Year: 2009

Q: I’m from the Midwest and live in Connecticut. My entire family often ends sentences with the word “with,” but my husband laughs at us and says this is wrong. Is it a Midwestern thing to say, “Do you want to come with,” without really finishing the sentence?

A: I too am from the Midwest (Iowa) and now live in Connecticut. And I too grew up hearing people say, “Want to come with?” and “Shall we go with?”

But we aren’t the only ones. While the usage is widespread in the Midwestern US, it’s also common in South Africa. And it was known in England back in King Alfred’s day.

In a 1997 article in the journal American Speech, Michael Adams calls this usage the “elliptical with,” and says it’s a phenomenon that “eludes lexicographers by appearing in unexpected venues and in speech more often than in print.”

Because speech doesn’t leave a written record as print does, this usage is hard to trace. The Oxford English Dictionary has very few examples, and they’re all quite old – ranging from circa 888 to 1450.

In this sense, the OED defines “with” as an adverb meaning “in collocation, company, or association; together.” Is there a connection with the modern use of the word? Probably not. It’s more likely that today’s shorthand arose independently.

In the Midwest, as in old England, this kind of construction uses “with” as an adverb meaning “along” (“Let’s invite him to go with”). Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English records a related use of “with” in South Africa dating back to 1913 (using the example “Can I come with?”).

A similar usage is well known in restaurants, bars, delis, and diners, where “coffee with” means coffee with cream, “a burger with” means one with everything, “a margarita with” means a margarita with salt, and so on. In this kind of clipped speech, “with” is a preposition with its object omitted.

This tradition goes back to 19th-century tippling in England, where “with” meant mixed with sugar. For example, “Bring me a whiskey with” meant “Bring me a whiskey with sugar.”

In the same vein, there’s also the “elliptical and,” as in “Come on over to the house for coffee and.” Here, “and” means “and whatever goes with it.”

There’s nothing wrong with any of these elliptical usages. They’re fine old colloquialisms along the lines of “come to” (meaning to one’s senses), “do without” (without luxuries), “come by” (by our house) and “drop over” (over to our house).

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Q: Can you please describe the accepted usage of the semicolon? I tend to see the connection between thoughts and probably use it excessively; rather than write a separate sentence.

A: Here’s how I describe the use of the semicolon in my grammar book Woe Is I:

(1) Use a semicolon to separate clauses when there’s no connecting and or but between them and each could be a sentence in itself. Andy’s toupee flew off his head; it sailed into the distance.

(2) Use semicolons to separate items in a series when there’s already a comma in one or more of the items: Fred’s favorite things were his robe, a yellow chenille number from Barneys; his slippers; his overstuffed chair, which had once been his father’s; murder mysteries, especially those by Sue Grafton; and single-malt Scotch.

By the way, a semicolon always goes outside quotation marks. Here’s an example from Woe Is I: Frank’s favorite song was “My Way”; he recorded it several times.

The semicolon is one of the handiest – and least used – punctuation marks. I suspect that people avoid it because the semicolon intimidates them.

You obviously don’t have that problem. Quite the contrary. As you suspect, the semicolon in your second sentence is unnecessary since “rather than write a separate sentence” couldn’t be a sentence itself and isn’t an item in a series.

I hope this helps.

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Q: I think it’s pretentious to pronounce “vase” as if it rhymes with “Oz” (as in the Wizard of Oz). I’ve always pronounced it to sound like VAZE – that is, with a long “a.” Is there a correct pronunciation?

A: The word “vase” can be correctly pronounced three ways: as if it rhymed with (1) “base,” (2) “haze,” or (3) “Oz,” like the Wiz.

All three pronunciations are given, in that order, in both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

Merriam-Webster’s notes that #1 is used “oftenest” in the US. The #2 pronunciation is heard “usually” in Canada but “also” in the US. And #3 is heard “usually” in Britain, “also” in Canada, and “sometimes” in the US.

While the British now pronounce “vase” with a broad “a” (the “Oz” version), it wasn’t always so.

The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the Brits once pronounced it with a long “a” (rhyming with “base” or “haze”), and that these “earlier pronunciations … are still current in America.”

The OED cites examples of English poems in which “vase” rhymes “face” (Swift, 1731), as well as “place” and “grace” (Byron, 1822). Nineteenth-century American poets rhymed “vase” with “grace” (Emerson, 1847), “chase” (Whittier, 1857), and “case” (Lowell, 1860).

So your pronunciation with a long “a” has history on its side. I go into a lot more detail about British and American pronunciation in “Stiff Upper Lips,” a chapter in my new book, Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, written with my husband, Stewart.

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Q: Why has the awkward and ugly word “conflate” suddenly appeared in the media? There are so many more pleasant synonyms, but this clunker has become the rage. Yoiks!

A: I’m surprised that you don’t like “conflate.” It’s actually a pretty handy term, meaning to bring together or fuse. It’s not new, either. It’s been around since 1610, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

It comes from the Latin verb conflare, meaning “to blow together, stir up, raise, accomplish; also to melt together, melt down (metals),” according to the OED.

“Conflate” in its figurative sense, meaning to fuse two texts or pieces of information, dates from the 19th century.

The earliest citation in the OED for this usage, from an 1885 article in the American Journal of Philology, refers to two Greek terms that “are undoubtedly early, since they are conflated.”

So, this is a case of an old term being revived and looking new again.

Speaking of old terms, “yoicks” (the usual spelling), began life in the 18th century as a call used to urge on foxhounds. It may be related to an even earlier hunting term, “hoicks,” which the OED traces back to the beginning of the 17th century.

“Yoicks” is occasionally used (as you used “yoiks”) in a more general way “as an exclamation of excitement or exultation,” according to the OED.

Here’s an 1884 citation for the exclamation from Blackwood’s Magazine: “With renewed spirits he jumped into a hansom, and gave the direction … ‘Yoicks!’ cried he to himself, ‘I’m going it!’ “

Of course you may have meant “yikes,” a relatively recent term that the OED dates back to only 1971. The dictionary defines it as an exclamation of astonishment of unknown origin, though it notes similarities with … yes … “yoicks.”

H-m-m. Is “yikes” a conflation of “yoicks” and “hoicks”?

