Category: Grammar

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English English language Grammar Usage

Leaning out

Q: Which of these is correct: (1) “I leaned out the window” or (2) “I leaned out of the window”? And which of these: (3) “I looked out the window” or (4) “I looked through the window”? I often see #1 and #3, but I prefer #2 and #4.

A: All of those are correct, though some usage commentators have objected to the “of” in #2 as redundant. However, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage pooh-poohs the objections.

“A few commentators observe that the of is superfluous most of the time, or sometimes—depending on whose opinion you are reading—when out is used with verbs of motion,” Merriam-Webster’s says.

However, the usage guide adds that this observation “is not especially useful, for out and out of are interchangeable only in a few very restricted contexts; out simply cannot be substituted for out of in most cases.”

“Out” is generally an adverb (“Get out!”), but it’s sometimes used prepositionally as a substitute for “out of.”

When used as a preposition, according to M-W, ”out” seems “most often to go with door or window” (“She looked out the window, then ran out the door”).

Merriam-Webster’s notes that “out” and “out of” are “about equally common” in constructions with the word “window.”

The dictionary gives this “out” example from the February 1969 issue of Harper’s: “He stares out the window.”

And it gives this “out of” example from “A Summer’s Reading,” a 1956 short story by Bernard Malamud: “as he read his Times, upstairs his fat wife leaned out of the window, seeming to read the paper along with him.”

The usage guide says “out of” is more common with “nouns that designate places or things that can be thought of as containing or surrounding.”

Here’s an example from And More by Andy Rooney, a 1982 essay collection by the 60 Minutes commentator: “A bathtub is, at best, a makeshift place to take a shower. It’s hard to get into and out of gracefully.”

M-W says “out” is sometimes used this way too, “but it sounds not quite part of the mainstream.”

This is an example from “The Heart of the Park,” a 1949 short story by Flannery O’Connor: “The woman came out the bath house and went straight to the diving board.”

If you’d like to read more, we had a post a couple of years ago about the use of “out” by itself in such constructions, a usage heard mostly in the South and the Gulf region.

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Myself and other selfies

[Note: An updated post about “myself” and other “-self” words appeared on Aug. 27, 2018.]

Q: Every time I hear someone say “I myself,” it makes me pause. I can never figure out why someone would use such a redundancy. It seems more prevalent on the East Coast than on the West Coast. Is this regional? Is it correct?

A: There’s nothing wrong with using both a pronoun and its reflexive (“she herself,” “you yourself,” “I myself,” “me myself,” etc.), or a name plus a reflexive (“Herman himself,” “from Vivian herself”) for purposes of emphasizing the subject or object.

What some have criticized is the use of a reflexive in place of the pronoun or name, as in “John and myself went to the movies,” or “that’s between him and myself.” (Though those uses of reflexives aren’t considered grammatically incorrect today, a traditionalist would prefer “I” in the first example, and “me” in the second.)

But for more than a thousand years, people have used reflexive pronouns for emphasis by placing them in apposition to (that is, as the equivalent of) the subject or object.

As far as we can tell, the usage is common wherever English is spoken: in the US, the UK, and elsewhere.

Within its entry for “myself,” for example, the Oxford English Dictionary says that in “emphatic uses,” the reflexive pronoun appears “in apposition to” an accompanying subject or object pronoun (“I” or “me”).

The OED has examples dating from before the year 1000 for “I myself,” when it was written ic me sylf in Old English. And it has examples of “me myself” dating from around 1300.

In these usages, Oxford says, the reflexive pronoun is used “in apposition to” an accompanying subject or object pronoun. As the OED explains, when used in apposition to “I,” the meaning of the reflexive is “in my own person; for my part; personally, as far as I am concerned.”

In the simplest emphatic use, the OED says, “myself is generally placed immediately after I.”

But when it appears elsewhere, as in “I will go to him myself” or “I’ve never been there myself,” the emphasis takes on another character. As the OED says, “in other positions there is often an explicit or implicit contrast with the idea of any other person performing the action.”

And the emphasis is strongest of all, Oxford adds, when the reflexive comes first. An example: “Myself, I wouldn’t think of it.”

The emphatic reflexive is not only legitimate, but it’s found in English literature from the earliest times. You may have heard this line from A. E. Housman’s poem A Shropshire Lad (1896): “Then the world seemed none so bad, / And I myself a sterling lad.”

Of course Housman may have used the construction purely for reasons of meter (though we think it serves an emphatic purpose as well). But even in prose, the usage is common in cases where the lone pronoun or name just wouldn’t be enough.

Just for fun we looked into a few Shakespeare concordances, and we found scores of examples from the plays and sonnets of the sterling lad himself.

Shakespeare used “I myself” at least 38 times, as in this line from King Henry IV, Part I: “For I myself must hunt this deer to death.”

He used “you yourself” at least 18 times, as in this line from Twelfth Night: “It is perchance that you yourself were saved.”

He also used “he himself” 12 times, “she herself” seven times, “they themselves” six times, and “we ourselves” five times.

Many people think a word is incorrect if it’s not absolutely necessary. Not so. An extra word or two is often justified. We’ve written often on the blog about emphatic redundancy, including posts in 2012, 2008, and 2007.

As for the noun “selfie” in the title of this post, its use in the sense of an uploadable smartphone photo taken of oneself has been traced back to 2002.

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English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Usage

What’s the difference?

[Note: This post was updated on May 27, 2020.]

Q: I’ve always said “A is different from B,” but now I’m hearing television ads and reporters saying that “A is different to B.” (Currently, there is a denture ad that says, “Dentures are very different to real teeth.”) I cringe when I hear “different to,” but am I cringing with righteousness?

A: We’d say “different to” makes you cringe out of unfamiliarity, not righteousness. The usage has a long history, but it’s uncommon in American English despite your recent sightings or, rather, hearings.

In a post a few years ago, we pointed out that both “different from” and “different than” are legitimate constructions. But we didn’t say much about “different to,” except that it’s used in British English.

On one point, British and American speakers agree—“different from” is standard in all varieties of English. 

But the other two combinations—“different than” and “different to”—are controversial, depending on whom you ask and where you live. In very broad, general terms, Americans accept “different than” but not “different to,” while the reverse is true in Britain.  

Much has been written about all of this—probably more than it deserves.

The editors of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage say they have “thousands and thousands of words” in their files, by about 80 commentators, on the subject of “the propriety of different than or different to.”

Despite all the wordage, the M-W editors write, the various “different” phrases can be explained very simply:

● “different from”: This usage “is the most common and is standard in both British and American usage.”

● “different than”: This construction “is standard in American and British usage, especially when a clause follows than, but is more frequent in American.” (A clause contains both a subject and its verb.)

● “different to”: This phrase “is standard in British usage but rare in American.”

We should note here that not all authorities agree with M-W that “different than” is standard in Britain.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language says “different than” is “hardly used at all in BrE [British English], but is well established in AmE.”

The authors, Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, write: “American manuals accept than, especially with clausal complements, while British ones vary in their attitude to it: some defend it as permitting a simpler construction … but most do not allow it as standard in BrE.”

Another guide, Fowler’s Modern English Usage (3rd ed.), by R. W. Burchfield, has this to say:

“The commonly expressed view that different should only be followed by from and never by to or than is not supportable in the face of past and present evidence or of logic.”

Despite that, Burchfield adds, “different to” is “rarer in AmE,” while “different than” is “widespread in AmE but does not form part of the regular language of Britain.”

The Oxford English Dictionary, in its entry for “different,” says it’s used today with “from,” “to,” and “than” (formerly with “with,” “against,” etc.) in “constructions specifying the two or more things which differ from each other.”

The OED goes on to say: “Different from is the most common and most accepted construction, both in British and North American English. Different than, although often thought of as being used chiefly in North America, has a long history of use in British English.”

Whether or not you regard “different than” as standard in Britain, it’s certainly standard in the US, especially before clauses.  For example, “different than it appeared” is much simpler than “different from the way it appeared” or “different from what it appeared.”

Now on to the question at hand, the use of “different to.”

This construction, the OED says, “is found in writers of all ages, and is frequent colloquially, but is by many considered incorrect.” [Note: The OED‘s third edition, updated in March 2016, no longer includes this notation and in fact does not comment specifically on the use of “different to.”]

As we’ve shown, it’s probable that most of the “many” who consider this incorrect are Americans, since “different to” isn’t considered incorrect in British English.

The British commentators Huddleston and Pullum give this example of the usage in the Cambridge Grammar: “This version is very different to the one we shall hear in the simulcast.”

