Author: Pat and Stewart

Q: I was recently listening to a police lieutenant describe how he drove from Jersey City to Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. The New Jersey Turnpike was closed to all but military vehicles but he “badged” his way on so he could get to the scene. I hadn’t heard that usage before, but it makes perfect sense to me.

A: Thanks for the observation. I’ll make note of it.

Interestingly, “badge” has been used as a verb as far back as the 14th century. Over the years, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it has meant to mark or distinguish, to buy something for resale, and to harvest a crop.

Here’s a quotation from Macbeth for the first meaning: “Their Hands and Faces were all badg’d with blood.” The second meaning (to buy for resale) is a reference to the old term “badger” (a middleman or itinerant dealer). The third definition (to harvest) may be related to the words “bag” or “batch.”

The verb “badge” comes, as one might expect, from the noun “badge,” but the origin of the noun is unknown. Etymologists have speculated that it might be derived from Anglo-Latin or Anglo-French words for emblem.

As for the quadruped that we call a “badger,” the origin of the word is uncertain, though some wordsmiths speculate that it might refer to the white marks or badges on the animal’s head.

I won’t badger you any more about this, except to note that the verb “badger” (to pester or persecute) comes from badger-baiting or badger-drawing, a so-called sport in which dogs were once used to draw captured badgers from artificial dens. Shades of Michael Vick!

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Q: I have a couple of questions about pronunciation. I can’t stand it when people say CAR-mel for “caramel” and va-NELLA for “vanilla.” Am I too uptight or do I have a right to be annoyed?

A: “Caramel” can be pronounced with two syllables or three, according to modern dictionaries. Some reference books list the twosome first and some go first with the threesome, but both are correct.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) leads off with the two-syllable version (CAR-mel) while The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) goes with the three-syllable job (CAR-a-mel).

Dictionary palates aren’t quite as indiscriminate about “vanilla,” but you can find different pronunciations in the standard references. In Merriam-Webster’s, for instance, there are two pronunciations (va-NILL-a and va-NELL-a). American Heritage has only one (va-NILL-a).

Dictionaries often list several pronunciations for an individual word. All are usually acceptable, and the difference between them (as far as how common each is) may be so slight as to be negligible.

So, loosen up, or one of these days you’ll be singing: “You say va-NILLA and I say va-NELLA. Let’s call the whole thing off!” (My apologies to Ira Gershwin for playing with his lyrics!)

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Q: I was reading an Op-Ed piece that used the medical term “fugue” to describe that dreamlike state of consciousness that so many survivors had after 9-11. Is this term related etymologically to the musical “fugue”?

A: Both words come from the Italian word fuga, meaning flight, which is ultimately derived from the Latin verb fugere (to flee).

The psychiatric “fugue” (think of it as a flight from reality) refers to a sort of amnesiac state in which someone does various things but has no awareness of them when he returns to normal consciousness.

The musical “fugue” (think of it as a flight of harmony) is a composition that weaves one or more melodies in different voices.

The musical “fugue” entered English in the late 16th century. The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary describes it as a musical composition in which “one part beginneth and the other singeth the same, for some number of notes (which the first did sing).”

The first medical reference in the OED is from a 1901 English translation of a book by Pierre Marie Félix Janet, The Mental State of Hystericals, which describes the condition as “those strange excursions, accomplished automatically, of which the patient has not the least recollection.”

The Latin word fugere and its relatives have also given us “centrifuge,” “fugitive,” “refuge,” “refugee,” “subterfuge,” and others.

I’ll knock off now and take one of my favorite musical flights, with Glenn Gould and the Well-Tempered Clavier.

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Q: Lately, I’ve noticed the increasing use, or rather misuse, of “shambles” as a plural (“His house was in shambles”) instead of a singular (“His house was in a shambles”). This is on my list of 250 worst language offenses. What has become of the language?

A: “Shambles” is a very, very old word that has had more makeovers than an aging socialite. We’ve had it in one form or another since the 9th century. Various spellings include shammel, shamil, shamwelle, shammoulle, sheamble, schambylle, shambulles, chambulles, and shambylles.