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If you missed any of the five quizzes that appeared on The Grammarphobia Blog last week, just click on the links in the posting below.

Test your knowledge of English with five quizzes based on Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language.

Stiff upper lips: British vs. American English.

Sense and sensitivity: Politically correct facts and fictions.

An oeuf is an oeuf: Fractured French.

It ain’t necessarily so: “Ain’t,” “nucular,” and other bad boys of English.

Jeepers creepers: Misbegotten word and phrase origins.

For more on these and other myths about English, check out Origins of the Specious.

Q: I’m reading The Goshawk, T. H. White’s 1951 book about falconry. In describing how silly his goshawk looked while taking its first bath, White compares it to “a charlady at Margate.” Later, he describes a falconer “nasconded some fifteen yards away” from a lure. I can’t find either “charlady” or “nasconded” in the Oxford English Dictionary, let alone the significance of “Margate” in this context. Help!

A: You’re right. The OED doesn’t have an entry for “charlady,” but it does have one for “charwoman,” defined as “a woman hired by the day to do odd jobs of household work,” as opposed to a live-in servant. The word dates back to 1596.

The “char” portion of the compound is an archaic form of the noun “chore,” according to the OED, and dates back to the early 1300s, when it meant “an occasional turn of work, an odd job, esp. of household work.”

Words like “charlady,” “chargirl,” “charboy,” “charmaid,” and “charfolk” are variations on the theme of “charwoman.” Here’s an 1895 citation for “charlady,” from the Westminster Gazette: “She had a good post to offer to the charlady.”

Margate is an English seaside resort town, so “charlady at Margate” is probably an imaginative reference to a charwoman on holiday at the beach, gingerly easing herself into the water.

As for “nasconded,” I can’t find it (or “nascond”) in any of my English dictionaries. However, there is an Italian verb, nascondere, which means to hide or conceal or disguise. The expression niente da nascondere means “nothing to hide.”

So if an English writer were to borrow the verb “nascond” from Italian (as White seems to have done), it would presumably mean the same thing, and “nasconded” would be the past tense (“hid”) and past participle (“hidden”).

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Q: My dictionary says the plural of a computer mouse can be either “mice” or “mouses,” but both of them sound funny to me. Which do you prefer?

A: A live “mouse” has baby “mice,” but a computer “mouse” multiplies as either “mice” or “mouses.” It’s your choice.

I agree with you, though, that either plural sounds silly. That may be why I’ve never used the plural, and why some wags prefer “meece,” “rats,” or “rodentia.”

I got an interesting email from a listener after the subject came up during one of my appearances on WNYC. Here’s an edited excerpt:

“In the technical circles I run around in, mice is used more frequently, but on rare occasions I hear people say mouses, usually with question marks in their voices.

“However, I can’t recall ever hearing anyone use either term with an entirely straight face. There seems to be something inherently absurd and humorous about trying to pluralize this word. The use of mice in this context is often followed by some sort of mouse joke or by the substitution of meece to emphasize how ridiculous the whole thing is.

“It’s not uncommon to hear tech folk refer to the general class of mouselike pointing devices (mice, track balls, touch pads, etc.) as rodentia. Of course there are diehards who feel that controlling computers with keyboards is vastly superior to any kind of pointing device and that the computer mouse is just a pest. These folks refer to that device as a rat.”

Eek!

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(The Grammarphobia Blog is featuring five daily quizzes this week to mark the publication of Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. This quiz is about misbegotten word and phrase origins.)

(1) Is the word “jeep” derived from GP, an Army abbreviation for “general purpose” vehicle?

(2) Does the expression “three sheets to the wind,” meaning drunk, refer to loose sails flapping in the wind?

(3) Does “no room to swing a cat” refer to the cat-o’-nine-tails once used to keep wayward sailors in line?

(4) Is the term “cop” derived from the copper buttons or badges on police uniforms?

(5) Is “Xmas” part of a modern secular plot to x-out Jesus from the holiday?

Answers:

(1) Think again. The true source is Eugene the Jeep, a character in the old Thimble Theater cartoon strips featuring Popeye, Olive Oyl, and company.

(2) To a sailor, sheets are lines (ropes, to a landlubber), and not sails. The sheets are used to trim, or adjust, the sails. If the sheets are loose, the sails can’t do their job, leaving the vessel out of control, not unlike a drunken sailor.

(3) The “cat” in question is actually of the feline variety. The expression has been traced to Elizabethan times, when archers put cats in leather sacks and swung them from trees for target practice.

(4) The best evidence is that the noun “cop” comes from the verb “cop,” which has meant to seize or nab since at least the early 1700s.

(5) Modern? Not by a long shot. And secular? Think again. The usage has been around for nearly a thousand years. The real culprits were monks in Britain who used the Greek letter X (short for ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, or “Christ”) when transcribing classical manuscripts into Old English.

For more on these and other myths about English, check out Origins of the Specious at your local bookstore, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com.

Q: I believe the word “meme” can be used in a broader sense than the way you described it on WNYC the other day. I first encountered it when I read John H. McWhorter’s Losing the Race, a book in which the word is used to encompass a self-destructive subculture in the black community.

A: You’re right. I said on the air that I thought a “meme” was a linguistic unit that couldn’t be divided into smaller parts. But I was wrong. That’s a “morpheme,” not a “meme.”

A “meme” (pronounced MEEM) is a unit of cultural information (an idea, a style, a usage) that spreads from one mind to another. In the example you cited, anti-intellectualism among young African-Americans could be an example of a meme.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “meme” as “a cultural element or behavioural trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means (esp. imitation), is considered as analogous to the inheritance of a gene.”

It’s a shortened form of “mimeme,” which is derived from an ancient Greek word meaning “that which is imitated.”

The term was coined by Richard Dawkins, who said in his book The Selfish Gene (1976): “The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun which conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.”

The word “mimeme,” Dawkins continued, “comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene.’ “

“I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme,” he said, adding, “It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream.’ Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.”

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(The Grammarphobia Blog is featuring five daily quizzes this week to mark the publication of Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. This quiz is about “ain’t,” “nucular,” and other bad boys of English.

(1) Was “ain’t” ever legit?

(2) Are African-Americans responsible for the mispronunciation of “ask” as AX?