From a historical perspective, there’s no doubt that “different to” has a respectable pedigree. Evidence in the OED shows that “different from” was first on the scene in the 15th century, followed  by “different to” and “different unto” in the 16th century, and “different than” in the 17th century.

For many years, all three forms lived peacefully together. It wasn’t until the latter half of the 18th century that objections began cropping up. Some grammarians of the day found reasons to quarrel with both “different than” and “different to.”

Henry Fowler, in the first edition of his Modern English Usage (1926), defended both of them. Nevertheless, they still raise the ire of pedants in one English-speaking country or another.

We’ll conclude by saying that neither “different than” nor “different to” is incorrect. All that can be said against them is that in some places they aren’t commonly heard. 

British speakers don’t routinely use “different than.” Some still occasionally object to “different to,” though it’s a standard usage in Britain.

Similarly, some Americans still occasionally object to “different than,” though it’s standard in the US. But Americans rarely use “different to.”

So any American who uses “different to” on home ground can expect to inspire a few cringes.

[We discussed the etymology of “different” on Dec. 20, 2021, in a post about how it differs from “disparate.”]

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English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Pronunciation Spelling Usage Word origin

Texicography

Q: Your July 9 blog about how to pronounce “texted” inspires me to write about a ubiquitous and annoying pronunciation of the past tense of “text” here in Cincinnati. Young people almost exclusively pronounce the present as “tex” and the past as “text.” Maybe the past would be spelled “texed,” but that doesn’t change the pronunciation. Have you heard this in your area?

A: No, we weren’t aware of the usage until you mentioned it.

But on looking into this we find that quite a few people consider to “tex” the infinitive, with “tex” or “texes” the present, and “text” the past.

Others consider “tex” or “texes” the present, and “texed” (pronounced TEXT) the past tense. And still others use “text” or “texts” for the present and “text” for the past.

Interestingly, these usages aren’t confined to speech. We got more than half a million hits in Google searches for “tex” and “texed” used in place of “text” and “texted.”

And the linguist Arnold Zwicky, in searches for past tenses and past participles, found roughly one example of “text” for every five of “texted.”

This isn’t an overnight phenomenon, either, and it’s not limited to Cincinnati.

A July 25, 2005, article in the Modesto Bee, for example, reported that a friend sent this text message to the cell phone of a California teenager killed in a car crash:

“Tex me when u get to heaven.”

(Family members found the message on 16-year-old Stephanie Blevins’s phone.)

In standard English, as you know, the infinitive or root verb is “text,” the present tense is “text” or “texts,” and the past tense (as well as the past participle) is “texted.”

Why all the variants? We think pronunciation has a lot to do with this.

Some people hear the verb “text” as if it were spelled “texed,” and assume it’s a past tense. Naturally, the present tense would be “tex” or “texes.” (Think of “fax,” “faxes,” and “faxed.”)

The phonetician John Wells notes on his blog that the confusion here apparently lies with the consonant cluster at the end of “text.”

“The final cluster [kst] is highly susceptible to losing its final consonant, particularly when followed by a consonant sound,” Wells writes.

In words with similar-sounding endings (like “next,” “boxed,” and “mixed”), he says, “it’s usual for the final [t] to be elided (lost) except in very careful (over-enunciated) speech.”

The linguist David Crystal, however, finds “nothing intrinsically difficult about the consonant cluster at the end of text.”

“But adding an -ed ending alters the pronunciation dynamic,” he writes on his blog. “We now have two /t/ sounds in a rapid sequence, as we had in broadcasted.”

Although it’s “very unusual to find a new irregular past tense form in standard English,” Crystal says, it “does happen, as we see with the preference for shorter broadcast.”

He predicts that lexicographers will one day recognize “texed” as a legitimate past tense. We’re not so sure, but we’ll let Crystal have the last word.

“Whatever the reasons, we do now find forms such as texed and tex’d being used with increasing frequency,” he writes. “I think it’s only a matter of time before we find it being treated like broadcast in dictionaries, and given two forms.”

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Hear Pat live today on WNYC

She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 PM Eastern time to discuss the English language and take questions from callers. Today’s topic: New words and back-to-school words. If you miss the program, you can listen to it on Pat’s WNYC page.
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English English language Grammar Usage

How to correct a friend’s English

Q: I have a friend who loves using interesting words, but he often misuses them. For example, he uses “to whit” in the wrong way when everyday language would suffice. I’d like to help him, but I don’t know how to do it without hurting his feelings. Any advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.

A: We often get questions like this, and they always make us uncomfortable.

“What’s the best way to correct my boss?” someone will ask, or “How can I keep my daughter-in-law from passing on her bad grammar to my grandchildren?”

This subject has more to do with etiquette than with grammar, which is one of several reasons it makes us squeamish (we are not Emily Post). Another reason is that there’s no good answer.

We’re in the business of giving people advice about their English, and in our writing we comment freely because we’re expected to. But in our “real” lives—apart from our blog, books, and other writing—we keep our opinions to ourselves unless we’re asked.

If someone we’re talking with tosses in a “should have went” or a “tough road to hoe,” we don’t interrupt to correct him. Neither do we clumsily insert the correct usage (“should have gone,” “tough row to hoe”) into our end of the conversation. This is not tactful—it’s still a correction, however oblique.

When the two of us meet new people, they often say something like “I’ll have to watch what I say around you!” We groan inwardly when we hear this, because nothing could be further from the truth. People are much more to us than the grammar they use. If they don’t ask, we don’t tell.

Now, some people get a kick out of debating points of grammar. It’s not unusual for office friends, or perhaps a married couple, to write and ask us to settle a good-natured argument. 

But your friend may be different. From what you say, he prides himself on his English (how many people use “to wit”?), and his ego may be easily bruised.

If he asks your opinion about his English, fine. But if he doesn’t, do you really want to risk hurting him and losing his friendship over something so trivial as an error in usage? (Here’s a self-serving suggestion. Tell him that as someone who appreciates language he might like to check out our blog.)

There’s another reason that it’s not a good idea to “correct” people’s English. You could be wrong.

We wrote a post a few years ago, for example, that explained why the phrase is “to wit,” not “to whit.” (When someone makes a mistake in a question, we usually fix it without comment, but we left this one in to make a point.)

Many so-called rules of grammar aren’t rules at all

For instance, the boss mentioned above might be “guilty” of nothing more than “splitting” an infinitive. But that’s perfectly good English, as we’ve written many times, including posts in 2013 and 2011.

And perhaps the daughter-in-law ends her sentences with prepositions. That’s no crime. either.

In short, unless you’re a teacher, the parent of a young child, or a mentor who’d be expected to correct someone’s English, think twice before doing so.

And if you do forge ahead, be sure you’re right. We’re all human and we’re all wrong at times—the “corrector” as well as the “corrected.”

We’re reminded of an exchange in Judith Martin’s book Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (2005):

“Dear Miss Manners: A friend of mine always corrects me when I say the word ‘drapes.’ She says that is vulgar, and that the right word is ‘draperies.’ Which of us is correct?

“Gentle Reader: You are both hopeless. The word for material that hangs on the sides of windows is ‘curtains.’ ”

Our gentle readers are aware, of course, that there’s nothing wrong with using “drapes” or “draperies” for “curtains” in American English.  

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Never-never land

Q: Is “never” accepted as standard English in a sentence like “He never saw the world that way”? If not, why not? And what are some informal and formal ways to use “never,” as well as more borderline ways if there are any?

A: Yes, the use of “never” in your example (“He never saw the world that way”) is standard English.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) says the adverb “never” has these standard meanings:

“1. Not ever; on no occasion; at no time: He had never been there before. You never can be sure.

“2. Not at all; in no way; absolutely not: Never fear. That will never do.”

In the sentence you cite, the adverb “never” is being used as in #1 (“not ever; on no occasion; at no time”).

A few usage guides, beginning with Edward S. Gould’s Good English (1867), have objected to the use of “never” as in #2: “not at all; in no way; absolutely not.”

But Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage points out that the critics don’t explain “just what is wrong” with these usages. “Such uses are standard,” Merriam-Webster’s says, citing examples going back to Shakespeare.

American Heritage also includes several meanings of the phrase “never mind”:

“1. Don’t bother: I was hoping for some help, but never mind, I’ll do it alone.

“2. Not to mention; and certainly not: I can’t tread water, never mind swim.”

AH labels “never mind” as an “idiom,” which it explains is “an expression consisting of two or more words having a meaning that cannot be deduced from the meanings of its constituent parts.”

The Oxford English Dictionary lists sense #1 of “never mind” without reservation, but it describes sense #2 as colloquial—that is, characteristic of spoken English or informal writing.