It’s been singular and plural as well as noun and verb. As a noun, it’s meant a stool, a butcher’s table, a scene of bloody mayhem, and a plain old mess, among other things. As a verb, it’s meant to walk or shuffle or stumble or cut up or slaughter.

In the 9th century, the noun sceamol was an Old English word for a stool or table (it came to us in a roundabout way from the Latin scammelum, a bench). By the 10th century, the word was being used to mean a table in a shop or market, and by the 1300s it meant specifically a butcher’s table or stall – that is, an area for the slaughter and sale of meat.

Over the years, a “shamble” or “shambles” came to mean a slaughterhouse, and eventually, by extension, a disorderly scene of carnage, ruin, or devastation.

By the 1500s it was used mostly in the plural and had acquired a “b” along the way. Even when used with an “s” at the end, however, the word was generally treated as a singular (similar to words like “measles,” “checkers,” and “news”). In 1610, for example, the poet John Donne wrote of “a spirituall shambles” of souls and “a Temporall shambles” of bodies.

In the 20th century, the word lost much of its blood and gore. We now use the noun “shambles” to refer to any chaotic or messy situation.

Back to your question: Is it correct today to say “in a shambles” or “in shambles”?

Modern dictionaries describe “shambles” as a plural word that’s usually treated as a singular. The examples given nearly always include the article “a.” But these dictionaries may be behind the times. In practice, the word is now used more often without the article. I just did a bit of googling and got these results: “in a shambles” (132,000 hits) and “in shambles” (678,000).

I believe either expression is OK, but you can always say, “What a dump!”

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Q: I have always tried to instill in my children the correct use of English. But they (and all their friends) insist on substituting the word “go” for “say” in colloquial speech: “After my question, he goes, ‘I don’t get it,’ and I go, ‘What’s not to get?’” I would have been ostracized for this in my younger days. Has it become acceptable? Have I become superannuated?

A: Linguists call this usage the “quotative go.” Is it acceptable? Well, it all depends on whom you ask. It drives a lot of parents crazy, but language scholars generally like it.

I recently did a piece for the New York Times Magazine on the use of quotatives, “like” in particular. But “go” is in the same category, as is “all.” (Example: “I’m all, ‘Where’s the car?’ And he’s all, ‘Don’t tell me it’s stolen!'”)

You can find the On Language column on my website. It says in short that quotatives are OK in informal speech, but not in situations requiring your best English.

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Q: I sometimes see people write “enamored of” and sometimes “enamored with.” Which is correct and why?

A: A handy book called Words Into Type, familiar to journalists, is often helpful for questions like this. It has a section called “The Right Preposition” that consists of a long list of words and the prepositions they take.

For “enamored,” the book recommends “enamored of” if the object is a person, and “enamored with” if the object is a scene (and here I’d extrapolate other inanimate things). So if you’re on a trip to Italy, you can be “enamored with” the view from the Boboli Gardens and “enamored of” your guide, Luigi.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) seems to agree. Under the entry for “enamor,” it has these examples: “was enamored of the beautiful dancer; were enamored with the charming island.”

Shakespeare also seems to go along with this usage, if you’re willing to expand the definition of “person” to include a donkey. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titiana tells Oberon: “Methought I was enamoured of an ass.”

Well, as Dean Martin sang, “That’s amore.”

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Q: Why is it the Bronx? It’s not the Manhattan. Nor the Queens. What’s unique about the Bronx that it’s the Bronx?

A: The Bronx got that “the” because it’s named after the Bronx River, which runs through the center of the borough. The last time this came up, I cited Dr. Peter Derrick of the Bronx Historical Society. For more, check out the Dec. 19, 2006, entry on The Grammarphobia Blog.

I’m sure you’re aware of the two-line poem about the Bronx that Ogden Nash wrote in 1931:

The Bronx?
No, thonx!

But you may not be aware that Nash apologized for it in verse in 1964 in a letter to Abraham Tauber, dean of the faculty at the Bronx Community College:

I wrote those lines, “The Bronx? No thonx”;
I shudder to confess them.
Now I’m an older, wiser man
I cry, “The Bronx? God bless them!”

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Q: I’m an artist and I always cringe when I hear people describe something as “artsy.” The word seems to carry a denigrating tone that suggests to pretend to be artistic. Is this true? If one used “arty” instead wouldn’t that imply something neutral or positive?

