Year: 2009

Q: Sometime in the ’60s, Edmund Wilson reviewed a translation of Pushkin by Vladimir Nabokov. In the review, he accused Nabokov of using nonexistent words that were not in the Oxford English Dictionary. Nabokov replied that he never used the OED, but preferred another dictionary. Do you know what it was?

A: You’re referring to Edmund Wilson’s article in The New York Review of Books on July 15, 1965, in which he reviewed Nabokov’s translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.

Wilson criticized Nabokov’s use of odd and obscure English words in translating the Russian of Pushkin:

“He gives us, for example, rememorating, producement, curvate, habitude, rummers, familistic, gloam, dit, shippon and scrab. All these can be found in the OED, but they are all entirely dictionary words, usually labeled ‘dialect,’ ‘archaic,’ or ‘obsolete.’ “

Wilson also complained about another word, “stuss,” which was not then in the OED. “To inflict on the reader such words is not really to translate at all,” he said, “for it is not to write idiomatic and recognizable English.”

Nabokov replied in a letter to the New York Review on Aug. 26, 1965, saying he wanted to “undeceive credulous readers who might assume that Mr. Wilson is an expert in Russian linguistics.”

He complained of “ghastly blunders” in the review, and said, “I greatly regret that Mr. Wilson did not consult me about his perplexities (as he used to do in the past) instead of lurching into print in such a state of glossological disarray.”

As for “stuss,” Nabokov said, it “is the English name of a card game which I discuss at length in my notes on Pushkin’s addiction to gambling.”

He said Wilson “should have consulted my notes (and Webster’s dictionary) more carefully.” Wilson, in a reply to Nabokov’s reply, sniffed, “I never use Webster.”

(They were apparently referring to Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, second edition, which defines “stuss” as a gambling game like faro. The OED now defines it as an American word for a form of faro.)

Wow! Some insults! And these guys were friends! The literary scene now seems tame by comparison.

I can’t find any mention during this particular dispute of Nabokov’s preference in dictionaries. But the literary critic Brian Boyd has said Nabokov’s favorite was Webster’s New International (2d ed.), often referred to as Web II. Boyd mentions this in a note to a book of his about Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire.

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Q: I was reading a biography of Thomas Carlyle in which he describes his first train ride as the “likest thing to a Faust’s flight on the Devil’s mantle.” The word “likest” seems so handy. When and why do you think we stopped using it?

A: You’re right: “likest” would be a handy word to have today. And, as you’ve discovered, it once was a handy word. In fact, it was used for hundreds of years (spelled “lickest,” “likkest,” “lykest,” and “likest”) before falling out of favor in the mid-19th century.

As a superlative that means most like someone or something, it first showed up in print in the 14th century. Here’s an early example from Piers Plowman (1377), William Langland’s allegorical poem: “He … made man likkest to hym-self one.”

The most recent published reference for “likest” that I can find in the Oxford English Dictionary is from an 1859 book about British novelists: “Swift … the likest author we have to Rabelais.”

I can’t find “likest” in the two modern US dictionaries that I use the most, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).

But I do see the word in my Webster’s New International Dictionary (2d ed.) from the 1950s. Web 2 describes both the comparative “liker” and the superlative “likest” as “Now Chiefly Poetical,” though I don’t recall seeing either one in any recent poetry.

By the way, Carlyle used “liker” as well as “likest.” In his book Past and Present (1843), the essayist and historian wrote: “Nothing liker the Temple of the Highest, bright with some real effulgence of the Highest, is seen in this world.”

As for that devilish comment in the Carlyle biography, it was an allusion to the scene in Goethe’s tragic play in which Mephistopheles spreads out his mantle, or cloak, to take Faust on a satanic flight through the air.

Why did we stop using “likest”? I don’t know, but I’ll update this if I come across a likely story!

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Q: I’m an American in Paris, where the main Xmas meal is very late on the 24th. I think it was originally supposed to keep you awake until Midnight Mass. In any case, that gives us all day on the 25th to digest. One thing I had trouble digesting during the last holiday was the use of the verb “gift,” as in “I plan to gift him an iPod.” What’s wrong with “give”? I hope you will indulge me by denouncing this usage, but I fear there are any number of acceptable examples going back millions of years. By the way, I have no problem with “regift.”

A: As you suspect, the verb “gift” is very old. It doesn’t go back millions of years, though, just to the 1500s!

Not surprisingly, the verb is adapted from the noun, which entered English around 1250, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology. As for “gift” vs. “give,” the two words come from same Germanic source.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb “gift” as “to endow or furnish with gifts … [or] to endow, invest, or present with as a gift … [or] to bestow as a gift; to make a present of.”

The OED’s first citation for the verb is from an anonymous 16th-century English poem: “The friendes that were together met / He gyfted them richely with right good speede.”

The poem, which was probably published around 1550 to 1560, is entitled A Merry Jest of a Shrewd and Curst Wife Lapped in Morel’s Skin for her Good Behaviour. (“Morel” is the name of a horse the husband kills for its skin. The horsehide is then rubbed in salt and wrapped around his wife to teach her good behavior. Yikes!)