However, the question of whether a usage is formal or informal is very subjective. Dictionaries often disagree about this. In fact, the two of us often disagree with each other about the formality of a usage.

And formal English, mind you, isn’t necessarily better than informal English. We try to keep our writing as informal as possible, whether we’re writing an email to an old friend or a book about the English language.

The OED describes a half-dozen common uses of “never” as colloquial. We don’t necessarily agree with the dictionary’s editors about all of them, but we’ll list them here (with our examples) and let you decide:

● With “ever” as an intensifier: “She’ll never ever do it.”

● With the verb omitted, expressing emphatic denial: “Did you steal it?” “I never!”

● Without the verb, expressing disbelief: “He was caught sexting.” “He never!”

● Using “never mind” to mean “not to mention”: “She hates spiders, worms, beetles, never mind slugs.”

● Without a verb, expressing surprise or indignation: “Well, I never!”

● Using “never again” to emphasize that an experience won’t be repeated: “Every time I get smashed I say, ‘Never again.’ ”

As for the history of the word itself, “never” dates back to the early days of Old English, when it was generally spelled næfre. It’s a compound of ne (not) and ǽfre (ever).

In Old English, according to the OED, næfre meant “at no time or moment; on no occasion; not ever.”

Here’s an example from Beowulf, which may have been written as far back as the year 725: “Næfre ic maran geseah eorla ofer eorthan.” Modern English: “I never saw greater warriors in the world.” (We’ve changed the letter thorn here to “th.”)

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English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Linguistics Phrase origin Usage Word origin

“This this” and “that that”

“Q: What do you call those constructions where the same word is repeated? Specifically: “I can see that that is going to be a problem” or “I received this this morning.” I’ve used a few in writing recently, but I’m puzzled at whether they require punctuation to make the reader realize they aren’t typos.

A: When a sentence has two words back to back, like “that that” or “this this,” we hear an echo. But there’s not necessarily anything wrong. Unless it’s a typo (as when we type “the the”), the words are doing different jobs.

If there’s a special term for back-to-back words used legitimately, we haven’t been able to find it. But your sentences are good examples; both are grammatically correct and neither requires any special punctuation.

Let’s look at them one at a time.

(1) “I can see that that is going to be a problem.”

Here we have two clauses (a clause is part of a sentence and includes both a subject and its verb). The first “that” is a conjunction—it introduces a subordinate clause that’s the object of the main clause (“I can see”). The second “that” is a demonstrative pronoun and the subject of the subordinate clause (“that is going to be a problem”).

(2) “I received this this morning.”

Here the first “this” is a demonstrative pronoun and the direct object of the verb (“received”). The second “this” modifies the noun “morning,” and you can call it a demonstrative adjective or (as many grammarians prefer) a “demonstrative determiner.” The phrase “this morning” is adverbial because it tells when.

Examples of back-to-back repetition—especially with “that”—are not uncommon, even in great literature.

For instance, you can find them in the King James Version of the Bible: “for that that is determined shall be done” … “What is that that hath been done?”

And they’re abundant in Shakespeare: “Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues” (Merry Wives of Windsor); “Who is that that spake?” (The Two Gentlemen of Verona); “Who’s that that bears the sceptre?” (King Henry VIII).

Finally, here’s another, in a passage from Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1653): “it is that that makes an angler: it is diligence, and observation, and practice, and an ambition to be the best in the art.”

As we said, such repetitions are perfectly good English. But if the echo bothers you, the repetition can easily be avoided.

Going back to sentence #1, the first “that” could be deleted (“I can see that’s going to be a problem”). Or the second one could be replaced with another pronoun (“I can see that this [or it] is going to be a problem”).

In sentence #2, either “this” could be replaced: “I received it this morning” … “I received this in the morning.”

We’ve written before about another kind of repetition—the double “is.” This formation is sometimes grammatical (“What this is is an enigma”), and sometimes not (“The problem is is he’s too young”).

The nongrammatical usage does indeed have a name—actually, several names. The two most common are “double copula” and “reduplicate copula.” (A copula is a linking verb that joins the subject and predicate of a sentence.)

And just in case one “that” after another isn’t enough for you, we’ve written about a sentence with five of them in a row.  

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Idiomatic transmission

Q: Do you have any tips for determining when to use “to” and when to use “of” in a sentence? For example, why do English speakers use different prepositions in these sentences: “There are many disadvantages to pet ownership” and “The disadvantages of pet ownership are many.”

A: There’s no formula for how to choose the proper preposition. In English, the use of prepositions is largely idiomatic, and people who use them correctly do so because they’ve “absorbed” them through long exposure to idiomatic usage.

For example, in the plural we may correctly say, “There are many disadvantages to pet ownership,” or “The disadvantages of pet ownership are many,” or  “You can’t get around the disadvantages of pet ownership.”

In the singular we can say, “One disadvantage of pet ownership is …” or  “The biggest disadvantage of pet ownership is …” or “If there’s a disadvantage to pet ownership, it’s …”

You might use either “in” or “with” when the phrase is split: “In [or With] pet ownership, there are many disadvantages.”

There are even more idiomatic usages when the noun is the object of the preposition: 

“He had me at a disadvantage” … “The terms of the contract were to my disadvantage” … “He labored under a disadvantage”  … “I can’t see beyond the disadvantages” … “We could live with the disadvantages” … “They disagreed about the disadvantages.”

This is why we say there’s no formula here.

We’ve written several times on our blog about the oddities of prepositions, including a posting in 2008.

We wish we could be more definitive. There’s a very handy book, Words Into Type, that has an extensive list (many pages long) of words together with the prepositions they usually take.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t list “disadvantage.” It does list “advantage,” which it advises using with “of” or “over.”

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Blood, toil, tears, and quotes

Q: In your article for Smithsonian earlier in the year, you say it’s a myth that Winston Churchill responded to a pedant by scribbling, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” I’ve always thought that clever and so obviously Churchillian. The American Heritage Book of blah blah blah says he said it. The Oxford Companion to blah blah blah says he said it. You call it a myth, so is this a fact?

A: We’ve seen umpteen versions of the quotation and just as many descriptions of the incident that prompted  it.

In the most common version, Churchill scribbled the remark in the margin of a document after a pedant dared to tinker with the great man’s writing to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition.

However, no such document has ever surfaced. And there’s no solid evidence that one ever existed. You can believe what you want. We’ll believe it when someone comes up with the document, complete with Churchillian scribbles.

Word sleuths have searched high and low for proof that Churchill wrote or said something of the sort, using all the research tools of the digital age. So far, that proof hasn’t been found. And what little evidence there is suggests that someone else said it.

We’re not sure which references you mean when you refer to the American Heritage Book of blah blah blah and the Oxford Companion to blah blah blah.

Although the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations does attribute the remark to Churchill, its source is quite iffy—a half-hearted citation by Sir Ernest Gowers.

In his 1948 book Plain Words, Gowers qualified his remarks: “It is said that Mr. Winston Churchill once made this marginal comment.”

Because of space limitations, we didn’t have a chance to go into detail about this questionable quote in our Smithsonian article. However, we discussed it extensively in Origins of the Specious, our book about language myths. Here’s an excerpt:

“Over the years, numerous versions of the quote and the incident that provoked it have circulated on both sides of the Atlantic, all of them claiming to be the genuine article. In various incarnations of the story, Churchill blusters not only at ‘the sort of English,’ but also at the ‘stilted English,’ ‘arrant pedantry,’ ‘errant pedantry,’ ‘errant criticism,’ ‘offensive impertinence,’ ‘insubordination,’ ‘bloody nonsense,’ ‘tedious nonsense,’ ‘pedantic nonsense,’ and … you get the idea. As for the end of the quote, it can be ‘up with which I will not put,’ ‘up with which I shall not put,’ ‘with which I will not put up,’ or ‘which I will not put up with.’

“The provocation that supposedly got Churchill so worked up? It’s sometimes a government document clumsily written by someone else, and at other times it’s clumsy editing of the great man’s own writing— here a book, there a speech, perhaps a memo or whatever. With so many genuine articles to choose from, it would take a linguistic anthropologist to track down the real story. Fortunately, one has. Benjamin G. Zimmer has traced the quotation to a 1942 article in The Wall Street Journal, citing an earlier mention in The Strand Magazine. The ‘offensive impertinence’ version of the quote is there, but (surprise!) Churchill is missing. The witticism is attributed to an unnamed writer in ‘a certain Government department.’

“It wasn’t until two years later that the quote (this time it’s the ‘tedious nonsense’ version) was pinned on Churchill. On February 27, 1944, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times all ran brief items from London saying Churchill had scrawled the remark on a ‘long, rambling’ government document— and that he’d done it only the week before.”