(3) Was George W. Bush the first president to mangle “nuclear”?

(4) Can “literally” be used with figurative expressions?

(5) Is there a case to be made for the use of “like” to quote or paraphrase people? Example: “She’s like, ‘Get off my case, puh-leeze!’ ”

Answers:

(1) Although “ain’t” is now a symbol of the illiterati, it was routinely used by the upper classes as well as the lower, educated and otherwise, in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. At first, the word was a legitimate contraction of “am not” and “are not.” But it fell into disrepute when people began using it for “is not,” “has not,” and “have not.”

(2) The AX pronunciation is also heard among whites – and on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, the word “ask” was spelled – and pronounced – “axe” when it first appeared in print in the 14th century. It wasn’t until the 17th century that “ask” replaced “axe,” but the old pronunciation hasn’t quite died out.

(3) Bush’s partners in crime include Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. A veritable “nucular” explosion!

(4) In standard English, “literally” means “to the letter” or “word for word.” And that’s what it meant when the word first showed up in English in the 16th century. But many well-known writers, including Thoreau, Dickens, Twain, and Thackeray have used the word to underscore figurative expressions.

(5) Linguists like this usage and call it the “quotative like.” Sticklers may grumble, but dictionaries now include it as informal speech.

For more on these and other myths or misconceptions about English, check out Origins of the Specious at your local bookstore, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com.

Q: I recently watched the film Synecdoche, New York, and wonder if you would comment on the screenwriter’s use and understanding of the first word in the title.

A: We haven’t seen the film, so we can’t comment on the relevance of the title. We know it’s an intellectually playful movie, and it’s set partly in Schenectady, so the pun was no doubt irresistible to the director and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.

Years before the film came out, Leonard Lopate and Pat were asked on the air to discuss the difference between “metonymy” and “synecdoche.” Leonard can never resist a pun. He said, “Isn’t the second one a town in upstate New York?” He was ahead of his time!

(We mention this story at the beginning of “In High Dungeon: And Other Moat Points,” a chapter in Origins of the Specious, a new book we’ve written to debunk common myths about the English language. In fact, the title of the chapter comes from another of Leonard’s puns.)

“Synecdoche” and “metonymy” are figures of speech in which one thing is used to represent another. In both of these rhetorical figures, the original term and the substitute are closely identified or associated with each other.

In this respect, “synecdoche” and “metonymy” are different from “metaphor,” in which the terms are unrelated yet imaginatively similar (as when you call your ’67 Pontiac “a boat”).

With, “synecdoche,” a part is used to represent the whole or vice versa. Examples commonly cited are the use of “hand” to mean a sailor and “the cavalry” to mean a single trooper. It’s pronounced sin-EK-duh-kee and comes from a Greek word meaning “to take with something else.” (“Schenectady,” the ninth-largest city in New York State, is pronounced skuh-NEK-tuh-dee.)

With “metonymy,” the substituted word is not a part (or an extension) of the original but something associated with it. Classic examples are “the crown” to represent the monarchy and “the sword” to represent military power. It’s pronounced met-ON-uh-mee and comes from a Greek word meaning “change of name.”

Here’s a simple illustration of the difference. A new guy at the office might be described as “a new face” (synecdoche) or as “a new suit” (metonymy).

If you’d like to read about a related subject, we’ve written here about metaphors and similes. For later posts, put a term like “metaphor” or “figure of speech” in the search box near the upper right of the blog page.

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(The Grammarphobia Blog is featuring five daily quizzes this week to mark the publication of Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. This quiz is about fractured French.)

(1) Is a nom de plume a pen name in France?

(2) Why don’t Frenchwomen wear brassières?

(3) Is “niche” pronounced NITCH or NEESH in English?

(4) What do the French shout when they want Sam to play it again?

(5) Are négligées worn in Parisian boudoirs?

Answers:

(1) No, nom de plume is not a French expression. The British made it up in the 19th century. The French for an assumed name is nom de guerre or pseudonyme.

(2) The French term for what an English speaker calls a brassiere is soutien-gorge. In Paris, a brassière is usually a baby’s undershirt.

(3) NITCH is the traditional English pronunciation, but the Frenchified NEESH has been gaining in popularity, and dictionaries now accept both of them.

(4) The French shout Bis! or Une Autre! or Un Rappel! English speakers have shouted “Encore!” since the early 17th century, perhaps in an attempt to sound French.

(5) No, the French don’t call that frilly nightie a négligée. A Frenchwoman might wear a robe de chambre, a peignoir, or a chemise de nuit. The French verb négliger means to neglect, and a négligé is someone who’s careless or sloppy or poorly dressed.

For more on these and other myths about English, check out Origins of the Specious at your local bookstore, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com.

Q: I keep hearing people say they can’t “phantom” something. This must be wrong! Do they mean they can’t allow things to haunt them the way a bad usage haunts grammarphobes?

A: The word these people should be using is “fathom,” not “phantom.” This is a fabulous example of a malapropism, one I hadn’t noticed before. (I’ve already written about malapropisms on the blog.)

Since you emailed, I’ve found thousands of examples of this particular malapropism on the Internet, including these:

“I can’t phantom the thought of eating mac and cheese” … “I can’t phantom paying full-price” … “I can’t phantom why we should even entertain the idea of a Big 3 bailout” … “Some things like tragedy, disaster, sorrow, our mind can’t phantom.”

In all cases, “fathom” is the correct word, and a very interesting word it is!

Today the verb “fathom,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means “to get to the bottom of, dive into, penetrate, see through, thoroughly understand.”

But when it first entered the language more than a millennium ago, it meant to encircle with outstretched arms. By the 1600s, people were using the verb “fathom” to mean to measure something by means of a person’s two arms, extended from the sides.

The word developed from the Old English faethm, which dates back to about 725, and was a noun meaning the length of the outstretched arms.

As the OED explains, a “fathom” once meant “the length covered by the outstretched arms, including the hands to the tip of the longest finger,” a measure later standardized at six feet and used to measure the depth of water.

In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest (1610 or 1611), for example, Ariel sings: “Full fathom five they father lies; / Of his bones are coral made; / Those are pearls that were his eyes: / Nothing of him that doth fade.…”

The noun “fathom” is now seen mostly in nautical terminology, where until the mid- to late-20th century it was used in charting depth soundings; a depth of 100 fathoms, for example, was 600 feet.