Some scholars believe this long and very brutal poem about wifely submission, which was popular in its day, inspired Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

The OED’s citations for “gift” as a verb seem to peter out in the latter part of the 19th century. The most recent citations are from the 1870s and ’80s, as in this quote from The Abbey of Paisley, a history by J. Cameron Lees (1878): “The Regent Murray gifted all the Church Property to Lord Sempill.”

Today, this sense survives primarily in our participial adjective “gifted” (meaning something like talented). Example: “The Glasses are gifted children.”

But why is the old verb “gift” being revived? Your guess is as good as ours. We don’t care much for it but, like you, we’re rather fond of “regift.” This attitude may be inconsistent, but such is language.

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Q: I heard you on NPR and I have a question: Why do people say “Let’s see if we can’t do this” instead of “Let’s see if we can do this”?

A: Let’s see if we can’t shed a little light.

In English, sentences that begin with “Let’s see if we can’t” or “I’ll see if I can’t” are routine, and most of us never stop to think about the negative construction. In fact, this kind of construction implies a positive outcome, not a negative one.

I haven’t found any sources that deal specifically with “see if we can’t,” but the linguist Otto Jespersen, in Essentials of English Grammar, writes about a similar phenomenon:

“A negative expression is often used idiomatically in such a way that the negative idea is weakened or even disappears totally.” He gives the example: “How often have I not watched him.”

Jespersen also notes that a question cast in the negative (“Isn’t that nice?”) actually implies a positive (“That is very nice”). I might add another example. “Won’t you join us?” really means “Will you join us?”

Elsewhere, Jespersen cites the expression “See if I don’t!” (Translation: “I will!”)

By extension, I think a sentence like “Let’s see if we can’t win” suggests that in fact we WILL win. On the other hand, the simple statement “Let’s see if we can win” is noncommittal. It doesn’t anticipate the outcome one way or the other.

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Q: I came across the phrase “grinded to a halt” the other day in an article on the Star Tribune’s website about the Senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman. Were I writing the piece, I would’ve said “ground to a halt,” but it occurs to me that I don’t really know which one is more correct (if either).

A: The past tense and past participle of “grind” is “ground.” There is no “grinded,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

The Oxford English Dictionary also gives both the past tense and the past participle as “ground.” However, it does have a few citations for the use of “grinded” in the 16th through 19th centuries.

It seems as if the dispute over the Senate election results has been going on since the 16th century. I’ll bet the people of Minnesota find that a grind!

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Q: My supervisor sends out emails with sentences like “Debby will not be at work on tomorrow” or “We will meet on this afternoon.” Is it appropriate to say or write “on tomorrow” or “on this afternoon”? What is the rule for this?

A: The only “rule” here is common usage. If enough of us begin using “on” with “tomorrow” and such words, it will become an accepted idiom.

For now, though, it’s still unusual enough to grate on most people’s ears. In the best English, we don’t hear expressions like “on tomorrow” or “on this afternoon.” Here’s why.

The words “today,” “tonight,” and “tomorrow” already include the implied preposition “to.” In fact, they were once written as “to day,” “to night,” and “to morrow.”

Later, hyphens were added (as in Macbeth’s “sound and fury” soliloquy), then the hyphens fell away and the words were joined. To use the additional preposition “on” with these is redundant.

By extension, it’s redundant in sentences like the other one you cite to use the preposition “on” as well as the demonstrative adjective “this” with “evening,” “afternoon,” “morning,” etc.

The Oxford English Dictionary explains that the expressions “this morning, this afternoon, this evening now always mean ‘the morning (etc.) of to-day.’ ”

(We’re leaving aside emphatic usages like “The night was memorable because it was on this evening that he proposed,” or “On this particular morning we discussed the company’s future.”)

Within its entry for the preposition “on,” the OED has this definition: “Indicating the day or part of the day when an event takes place.” (This is the sense in which your supervisor uses it.)

The OED’s citations, dating from Old English to the present, generally pair the preposition with holidays (“on Wintanceastre,” “on Cristesmessa,” “on All Soules Day”), days of the week (“on fridæi,” “on saterdei,” “on Sundays,” “on Tuestay,” and so on), or dates (“on the 29th”).

The OED does note, however, that in US and in Irish English, the preposition “on” is sometimes “used with tomorrow, yesterday, etc.” – but it adds that this usage is apparently redundant.

We hope this sheds some light.

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Q: Being an avid IRC user in Australia, I chat with a lot of US folk. Your site was able to explain to me why I hadn’t seen many of them use “whilst,” “amongst,” and “amidst” as much as I do. I was wondering if you could answer this question. Back in high school, my senior English teachers used to complain about the superlative “stupidest.” They proclaimed that “stupid” could not be used in such a manner, and that only “most stupid” was appropriate. Any idea where their belief may have originated?

A: I don’t see any problem with “stupidest.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), for example, gives the forms as “stupid” … “stupider” … “stupidest.”

And this isn’t a peculiar Americanism. H. W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage also gives the correct forms as “stupid” … “stupider” … “stupidest.”

Fowler hints, though, at what might account for your teachers’ avoiding “est” in favor of “most” to form the superlative:

“Neglect or violation of established usage with comparatives & superlatives sometimes betrays ignorance, but more often reveals the repellent assumption that the writer is superior to conventions binding on the common herd.”