A: The word “artsy” had its origin in 1902 as part of the phrase “Artsy-Craftsy,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (The expression was originally capitalized because it was a reference to the Arts and Crafts Movement.)

Soon “artsy-craftsy” (and later “artsy” by itself) became a generic term for something artistic in a self-conscious or pretentious way. The variation “artsy-fartsy” was first recorded in 1971, according to the OED.

The word “arty” can mean either (1) “of or relating to artists or the fine arts,” which would be neutral, or (2) “artsy,” which is “showy or affectedly artistic,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.)

To be on the safe side, maybe you should stick to “artistic.”

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Q: As the millennium approached, I wondered when people would realize that the term “turn of the century” was ambiguous. Well, 1-1-2000 came and went and the term has persisted, even in books that people may be reading years after publication. I believe I have seen it as late as 2005, still clearly intended to refer to circa 1900. Isn’t it time to turn the page on this expression?

A: For whatever reason, “turn of the century,” like “fin de siècle,” has generally stuck to one historical period and is very rarely applied to our own new century. I occasionally see “turn of the 21st century,” but it’s obviously an awkward allusion to the REAL turn of the century.

Dictionaries define “fin de siècle” as the last years of the 19th century, but I can’t find a definition for “turn of the century” in the two references I consult the most, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the expression as “the beginning or end of the century under consideration,” suggesting that it could be applied to any century, but the online version of the OED doesn’t have any post-millennium citations for this usage.

So what does “turn of the century” refer to now? Unless it’s modified (as in “turn of the 21st century”), I think it’s still assumed to mean the period around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Like “fin de siècle,” it’s idiomatic – at least for the time being.

One of the few exceptions I’ve found is a website, turn-of-the-century.com, run by two people devoted to the fine old craft of … woodturning.

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Q: I’ve tried to call you on the air about the word “exquisite,” but I haven’t been able to get through. When I was in school 30 years ago, I was taught that the first syllable should be stressed. These days most people seem to stress the second. Am I wrong? Have things changed? Should I adapt?

A: My old Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language (2d ed.), which goes back half a century, lists only one correct pronunciation, with the stress on the first syllable.

Times have changed, however. Both pronunciations are correct these days. Some modern dictionaries list one first and some the other, but the order means little, if anything.

The initial pronunciation in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) stresses the first syllable, while the initial choice in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) stresses the second.

The word “exquisite,” which dates from the 15th century, can be traced to the Latin exquirere (to search out). In the early days, it meant carefully chosen, but by the 16th century the meaning was pretty much the same as it is now – beautiful, excellent, elaborate, or intense (as in exquisite pain or pleasure).

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Q: I go nuts when I hear people say things like “Do you mind me smoking?” And not just because smoking is such a vile habit. The grammar is all screwed up too. Shouldn’t it be “Do you mind my smoking”?

A: A lot of people get this wrong. In my grammar book Woe Is I, I refer to it as the Gordian knot of possessive puzzles. But this knot isn’t hard to untie once you know a trick or two.

“Smoking” in your example is a gerund, a word that is made up of a verb plus “ing” and that acts as a noun. Since “smoking” acts as a noun, it should be treated like a noun.

To see what’s going on here, let’s replace “smoking” with a real noun – say, “habit.” Which of these two examples is correct?

(1) “Do you mind my habit?”

(2) “Do you mind me habit?”

The first one is obviously right. So here’s a hint: if you can substitute a noun for an “ing” word, then treat it like a noun.

Of course not all “ing” words act as nouns. Some act as adjectives (“Has he found a smoking gun?”) and some are parts of verbs (“Is he smoking out the scandal?”).

In a couple of cases, you may not want to treat an “ing” word like a noun even if it’s acting as a noun.

Sometimes it’s too clumsy to use a possessive with a gerund – for instance, when you have to make a whole string of words possessive, not just one.

Here’s an example from Woe Is I: “Basil objects to men and women kissing in public.” Using the possessive (“men’s and women’s kissing”) would create an ugly monstrosity.

Another complication is the kind of sentence that could go two ways. Here’s what I mean:

(1) Basil dislikes that woman’s wearing shorts.