These days, international practice is to measure water depth in meters instead of fathoms, though many older charts still give soundings in fathoms.

Now we’ve gotten to the bottom of this one!

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(The Grammarphobia Blog is featuring five daily quizzes this week to mark the publication of Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. This quiz is about politically correct facts and fictions.)

(1) Does the expression “rule of thumb” have anything to do with wife beating?

(2) Is it racist to “call a spade a spade”?

(3) Did the term “shyster” originate as an anti-Semitic allusion to Shylock?

(4) Is “wop” an acronym for “without papers” and was it used at Ellis Island to identify immigrants without proper documentation?

(5) Are male chauvinists responsible for the use of “he,” “him,” and “his” to refer to both men and women?

Answers:

(1) No one has ever found an old English law allowing a husband to beat his wife with a rod no thicker than his thumb. The phrase “rule of thumb” refers to using body parts (hands, feet, thumbs, etc.) for rough measurements.

(2) “Call a spade a spade” has nothing to do with race. In its earliest versions, in ancient Greece, the saying was about figs and troughs, not spades. During the Renaissance, the Greek word for trough was mistranslated as the Latin word for spade.

(3) We can’t thank Shakespeare for “shyster.” We got it in the 19th century from a vulgar German word, scheisser, literally “one who shits,” or as an American would put it, an asshole.

(4) “Wop” has been a derogatory term for Italians since at least 1908, 10 years before immigration documents were required of newcomers. The term is derived from guappo, a word in Sicilian and Neapolitan dialects for a thug.

(5) If any one person is responsible for this usage, it’s Anne Fisher, an 18th-century schoolmistress and the first woman to write an English grammar book.

For more on these and other myths about English, check out Origins of the Specious at your local bookstore, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com.

Q: I gotta axe you this question: What’s the origin of the wonderful pejorative “battleaxe”? (“Battleaxes” are always “old,” aren’t they?)

A: The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang says “battle-ax,” meaning “a quarrelsome, unattractive, old, or domineering person; specif. a combative, domineering old woman,” can be traced to late-19th-century America.

It was first used, according to Random House and the Oxford English Dictionary, in George Ade’s novel Artie (1896): “Say, there was a battle-ax if ever you see one. She had a face on her that’d fade flowers.”

It’s an expression with staying power. Here’s a more recent usage, from Punch (1959): “Though slim as an arrow / A girl can wax / In the course of time / To a battle-axe.”

Battles, it seems, have loomed large in slang terms devoted to unpleasant women, whether old or young. Similar terms for such harpies (most of these are from Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang) were “battleship” (late 19th century), “battler” (1900s), “battle-cruiser” (1910s), and “battle wagon” (1940s).

The original “battle-ax,” the kind used in hand-to-hand combat, made its first appearance as an English phrase in about 1380, according to the OED.

Here’s the citation, from a medieval Scottish poem about the deathbed advice left by Robert the Bruce for the defense of his kingdom: “… bow, and spier, / And battle-axe, their fechting gear.”

And, by the way, it wasn’t always wrong to “axe” (or “ax”) for something. If you don’t believe us, check out this blog item.

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(The Grammarphobia Blog is featuring five daily quizzes this week to mark the publication of Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. This quiz is about British vs. American English.)

(1) Did Americans once speak with British accents?

(2) Is the word “apartment” an American barbarism for the British term “flat”?

(3) Did the British ever use “gotten” as a past participle of the verb “get”?

(4) Which is older: “whilst,” which is commonly heard in Britain, or “while,” the preferred American version?

(5) Did Winston Churchill ever describe the US and England as “two nations divided by a common language”?

Answers:

(1) The truth is the other way around. In many respects, the English spoke in the 17th and 18th centuries much the way Americans do today. The accent we now associate with educated British speech didn’t develop until after the American Revolution.

(2) “Apartment” was the usual word for a suite of rooms in 17th-century England. The British didn’t start using “flat” for a dwelling until the 1820s or so.

(3) At one time, English routinely used both “got” and “gotten” as past participles of the verb “get.” But after the two branches of English split in the 18th century, Americans retained both forms while the British abandoned “gotten.”

(4) Although “whilst” has an air of antiquity about it, “while” is actually the older word, dating back to the year 1000.

(5) No, but George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde made similar cracks.

For more on these and other myths about English, check out Origins of the Specious at your local bookstore, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com.

Q: I was in an NYC restaurant on the site of The Old Grapevine, a tavern that an article on the wall claimed to be the origin of the term for a rumor mill. The artists and intellectuals who hung out there would pass around rumors heard through the grapevine, according to this article. Is this true?

A: Sorry, but I haven’t found any evidence that The Old Grapevine is the source of the old slang usage, though it may have helped popularize it.

The use of “grapevine” to refer to a rumor mill began life in the mid-19th century as “grapevine telegraph,” according to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

Random House defines this usage as “any informal or unofficial method of relaying important or interesting information, esp. by word of mouth,” or “the means by which gossip or rumor travels.”

The first published citation for “grapevine telegraph” in Random House is from 1852: “By the Grape Vine Telegraph Line … we have received the following.”

Both the short and the long versions appear in this quote from 1862: “We get such ‘news’ in the army by what we call ‘grape vine,’ that is ‘grape vine telegraph.’ It is not all reliable.”

I’ve done lots of looking but haven’t found any solid historical evidence for a connection with the old tavern, only hearsay. What’s needed here are published references from that time.

A July 18, 1915, article in the New York Times about the closing of the old tavern makes great reading, but it has no mention of the pub’s connection with the use of the word “grapevine” to mean a rumor mill.

However, the pub and its name may have reinforced the slang usage. I found this in a footnote in a book called The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech, by Irving L. Allen (Oxford University Press, 1993), page 263:

“The mid-nineteenth-century expression on (or through) the grapevine (i.e., on or through a social network of rumor) is a self-evident metaphor probably taken from the image of a winding, spreading vine. But its popularity in New York may have been influenced by the name of The Old Grape Vine tavern that once stood on Sixth Avenue and 11th Street from 1838 to 1915. It was a hangout and gossip center for local artists, who naturally would have said they heard something ‘at the Grape Vine’ and, thus, make a clever pun.”