Is it a fact, you ask, that the attribution of the quotation to Churchill is a myth? In Origins of the Specious, we say it’s probably apocryphal. That’s perhaps a more accurate way of describing it.

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Out goes you!

Q: I teach ESL to very smart students who have amazing questions. This one stumped me. Shouldn’t the inverted verb be “go,” not “goes,” in this poem? Acca bacca soda cracker, / Acca bacca boo. / Acca bacca soda cracker, / Out goes you!

A: Yes, grammatical correctness would require “Out go you!” But one doesn’t expect proper grammar in playground rhymes, with their nonsense words and quirky syntax. On the playground, grammar is never as important as rhythm and onomatopoeia.

But was “goes” ever the second-person singular of “go” in English? If so, the usage could be a relic from the past.

Well, we couldn’t find this use of “goes” in the Oxford English Dictionary, but the second-person singular was sometimes spelled “gose” in Middle English.

Here’s a 15th-century example from The Towneley Plays, a manuscript named for the family that once owned it: “Who owe this child thou gose withall?”

Nevertheless, we see no evidence of an etymological connection between that 15th-century spelling and the 19th-century children’s doggerel you’ve asked about.

The poem is typical of what are called children’s counting-out rhymes. These frequently end in three emphatically stressed words: “out goes you.”

Children chant such rhymes in order to select a player who’s “counted out” or selected to be “it”—for instance, in a game of tag or hide-and-seek. 

 We found many similar poems in a book called The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children (1888), by Henry Carrington Bolton. A pair of examples:

Acker, backer, soda cracker,
Half-past two.
A pinch of snuff,
That is enough,
Out goes you!

Hackabacker, chew tobacco,
Hackabacker chew;
Hackabacker, eat a cracker.
Out goes you!

Other versions, found in this book and elsewhere, end in variations on this theme, typically with “O-U-T spells out goes you” or “One, two, three, and out goes you.”

Very rarely does one find “out go you.” And we can see why. The punchy “z” sound in “Out goes you” is phonetically pleasing amid all those vowel sounds. In other words, it’s more fun to say—or yell.

Besides, “out goes you” is easily adaptable to substitution—“out goes Jack,” “out goes Mary,” and so on.

Such counting-out rhymes are common among children throughout the world, and according to scholars they make no more sense in French or Russian or Czech than they do in English. But let’s get back to English.

In a study entitled “Children’s Traditional Speech Play and Child Language” (1976), Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett and Mary Sanches quote one such rhyme, which they characterize as “gibberish”:

Inty, ninty, tibbety fig
Deema dima doma nig
Howchy powchy domi nowday
Hom tom tout
Olligo bolligo boo
Out goes you.

In children’s poetry, the authors write, sound is what counts, not grammar or syntax or sense: “only the phonological rules are observed: the phonological sequences neither form units which have grammatical function nor lexemes with semantic reference.”

“That children enjoy playing with sound for its own sake has long been recognized as a prominent feature of child speech,” they add.

In short, the words that kids chant on the playground aren’t about grammar—they’re about sound. Put ’em together and what have you got? Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!

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Hear Pat on Iowa Public Radio

She’ll be on Talk of Iowa today from 10 to 11 AM Central time (11 to 12 Eastern) to discuss the English language and take questions from callers. Today’s topic: It’s summertime and the language is breezy.

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Let’s do “do”

Q: I’m wondering how “do” has universally replaced almost all specific verbs: “do Italy,” “do quiche,” “do tennis,” “do the mail,” and on. I was in a diner with a friend who asked the Greek waiter, “Did you do the broccoli yet?” He had no idea what she meant. I interceded, “Did you cook the broccoli?” I’m an English teacher and it drives me crazy.

A: You might as well make peace with this usage. It may be overdone, but it’s not new, and it’s not likely to go away.

We’ve all heard it for years now, from “Let’s do lunch” to the eternal refrain of cleaning people everywhere: “I don’t do windows.”

In fact, from a historical standpoint, this kind of construction—“do” followed by a noun as direct object—isn’t unusual.  For more than a thousand years, English speakers have used it to mean achieve, perform, bring about, carry out, accomplish, and so on.  

We still use “do” this way, as in “do honor to one’s country,” “do the work,” “do nothing,” “do one’s duty,” “do justice,” “do evil,” “do penance,” “do your best,” etc.

We also use “do” plus an object to mean prepare, arrange, clean, put in order, deal with, work on, or make ready.

Your example “do the mail” falls into this category, and it’s not unusual. Similar examples include “do the flowers,” “do the room,” “do housework,” “do one’s hair [or makeup],” “do his homework,” “do the accounts,” “do your taxes,” and so forth.

“Do” is extremely useful in this way. As the Oxford English Dictionary remarks, “Since every kind of action may be viewed as a particular form of doing, the uses of the verb are as numerous as the classes of objects which it may govern.”

We’ve written before on the blog about usages like “do a burger,” “do lunch,” and so on. As we noted, “do” has been used to mean consume (as in “do a couple of pints” or “do a chop”) since the mid-19th century.

A related sense, “to eat or drink, esp. habitually,” dates from the 1970s, Oxford says. The dictionary’s citations include “do booze” (1970), “do sushi” (1987), “do coffee” (1989), and “do alcohol” (1994). We might add your example “do quiche” (as in “Does he do quiche?”). 

As we also mentioned in that earlier post, “do lunch” is vintage 1970s. This expression (sometimes it’s “do dinner”), was first recorded in Ladies’ Man (1978), a novel by Richard Price:

“ ‘Kenny, whata you doin’ now?’ ‘Now? I was gonna do lunch; you wanna do lunch?’ ”

The OED defines the phrase as meaning “to meet for the specified meal, esp. with a view to conducting business.”

This more businesslike exchange of pleasantries is from Marc Blake’s novel 24 Karat Schmooze (2001): “ ‘And if you come up with something more, do get in touch.’ ‘I will.’ ‘We must do lunch.’ ”

Let’s look at the other usages you mention: “do Italy,” “do tennis,” and “do the broccoli.”

It was 19th-century tourists, the OED says, who began using “do” to mean to visit a site.

Oxford’s citations include “do the Rhine” (1817), “done North and South America” (1830), “ ‘did’ a bit of continent” (1844), and “ ‘do’ Cologne Cathedral” (1854).

The fact that the writers sometimes used quotation marks or italics probably indicates that they considered  this usage a colloquialism.

Phrases like “do tennis” are more recent. The OED has citations since 1990 for “do” used to mean “to (be able to) partake of or engage in,” mostly in negative constructions.

The dictionary’s examples include “he didn’t ‘do’ relationships” (1990), “can ‘do intimacy’ ” (1994), “he doesn’t do boyfriends” (1999), and “doesn’t do small talk.”

As for “do the broccoli,” the OED says that since the 1600s “do” has been used to mean “to prepare or make ready as food; to cook.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is from Samuel Pepys’s Diary (1660): “We had … a carp and some other fishes, as well done as ever I eat any.” (He’s using “well done” here in the sense of “well prepared.”)

In another citation for the usage, an advertisement from the 1890s seeks a young woman “capable of doing pastry.”

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the verb “do” in our language.

For example, we use “do” with a pronoun as object, in both questions and statements: “What has Jack done?” … “That does it!” … “What does your brother-in-law do?” … “This just isn’t done.” 

As auxiliary forms, “do”/”do not” and “did”/”did not” are especially handy.

We use the auxiliary “do” plus an infinitive to form an emphatic imperative, as in “Do tell!” … “Do be quiet” … “Do stay.”

In addition, the auxiliary “do” is often used with an infinitive to form a question: “Do you smoke?” … “Did they drive?” … “Does he love her?” Without this flexibility, we’d have to resort to the clumsy “Smoke you?” … “Drove they?” …”Loves he her?”

And in negative sentences, as Oxford points out, “do not” and “did not” allow “the negative to come after the auxiliary, instead of following the principal verb: e.g., ‘We did not recognize him’ instead of ‘We recognized him not.’ ”

In short, forms of “do” have helped English no end! We could go on, but for now this will do.

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Sentence interruptus

Q: Is there a word for making a habit of finishing someone else’s sentences?

A: Annoying? Bothersome? Irritating? Exasperating? We’ve known people who do this, and it bugs us mightily.  Before we can finish a sentence, they break in and finish it for us.

Is there a word for this? Not that we know of. But sociolinguists who specialize in conversational analysis have used various phrases to describe the phenomenon.