(2) Basil dislikes that woman wearing shorts.

Both are correct, but they mean different things. In the first, Basil dislikes shorts on the woman. In the second, he dislikes the woman herself.

And that’s the long and the short of it.

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Q: Is there a name for a word like “gruntled” (as in “disgruntled”) or “ruth” (as in “ruthless”) that exists only within another word?

A: The term you’re looking for is a “cranberry morpheme.”

A morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit. A bound morpheme (a prefix or a suffix, for example) must be attached to another linguistic unit. A free or unbound morpheme (a word like “cat,” “got,” or “yes”) makes sense on its own.

A cranberry morpheme (also known as a fossilized term) is a kind of bound morpheme. In theory, it doesn’t mean anything by itself, but many were once legitimate words and some have become words again, often used for comic effect.

The verb “gruntle,” for example, meant to grunt like a pig as far back as 1400, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. By the 16th century, it meant to grumble or complain. A century later, the prefix “dis,” meaning very, joined in, giving us our modern words “disgruntle” and “disgruntled.”

You rarely hear “gruntle” or “gruntled” used alone now, except in humor, as in this quote from P.G. Wodehouse: “He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

The words “ruth,” meaning compassion or pity, and “ruthless,” meaning pitiless, have been around since the days of Chaucer, but the OED doesn’t have any published references for plain old “ruth” since the 19th century.

Many cranberry morphemes appear in only one form. The “cran” of “cranberry” used to be one of them (excluding a few obscure terms like the one denoting the capacity of a herring barrel). But in recent years Ocean Spray has used “cran” (the ur-cranberry morpheme) in the names of new juices like Cran-Apple, Cran-Cherry, Cran-Grape, and Cran-Mango.

Now, where did “cran” come from? There are two theories: One is that cranes used to visit bogs and eat the berries. The other is that the stem, calyx, and petals of a cranberry flower resemble the neck, head, and bill of a crane.

Note: If you google “Jack Winter” and “New Yorker,” you should find a story written about a dozen years ago called “How I Met My Wife.” Every sentence has at least one cranberry morpheme.

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Q: I know “inchoate” means “I am in and I ate the chocolate,” but I have never heard anyone actually use it in conversation, with the possible exception of William F. Buckley. I would like to start a petition to retire “inchoate” from the English language. I would have it spend its remaining years on Buckley Island – reserved exclusively for the founder of the National Review and words only he uses in conversation. To visit “inchoate” and its friends, dock at the Harbor of Pretentiousness, make your way up Snob Beach to the Blackford Oakes Housing Project, whisper the password (“boola boola”) … and you’re in!

A: Yours takes the Grammarphobia.com prize for funniest e-mail of 2007 (so far)! Your island is a very good idea, and I love the password. But I don’t think “inchoate” is as retiring as you seem to believe. I just googled it and came up with nearly a million hits. Yikes!

I’ve learned from Wikipedia that an “inchoate offense” is conduct deemed criminal without actual harm being done. Could “inchoate” itself be charged with the offense if it plots to leave the island?

The word “inchoate,” which means (I’m sure you know) in the early stages, comes from the Latin incohare (to begin). It’s been around for quite some time: the first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1534.

What catches my eye is a 1993 addition to the OED with a new meaning of this old word: disordered, incoherent, or confused. How did a word meaning just beginning come to mean messy? One possibility, according to the OED, is that people simply mixed up “inchoate” and “chaotic.”

English, it seems, is a messy (or, dare I say, inchoate) business.

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Q: I’m a newspaper reporter who’s done a story that a copy editor wants to change. I’ve written that a particular financial relationship is tricky, meaning it’s complicated and requires caution, and the editor wants to change “tricky” to “problematic.” I’ve objected, but I’m not getting anywhere. I have no idea where to turn and I thought you might be able to help me out.

A: I don’t know how much help I can be, but here’s my take on the situation.

“Problematic” isn’t an exact synonym for “tricky,” so they’re not interchangeable. Something that’s “problematic” poses a problem or a difficulty. But something that’s “tricky” requires caution or skill.

Whether the substitution is justified depends on the context. If “tricky” fits exactly, and if switching to “problematic” would change the meaning, then I’d stick with the original wording. From what you’ve said, I’d go with “tricky.”