By the way, Marvin Gaye recorded the best-known version of the song “I Heard It Though the Grapevine” in 1968, but he wasn’t the first to make it a hit. The song, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, was a big winner for Gladys Knight & the Pips in 1967.

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Q: Where does the phrase “good on you,” or the Aussie version, “good on ya,” come from? I’ve used the Aussie rendition myself instead of “kudos.”

A: The exclamation “Good on you!” is associated with Australia, but according to Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, it’s “equally common in Ireland.” Some have suggested an origin in the Gaelic expression maith thú (“good to you,” “well done”).

The phrase originated in the 20th century as “a general expression of approbation, thanks etc; also abbr. to good,” Cassell’s says.

Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English notes that the vocal emphasis is on the middle word: “on” (as in, “Good ON you!”). The book’s editor, Paul Beale, comments that the phrase is often shortened to something like “On ya!”

What is its ultimate origin? Here opinions differ.

Partridge says: “The phrase, although acknowledged to be quintessentially Australian, may well have been borrowed from Cockney: ‘Good on ’em!’ = good for them, well done!, appears in the caption of a Punch cartoon 10 Oct. 1917.”

But Cassell’s cites a source that has linked the phrase to an Irish expression, rinne sé mhaith orm, which means “he made/did his good on me.” Others, as we said above, have cited the Gaelic maith thú. Since “Good on you!” is common among the Irish, Gaelic seems the likelier origin.

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Q: It seems to me there are two standards of pronunciation: one for public radio and another for the public at large. Examples: BY-oh-pic on NPR versus by-OP-ic everywhere else; car-NEGG-y on the radio versus “CAR-nuh-gee”; huh-RASS versus HAIR-us. It’s driving me crazy! Who’s correct?

A: The word “biopic” may look like a term in ophthalmology, but it’s not pronounced that way. It’s a relatively new word for a film biography, formed from the terms “bio” (pronounced BY-oh, for “biography”) and “pic” (for “picture”). It’s properly pronounced BY-oh-pic.

“Biopic” has been in use since the early 1950s, and we have the editors of Variety to thank. Here are a couple of early citations from the Oxford English Dictionary:

1951, from the Memphis Commercial Appeal:
” ‘Variety’ coins another word for show biz – ‘biopic,’ meaning a biographical film.”

1975, from the Toronto Globe & Mail: “Warners … dares to document the social problems of the time … educating an unsophisticated audience with its historical and medieval bio-pics.”

As for “Carnegie,” there are differences of opinion.

Both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) list two pronunciations: CAR-nuh-gee and (roughly) car-NAIG-gee.

Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland and pronounced his name as the Scots do, with the accent on the second syllable.

In his Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, he wrote that as boys, he and his cousin George Lauder called each other “Dod” and “Naig,” and that Carnegie was always “Naig” to his Scottish relatives.)

In Pittsburgh, where Carnegie made his reputation as a captain of industry, people still pronounce his name car-NAIG-ee (though when run together, it sounds more like car-NEGG-y).

But the far more common American pronunciation is CAR-nuh-gee. The first syllable is also stressed in the names of Carnegie Hall, Carnegie-Mellon University, and Dale Carnegie.

As for “harass,” it has two legitimate pronunciations – huh-RASS and HAIR-us. The choice is up to you – and NPR.

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Q: In an economic discussion on WNYC, Brian Lehrer asked a guest which parts of the stimulus bill were most “stimulating.” He then corrected it to “stimulative.” It seems that many of us are using “stimulative” to refer to the economy, instead of “stimulating,” which I’d guess is more emotionally suggestive. Are there any interesting distinctions between the two words?

A: The adjective “stimulative” has been around for nearly 300 years, though it has largely been replaced in everyday usage by “stimulating.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “stimulative” means “having the property of stimulating; of a stimulating nature or character.”

It’s generally used in constructions with “of” or “to,” as in “the stimulative power of manure” (I’m not kidding; see below). Here are some citations given in the OED:

1791, from A Tour in England and Scotland in 1785, by Thomas Newte: “This would be like spreading the stimulative power of manure over large tracts of waste land.”

1836, from The Tin Trumpet, by Horatio Smith: “More stimulative of the risible faculties.”

1906, from Silanus the Christian, by E. A. Abbott: “This belief I found also stimulative to well-doing.”

By the way, “stimulative” has been a noun, too, but this usage is now labeled “rare or obscure” in the OED. Its job seems to have been taken over by “stimulant,” “stimulus,” and “incentive.”

But getting back to adjectives, “stimulating” is only slightly older than “stimulative.” Here are a few OED citations:

circa 1732, from John Gay’s Fables (the speaker here is an ox): “Urg’d by the stimulating goad, I drag the cumbrous waggon’s load.”

1873, from On Some Influences of Christianity Upon National Character, by R. W. Church: “The sentences of Seneca are stimulating to the intellect.”

1908, from Stewart of Lovedale, by James Wells: “Admirable and stimulating as he was as a preacher, Mr. Stewart was even more stimulating as a teacher.”

The OED doesn’t make much distinction between the two words. But “stimulating” does seem to convey emotional overtones (excitement and so on) that are lacking in “stimulative.”

Maybe all the commentary about the economic stimulus package will stimulate “stimulative” into making a comeback!

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Q: I have a friend who uses the construction “Did you …?” where I would use “Do you …?” For example, if I were driving her home, she might say, “Did you want to come in?” This always makes me feel as if I’d invited myself in. Is it simply my own foible, or is there an actual grammar/usage reason behind my reaction?

A: I’ve noticed this too. For example, a barista at Starbucks might ask, “Did you want a grande or a vente?”

In effect, the barista is using the auxiliary verb “do” in the past tense (“did”), even though the present tense is implied.

It’s analogous to a salesclerk’s saying “Was that all?” (past tense) or “Will that be all?” (future) or “Would that be all?” (conditional) instead of the present-tense “Is that all?”

Why do people do this? When relatively insignificant verbs or auxiliaries are involved, some people seem to feel that the present tense (“Do you want …”) is too direct or blunt, and that an oblique, roundabout approach is somehow more polite.