Some phrases we’ve seen are “interruptive conversational transitions,” “interruptive turns in talk-in interaction,” “aberration from the turn-taking rules,” “relaxation of turn-taking practices,” and “anticipatory completion of a speaking turn by another speaker.”

Language scholars who study the organization of conversation have offered various explanations for what a lay person would consider violations in the accepted turn-taking rules.

Gene Lerner, a sociologist who studies conversational analysis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says one reason listeners break in and finish sentences is to guide conversations in a desirable direction.

In “Finding ‘Face’ in the Preference Structures of Talk-in-Interaction,” a 1996 paper in Social Psychology Quarterly, Lerner puts it this way:

“The anticipatory completion of a speaking turn by another speaker can be used to preempt an emerging dispreferred action and change it into the alternative preferred action.”

Deborah Tannen, a linguist at Georgetown University, sees two kinds of interruptions in conversation: dominating and supportive.

In an introduction to “Interpreting Interruption in Conversation,” an essay in her 1994 book Gender and Discourse, Tannen distinguishes between interrupting and overlapping in conversation.

She says “high involvement style” conversation involves a lot of “cooperative overlap,” which she describes as “a listener talking along with a speaker not in order to interrupt but to show enthusiastic listenership and participation.”

Tannen says men often interrupt and dominate women in conversation, but she’s reluctant “to jump on the ‘men dominate women by interrupting them’ bandwagon.”

She writes that her research into the workings of conversation has shown that “one cannot simply count overlaps in a conversation, call them interruptions, and assign blame to the speaker whose voice prevails.”

We’ve seen many explanations for the finishing of another person’s sentence. Some language commentators believe that it’s a sign of intimacy; others that it’s a putdown.

And some chronic interrupters believe they have psychic powers that give them an uncanny ability to finish other people’s sentences.  

We find that finishing someone else’s sentences often involves impatience. The listener simply wants to hurry a slow talker along.

That reminds us of an old Bob and Ray routine in which Ray Goulding interviews Bob Elliot in the role of president and recording secretary of the Slow Talkers of America.

As Bob pauses between words, Ray jumps in with the next word, but Bob then changes his responses to make Ray’s guesses wrong.

We’ll finish this now before someone with psychic powers finishes it for us.

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Whosetrionics

Q: In your post last May about “who” and “which,” you use (deliberately?) a “who”-related word for things (“clauses whose information”). If “who” is used exclusively for people, why is “whose” used for both people and things?

A: Yes, we deliberately used “whose” to refer to things. It’s a myth that “whose” shouldn’t be used in reference to inanimate things, as in “a company whose CEO is 22 years old,” or “an idea whose time has come.”

For more than a thousand years, “whose” has been used—and quite properly—for both people and things. Yet the belief that “whose” is only for people is one of the most stubborn misconceptions about English grammar.

We’ve referred to this hoary old myth before on our blog, but we’ve never devoted an entire post to it. 

The fiction persists because many people associate “whose” with “who.” They assume that because “who” applies to people and not things, the same must be true of “whose.”

But as dictionaries and usage guides will tell you, “whose” is the genitive (or possessive) case of both “who” and “which.”

(The genitive case, as we’ve written before, is for relationships much wider than simple possession or ownership. It indicates “of or relating to” as well as “belonging to.”)

So “whose” can apply to a person or a thing; it can mean “of whom” or “of which.” 

“Whose” was first recorded in the late 800s, when it was written in Old English as hwæs, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In those times, it was the genitive case of both “who” (hwa) and “what” (hwæt), the OED says.

During the Middle English period (roughly 1100-1500), the spelling of “whose” shifted a lot, from hwas to the later hwos and whos. During this same period—in the 1300s—people began using “whose” as the genitive form of “which” as well as “who.”

That’s how it’s been used ever since, and that’s how standard dictionaries define it. Yet because of its similarity to “who,” many people think its use for things is taboo.

In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), Henry Fowler vigorously condemned the taboo against using “whose” for things:

“Let us, in the name of common sense, prohibit the prohibition of whose inanimate; good writing is surely difficult enough without the forbidding of things that have historical grammar, & present intelligibility, & obvious convenience, on their side, & lack only—starch.”

The current Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.), by R. W. Burchfield, says the notion that “whose” is limited to people is a “folk-belief.”

The editors of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage use even stronger language: “The notion that whose may not properly be used of anything except persons is a superstition.”

“The force that has always worked against acceptance of whose used of inanimate things is its inevitable association with who,” the usage guide says.

But “whose,” Merriam-Webster’s adds, is commonly used in reference to things, even in writing characterized by “formality and solemnity.”

The OED says that “in reference to a thing or things (inanimate or abstract),” the pronoun “whose” was “originally the genitive of the neuter what … in later use serving as the genitive of which.”

And as the OED’s citations prove, “whose” has been used this way for centuries by the best of writers. Here are some examples:

“I would a tale vnfold, whose lightest word / Would harrow vp thy soule.” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1603.)

“Mountains on whose barren brest / The labouring clouds do often rest.” (John Milton, L’Allegro, 1645.)

 “A newspaper of sound principles, but whose staff will persist in ‘casting’ anchors.” (Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea, 1906.)

“She looked down … and saw a little house, with a blue door whose colour delighted her.” (Elizabeth Bowen, The Hotel, 1927.)

“Toby … marvelled at this light which is no light … and whose strength is seen only in the sharpness of cast shadows.” (Iris Murdoch, The Bell, 1958.)

“There were pictures whose context she understood immediately.” (Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers, 1981.)

Merriam-Webster’s has many more examples, from the Bible, Milton (Paradise Lost), Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, Stephen Spender, Lewis Mumford, and John Updike.  

Yet, some people still doubt the propriety of “whose” in cases like these. They’d rather substitute “of which,” though the result is often a clumsy monstrosity.

Take the examples we used in our opening sentence: “a company whose CEO is 22 years old,” and “an idea whose time has come.”

Without “whose,” they’re stiff and ungainly: “a company the CEO of which is 22 years old,” and “an idea the time of which has come.”

“Of which” isn’t wrong here—just starchy, as Fowler would say. But “whose” isn’t wrong either, so why avoid a perfectly good usage?

We’ll let the Merriam-Webster’s editors have the final word: “The misinformation that passes for gospel wisdom about English usage is sometimes astounding.”

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See Spot run!

Q: I teach ESL at LaGuardia Community College in NY. One of the lessons compares two sentences: “I saw Mary get off the bus” and “I saw Mary getting off the bus.” The lesson plan says “get” here is in the simple present and indicates a longer action than “getting,” the continuous form of the verb. This seems backward. Please help.

A: We’ll answer your larger question first and get to the terminology later.

To begin with, in the first sentence (“I saw Mary get off the bus”), the speaker saw Mary perform a complete action.

But in the second (“I saw Mary getting off the bus”), the speaker saw an act in progress—perhaps only part of it.

That’s probably what the lesson plan means by saying the action in the first sentence is “longer.” By implication, it’s more complete.

But “longer” is a misleading choice of words because the actual length of time involved is irrelevant.

The difference in meaning between the two sentences is a matter of the observer’s  vantage point—is he talking about a completed action or about a process? Is he speaking after the fact, or seemingly placing himself in the midst of the action?

We can see why the description of the first sentence as “longer” seems backward to you. In fact, the “getting off” may be quite stretched out!

Now for the terminology.

(1) “I saw Mary get off the bus.” Here, the phrasal verb “get off” is an infinitive. It is not in the present tense.

The simple infinitive (without “to”) is often used after verbs of perception like “see,” “hear,” and “feel.”

A familiar example from the old “Dick and Jane” readers is “See Spot run,” in which “run” is an infinitive.

We’ve written several times on our blog about simple, or bare, infinitives, including posts in 2010 and 2013.

(2) “I saw Mary getting off the bus.” Here, “getting off” is a present participle. It’s not an example of “the continuous form” (often called the “progressive”).

The two are similar, since both include verbs ending in “-ing.” But a progressive verb has something extra—a form of the verb “be,” as in “am getting off,” “is getting off,” “was getting off,” “are getting off,” “will be getting off,” and so forth.

So in this sentence, “getting off” is not a progressive (or continuous) form but a present participle.

This present participle is part of a noun phrase—“Mary getting off the bus”—that’s the direct object of the verb “saw.” What did the speaker see? “Mary getting off the bus.”

So don’t assume that a verb ending in “-ing” is necessarily in the progressive form.

It could be a present participle or a gerund, verbal forms we’ve written about before, including posts in 2011 and 2012.

In summary, with a verb of perception like “see,” you can talk about completed acts or acts in progress. (We’ll illustrate with a different sentence.)

This example uses a verb in the infinitive to express a completed action: “We saw him go.”