And “stupidest” does seem to be quite common in English usage. While the Oxford English Dictionary has no entry specifically for “stupidest,” I did find the word in several quotations cited within other entries, including these:

1828: Thomas Carlyle, in a letter, refers to “the simplest and stupidest man of his day.”

1842: Samuel Lover, in Handy Andy: A Tale of Irish Life (1842), writes, “She felt the pique which every pretty woman experiences who fancies her favours disregarded, and thought Andy the stupidest lout she ever came across.”

1871: Charles Gibbon, in the novel For Lack of Gold, writes, “This cursed frenzy makes me say and think the stupidest things.”

Just for the heck of it, I searched online in “The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913,” and found the word used in testimony in a theft case tried in May 1785. A prosecutor is quoted as saying, “I should be the stupidest man living, having property, to leave my house so unsafe.”

The Old Bailey site is great fun, by the way. Check it out, when you’re not channeling with Internet Relay Chat!

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Q: Why is it that baseball announcers (like John Sterling and Michael Kay for the Yankees) refer to the Dominican Republic as the Dominican? Example: “Manny Ramirez came from the Dominican to play baseball.” It drives me nuts.

A: There are all kinds of Englishes: American, British, Australian, Indian, Irish, and so on. One of the more quaint varieties is baseball English.

As a friend who lives, eats, and sleeps baseball told me, “Remember that Major League Baseball announcers to a man (and, yes, they are all men) say ‘amongst’ rather than ‘among.’ So, they dwell in a milieu given to mannered speech.”

I can’t tell you where this particular usage comes from, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s simply an attempt by the announcers to add variety to their patter.

I suspect that if you listen carefully you’ll find that many announcers use both “the Dominican Republic” and “the Dominican” while doing play-by-play.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame, for instance, used both versions on its website last year in an item on the opening of an exhibition in Santo Domingo about Dominican players.

As I’m sure you’re aware, baseball announcers are famous for their broadcast mannerisms. Sterling, for example, can’t announce a home run without saying “It is high. It is far. It is gone.”

And if it’s really gone, I guess, it ends up in the Dominican!

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Q: I serve with the US military and am constantly being corrected for using “Sirs/Madams” as a general greeting in emails to a group of men and women of higher rank. To pay proper respect to a higher-ranking individual, I would use the words “Sir” or “Ma’am.” But I was told by numerous English teachers that there is no plural of “Ma’am,” hence my use of “Madams.”

A: The word “ma’am,” according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), is an abbreviated form of “madam.” Although “ma’ams” is occasionally seen or heard, none of the dictionaries I consult the most consider the plural standard English.

I could find only a few published examples of “ma’ams” in the Oxford English Dictionary. One of them, a 1781 reference to “misses and ma’ams,” uses the word for a group of married women, not as a term of respect for high-ranking women.

The other citations refer to “thank-you-ma’ams,” hollows or ridges that makes for bumpy rides when vehicles pass over them. This colloquial expression refers to the involuntary nods of people in the vehicles.

The entry for “madam” in Merriam-Webster’s gives the ordinary plural as “madams.” But it notes that when the title “madam” is “used without a name as a form of respectful or polite address to a woman,” then the plural is “mesdames.”

So “Sirs/Mesdames” would be correct in salutations, though I would think “Dear Sir or Madam” would look better. (Another possibility might be “Ladies/Gentlemen.”)

As for “madams,” the Columbia Guide to Standard American Usage says this plural usually refers to women in charge of houses of prostitution. I guess that’s as good a reason as any for not using it to address superiors in the military.

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Q: Three words are driving me nuts: “incentivize,” “effort” (used as a verb), and “orientate.” You covered “orientate” recently on the Leonard Lopate Show. Any comments about the other two? They appear to come from the worlds of business and politics.

A: I’m happy to say that to “effort” is a new one on me, though another listener recently wrote me about it. I can’t find any dictionary that allows “effort” as anything but a noun.

“Incentivize” is truly ugly but, unlike “effort,” it appears as a verb in both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed). M-W dates it from 1970.

What’s wrong with “motivate”? I have a blog entry about “incentivize” and one on an even weirder (in my opinion) verb, “incent.” I also have a posting on “orientate.”

“Incent” is a word formed a generation or so ago, and it’s what’s known as a back-formation, in this case formed from “incentive.” (As the verb “effort” is a back-formation from the noun “effort,” and “orientate” is one from “orientation.”)

The blog entry on “incent” has more information on other back-formations, some of them pretty outrageous. How about “administrate” as a candidate for Uggie of the Year!

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Q: On a recent radio show, you discussed “thrown under the bus.” I first heard it on “Top Chef.” It’s used on almost every episode to mean telling the judges something negative about a competitor to better one’s chances of winning.

A: Thanks for sharing the information about “thrown under the bus,” but the expression has been around a lot longer than the reality show “Top Chef,” which began airing on the Bravo cable network in 2006.

The slang lexicographer Grant Barrett has collected published references for various versions of the expression dating back to 1984. The first citation listed on his website, the Double-Tongued Dictionary, is from Cyndi Lauper.

In a Sept. 7, 1984, article in the Washington Post, she’s quoted as saying: “In the rock ’n’ roll business, you are either on the bus or under it. Playing ‘Feelings’ with Eddie and the Condos in a buffet bar in Butte is under the bus. Peter Frampton is under the bus. God willing, so are the Bee Gees.”