I wouldn’t read anything into your friend’s usage – for example, that it’s not HER idea to invite you in. This is probably just her way of saying “Do you …?”

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Q: On the car radio today, I heard someone say “for all intensive purposes.” Yuck! What is the world coming to?

A: What you should have heard, of course, is “for all intents and purposes.” Here the noun “intent” (which dates back to about 1225) means “intention” or “inclination.”

The phrase means for all practical purposes or practically. The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from a 1546 act adopted during the reign of King Henry VIII: “To all intents, constructions, and purposes.”

Here’s a later citation, written by Joseph Addison in a 1709 issue of The Tatler: “Whoever resides in the World without having any Business in it … is to me a Dead Man to all Intents and Purposes.”

In English, the adjectives “intense” and “intensive” have nothing to do with the nouns “intent” and “intention,” but all are ultimately related to the Latin verb intendere, meaning to stretch or strain.

That, for all intents and purposes, is the story.

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Q: I recently tasted a mixed drink called the bee’s knees. It was delicious, and got me to thinking. Where does the expression “the bees knees” come from?

A: The phrase dates back to the 1920s, and refers to an extraordinary person, thing, idea, and so on, according to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

The first published citation in Random House is from Fighting Blood (1923), a short-story collection by H. C. Witwer: “You’re the bee’s knees for a fact!”

Witwer wrote stories for Collier’s magazine and was also a newspaper columnist, humorist, and screenwriter. In fact, one of his silent film shorts was called “Bee’s Knees” (1924).

But why a bee, and why knees? It’s probable that the expression is merely rhyming slang, along the lines of “the eel’s heels,” “the gnu’s shoes,” “the owl’s bowels,” and so on.

The expression is similar to several other whimsical Jazz Age phrases that sprang up in the 1920s: “the cat’s meow” (1921), “the cat’s pajamas” (1922), “the cat’s whiskers” (1923), and “the eel’s ankle” (1923, Witwer again).

We’ve found many other examples of zoological whimsy in various slang dictionaries: “the clam’s cuticles,” “the caterpillar’s spats,” “the elephant’s fallen arches,” “the elephant’s instep,” “the frog’s eyebrows,” “the pig’s whiskers,” “the snake’s toenails,” and more.

During Prohibition, the drink called “the bee’s knees” made its debut. The ingredients: honey, lemon juice, and gin.

David A. Embury, in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, says the original version was vile – heavy on the honey to help the bootleg gin go down. But with real gin and less honey, Embury says, the drink can be the bee’s knees.

Q: I thought I understood the usage of “make do,” but I’ve seen “make due” twice now – the second time in the Wall Street Journal. Is this some new application of the phrase?

A: You’re right! This sentence appears in the March 5, 2009, Wall Street Journal: “Families typically have been able to make due as long as they remained employed and on a company health plan.”

This is a misuse. The correct phrase is “make do.” It means something like manage or manage with what’s available.

It’s easy to see how the original phrase came about. Whatever you happen to have may not be ideal, but you can make it do.

The Oxford English Dictionary has this early citation from The Observer (1927): “The listener who was content to receive only the programmes from his local station … could make do with a very simple and inefficient form of direct-coupled tuning arrangement.”

Here’s a more recent cite, from The School of Genius (1988) by the British psychiatrist Anthony Storr: “Many human beings make do with relationships which cannot be regarded as especially close, and not all such human beings are all or even particularly unhappy.”

You’re not the only observer to report this swapping of “due” for “do.” There’s a similar observation on the Language Log, a blog maintained by the linguist Mark Liberman.

I’ve found a few recent examples myself, including headlines like “USC has to make due without Lady Luck” and “Forced to Make Due with the Critic’s Choice Awards” and “Many make due with less this year.”

I could make do with less of this making due!

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Q: Can you clarify the meaning (and origin) of the phrase “as is my wont”?

A: The noun “wont” means habit or custom, and it can be pronounced in several ways – like “wahnt” or “wunt” or “woant.”

Here’s a good illustration of its use, from an 1851 issue of Harper’s Magazine: “The Elegy was concluded, and I was rapturizing even more vehemently than was my wont, when, whack! I received a blow on my shoulder.”

So, the expression “as is my wont” means as is my custom or as I usually do. Example: “I got up late, as is my wont, but I managed to get to class on time.”

There used to be a verb “wont,” now long obsolete, that meant to do habitually, or to make someone or something accustomed to.

This verb was used in its past-participle forms (both “wonted” and “wont”) as an adjective meaning accustomed. Thus, a 19th-century observer might have said, “I drove my wonted carriage to the ball,” or “I am wont to walk to church.”

Similarly, something “unwonted” was unfamiliar or out of the ordinary.

The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology says the adjective “wont” developed in medieval times from an Old English verb (wonen or wunen) meaning dwell or be accustomed. The noun “wont” came from the adjective.

Now, as is my wont, I’d better get to the next question in my in-box.

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Q: On your Grammar Myths page, you say the “to” in “to escape” is a preposition and not part of the infinitive. I think you’re wrong. Most linguists would say this “to” is most definitely not a preposition, but is actually part of the infinitive.

A: I disagree on two points.

(1) “To” is a preposition, even before an infinitive.

Ordinary dictionaries (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed.) classify the infinitival “to” as a preposition with the function of indicating that the following verb is an infinitive.

So do more scholarly sources, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, which notes that in modern English this prepositional sense has become weakened.

(2) When used before an infinitive, “to” is not part of the verb. Here I will quote The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, written by two distinguished linguists, Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum:

“Infinitival to is not part of the verb. The traditional practice for citation of verbs is to cite them with the infinitival marker to, as in ‘to be,’ ‘to take,’ and so on. That is an unsatisfactory convention, because the to is not part of the verb itself. It is not a (morphological) prefix but a quite separate (syntactic) word.” – CGEL, p. 84.

A great many other grammarians have said the same thing over the years.

And as I point out on the Grammar Myths page, the “to” isn’t always necessary. The word “escape,” for example, is an infinitive in both these sentences: (1) Blackbeard helped him to escape. (2) Blackbeard helped him escape.