This one uses a present participle to express an act in progress: “We saw him going.”

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Hear Pat live today on WNYC

She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 PM Eastern time to discuss the English language and take questions from callers. Andy Borowitz is filling in for Leonard. Today’s topic: What would Jane say? Jane Austen’s contributions to the English language. If you miss the program, you can listen to it on Pat’s WNYC page.
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That’s all, folks!

Q: In the past few weeks, I’ve heard TV anchors refer to Edward Snowden as being in “that transit lounge” and in “that Moscow airport.” The use of “that” instead of “the” sounds odd to my ear. Is this a trend? A coincidence? Or maybe some journalistic usage? Perhaps anchors have always spoken this way and I never noticed.

A: This isn’t a new usage, though it seems to have become popular lately among TV anchors or commentators trying to convey a casual, familiar tone on the air. 

An anchor who uses “that” instead of an article—as in “that transit lounge” instead of “the transit lounge” or “a transit lounge”—assumes the audience knows the story already.

The use of “that” here implies the transit lounge has been mentioned before, and suggests the anchor and the audience have just been discussing it.

Everybody’s on the same page—or that’s the assumption—and the listener won’t respond by thinking, “What transit lounge? What Moscow airport? What’s this person talking about?”

As you can see, this use of “that” conveys a looser, more familiar tone than would be appropriate in straight news coverage—especially in newspaper reporting, where a professional distance is generally maintained between journalist and reader.

But network anchors, as well as many broadcast and print commentators, allow themselves a more personal tone.

In constructions like “that transit lounge” and “that Moscow airport,” the word “that” is a demonstrative adjective.

In explaining the use of “that” in such constructions, the Oxford English Dictionary says the demonstrative adjective is being used “in concord with a n. which is the antecedent to a relative (expressed or understood).”

In plain English, this means “that” is being used with a noun to introduce a relative clause that’s actually present (“that transit lounge, which we were just talking about”) or merely understood (“that transit lounge”).

The OED says the use of “that” in such constructions is “often interchangeable with the … but usually more emphatic.”

In a 1532 Oxford’ citation for this usage, Thomas More illustrates how “that” may be more emphatic than “the” by contrasting two examples:

“A manne may saye ‘the man that we spake of was here,’ or ‘that man that we spake of was here.’ ”

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Much ado about texting

Q: How do you pronounce the past tense of “text” (a word, mind you, that is yet to be recognized by the Oxford Dictionary)? The two-syllable pronunciation, TEXT-ed, sounds too juvenile to me. I prefer one syllable, along the lines of “ask” and “asked.” Please advise.

A: The verb “text” does indeed appear in the Oxford English Dictionary as well as in the Oxford Dictionaries online.

It’s also in many standard dictionaries, including the two we consult the most: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

Dictionaries don’t generally provide pronunciation guides for past tenses unless there’s something unusual about them.  However, the dictionaries sometimes use dots to show that a past tense is divided into separate syllables.

American Heritage, for example, lists the past tense of “text” as “text·ed,” indicating that the word has two syllables.

As for us, we pronounce “texted” as TEXT-ed, and we’ve never heard it pronounced otherwise.

The linguist Arnold Zwicky shed some light on “texted” in a blog post he wrote on the subject in 2008.

“The big point,” Zwicky says in his article, “is that novel verbs—verbed nouns in particular—are almost invariably entirely regular in their inflection.”

Thus a noun like “text,” when it becomes a verb, will ordinarily form its past tense and past participle with the addition of “-ed.”

He notes that a small number of very old, mostly monosyllabic verbs ending in “-t” and “-d” (like “hit” and “bid”) don’t add “-ed.” He calls these “bare past” verbs. And of course there are the well-known irregular verbs like “shrink,” “run,” “sing,” and so on.

“But, generally,” he says, “when a new verb enters English—by borrowing from another language, by verbing a noun or adjective, or whatever—it’s entirely regular.”

And that’s what would make a past-tense form like “text” unusual. “In the case of the verb text (in its recent, electronic, sense), the lexicographers and other authorities go for texted,” Zwicky says.

He notes, for example, that the linguist David Crystal’s book Txtng (2008) has “texted” as the past tense.

Yet, as we said above, “texted” may not appear in a particular dictionary—at least not in an obvious way.

“As a general practice,” Zwicky says, “most dictionaries don’t list most inflected forms, because listing perfectly regular inflected forms would just be a waste of precious space. So absence of a listing is evidence of regularity.”

By the way, we see online that some people are still complaining about the use of “text” as a verb. They insist on “send a text message.”

We once felt the same way and wrote about it on the blog, but times change, and so does language.

Merriam-Webster’s, for instance, gives these three examples of how the verb “text” is used: “I texted her a little while ago” … “I texted a message to her” … “She just texted me back.”

A March 2004 draft edition to the online OED defines the verb “text” as “to send (a text message) to a person, mobile phone, etc.” and “to communicate by sending text messages.”

The earliest Oxford citation for the usage is in a March 14, 1998, message on the Usenet newsgroup alt.cellular.gsm: “We still keep in touch … ‘texting’ each other jokes, quotes, stories, questions, etc.”

However, the word “text” has been used as a verb since the late 1500s, according to written examples in the OED.

When the verb first appeared, it meant “to inscribe, write, or print in a text-hand or in capital or large letters,” but the dictionary describes that sense as obsolete.

Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing (1600): “Yea and text vnder-neath, here dwells Benedick the married man.”

The OED has citations from the 1500s and 1600s for another obsolete sense: “to cite a text at or against (a person).”

And it has citations up until the late 1800s for the verb used to mean “to write in text-hand.”

The dictionary’s latest citation for the verb is from the July 31, 2001, electronic edition of a British newspaper, the Leicester Mercury: “I texted my mother and my friends when I got my results.”

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Is it “is”? Or is it “are”?

Q: I recently wrote this sentence: “Is celebrities sending prayers newsworthy?” I went back and forth between “is” and “are.” Neither sounded totally right, nor totally wrong. What do you think?

A: Your choice was correct: “Is celebrities’ sending prayers newsworthy?” Note that we’ve added a possessive apostrophe to “celebrities.”

The noun “celebrity” has an interesting history, which we’ll get to later, but let’s first look at the sentence you’ve asked about.

In this sentence, “celebrities’ sending prayers” is a noun phrase. “Sending” is a gerund here—a verb form that functions as a noun—so the possessive apostrophe is called for.

“Sending” (not “celebrities”) is the subject of the verb, which should be “is.” In fact, “celebrities’” functions as a modifier; drop it and you have “Is sending prayers newsworthy?”

A parallel case would be “Is mom’s cooking newsworthy?” The gerund “cooking” is the subject of the verb. Drop the modifier (the possessive adjective “mom’s”) and you have “Is cooking newsworthy?”

Still, correct or not, the phraseology of that “celebrities” sentence is awkward enough to deserve a rewrite: “Is it newsworthy that celebrities send prayers?”

If you’d like to read more about gerunds, we’ve discussed them several times on our blog, including posts in 2011 and 2012: 

Now, let’s look at the word “celebrity,” which meant fame or notoriety when it entered English sometime before 1600. By the early 1600s, it could also refer to a solemn rite, a ceremony, or a celebration.

It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that “celebrity” took on the sense used in your question: a celebrated person or public figure.

The earliest example of the usage in the Oxford English Dictionary is from The Ogilvies, an 1849 novel by the English writer Dinah Maria Mulock Craik: “Did you see any of those ‘celebrities,’ as you call them?”

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Bilingual education

Q: My Danish stepmother is completely bilingual, with one exception: she uses the phrase “not that I know to” instead of “not that I know of” when speaking English. It would be interesting to understand where this usage comes from.

A: There’s a verbal phrase in Danish, kende til, that means to “know about.”

But someone attempting a literal translation into English might render kende til as “know to.” That’s because the Danish verb kende means to “know” and the preposition til frequently means “to.”

Louise Møhl, a cultural officer with the Danish Consulate in New York, provided us with a couple of Danish-to-English examples of these terms used in the first-person singular:

Jeg kender ham fra mit arbejde. = “I know him from work.”

Det kender jeg ikke noget til. = “I don’t know anything about that.”

As for til, Ms. Møhl said, it “has many meanings in Danish depending on the situation.”

When it’s not part of the expression kende til, the preposition til can mean “to” (perhaps its most frequent sense), “of,” “for,” “about,” “toward,” “from,” or “at.”

Incidentally, the Danish til has a similar-sounding cousin in English, “till.” The Old Norse preposition til (“to”) is the ancestor of both the Danish til and the English prepositions “till” and “to.”