Barrett’s first citation for the full expression (with “thrown” thrown in) is from a Dec. 12, 1991, article in the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph: “Dees said he talked to Hood after he bonded out of the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center on Sept. 26, 1990, and warned him ‘that he was being thrown under the bus by Jennifer Reali.’ But he said Hood believed Reali ‘was going to tell the truth.’ ”

The ultimate origin of the expression, which means to sacrifice or betray or treat like a scapegoat, is uncertain

The language maven and baseball guru Paul Dickson (quoted by William Safire in the New York Times) has suggested that it might come from minor-league baseball, where players are told, “The bus is leaving, get on it or under it.”

But Evan Morris, on his Word Detective website, speculates that the phrase may have its origin in “the classic urban nightmare” of being pushed in front of a bus.

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Q: I enjoy your segments on Leonard Lopate but I can never get through on the phone! Here’s my question: Do you know the meaning behind the phrase “talk to the hand”?

A: “Talk to the hand” is a rude way of saying, in effect, “shut up.”

Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang describes it as a dismissive American teen-age expression dating from the 1990s.

The phrase is actually a short version of a slang expression usually seen in full as “”talk to the hand, ’cause the face [or ear] ain’t listening.” It’s often accompanied by a hand signal: a palm held toward the offending talker, arm extended, in a “Stop!” gesture.

The language sleuth Gary Martin has traced the expression to an October 1996 advertisement in a Wyoming newspaper, The Pinedale Roundup.

In the ad, a cartoon cowboy in a ten-gallon hat appears to be encouraging people to vote. He’s pictured holding a hand out with the palm facing the reader. “If you don’t vote,” he says, “talk to the hand because the face does not understand.”

Martin, writing on the Phrase Finder website, says the expression showed up in Britain a year and a half later in a May 1998 issue of the Times.

In an account of a trip to San Francisco, a traveler describes the idioms encountered: “A contemporary favourite, if you don’t like what somebody is saying (a traffic warden, say) is to turn a palm forward and yell: ‘Talk to the hand.’ ”

Martin also mentions a 1998 article in which a writer in the Syracuse (NY) Herald Journal groans about the phrase: “I don’t know about you, but if I hear someone say ‘talk to the hand’ again I will strangle them with their own shoelaces.”

The expression hasn’t made it yet into the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, but two draft additions are “to talk the talk” and “to talk trash.”

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Q: I wanted to call WNYC while you were discussing “off the wall,” but I was driving and couldn’t stop. I think this expression (like “screwball”) must come from baseball. Why “off the wall”? Because it’s hard to tell what direction a fly ball will take off a stadium wall.

A: I’m glad you didn’t try to call while driving!

You’re right, of course, that “screwball” is a baseball term, for a pitch that breaks in the opposite direction to a curve ball. The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary, by Paul Dickson, says it’s also been called a “corkscrew,” “fadeaway,” “incurve,” “reverse curve,” “screwgie,” and “scroogie.”

But the term (or an early version of it) apparently originated in cricket, not baseball, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and referred to a “ball bowled with ‘screw’ or spin.”

The first published reference in the OED is from an 1866 book on cricket: “A ‘screw’ ball, which in slow bowling would describe the arc of a circle from the pitch to the wicket, becomes in fast bowling a sharp angle.”

The cricket term is now obsolete, according to the OED, and as far as I can tell it didn’t influence the baseball usage.

The earliest OED citation for the term used in a baseball sense is from a 1928 article in the New York Times: “Haines is a large, healthy individual with … a ‘screw ball’ that ducks under many a well-meant swing with a hickory bludgeon.”

The pitch, called a fadeway when Christy Mathewson used it in the early 1900s, became known as a screwball after Carl Hubbell revived it in the late 1920s, according to Dickson’s dictionary.

Where did the name “screwball” come from? A minor league catcher, Hubbell told the New York Times, helped give the pitch its name by saying, ”That’s the screwiest thing I ever saw.”

The adjective “screwy,” by the way, has meant tipsy since 1820, and crazy or foolish since 1877, according to the OED. The word “screwed” has been used since 1697 to mean twisted or awry, and since 1837 to mean intoxicated.

The use of “screwball” to mean an eccentric or a nutty person originated in the US in the early 1930s and does indeed seem to be derived from baseball, according to Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang. The earlier meanings of “screwy” and “screwed” probably played a role, too.

The first published reference for this usage in the OED is from a 1933 work by Paul Gallico in the Saturday Evening Post: “McKabe was already heading for the door. He heard Billers say: ‘Who is that screwball?’ “

Dickson’s baseball dictionary also has an entry for the expression “play it off the wall,” which means “To field a fly ball just before it hits an outfield wall or to field the ball after it bounces off the wall and before it hits the ground.”

I doubt, however, that this baseball usage is the derivation of our common phrase “off the wall.” Unfortunately, its origins are uncertain.

The current meaning of the phrase (odd, eccentric, crazy; or obnoxious, offensive, pointless) was not recorded before 1953, according to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. (The meaning of a 1937 reference is unclear.)

And while Random House cites dozens of published references to the expression, none of them come from baseball. Similarly, the OED lists eight published references to “off the wall,” none having to do with baseball.