The point I’m trying to make, of course, is that there’s nothing wrong with putting an adverb (like “discreetly”) between the prepositional marker “to” and a verb in this sentence: Dilbert decided to discreetly mention dating in the workplace.

In other words, the old “rule” against splitting an infinitive is bogus. If “to” isn’t part of the infinitive, there’s nothing to split.

(I discuss this in more detail in “Grammar Moses,” a chapter in my new book, Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, written with my husband, Stewart Kellerman.)

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Pat is a guest contributor to a discussion on the New York Times blog Room for Debate to mark the 50th anniversary of the popular usage and grammar guide Elements of Style. Here are her comments:

We’ve Moved On

Rereading Strunk and White on its 50th birthday is like meeting an old lover and realizing how much you’ve outgrown him. Things have changed, little book, and you have not, or not enough.

Oh, the first 14 pages are still the gospel truth. And I still love the things I loved most — the “Elementary Principles of Composition” and the reminders at the end of the book. Any young person prone to getting tattoos might consider having a few of these permanently engraved where they can readily be seen: Omit needless words. Use concrete language. Be clear. Avoid fancy words. Revise and rewrite. Pure gold.

But much of the grammar and usage advice in the rest of the book is baloney, to use a good concrete word. “He” has not been the default pronoun for both genders since “the beginnings of the English language” (only since the mid-18th century). Nobody these days uses “shall” instead of “will” in the first-person future tense.

The advice on “data” and “media” is outdated, as is some of the stuff about verbs. I see nothing wrong — and neither does Merriam-Webster’s — with “loan” or “state” as verbs, or “fix” to mean mend, or “gotten” as a participle for “get.” Nor am I losing sleep over “certainly” and “prestigious” and “offputting.”

Finally, “six persons” is not better than “six people.” Show me a guy who invariably says “six persons” and I will show you a fathead. But Happy Birthday anyway, Strunk and White.

For the rest of the debate, click here. And for more myths and misconceptions about the English language, check out Origins of the Specious, the new book that I’ve written with my husband, Stewart.

Q: I was born and raised in the US, but I’ve worked overseas most of my adult life. I get back from time to time, but my English is always somewhat out-of-date. What bothers me now is hearing so many people not pronounce the letter “t” in certain plurals. For example, “tests” becomes “tess,” “districts” is “distrix,” “next” sounds like “nex,” and “facts” like “fax.” What’s going on?

A: The pronunciations you mention aren’t unusual and aren’t incorrect. In practice, not every English plural is pronounced exactly as the singular with an “s” at the end. The distinct enunciation of several consonants in a row is often awkward and unnatural.

A phonologist could explain this much better, but I’ll do my best. Let’s take these plurals one at a time.

“Tests.” Most people would pronounce the second “t” if “tests” came at the end of a sentence or before a vowel (as in “the tests are in”). But when “tests” appears before a consonant (as in “tests tomorrow” or “tests daily”) that “t” is often elided into the following letter. Thus a speaker may appear to be saying “tess tomorrow” or “tess daily.”

“Districts.” In the plural, the second “t” is generally elided into the “s.” So it sounds like “distrix.” It would require a real bit of gymnastics for the tongue to separately enunciate all three consonants: the “c,” the “t,” and the “s.” Hence the “t” is elided into the next letter.

“Next.” When the words appears at the end of a sentence, or before a vowel (as in “next in line”), both the “x” and the “t” are sounded. But before a consonant, the “t” is often elided. Example: “nex customer” or “nex time.”

“Facts.” Again, it’s difficult (and in fact unnatural) for the tongue to enunciate separately all three consonants: the “c,” the “t,” and the “s.” Hence the “t” is elided into the next letter, which is why “facts” rhymes with “fax.”

I often wish dictionaries listed standard pronunciations for both singulars and plurals, but they don’t. Sigh.

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Q: It drives me crazy when people describe something as surrealistic. Shouldn’t one just say it’s surreal? I know there’s a difference between “real,” meaning actual, and, “realistic,” but does that apply here? It seems to me that “surrealistic” is just another redundancy.

A: The adjectives “surreal” and “surrealistic” mean essentially the same thing. But it’s arguable whether “surrealistic” is redundant or not. I would say not, and I’ll explain why later.

Both words are 1930s offshoots of two earlier ones, the noun “surrealism” (1917) and the adjective “surrealist” (1918), coined by the French painter Guillaume Apollinaire (originally as surréalisme and surréaliste).

The French words were immediately absorbed into English, where “surrealist” became a noun (meaning an adherent of surrealism) as well as an adjective. The precise English equivalents, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, would be “super-realism” and “super-realist.”

The later coinage “surreal” is described by the OED as a back-formation, derived from “surrealism” and “surrealist.” (A back-formation is a word created by dropping a prefix or suffix from an existing word.)

Other words derived from the two originals are “surrealistic,” “surrealistically,” “surreally,” and “surreality,” most of them from the 1930s and originally meaning “characteristic or suggestive of surrealism.”

So what’s the reality behind all these words?

“Surrealism” was a movement in literature and art that sought to express the workings of the subconscious mind by using techniques like juxtaposing realistic images in an irrational way. Think of Salvador Dali and his droopy clocks.

As the poet André Breton explained in his Surrealist Manifesto (1924), the aim was to transmute “those two seemingly contradictory states, dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, of surreality, so to speak.”

These days, “surrealism” and company are used both inside and outside the worlds of art and literature. In everyday language, both “surreal” and “surrealistic” can simply mean dreamlike or unreal, and in my opinion they’re a bit overused.

Now for another opinion, and you’re free to disagree. I say there’s no redundancy here because “surreal” and “surrealistic” might be used in slightly different ways. You might say, for example, that a play is “surrealistic” (meaning it has some characteristics of the surreal) without being “surreal” on the whole.

There are parallel cases in English where two derivatives or offshoots of a word may or may not take on separate meanings. For example, many word pairs in English have both “ic” and “ical” endings.

Sometimes these adjectives mean the same thing, and the choice is yours, as is the case with “botanic” and “botanical.” But sometimes the words mean different things, as “politic” and “political.” I recently had a blog item about this.

Sorry to go on at such length, but this language racket can get surreal!