We’ve written on our blog about the English words “till” and “until” (you may be surprised to learn which came first).

Sorry that we can’t be more definite about why your Danish stepmother says “know to” instead of “know of,” but here’s a suggestion: ask her why she does it.

You might as well get it straight from the horse’s mouth. Or, as a Dane would put it, lige fra hestens mund.

Why a horse’s mouth? We had a brief posting back in 2006 that says there are two theories about the origin of the English expression, one involving horse racing and the other horse trading.

The most likely explanation is that it originated in the early 20th century in reference to inside information from a racing tipster that was supposedly as good as if it came straight from the horse itself.

We’ll end with an example from “The Reverent Wooing of Archibald,” a 1928 short story by one of our favorite writers, P. G. Wodehouse. The wooer (and eavesdropper) here is Archibald Mulliner:

“It might be an ignoble thing to eavesdrop, but it was apparent that Aurelia Cammarleigh was about to reveal her candid opinion of him: and the prospect of getting the true facts—straight, as it were, from the horse’s mouth—held him so fascinated that he could not move.”

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“Other” wise

Q: A colleague and I are arguing over this quote: “An 88-year-old man was killed and three others injured.” I say “others,” as a pronoun, must refer to 88-year-old men in this construction. My colleague says it effectively means three other people. The injured were not all 88-year-old men. Which of us is right?

A: Your colleague is right. In cases like this, “others” doesn’t mirror its exact antecedent (“88-year-old men”). Here the plural pronoun simply means additional people.

Among its various functions, the word “other” can be an adjective. Examples: “other charges” … “other drivers” … “other 88-year-old men.” As an adjective, “other” modifies the noun that follows.

But “other” can also be a pronoun, in which case it stands alone instead of modifying a noun. Examples: “Who is the other?” (singular) … “Let’s wait for the others” (plural) … “Others were injured” (plural).

The Oxford English Dictionary says that as a pronoun, “other” (or “others” in the plural) can mean “another person, someone else, anyone else” as well as another person “of a kind specified or understood contextually.”

In the example you mention (“An 88-year-old man was killed and three others injured”), the writer is obviously using “others” in the looser sense of other people.

The OED has written examples of this usage going back to early Old English, but here are a few more recent ones:

“Others indeed may talk.” (From the philosopher George Berkeley’s Alciphron, 1732.)

“If one has too much in consequence of others being wronged, it seems to me that the divine voice which tells us to set that wrong right, must be obeyed.” (From George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch, 1872.)

“He had always worked in places where others had established the English corner before he came.” (From Graham Greene’s novel England Made Me, 1935.)

Your question points up a possible usage problem. If “others” can refer to people in general as well as people of a specific kind, it can sometimes be misunderstood.

If all the victims in your example are indeed 88 years old, the writer should be more precise in the wording: “Four 88-year-old men were victims—one was killed and the others were injured.”

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The tip of my fingers?

Q: I remember hearing the country song “The Tip of My Fingers” when I was a young’un in Upstate South Carolina 50 years ago. I’m old enough to know by now, but shouldn’t that be “Tips”? Thank y’all very much.

A: As we’ve written before on the blog, song writers are allowed a lot of leeway in the way they use English.

Bill Anderson wrote “The Tip of My Fingers” and released it as a single under that title in 1960. And we won’t fault him for it, even though most people would say “tips of my fingers.”

But the original title has apparently bothered some of the artists who’ve recorded the tune over the years.

It’s been recorded by Hank Snow, Eddy Arnold, Jean Shepard, and others—sometimes under the original title and sometimes as “The Tips of My Fingers.”

In fact, singers haven’t always pronounced the title the way it reads on the record label or album cover.

For instance, on the album Roy Clark Sings The Tip of My Fingers (1963), Clark very distinctly says “tips,” and so do his backup singers.

So you’re in good company if the original title bugs you.

Here’s an excerpt from Teresa Brewer’s 1966 recording of the song (she says “tip”):

I reached out my arms and I touched you
With soft words I whispered your name.
I held you right on the tip of my fingers
But that was as close as I came.

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A loaded question

Q: I recently came across this quote from the Mormon lawman Porter Rockwell: “I never shot at anybody, if I shoot they get shot! He’s still alive, ain’t he?” That got me to thinking. You shoot an arrow, not the bow, but you shoot a gun, not the bullet. A friend of mine says he shoots targets. I’m confused.

A: The verb “shoot” has a lot of flexibility. It can be used intransitively—that is, without a direct object. Example: “He likes to go into the woods and shoot.”

But “shoot” can also be used transitively—with a direct object. When we’re talking about weapons, the transitive verb “shoot” can mean to discharge, to let fly, or to hit.

Consequently, it can have a variety of objects. You can “shoot” (that is, discharge) a gun, bow, slingshot, or catapult. You can “shoot” (let fly) a bullet, arrow, spear, javelin, or similar projectile. And finally, you can “shoot” a target.

All of these senses of the verb are recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary and have been around for hundreds of years.

By the way, that last sense of the word—to “shoot” a target—implies that the target was hit. But “shoot at” means only to fire in a particular direction.

We’ll have something to say later about Orrin Porter Rockwell, a colorful and controversial Mormon figure from the Wild West.

But first let’s look at the life of “shoot,” a verb with an interesting history, and not just in weaponry.

Its ancestors were old Germanic words that meant to go swiftly or suddenly, to rush or fly—yes, like an arrow from a bow.

It was first recorded in Old English in the ninth century in reference to the shooting of arrows, according to citations in the OED.

But other Old English examples use the term in a wider sense that reflects its earlier Germanic roots—to dart swiftly from one place to another.

So at the root of the word is the sense of moving quickly, and this ancestry explains the many ways in which “shoot” is used today.

For example, meteors “shoot” across the night sky, rafters “shoot” the rapids, and a toboggan “shoots” down a slope. A racehorse “shoots” from the gate, then “shoots” ahead of the pack.

A golfer “shoots” a birdie,” while a basketball player “shoots” a basket. Grownups “shoot” pool or dice, and children “shoot” marbles. If the kids are growing fast, they’re said to “shoot” up.

Plants in spring send out new “shoots” (a noun usage). Rays of the sun “shoot” through the clouds, and on a more prosaic note, product sales “shoot” up.

An indiscreet person “shoots off” his mouth or “shoots” himself in the foot, while an ambitious colleague “shoots” for success.

To lock a door a night, we “shoot” a bolt into its fastening. And if we don’t look where we’re going, our feet “shoot” out from under us (after which we experience “shooting” pains).

With that, we’ve “shot our bolt.” In case you’re curious (even if you’re not), the “bolt” in this old proverb is a thousand-year-old word for a short, blunt arrow fired from a cross-bow.

In olden days, there was a similar expression, “a fool’s bolt is soon shot.” The lesson: conserve your ammunition.

In case any readers are wondering about that quote you mention, Porter Rockwell was, among other things, a gunfighter, a deputy US marshal, and a bodyguard to the Mormon leader Joseph Smith Jr.

Rockwell was arrested in St. Louis in March of 1843 in connection with an attempt to kill Lilburn Boggs, a former governor of Missouri, the year before. (In 1838, as governor, Boggs issued an executive order evicting Mormons from the state.)

A grand jury found that there wasn’t enough evidence for an indictment on the charge of attempted murder, but Rockwell was tried in December of 1843 for trying to escape.

He supposedly made his comments at that trial, where he was found guilty and sentenced to five minutes in jail, according to Enemy of the Saints, a biography of Boggs by Robert Nelson.

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Theories of relativity

Q: Is a group of people a ”which” or a “who”? Here’s the sentence I have in mind:  “It has only been studied in chronic alcoholics, which [or who] have reduced rates of muscle protein synthesis.” Please help!

A: In modern English the relative pronoun “which” isn’t generally used in reference to people. This wasn’t always so, however. Depending on when you lived, the use of “which” has been relative.

Until the 19th century, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, “which” was used in relative constructions to refer to a person or people already mentioned.

(A relative pronoun introduces a subordinate clause: “I finally found my keys, which I’m always losing,” or “He’s the man that got away.”)

Here are two 19th-century examples from the OED:

“Dugald Stewart, one of the greatest men which Scotland has produced”—1836, from James Grant’s Random Recollections of the House of Lords. (Today, “that” or “whom” would be used instead.) 

“The wounded, which were carried past, … never failed to salute the Emperor”—1841, from Archibald Alison’s History of Europe, From 1789 to 1815. (Today, “who” would be used.)

But here’s a much older and more familiar example. In the original 1549 edition of the Book of Common Prayer, the Lord’s Prayer begins, “Our father, whyche art in heauen ….”