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Q: I tried to call you during your last appearance on WNYC, but I couldn’t get through. My question is that I constantly hear people pronouncing the word “have” as “haff,” such as “I haff to go to the store.” What is that all about?

A: You’ve noticed a common pattern in English pronunciation. Some linguists call it “voicing assimilation,” and here’s how it affects the pronunciation of the letters “v “and “f.”

These letters are nearly twins, as you can see when you pronounce “very” and “ferry,” or “have” and “half.” If you look in the mirror, you’ll notice that the lips and teeth are positioned identically for both “v” and “f.”

The only difference here is that “v” is voiced (pronounced with the vocal cords vibrating) and “f” is “voiceless” (the vocal cords aren’t involved, only a rush of air).

When these letters appear at the end of a word (as in “have” and “half”) and just before a vowel, they’ve pronounced normally: “have a cookie” … “half a cookie.”

But before the letter “t,” the “v” becomes “voiceless” – that is, it’s pronounced as “f”: “I haff to go.”

This shouldn’t be regarded as a mispronunciation. Think of it this way. The “v” is there all right; it’s just undergone a little shift.

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Q: I’ve tried many times to call you on the air, but I couldn’t get through. So, here’s a question for the blog. I’ve noticed that almost everyone says fir when he or she really means to say “for” – people of all ages. I’ve even heard it from news broadcasters! Very strange. What’s up with this?

A: The word “for” when it’s unstressed tends to get squeezed into something clipped that sounds like f’r, especially when we speak rapidly. This is a common phenomenon.

In fact, both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) list the two pronunciations as standard English.

The same thing happens with the word “to,” which gets shortened to t’. When in a hurry, we’re likely to say “time t’ go” instead of pronouncing the full word “to.”

Speakers of other languages also commonly elide (run together) prepositions with the words that follow. In short, not to worry!

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Q: Do you know the derivation of the phrase “out in left field”? I’ve looked in various references – my favorite, Cultural Literacy, doesn’t have it – and I’ve been unable to find its origin. Any answer would be greatly appreciated.

A: The phrase you mention, “out [or off] in left field,” originated in baseball lingo, according to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. It was first recorded in the 1930s, and means nonsensical, absurd, unreasonable, far from the mark – in short, out of it.

A related phrase, “from [or out of] left field,” meaning out of the blue or without warning, came along in the 1940s, also via baseball.

Random House says the “semantic development” of these “left field” expressions is uncertain, but they may have been influenced “by the fact that, owing to the distance involved, a putout throw from left field to first base is extremely difficult.”

But why left field instead of right? As Paul Dickson points out in The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary, right field is just as remote as left field. We may never know, but some theories have been put forward.

One is that in Babe Ruth’s day, nobody was likely to want left-field seats in Yankee Stadium, because the Babe was a right-fielder and fans in the left-field seats didn’t have a good view of him.

Another theory is that “out in left field” was a reference to a mental hospital (the Neuropsychiatric Institute) located behind left field in the old West Side Park in Chicago. So someone “out in left field” was acting like a nut case.

So far, all these are just theories, and they may be out in left field.

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Q: I’m a web editor and I was wondering why you don’t allow comments on your blog. I would be curious to see what other readers have to say about some of your posts.

A: The reason Stewart and I do our blog as we do – a simple Q&A – is because this allows us to carefully edit and research each answer that’s published. (And, yes, it’s OK to put an adverb like “carefully” between the prepositional marker “to” and an infinitive like “edit.” If you disagree, check out this blog item.)

Our principal goal is absolute accuracy, though we occasionally fall short. Every once in a while, a reader points out the error of our ways, and we fix the offending blog item.

If we allowed free access and let everyone comment at will, the blog would be full of inaccuracies. Or we would be spending an inordinate amount of time correcting comments.

Too many language blogs are mere collections of misinformation. We want ours to be authoritative, and not a rumor mill.

While we’re on the subject of comments (or, rather, no comments), you may be interested in the early history of the verb “comment.”

When it entered English in the 15th century, the verb had a negative connotation, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. This early meaning, now considered obsolete, was to “devise, contrive, invent (especially something false or bad).”

The OED says we got the word from the medieval Latin commentare, meaning “to devise, excogitate (usually in a bad sense, of fraud or mischief).”

Although Stewart and I don’t let readers comment at will, we like to hear your comments. If you spot any errors, let us know. Keep us on our toes!

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Q: I recently came across the expression “sleight of hand” in connection with the magician’s art. It occurred to me that the word “sleight” is almost always accompanied by the appendage. Is there a name for this kind of word or usage, and what are some other examples?

A: Some words always seem to appear in pairs (as in the old saying about nuns!). H. W. Fowler called words like these “Siamese twins,” and he used examples like “alas and alack,” “betwixt and between,” “gall and wormwood,” “leaps and bounds,” and “lo and behold.”

We might add “sackcloth and ashes” and “wrack and ruin” (see our blog entry touching on that one).

If the pair rhymes (or almost does), it can be called a “rhyming compound.” A few examples: “flotsam and jetsam”; “boogie-woogie”; “dilly dally”; “itsy bitsy,” and so on.

Something is never just itsy or bitsy. This explains that itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini.