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Q: I have a question about grammar. Which is correct: “I would have liked to go on the retreat” or “I would have liked to have gone on the retreat”? I always use the latter, but I am not sure if there is ever an instance when the former is acceptable.

A: Many people use too many “haves” in constructions like this and create a verbal pileup.

Here we have two verbs, “like” and “go.” Except in rare cases, only one of them needs a “have” (that is, only one needs to be in a perfect tense). That’s because you’re usually talking about only one time in the past, not two.

You can use “have” with either part of the equation. Both of these sentences are correct:

(1) “I would have liked to go” … (2) “I would like to have gone.”

When the first verb is in the conditional perfect (“would have liked”), then the second is in the infinitive (“go”).

But when the first verb is in the simple conditional (“would like”), then the second is in the present perfect (“have gone”).

The correct sentences have slightly different perspectives, because they emphasize different times.

When choosing one over the other, ask yourself: Did I wish THEN that I had gone? … or … Do I wish NOW that I had gone?

Here’s what I mean. In #1, the emphasis is on the past: “I would have liked [back THEN] to go.” But in #2, you’re speaking of the past from the point of view of the present: “I would like [NOW] to have gone [back THEN].”

Using two “haves” (as in, “I would have liked to have gone”) is usually incorrect, because it’s unlikely that you really intend to talk about two separate times in the past.

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Q: I was reminded recently of a curiosity with respect to the names of the four seasons. Despite English’s large dictionary, there are no synonyms for “spring,” “winter,” or “summer.” Why does “autumn” alone have a synonym? That’s today’s conundrum.

A: We have two words (“autumn” and “fall”) for this season because they came into English from two different sources and we kept both – at least we Americans did.

The word “fall” comes from Old English and has been part of the language since the ninth century, though it wasn’t used to mean the season until the 16th century.

This usage of “fall” made its first appearance in print in a 1545 book on archery: “Spring tyme, Somer, faule of the leafe, and winter.”

“Autumn,” which comes ultimately from the Latin autumnus, was borrowed into English from Old French in the 14th century.

Americans use both words, as the British once did. But the Brits dropped “fall” along the way. It’s interesting that they kept the French borrowing but discarded the Anglo-Saxon one.

My husband and I have a whole chapter on British-vs.-American English in our new book, Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, which is coming out on May 5.

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Q: Have you ever noticed the difference in the names of the New York Botanical Garden and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden? Which one is right?

A: Yes, I’ve noticed that one garden is “botanic” and the other is “botanical.” I always have a hard time remembering which is which. (Brooklyn’s is “botanic” and the Bronx’s is “botanical.”)

In fact, both adjectives are correct and there’s no difference in meaning. Some of the big public gardens around the country use “botanic” in their names and some use “botanical.”

Many word pairs in English have both “ic” and “ical” endings. Sometimes these adjectives mean the same thing, and the choice is yours, as is the case with “botanic” and “botanical,” “cyclic” and “cyclical,” “ironic” and “ironical,” “geologic” and “geological,” and others.

But sometimes the words mean different things, as in “classic” and “classical,” “historic” and “historical,” “politic” (the adjective) and “political,” “economic” and “economical.”

For example, Monk’s album Straight, No Chaser is a jazz classic, but Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” is classical. Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile was historic, but the two runners who paced him were minor historical figures.

Also, a politician might give a long, windy speech on budget matters. It would be an “economic” speech but not an “economical” one. Later, he might give a “political” speech that wasn’t very “politic.”

Then there are words like “mythic” and “mythical.” They generally mean the same thing, though “mythic” has a slightly different meaning when used in a literary sense (a book that’s “mythic” may have the quality of myth without being mythical per se – that is, dealing in the imaginary).

As for “botanic” vs. “botanical,” we got both in the mid-17th century, perhaps from botanique, French for botanical or botany, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The ultimate source is a Greek word for “plant.”

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Q: I’ve always believed the word “so” requires “that” when introducing a clause: “There was a fire in the subway, so that it took me an hour to get to work.” But I hear an awful lot of “so”-ing without “that”-ing these days. Comment, please?

A: Not every “so” demands a “that” when introducing a clause. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) says “that” is optional in a sentence like yours where the “so” clause states the result or consequence of something.

The dictionary gives this example of a sentence in which either “so” or “so that” is perfectly acceptable: The Bay Bridge was still closed, so (or so that) the drive from San Francisco to the Berkeley campus took an hour and a half.

American Heritage notes, however, that many sticklers insist “so must be followed by that in formal writing when used to introduce a clause giving the reason for or purpose of an action: He stayed so that he could see the second feature.”

But even here, the dictionary says, “since many respected writers use so for so that in formal writing, it seems best to consider the issue one of stylistic preference: The store stays open late so (or so that) people who work all day can buy groceries.”

“So” may be a little word, but there’s a lot to say about it.

It goes back to Old English, when it was first recorded (as swa) in about 725. In those days it was often strengthened by the addition of eall (meaning “altogether” or “wholly”), and the Old English eall swa, all swa, and so on eventually gave us our words “as,” “so,” and “also.”

“So” is extremely useful. Here are the principal meanings (and grammatical functions) of “so” today:

An adverb, meaning “to such an extent”: I was so hungry that I drooled.

An adverb, meaning “to a great extent”: She is so selfish.

An adverb, meaning “consequently”: We were bored and so left early.

An adverb, meaning “afterward” or “then”: We went home and so to bed.

An adverb, meaning “likewise”: He was tired and so was she.

An adverb, meaning “apparently”: So you think you’ve got it bad?

An adverb, meaning “indeed”: You are not! I am so!

An adjective, meaning “true”: Tell me it isn’t so.

An adverb meaning “in this manner”: She dresses just so.

An adjective, meaning “right” or “orderly”: Their kitchen is just so.

A conjunction, meaning “with the result that”: The band didn’t show, so we left.

A conjunction, meaning “in order that”: I work hard so my boss will take notice.

A pronoun, meaning “the same” or “as specified”: She was born feisty and remained so.

An interjection, like “Aha!”: So! This is what you’ve been up to.

Can you stand a little more? We wrote a blog item a while back about the use of “so far” in place of “thus far.” And another item about the use of “so” at the beginning of a negative comparison (“She’s not so tall as her sister”). And, in parting, an entry about “so long.”

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