reflect the use of the adjective “public” in the sense of affecting or open to the general public.

The verb “privatize” also reflected its older adjective when it entered English.

In the earliest citations for “privatize” in the OED, the verb meant “to make personal or private; to regard or treat in terms of the individual, rather than the wider community.”

Here’s a 1940 example from the American Sociological Review: “We cultivate a lack of confidence towards those who are our partners and our leaders, and we privatize our existence.”

But in the 1950s, according to OED citations, the verb took on a new meaning, the one that has caught your attention: “to transfer (a business, industry, or service) from public to private ownership and control.”

The OED doesn’t offer a reason for the evolution of “privatize,” but it directs readers to its entries for the somewhat earlier verbal noun “privatizing” (1932) and verb “reprivatize” (1937).

The word “privatizing” needs no explanation, but “reprivatize” is defined this way: “to return (a previously nationalized business, industry, or service) to private ownership and control.”

In that definition, you can find an answer to your question about the opposite of “privatize.”

Yes, one possibility is “nationalize,” a word that entered English in the late 18th century, when it meant to give something a national character.

In the mid-19th century, though, “nationalize” took on its sense of “to bring (land, property, an industry, etc.) under state control or ownership.”

Check out our books about the English language

Q: This showed up in an online forum: “The Bulldog hitch never actually matched the ‘A’ frame on the trailer, and a means of making it solid required a little smoogying.” Isn’t that a wonderful word? Never heard it before.

A: A wonderful word indeed! The writer apparently used “smoogying” to mean improvising or being inventive or making do or something of that sort.

The reference to “smoogying” in that online welders’ forum is the only one we can find with that meaning.

And we noticed that the welder who used the word inserted an animated icon of a laughing face right afterward, so he meant it humorously.

Our guess is that he used “smoogying” as a nonce-word, one he made up on the spot.

A nonce-word, says the Oxford  English Dictionary, is “a word apparently used only ‘for the nonce,’ i.e. on one specific occasion or in one specific text or writer’s works.”

We can find only one authoritative reference with an entry for “smoogy,” but not as a verb.

Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang says “smoogy” is an Australian slang word invented about a hundred years ago as “a collective term for people who kiss and cuddle.”

This term, according to Cassell’s, may be related to another Australian slang word, spelled “smoodge” or “smooge,” meaning “to ingratiate oneself, to cuddle up.”

Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (8th ed.) traces the verb “smoodge” to Australia in the late 19th century.

Partridge says it originally meant “to flatter, wheedle, speak with deliberate amiability,” but in the 20th century the word came to mean “to make love, pay court” in Australian slang.

Interestingly, there may be a connection here (however, tenuous) with the verb “schmooze.” Cassell’s and Partridge say “schmooze” was sometimes written as “schmooge” or “smoodge.”

The OED calls “schmooze” an adaptation of the “Yiddish shmuesn, to talk, converse, chat.”

Oxford’s first citation is from the New York Times Weekly Magazine (1897): “He loves dearly to stop and chat (Schmoos, he calls it).”

But back to “smoogying.” We’ve come across a couple of “smoogie” references that may be using the verb as a euphemism for making love.

In 1975, Atlanta Rhythm Section recorded a bluesy song called “Boogie Smoogie” (containing the line “boogie smoogie all night long”). And in 2004 Stevie Kotey recorded one called “Smoogie Down Punk.”

Slang, as you can see, is just as intricate and complicated as standard English, and much harder to pin down!

This is entirely unrelated, but the OED has an entry for “smuggy,” a rare adjective meaning “grimy” or “smutty.”

The dictionary has only two citations for this adjective, one from about 1515 that refers to “smoggy colyers” (colliers, or coal miners), and one from 1630 that mentions a “smuggy Smith” (blacksmith).

That long-dead adjective is likely to be related to a long-dead noun: “smug,” a word for “blacksmith.”

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I’ve read of people being “hauled,” “haled,” and even “hailed” into court. How do you rule on these usages?

A: People who get themselves into a fix can be either “hauled” or “haled” into court.

They’re only “hailed” if their entrance is accompanied by a warm welcome or a chilly meteorological event.

In A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, Bryan A. Garner writes that the “haul” and “hale” versions of the phrase are “equally common.”

Google agrees: “hauled into court,” 372,000 hits, versus “haled into court,” 344,000. (The “hailed” version, described by Garner as a “solecism,” gets 108,000.)

So why, you may wonder, do we have two similar words— “haul” and “hale”—for dragging someone into court?

The story begins with “hale,” a venerable old word that has undergone a few changes over the centuries.

It was first recorded in writing in about 1205, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. 

Back then, its meaning was “to draw or pull along, or from one place to another, esp. with force or violence; to drag, tug.”

So once upon a time, miscreants were “haled” into court or “haled” before a magistrate.

But why are they now also “hauled” into court?