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Q: I have been struggling of late with the ideology of commas and conjunctions. Here is a quote from an MSN article: “There have been instances in the past where the Pakistanis arrested extremists after terrorist attacks on India but released them several months later, after the international pressure eased up.” I would have placed a comma before the clause beginning with “but.”

A: In some cases, comma use is governed by taste and rhythm, not by any formal rule of punctuation. And there’s no rule that a clause introduced with a conjunction must be preceded by a comma.

I don’t think that passage from the MSN article requires an additional comma. However, an author with somewhat different tastes in comma use might have placed the comma differently, like so:

“There have been instances in the past where the Pakistanis arrested extremists after terrorist attacks on India, but released them several months later after the international pressure eased up.”

And someone with your tastes in the matter would have used two commas: “There have been instances in the past where the Pakistanis arrested extremists after terrorist attacks on India, but released them several months later, after the international pressure eased up.”

Now here’s an author with a completely different take on commas. This passage, from John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, is quoted in my book Words Fail Me (pp. 89-90): Just listen as the protagonist, Rabbit Angstrom, shoots a basket on a playground, watched by a group of schoolboys:

“As they stare hushed he sights squinting through blue clouds of weed smoke, a suddenly dark silhouette like a smokestack against the afternoon spring sky, setting his feet with care, wiggling the ball with nervousness in front of his chest, one widespread white hand on top of the ball and the other underneath, jiggling it patiently to get some adjustment in air itself. The cuticle moons on his fingernails are big. Then the ball seems to ride up the right lapel of his coat and comes off his shoulder as his knees dip down, and it appears the ball will miss because though he shot from an angle the ball is not going toward the backboard. It was not aimed there. It drops into the circle of the rim, whipping the net with a ladylike whisper.”

Updike uses (and doesn’t use) commas here because of a rhythmic effect he’s employing to build suspense. It would be a crime to interrupt and separate some of those breathless clauses.

Nonfiction is different, of course. But when no rules are being broken, writers have a lot of latitude in comma use.

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Q: Please help me identify the rule that requires the singular verb in this construction: “The source of the funding is the contributions made by shareholders.” I’m trying to convince an ESL student of mine that he can’t say the source “are” the contributions. I’ve scoured all known sources and found nothing!

A: The rule here is that the verb agrees with the subject, not its complement (a word or phrase that follows a linking verb like “is” and describes the subject). So it’s correct to say “The source of the funding is the contributions made by shareholders.”

Turned around, the sentence could also read: “The contributions made by shareholders are the source of the funding.” In this case, “contributions” is the subject and “the source of the funding” is the complement.

If you want to cite another source for your student, look under “agreement” in The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 3rd ed., edited by R. W. Burchfield (p. 35):

“When a subject and a complement of different number are separated by the verb to be, the verb should agree with the number of the subject.”

Burchfield uses the example “the only traffic is oxcarts and bicycles.”

The same advice is given in the earlier, 2nd edition of Fowler, edited by Sir Ernest Gowers (p. 401): “The verb follows the number of the subject, whatever that of the complement may be.”

I hope this helps. And good luck with your student.

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If you missed hearing Pat on the Leonard Lopate Show today, you can listen to her by clicking here.

Q: Why do the words “pneumonia” and “pneumatic” start with a “p” even though we don’t pronounce the “p”?

A: The noun “pneumonia” and the adjective “pneumatic” are spelled that way because the Greek and Latin originals started with “p.”

The first is from the Greek word pneumonia, which was adopted into medieval Latin and then into English in 1603.

The second is from the Greek word pneumatikos, which became pneumaticus (having to do with wind or breath) in Latin and finally “pneumatic” in English in the 1600s.

The “p” is silent in English, though it is pronounced in modern Greek and probably was in classical Greek as well.

All this reminds me of a 1965 interview in which Vladimir Nabokov was asked how to pronounce the last name of the title character of his novel Pnin. Here’s Nabokov’s answer:

“The ‘p’ is sounded, that’s all. But since the ‘p’ is mute in English words starting with ‘pn,’ one is prone to insert a supporting ‘uh’ sound – ‘Puh-nin’ – which is wrong. To get the ‘pn’ right, try the combination ‘Up North’ or still better ‘Up, Nina!’ – leaving out the initial ‘u.’ “

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She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 P.M. Eastern time to discuss the English language and to take questions from callers.

Q: How did the phrase “so long” get to mean goodbye?

A: The colloquial expression “so long” (meaning goodbye) has been around since the mid-19th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Many etymologists have tried to pin down the origin of the expression, but it’s still in doubt. The phrase apparently first appeared in print in the mid-19th century in a poem by Walt Whitman, aptly titled “So Long!”

The poem is about death and leave-taking, and was first published as the final poem in an 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. The expression “so long” appears several times, as in these examples:

“While my pleasure is yet at the full, I whisper, So long! / And take the young woman’s hand, and the young man’s hand, for the last time.” And later: “So long! / Remember my words.” (The italics are the poet’s.)

Where did Whitman get the phrase? A friend of his, William Sloane Kennedy, has written that Whitman said he’d heard it “greatly used among sailors, sports, & prostitutes.” (The source of this is an article on a linguistic website, Onomasiology Online.)

Interestingly, there are similar-sounding salutations in other languages, including German (so lange), Hebrew (shalom), Norwegian (så lenge), Swedish (så länge), Arabic (salaam), and Irish Gaelic (slan), and even Malay (selang).

