Month: April 2026

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Language Usage Word origin Writing

‘New albums drop like leaves in the fall’

Q: Over the last decade I’ve been seeing an uptick in the use of “drop” to mean something new being released, like a podcast episode or music album. Where does this come from?

A: Something must be in the air. Two people have asked us this same question within a week.

The use of “drop” as a verb or noun for the release of new music, software, movies, podcasts, and so on apparently originated in the late 1980s in the world of hip-hop and rap.

Several online standard dictionaries now have entries for “drop” used this way in speech and informal writing.

Merriam-Webster, for example, defines the noun as “something (such as a song) that is released to the public.” And Cambridge says the verb means “to become available for people to buy, listen to, or watch, especially using the internet.”

The two earliest examples in the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, are from an interview with Joseph Simmons of the hip-hop trio Run-DMC in the May 1988 issue of the music magazine Spin.

Simmons uses the verb both transitively (with an object) and intransitively (without one) in these two citations: (1) “I think that I should be able to drop records when I want.”  (2) “Maybe after my album drops and I’m back on the road doing what I’m supposed to do in this world, I’ll be happy.”

The OED cites a somewhat similar use of “drop” that appeared a few months later: “to sing or perform rap lyrics or rap music.” The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from an Oct. 10, 1988, article in The Los Angles Times about a performance by the hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince:

“The Fresh Prince gave himself and Jazzy Jeff a last-gasp pep talk before performing their current hit, ‘A Nightmare on My Street,’ a parody of the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ teen-age exploitation horror films. ‘If we drop this record (i.e., play this song) and the crowd don’t go wild, I think we pretty much had it, pally wally,’ he said.” The parenthetical explanation is in the original article.

The earliest example we’ve seen for “drop” used more broadly, in the sense of something new being released, is from a holiday shopping article in the Philadelphia Daily News, Sept. 16, 1993:

“New albums drop like leaves in the fall, as the holiday shopping season approaches. CDs and tapes make great Christmas or Hanukkah gifts because they’re (relatively) cheap, you don’t have to worry about anybody’s size.”

As for the early etymology, the Old English noun (dropa) and verb (dropian) ultimately come from the reconstructed prehistoric base dhreu- (to fall, flow, drip, droop), according to the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

In Old English, the OED says, the noun originally referred to “a small spherical or pear-shaped portion of liquid.” The plural dropan is used in the dictionary’s first citation for the noun:

 “His swat wæs swylce blodes dropan” (“His sweat was like drops of blood”). From Luke in the West Saxon Gospels, dating from the late 900’s.

Oxford defines the original Old English verb as “to fall in drops; to drip or trickle down.” The third-person plural dropiað is used in the dictionary’s first citation:

“Myrre and gutta and cassia dropiað of þinum claðum” (“Myrrh and aloes and cassia droppeth from your garments”). From a late ninth-century prose translation of the Latin Psalms, traditionally attributed to King Alfred.

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

Subscribe to the blog by email

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

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Language Pronunciation Spelling Usage Word origin Writing

‘Thou shalt not loose by it’

Q: How can we get everyone to quit using “loose” when they mean “lose”? It’s driving me insane!

A: The word “lose” is usually a verb with the sense of failing to win or hold on to something, while “loose” is usually an adjective meaning not securely attached, or less commonly a verb meaning to release or set free.

But as you’ve noticed, some people spell “lose” with an extra “o” in casual writing, a usage that some language references suggest may be influenced by the double “o” in “choose,” a word that rhymes with “lose.”

Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4th ed.), for example, says, “Possibly because lose is pronounced like choose, there is a common tendency to write that meaning with two letter os.”

Similarly, the Merriam-Webster online dictionary says, “the fact that lose rhymes so well with choose seems to prompt many people to assume that it too should contain a second O.”

Nevertheless, the spelling of “lose” as “loose” is relatively rare in contemporary books, newspapers, magazines, and other edited writing, both online and off. Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.) describes it as Stage 1, the earliest level, in its Language Change Index.

Interestingly, the “oo” usage was fairly common in the early Modern English of the late 16th and 17th centuries, when Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, and other writers used “loose” for “lose.” Here are a few examples from the Oxford English Dictionary:

•  “At length, the left winge of the Arcadians began to loose ground” (from The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia, 1590, by Sir Philip Sidney).

•  “I thanke thee, thou shalt not loose by it” (from The Taming of the Shrew, written in the early 1590s by Shakespeare). We’ve expanded the cited comment by Petruchio in Act 1, Scene 2, one of many passages in Shakespeare’s plays that use “loose” in the modern sense of “lose.”

•  “As to a monoculos [one-eyed man] it is more to loose one eye, then to a man that hath two eyes” (Of Coulers of Good & Euill, 1597, by Francis Bacon). In the title, “coulers” (colors) refers to questionable arguments or reasons.

•  “The tempting stream, with one small drop to loose / In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe” (Paradise Lost, 1667, by Milton). We’ve expanded the citation, which describes the desire of the fallen angels to drink from the river Lethe and lose their torment in forgetfulness.

Our standard spelling and pronunciation of “lose” and “loose” evolved in Old English, Middle English, and early Modern English, according to the OED.

When “lose” first appeared in Old English, it was spelled losien, according to the dictionary,  but in Middle English it was variously losie, losien, losse, loss, loose, and lose.

As for “loose,” it was originally leowsin in Middle English, then lauce, laus, lowss, loyse, lous, lose, loiss, losyn, louce, louss, loss, looce, looze, los, loase, lows, lowis, lewce, leuse, and loose. 

By the middle to late 18th century, language authorities had recognized the standard modern spelling and pronunciation, but much of the population hadn’t got the word.

In A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Samuel Johnson spelled “lose” and “loose” the now-standard ways in their various senses.

And in A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791), John Walker pronounced “lose” as LOOZ, and “loose” as LOOS. Walker uses an inverted circumflex over each “o” to indicate a “slender o,” like those in “do” and “soon.”

But a century later, language authorities were still commenting on the spelling of “lose” as “loose.” The entry for “lose” in The Century Dictionary (1889), for example, describes the verb as “formerly also loose” and “more or less confused with loose, untie, relax.”

And yet another century later, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (1994), points out that “this error is rare in edited material but fairly common in casual writing. A quick look in any dictionary is all that is needed to avoid it.”

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

Subscribe to the blog by email

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