If I had to guess, I’d say the copy editor is troubled by “tricky” because it has another meaning (given to trickery). But I think your intended meaning is quite clear and unlikely to be misunderstood by newspaper readers.

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Q: Why do so many Americans insist on mispronouncing last names that end in “-stein,” including their own? There is only ONE correct pronunciation of “-stein” in names like “Bernstein,” “Goldstein,” “Weinstein,” etc., and that is “-stine.” The “-steen” version is completely wrong and not accepted by any German-speaking people.

A: We’re not authorities on German phonetics, but it’s our understanding that “-stein” may indeed be pronounced as “-steen” in some local dialects of Swiss-German. Be that as it may, we don’t believe a name, especially your own, must be pronounced the same as in its country of origin. Once your family emigrates, all bets are off!

If you check Leonard Bernstein’s entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, you’ll find two pronunciations for the last syllable of his surname, long “i” and long “e” (both “-stine” AND “-steen”).

Cesar Milstein, the Nobel Prize-winning immunologist, pronounced the last syllable of his name “-steen,” but the violinist Nathan Milstein was a “-stine.” We’ve known of different Weinsteins who pronounce their name differently. (We’re leaving aside the “-stain” pronunciations, and the ones in which “st” is pronounced as in German: “sht.”)

These choices should be left up to immigrants and their descendants. Would you require a woman of Hispanic ancestry named Linda Martin to pronounce her name “LEEN-da mar-TEEN” because that’s how it’s pronounced in Latin America? Of course not. The choice of pronunciation is hers. And if she chooses an Anglicized version, we respect her choice.

All this talk about pronunciation reminds us of that bit from Monty Python: “Ah, no, no. My name is spelt ‘Luxury Yacht’ but it’s pronounced Throatwobbler Mangrove.”

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Q: One quick question: When using a non-English word, should the plural be in the original language or in English? Example: In Italy, you buy one cappuccino or two cappuccini, whereas here it’s one cappuccino or two cappuccinos. What is the correct convention?

A: The proper convention is to use English plurals for foreign words that have been absorbed into our language. How do you tell if a foreign-born word is now a naturalized citizen or still on a green card? Go to the dictionary!

For that frothy Starbucks special, the singular is “cappuccino” and the plural is “cappuccinos,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).

In the “Plurals Before Swine” chapter of my grammar book Woe Is I and in the July 22, 2007, entry on The Grammarphobia Blog, I discuss foreign words that have been Anglicized and those that still have their old plural endings.

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Q: I was listening to you on WNYC the other day and I was struck that you did not mention the word “subtle” while discussing dropped sounds in consonant clusters. As I was growing up, I often came across the word in print and looked it up if I couldn’t remember what it meant. At the same time, I had no idea what the word pronounced “suttle” meant when I heard it in conversation.

A: We were talking on the air about words with consonant clusters in which one of the consonant sounds had been dropped over the years for ease of pronunciation. Examples of this can be seen in “often,” “soften, “listen,” “handkerchief,” “handsome,” “raspberry,” and others.

“Subtle” is a different case. The “b” sound was never pronounced. In fact, the “b” wasn’t even part of the word in early spellings.

Until sometime in the 14th century, the word was spelled “sutil,” “sutile,” or “sotil,” a borrowing from the Old French word sutil. The “b” was added to the spelling under the influence of Latinists who believed that English spellings should reflect a word’s classical history – or supposed classical history.

The ultimate source of the word was the Latin subtilis. Thus the silent “b” crept into the spelling. (The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the first editions of nearly all of Milton’s poems use the spellings “suttle,” “suttlety,” and “suttly.” The exception is Paradise Regained, which has “subtle” and “subtilty.”)

During the Renaissance, an entire class of words acquired silent letters because classical scholars wanted English to imitate Latin wherever possible. This is how “island” got an “s,” how “debt” and “doubt” got a “b,” and how “people” got an “o,” among others. (Sources were the Latin insula, debitum, dubitare, and populum, though “island” actually comes from the Old English iegland, not the Latin insula.)

If you’d like to read more about the pronunciation of consonant clusters, check out the “often” item on The Grammarphobia Blog.