To make a long story short, we don’t know where the phrase originally came from, but my money is on the German or Scandinavian connections.

It seems likely that German or Scandinavian immigrants brought the expression with them and that it became working-class vernacular before spreading.

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Q: In Woe Is I – recommended by folks from the Mount Hermon Writers Conference – you give this example: “The cops’ attitude was surly.” Shouldn’t it be the “cop’s attitude” or the “cops’ attitudes”? Please, where am I going wrong? Love the book!

A: I’m glad you’re enjoying the book.

The word “cop,” as you know, is singular, and “cops” is plural.

The possessive form of “cop” (singular) is cop’s, and the possessive of “cops” (plural) is cops’.

I used the plural possessive cops’ with the singular “attitude” here because the cops in question shared a single attitude – a surly one!

I hope this clears things up!

All this “cop” talk reminds me of a writing tip from Mark Twain about using short words: “I never write ‘policeman,’ because I can get the same price for ‘cop.’”

In case you’re interested, I had a blog item a couple of years ago about the origin of the noun “cop.” (No, it doesn’t come from the copper buttons on a police officer’s uniform. Or from the acronym “constable on patrol.”)

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Q: In one of your postings, you said it was OK for young people to use less-than-perfect idiomatic English “among themselves.” It struck me that “amongst themselves” would be better, but after researching the subject, I’m not sure. What are your thoughts regarding the usage of “amongst”?

A: “Amongst” is common in British English, while “among” is preferred in American English. I’ve written a blog entry that touches on the subject. But in case you’d like a little more history, here’s the story.

“Amongst,” “amidst,” and “whilst” are rarely used in the United States, and for good reason. They mean exactly the same thing as “among,” “amid,” and “while,” which have been around longer.

Although the “st” versions may have an air of antiquity about them, the unadorned American preferences – “among,” “amid,” and “while” – are actually the older words.

“Among” dates from about 1000, and “amongst” from 1250, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. “Amid” is from circa 975, and “amidst” from about 1300. “While” goes back to about the year 1000 (spelled “hwile”), according to the OED, and “whilst” dates from the late 1300s.

My preference, which is universal in American English, is for the three older, simpler words.

“Among” and “amid” are prepositions, and “while” is a conjunction. It’s been suggested that perhaps the “st” endings were added in error, on a mistaken analogy with superlative adjectives, which end in “st” and “est” (like “biggest,” “most,” and so on).

For whatever reason, an “st” ending was tacked on a now-obscure preposition, “again,” which dates back to 993 and originally meant “in the opposite direction” or “back.” In this case, the old usage disappeared and the later formation, “against,” which showed up in the late 1300s, was the preposition that survived. The old “again” exists now only as an adverb.

Although “amongst” is common in Britain, it by no means has a monopoly there. In fact, several British writers, including Robert Browning, Angela Thirkell, and Evelyn Waugh, have written works entitled Love Among the Ruins.

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Q: Once again, someone I consider a fairly good writer has “diffused” an explosive situation. I’m pretty sure it should be “defused.” Is there any leeway on this? Also, I pronounce the two verbs differently. Can they be pronounced the same?

A: “Defuse” and “diffuse” are unrelated and have no overlapping meanings, though they are widely confused. To “defuse” is to inactivate or render harmless. “Diffuse” is both a verb (meaning to spread out) and an adjective (meaning widespread).

The word that writers ought to use when they mean neutralize a volatile situation is “defuse,” a verb that developed during World War II and means literally to remove the fuse from a bomb.

The first published reference for “defuse” in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1943: “A group of fliers defused a 1,000-pound bomb that had jammed in the racks when their plane was flying … over an Italian target.”

If ever a verb was a good candidate for figurative usage, this was one. Here’s a figurative example from 1958: “Thought has to be given now, without delay, to the means of reducing the risks involved in this inevitable act of disengagement – of defusing it, in effect.”

As you suspect, the word has no relation at all to “diffuse,” which entered the English language around 1400 as a now-obscure adjective meaning “confused, distracted, perplexed; indistinct, vague, obscure, doubtful, uncertain,” according to the OED.

The verb “diffuse,” meaning to pour out or spread widely, showed up in the late 1500s. It was derived from the Latin diffundere, to pour out or away.

In the early 1700s, according to the OED, the adjective came to mean “spread through or over a wide area; widespread, scattered, dispersed: the reverse of confined or concentrated.”

The pronunciations of “defuse” and “diffuse” do overlap somewhat, perhaps contributing to the confusion between the two words.

“Defuse” is pronounced dee-FYOOZ. But “diffuse” has two pronunciations. The verb is dih-FYOOZ and the adjective is dih-FYOOCE (the “i” in each sounds like the one in “pit”).

Let’s hope these two very different words don’t become fused!

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Q: I’m wondering if “feel” can be used to state an opinion, as in “He felt wearing his red shirt would be a lot of fun.” I’ve found websites that say it’s incorrect, but I think you’ve used it in your blog, which gives me hope that it’s fine. By the way, my grandfather, Jimmy Larson, knew you when you were at the Des Moines Register. If his name doesn’t ring a bell, he was the news editor. I’m sad to say he passed away in 2006. I’m now the holder of his copy of Woe Is I.