Because several hundred years ago the old verb “hale” was mostly replaced by “haul,” which showed up in the 16th century as a new version of “hale”—same meaning, different spelling.

Apparently the difference in spelling came about because of a shift in pronunciation.

The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology explains that the “u” spelling represents a development in Middle English pronunciation in which vowel sounds shifted and spellings changed.

However, the verb “hale” can still be found in 19th-century literature in the old sense of pulling or dragging.

In 1879, for example, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of oxen “patiently haling at the plough.”

And, of course, the verb “hale” is still being used in the old legal sense.

A Feb. 18, 2003, article in the New York Times, for instance, refers to health insurance companies “haled into court.”

Here’s an aside. The verb “hale” shouldn’t be confused with the adjective “hale” (healthy, sound, uninjured).

English borrowed the verb “hale” from the Old French haler (to draw or pull), and the French got it from old Germanic sources.

But the adjective “hale,” as in the expression “hale and hearty,” is derived from the Old English hal (healthy), which is also the ancestor of “heal” and “whole.”

Another word to throw into the pot is “hail,” which is both an interjection (as in Shelley’s “Hail to thee, blithe spirit!”) and a verb meaning to salute, greet, or welcome.

This comes from an Old Norse word, heill (health, prosperity, good luck), which is the Norse counterpart of the Old English hal.

And no, the “hail” that’s frozen rain is no relation. It’s a very old term, dating from Anglo-Saxon times, and similar to words in other Germanic languages for those pellets of falling ice.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: On foodie blogs and in restaurant reviews, one sometimes sees “tuck into” used to mean to dine on a particular dish. Example: “I tucked into a grilled chicken Caesar salad.” Where does the term come from?

A: What a seasonal question! We’re still recovering from Thanksgiving, and bracing ourselves for the rest of our holiday meals. We hesitate to step on the bathroom scale.

The slang use of “tuck” to refer to gourmandizing goes back to the 18th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

This meaning is an extension of the use of “tuck” in the sense of putting something into a snug or hidden place (“The cottage was tucked into the woods”) or covering up something (“We tucked her into bed”).

Here, in chronological order, are some of the OED citations for “tuck” and “tucking” in reference to eating or drinking.

“We will dine together; tuck up a bottle or two of claret” (from the novel Barham Downs, 1784, by Robert Bage).

“Tom Sponge now began cramming unmercifully, exclaiming every three mouthfuls, ‘Rare tucking in, Sir William’ ” (from the anonymous novel Splendid Follies, 1810).  

“Now that I’ve cured you, you’ll be tucking all that into your own little breadbasket” (from Frederick Marryat’s novel Peter Simple, 1833).

“If you’ll just let little Wackford tuck into something fat” (from Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby, 1838).

“The strawberries … Which our Grandmother’s Uncle tuck’d in like a pig” (from The Ingoldsby Legends, written sometime before 1845 by Richard H. Barham).

“There is Rasherwell ‘tucking’ away in the coffee-room” (from William Makepeace Thackeray’s Roundabout Papers, 1860).

“Let’s go over and see if we can’t tuck away some of that grub” (from Lessons in Life, lectures of Josiah G. Holland, 1861).

“They gave themselves unreservedly to ‘tucking
in’ ” (from The Golden Butterfly, an 1876 novel by Sir Walter Besant and James Rice).

“Always in at dinner-time and to be found at odd hours tucking in” (from Knight-Errant, an 1887 novel by “Edna Lyall,” the pseudonym of Ada Ellen Bayly). 

Well, it’s mealtime and this is making us hungry!

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I recently saw somebody on television describe a movie theater as “full up.” Is that right? Is it a dialect thing? Wouldn’t “full” be more normal?

A: First, let’s fill in a bit of history.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the adjective “full” in this sense as meaning “having within its limits all it will hold; having no space empty; replete.”

“Full” is a very old word (first recorded in Old English before the year 1000) and it likes company.

The OED says “full” is often accompanied by intensifiers, as in “full to the brim,” “full to overflowing,” and “full up” (which it describes as colloquial). 

And don’t think that “full up” is a new coinage. Here it is in an 1892 article about cemeteries in the London Daily News: “Because they are full up … this additional one is required.”

The phrase was used even earlier with a slightly different meaning. In 19th-century British colonial slang, to be “full up” of something was to be sated with or tired of it.

Here are a couple of examples from the OED:

1890, in The Miner’s Right, an Australian novel by “Rolf Boldrewood” (the pseudonym of T. A. Browne): “She was ‘full up’ of the Oxley … a rowdy, disagreeable goldfield.”

1891, in Homeward Bound After Thirty Years: A Colonist’s Impressions of New Zealand, Australia, Tangier and Spain, by Edward Reeves: “The men … get tired, or as the colonial slang goes, ‘full up,’ soonest.”

In short, “full up” has been around for quite a while, but the OED still considers it colloquial.

We think it’s OK in speech and casual writing, but we’d go with “full” on formal occasions.

Check out our books about the English language