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Q: Was there a memo sent out that I missed having to do with the suffix “ist” when used with Islam? The adjective used to be “Islamic,” but it now seems to have changed to “Islamist.”

A: “Islamic” is an adjective referring to Islam (the religion, the Muslim world in general, or Muslim civilization), according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).

“Islamist,” which can be either an adjective or a noun (meaning a person), refers to “Islamism” (an Islamic revivalist movement or the religious principals of Islam), according to American Heritage. The dictionary says the Islamist movement is “often characterized by moral conservatism, literalism, and the attempt to implement Islamic values in all spheres of life.”

The Oxford English Dictionary, which defines an “Islamist” as an orthodox Muslim, includes published references dating back to this 1855 citation: “Caliphs who were, at least no longer, rigid Islamists.”

I mostly see or hear the term “Islamist” used these days in reference to orthodox or fundamentalist Muslims. But it seems to me (a language type, not a theologian) that the words “Islamic” and “Islamist” may overlap somewhat.

Crystal clear? Yeah, I thought so!

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[Note: A later post about “preventative” appeared on Feb. 24, 2025.]

Q: On Pat’s last WNYC appearance, she discussed people who add extra syllables to words in an attempt to make them (the words and the people) seem more impressive: for example, “orientate” instead of “orient” and “preventative” instead of “preventive.” Here’s a little poem that came to me after listening to you:

An ounce of preventative’s
Worth two pounds of cure.
But just one pound of curative.
Of this I am sure.

The longer a word is
The more it will mean.
So don’t get a tetanus shot
Get a tetanus vaccine.

A: Our hats are off to you! Thank you very much.

You can find “orientate” and “preventative” in standard dictionaries, and nothing’s wrong with the longer forms. The choice is up to you. But we think the extra syllable in such words is unnecessary and weakens writing.

In the “Pompous Circumstances” chapter of Pat’s writing guide, Words Fail Me, she compares these words to stretch limos that are used just to make an impression.

A good writer doesn’t use words that are longer than they have to be. Shorter is usually better, and often more beautiful, as in this excerpt from When You Are Old, a poem by William Butler Yeats:

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

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Q: My 9-year-old son listens to a lot of NPR with me, and he would like to know if Iraq and Iran are pronounced ih-RACK and ih-RAN or eye-RACK and eye-RAN. We have heard both on NPR, and he really wants to know which is right.

A: Pronouncing “Iraq” with a long “i” (as in “eye”) is incorrect, according to both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), the two dictionaries I consult most often about U.S. pronunciations.

The dictionaries list two acceptable pronunciations. In both, the “i” in the first syllable is short, as in “pit.” The second syllable, which gets the accent, can be pronounced correctly as either “rack” or “rock.”

As for “Iran,” it has three possible correct pronunciations. In the first, the “i” is short, as in “pit,” and the “a” is short, as in “pack.” In the second, the “i” is short and the “a” is pronounced as in “father.” In the third, the “i” is long, as in “eye,” and the “a” is short, as in “pack.” In all cases, it’s the last syllable that’s stressed.

So, Iraq can be pronounced ih-RACK or ih-ROCK, and Iran can be pronounced ih-RAN or ih-RON or eye-RAN.

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Q: How do you feel about using the relative pronoun “which” to modify an entire clause? Here’s an example: “We couldn’t find the answer on the Web, which always drives us nuts.” I often see this use of “which,” but it does not seem very elegant and it may sometimes be ambiguous. In the preceding example, what drives us nuts – the Web itself or the fact that we couldn’t find the answer on the Web?

A: Traditionally, the relative pronoun “which” modified a specific thing. Example: “We asked him to split the cost, which was considerable.” Obviously, the “which” clause (“which was considerable”) refers to the cost.

In the old days, the use of a “which” clause to modify an entire preceding clause (“We asked him to split the cost, which seemed only fair”), or even an entire preceding sentence (“We asked him to split the cost. Which he did.”), was regarded as a grammatical mistake by many – but not all – authorities.

In the last 75 years or so, however, the tide has turned, and this construction is so well established that it’s considered acceptable by every contemporary usage guide I’ve checked. But you’ve put your finger on the problem.