A: Great to hear from you! Of course I remember Jimmy. He was probably the most memorable person in the Register’s newsroom (and there were a lot of them)! This will sound like a terrible cliché, but they just don’t make newsmen like Jimmy any more.

But on to your question. There’s nothing wrong with using “feel” to express an opinion.

The Oxford English Dictionary has evidence dating back to about the year 1000 for the use of “feel” to refer to mental activity – that is, awareness of or thinking of something.

Here are some later, more specific usages cited by the OED, along with the dates they first appeared in print:

? To be conscious of a fact or to entertain a conviction (late 1200s).

? To be in a particular frame of mind (about 1340).

? To express a belief or judgment, or to think, feel or hold an opinion (1382).

I hope this helps. Thanks for letting me hear from you.

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Q: I worked for Barack. I voted for him. I believe in him. And it hurts me when he says “for Michelle and I.” The English language needs all the help it can get. Where are the Object of the Preposition Police when we need them?

A: I’m as disappointed as you are that our soon to be 44th president – along with the 43rd and the 42nd – says things like “for Michelle [or Laura, or Hillary] and I.”

They should all follow the example set by the 41st and the 40th, who never failed to say “Barbara and me” or “Nancy and me” when appropriate!

I think there’s some kind of pronoun virus going around – perhaps it affects even highly educated people once they set foot in our nation’s capital. I’ve written about this problem before on the blog. Here’s one posting and here’s another.

Once more, this is the law of the land: The pronoun “I” is a subject and the pronoun “me” is an object. The object (“me”) is the one that goes with a preposition, a positioning word like “for” or “with” or “to.”

No one ever messes this up when a pronoun appears alone with a preposition. You never hear sentences like “He did it for I” or “She went with I” or “They promised it to I.”

But common sense isn’t so common these days when a pronoun appears in tandem with someone’s name. So we end up with monstrosities like “He did it for Michelle and I” or “She went with Laura and I” or “They promised it to Hillary and I.”

For anyone who messes this up, the solution is simple. Just mentally block out the name (“Michelle” or “Laura” or “Hillary”) and you’ll get the correct pronoun (“me”).

So the next time our future president has cause to mention himself along with his wife, he should mentally eliminate his wife (sorry about that, Michelle). Then he’ll properly say “for Michelle and me” or “with Michelle and me” or “to Michelle and me.”

Update: Since this item was written, Stewart and I wrote an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times on the subject, with more information about the complicated history of the “I”-vs.”me” phenomenon. Click here to read it.

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Q: Which of these expressions is correct, “fine by me” or “fine with me”?

A: They’re both correct. “Fine with me” is perhaps a bit more formal, but “fine by me” is good colloquial English.

Of the two expressions, “fine with me” would seem to be somewhat older, at least according to the published references in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The first citation for the phrase in the OED is in a 1917 book that defines “thumbs up” as “everything is fine with me.”

The earliest citation in the OED for the “by” version is from a Feb. 3,1968, article in the Globe & Mail of Toronto: “It’s fine by me; I quit a couple of years ago.”

After a bit of noodling in old newspaper archives, however, I found earlier examples of both expressions.

A Dec. 22, 1901, article in the Idaho Daily Statesman about Christmas shopping quoted a Boise druggist as saying, “Business has been fine with me all of the past week and Monday and Tuesday will be much better.”

And, by and by, the other version showed up in a 1937 Walter Winchell column: “Those precocious Abbye children who wrote a book are going to tour China in a trailer … That’s fine by me.”

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Q: It seems to me that “repurpose” came onto the scene when “utilize” lost all distinction from “use.” It has been my understanding that you “use” a doorstop to keep a door open, but “utilize” a heavy book for the same purpose. I’m wondering if “repurpose” arose to fill the void left by the dilution of “utilize.” Any thoughts?

A: You may be right, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

The Oxford English Dictionary says “repurpose,” which it traces back to 1984, means “to convert or adapt (esp. something holding electronic data) for use in a different format; to use for a different purpose.”

Etymologically it’s formed from “re” and the verb “purpose,” which means to have a purpose or (and this is a rare and archaic meaning) “to be designed for some purpose; to be intended to do something.”

The last part of the definition of “repurpose” (“to use for a different purpose”) is somewhat similar to the now rather obscure one you mention for “utilize.” I wrote about “use” vs. “utilize” once before on the blog, and the difference between them isn’t as large as you think.:

While most of us now regard “use” and “utilize” as identical, “utilize” has another meaning that appears in English less frequently these days. This sense of “utilize” means to put something to use in a practical or profitable way. As you suggest, you might “utilize” a heavy book as a doorstop.

You ask whether “repurpose” arose to fill the gap left by that less frequently seen meaning of “utilize.” I’m doubtful. There seems to me to be a slight difference between this old sense of “utilize” and the newer “repurpose.”

I don’t think you’d “repurpose” the book you prop against the door. The book still is a book; it hasn’t been converted to anything else. It may be serving temporarily as a doorstop, but it hasn’t been changed materially. On the other hand, if you “repurpose” an old mill into condominiums, the original is lost.

Although the OED‘s definition of “repurpose” does include “to use for a different purpose,” it seems to me that most of us believe something that’s “repurposed” has changed in some manner.

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