The trick is to make it crystal clear what the “which” refers to. In the following example, it’s hard to tell what “which” is supposed to modify: “We asked him to split the cost, which he thought was outrageous.” What did he think was outrageous: the cost, or his being asked to split it?

Our feeling is that this more relaxed usage has a lot going for it and allows us a greater range of expression – as long as it’s used clearly and elegantly.

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Q: If someone tried to get in touch with me several times, was it a few times or many times? In other words, how hard did he try?

A: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) defines “several” as “more than two or three but not many” or “an indefinite small number; some or a few.”

But as for your question, it all depends.

If someone says, “I tried to reach you several times,” he probably means two or three, but that may seem like a lot to him. He may think he tried very hard, but you may think it was a half-hearted attempt.

I’m sorry I can’t be more definite. This is one of those words that have to be interpreted.

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Q: Would you consider discussing the origin of the political term “earmark”? I hear it all the time, but I can’t find its derivation.

A: The word “earmark” comes from the centuries-old practice of notching the ears of livestock for identification.

The noun dates from 1523 (spelled “eare-marke”) and the verb from 1591, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (These citations represent the first published references that have been found.)

The use of the verb “earmark” to refer to setting aside funds for a specific purpose dates from 1868, according to the OED. Interestingly, none of the dictionaries I consult the most include a similar definition for the noun.

Both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) define the noun “earmark” just as an identifying characteristic or a mark on the ear of an animal.

When I googled “earmark,” however, I found numerous examples of the noun used in the U.S. political sense: a provision inserted in legislation to finance a lawmaker’s pet project or organization or whatever. It’s only a matter of time before dictionaries get on the case.

Though not every earmark is pork, I’m told, it strikes me as fitting that the term comes from notching the ears of pigs and other livestock.

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Q: “Whiteboarding” is the new corporate jargon for talking while drawing on napkins (i.e., giving dynamic presentations online with digital whiteboards). Can I use “whiteboard” as a verb?

A: Lots of people are doing it, but dictionaries haven’t caught up with this usage yet. In fact, they haven’t even caught up with the digital version of the white plastic board that has all but replaced the blackboard in schools.

Both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) define “whiteboard” as that glossy analog thingie that you write on with erasable markers. Neither dictionary includes the word as a verb.

The “old” whiteboard isn’t all that old, of course. The earliest published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary is a 1966 citation about “an up-to-date plastic white-board, on which one wrote with a coloured wax crayon.”

The new whiteboard is a shared digital drawing and writing surface that several people can use electronically, thanks to computer software that simulates a physical whiteboard.

So when people use the verb “whiteboard” or say they’re “whiteboarding,” they may be referring to the electronic whiteboard or to the white plastic job. Or, perhaps, they’re talking about dinner napkins!

I imagine dictionaries will eventually add the verb “whiteboard” (unless whiteboarding is replaced by something even newer). In the meantime, I don’t see any objection to using “whiteboard” as a verb as long as all parties know which kind of whiteboard you mean.

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Q: I’ve always thought that one “waits for” someone or something (a friend, a bus, etc.), and that a waiter “waits on” someone. These days, however, “waiting on” seems to be used more and more instead of “waiting for,” as in this sentence: “I’m waiting on my mom to pick me up.” We even have the John Mayer song “Waiting on the World to Change.” Is this incorrect? Was it ever incorrect? Has common usage made it acceptable?

A: To my ears, “wait on” someone sounds more colloquial or informal than “wait for” him. But for centuries, one of the meanings of “wait on” has been “wait for.” Here’s a 1694 example from the Oxford English Dictionary: “We were forced to wait on him above half an hour, before he came from underneath the Ice.”

Even today, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) lists one of the meanings of the phrasal verb “wait on” as “to await.”

In short, “wait on” in the sense of “wait for” is long established and there’s nothing unacceptable about it. But you might want to save it for informal or casual usage.

[Update: We ran a later post on June 13, 2010.]

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Q: My daughter, now 25, sent me a link to a recent NY Times article in which detractors of the Junie B. children’s books wax wroth about the mangled English. My daughter—pursuing a master’s degree—writes, “I readed those bookses when i were littler, wats the problum?” (I will allow that her spelling, even when she’s serious, leaves much to be desired. She relies heavily on computer software that checks her output.)

Although I’m appalled to hear (presumably well-read) adults trip over the present perfect of irregular verbs or confuse word pairs that I learned about in second grade, I can’t get too worked up over stories that have fun with children’s—even fictional children’s—misspeakings. What say you?

A: I haven’t read the Junie B. Jones books, but my opinion is that anything that gets kids to read is a good thing. Whatever it takes to draw them in, short of tales of outright mayhem, can be justified.

My feeling is that Junie B. will lead on to Harry P. and Lemony Snicket and Jean Fritz and Roald Dahl and other well-written, grammatically impeccable reading.

I also feel that kids can tell the difference between an informal literary voice and a more correct one. Just as kids in bilingual households (lucky them!) can keep their languages straight, children who read a lot of different writers will learn to keep their Englishes straight.

Some of the same arguments against the Junie B. books could be used to prevent children from reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and other first-person novels whose narrators mangle the Queen’s English.

In the real world, there are no filters. Children are influenced by TV, MySpace, music, advertising, movies, school, parents, heard-on-the-street vernacular, and so on. Their reading, too, isn’t all of a piece. It varies wildly. I say, let them sort it out. The more they read, the better.

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Q: Is there a feminine form of “mensch”? Is the word used only for men? I wouldn’t want to call a woman a “wensch” since she would surely confuse it with “wench.”

A: “Mensch” or “mensh” comes from Yiddish by way of the German word mensch, or “person.” The standard dictionaries I’ve checked define “mensch” (or “mensh”) as an admirable or honorable human being, which of course could go either way.

The Oxford English Dictionary has a more expansive explanation: “In Jewish usage: a person of integrity or rectitude; a person who is morally just, honest, or honourable.” Sounds unisex, no?

And yet by far most of the examples I come across refer to men. One rarely hears a woman referred to as a “mensch.”

But Leo Rosten, in his book The Joys of Yinglish, notes: “The most withering criticism one can make of someone else’s conduct or character, manners or taste is to say, ‘He’s not a mensh’ or ‘She did not act like a mensh.’ “

So it would seem that, at least according to Rosten, “mensh” (the spelling he prefers) is an equal-opportunity word. Too bad. I kind of like “wensch” (though Rosten would have spelled it “wensh”).

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Q: I caught you on WNYC recently while driving through the NY area. Serendipity for sure, especially while at a dead stop on the Merritt Parkway. I have always been troubled by the slogan of the United Negro College Fund: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” A mind is not a “terrible” thing. It would be terrible to waste a mind. Are these proponents of higher education grammatically correct?

A: Well, grammatically (or syntactically), the slogan isn’t perfect. But sloganeers often come up with stuff designed to catch our attention precisely BECAUSE of their imperfections or their oddities or their unusual uses of language.

And you have to admit that the original slogan is sheer poetry compared with Dan Quayle’s version when he addressed the United Negro College Fund: “… what a waste it is to lose one’s mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.” (The New York Times, 6-29-89.)

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Q: This is a comment, not a question. I always seem to catch your appearances on WNYC when I am not near a phone, thus I missed a chance to call in during the recent discussion of “cute.” The fact that one of your listeners heard New York City detectives using the word in a negative way struck me as owing to the strong influence of the Irish on the culture of the NYPD.

I have spent a good deal of time over the years with relatives in Ireland, where the word “cute” has always seemed to mean “clever,” but in a pejorative sense. Dubliners, for example, refer to the people from Cork as being “very cute,” implying: “Keep an eye on your wallet.”

I would maintain that this usage is not, as stated on the program, derived from our contemporary meaning of the word (usually said of attractive children), but rather from the Latin acutus, meaning sharpened. Pardon the pedantry. I guess it is my way of making up for all the Latin that I was forced to endure over the years—and now the Pope seems to be threatening to bring it all back!

A: Thanks for your interesting comments. I wish you’d been near a phone when I appeared last on the Leonard Lopate Show!

The Oxford English Dictionary agrees with you that “cute” comes from the Latin word acutus. In fact, the earliest published references for “cute” in the OED, going back to the 18th century, use the word to mean acute, clever, or shrewd, much as Shakespeare and Ben Jonson used “acute” in the 16th century.

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