In the 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer, however, “who” was substituted for “which” to reflect modern usage.

Contrary to popular opinion, the relative pronoun “that” can often be used in place of “who.”

As we wrote on the blog in 2007 and 2006, “that” can properly refer to either a person or a thing, despite a common misconception that it’s only for things.

We could stop here, but your question touches on another problem: “that” versus “which,” and the kinds of relative clauses they introduce. We’ve discussed this subject on the blog too, in 2010 and 2008.

In modern American usage, the preference is to use “which” and “that” to introduce different kinds of relative clauses—“which” for inessential information (set off within commas), and “that” for essential information.

This means that in general, American writers use “which” for clauses whose information could be plucked out and still leave behind a sensible sentence (they’re called nonrestrictive or nondefining clauses).

And “that” is generally used for clauses whose information is essential and can’t be dropped (these are restrictive or defining clauses).

Many British writers use “which” for both kinds of clauses.

In the example you mention, the clause is nonrestrictive and would call for “which” if it didn’t refer to people: “It has only been studied in computer simulations, which [not that] show reduced rates of muscle protein synthesis.”

But since it does refer to people, you’ll want to use “who” instead: “It has only been studied in chronic alcoholics, who [not which] have reduced rates of muscle protein synthesis.”

In a restrictive clause, you could use either “that” or “who,” as in this sentence: “It has only been studied in patients who [or that] have reduced rates of muscle protein synthesis.”

By the way, we’re not saying “which” can never used to refer to humans—just not, for the most part, as a relative pronoun.

As The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) says, “which” can be used an as ordinary pronoun in place of “any of the things, events, or people designated or implied.”

Examples would be “Which of you is going?” … “Even after viewing the lineup, he couldn’t say which was the perpetrator.” … “Which is the better candidate, John or Mary?”

“Which” can also be used as an adjective in reference to people: “Which guy did she end up marrying?”

Finally, in case you’d like to brush up on “who” versus “whom,” we recently ran a roundup on how to use the two pronouns.

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Between times

Q: On the morning news the other day, a reporter said a fire was “between 30 to 50  feet” from something, instead of “between 30 and 50” or “from 30 to 50.” This usage is very common now, but incorrect unless the rules have changed since I was in school.

A: No, English usage hasn’t changed for constructions like these. The word “between” here is accompanied by the conjunction “and” (as in “between X and Y”), while “from” requires the preposition “to” (“from X to Y”).

You’re right, though, that many people confuse these two constructions, so “between” ends up with “to” while “from” ends up with “and.”

We found many examples of the mangled constructions by googling “between 30 to 50” and “from 30 and 50.”

Here’s an example from a Cleveland Clinic tweet: “Why are men between 30 to 50 years of age at the highest rate of suffering from an Achilles tendon rupture?”  

And here’s one from the website of the Flagstaff Cruisers Car Club: “Our membership ranges from 30 and 50 proud and dedicated members each year.”

In her grammar and usage book Woe Is I, Pat writes about another problem with “between” and “from”—whether they introduce singular nouns or plural ones. Here’s what she wrote:

“OK, it’s not something that’s been keeping you awake nights. But it comes up all the time. The question: When a noun follows between or from, is it singular or plural? The elevator stalled between the ninth and tenth [floor or floors], stranding the boss from the first to the third [week or weeks] in August. See what I mean? A small problem, perhaps, but a common one.

“The answer: Between is followed by a plural noun, and from is followed by a singular one: The elevator stalled between the ninth and tenth floors, stranding the boss from the first to the third week in August.”

The book also offers these examples of the proper way to use “between” and “from” in the constructions you’ve asked about:

“Veronica said she lost her charm bracelet somewhere between Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh streets. Archie searched every inch of pavement from Thirty-third to Thirty-seventh Street before realizing that she had been in a cab at the time.”

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Is “offshore of” off-putting?

Q: Several times recently I’ve come across the usage “offshore of” in copy I’m editing. It sounds dead wrong to my ears, but I’m having difficulty explaining why to my client. Can you clarify?

A: You’re right in thinking that the “of” is unnecessary in a phrase like “offshore of Cuba.”

But we don’t think this redundancy is a hanging offense, since the use of “offshore” as a preposition is relatively new, and many people seem to be uncomfortable with it.

When “offshore” is used as a preposition, it means “off the shore or coast of,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. So the “of” is already built in.

As we’ve written before on our blog, “offshore” has been used as both an adverb and an adjective since the great seafaring days of the 18th century.

The use of the word as a preposition, however, dates from only the 1960s, according to published examples in the OED.

Here are Oxford’s citations, and note that “offshore” is not accompanied by “of” in any of them.

1967: “Atlantic refining and Phillips Petroleum have announced the first discovery of natural gas in the Gulf of Sirte offshore Libya.” (From the journal Ocean Industry.)

1988: “This year’s Fireball Nationals … were held offshore Durban over Easter.” (From a South African journal, Sailing Inland & Offshore.)

1995: “A ground ice ridge or stamukha off-shore Sakhalin Island.” (From the Lamp, a magazine for Exxon shareholders.)

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) says the first known use of the preposition is from 1965, but it doesn’t give the source. M-W similarly defines the preposition “offshore” as meaning “off the shore of.”

Although “of” is unnecessary with the preposition “offshore,” many people prefer to tack it on anyway.

A Google search turned up hundreds of thousands of such usages—“offshore of San Diego,” “offshore of Nome,” “offshore of Captiva Island,” “offshore of Plymouth, MA.,” “offshore of the Bahamas,” and so on.

This isn’t surprising. To many ears, the use of “offshore” as a freestanding preposition— “The plane crashed offshore Nantucket”—may seem uncomfortably abrupt.

English speakers are more used to a construction like “off the coast of Nantucket” or “off the shore of Nantucket.”

Perhaps that’s why “offshore of Nantucket” feels more natural to many speakers.

Update [May 22, 2013]: After we posted this entry, the linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer reported several earlier uses of “offshore” as a preposition, including one that beats the OED and Merriam-Webster’s sightings by a decade.

Writing on the American Dialect Society’s discussion list, Zimmer reported this finding, from the December 1955 issue of Gas Age:   “… the company has filed an application with the FPC for a certificate of necessity to build a submarine gas pipe line offshore the Coast of Louisiana from the Sabine River to the coast of  the state of Mississippi.”

Then another contributor to the ADS list, Garson O’Toole, unearthed this World War II usage from a June 1942 issue of the State Times in Baton Rouge, La: “Lt. (j. g.) Robert Connel Taylor son of Mr. and Mrs. D. H. Taylor of this city, is recuperating at the naval hospital at Pearl Harbor from wounds received during the bombing of Midway preceding the great air-naval battle offshore the island, a letter received by his parents today disclosed.”

Thanks, Ben and Garson!

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Genitively speaking

Q: I’m confused by a passage in your “Sui genitive!” post about when to use a singular noun and when to use a plural in adjectival phrases: “two-dollar word” vs. “Thirty Years’ War.”

A: Here’s the relevant passage from our Aug. 10, 2010, post about adjectival phrases (we’ll set it off in italics).

Normally, nouns used with numbers to form adjectival phrases are singular, as in “two-inch rain,” “three-year-old boy,” “two-dollar word,” “eight-volume biography,” and “four-star restaurant.”

However, where a plural noun is used by tradition to form such a phrase, it’s generally followed by an apostrophe, as in “the Thirty Years’ War” and “the Hundred Years’ War.”

What we mean is that adjectival phrases consisting of a number plus a noun (like “thirty-year” and “two-dollar”) are normally formed with a singular noun (“year,” “dollar”).

This is true whether the noun being modified by the adjectival phrase is singular or plural.

Hence expressions like “thirty-year mortgages” and “two-dollar words.” We don’t say “thirty-years mortgages” and “two-dollars words.” The noun that’s part of the adjectival phrase stays singular.

Now for the “however” exception we mention in our earlier post.

Sometimes a phrase like this becomes plural, loses its hyphen, and gains an apostrophe. An example is “six dollars’ worth” (instead of “six-dollar worth”).

Here the phrase is being used in the genitive case. (If the genitive seems possessive, that’s because the possessive is one of its forms.)

The genitive is used in a handful of expressions, many of them involving numbers, that have developed by tradition or convention.

The genitive is used, for instance, when the noun “worth” is modified by a numerical phrase, as in “five cents’ worth” or “three days’ worth” or “two cups’ worth.”

Ask yourself, How much worth? The worth “of five cents” or “of three days” or “of two cups.” The apostrophe signifies that an unspoken “of” is involved here.

The genitive is also used when the noun “experience” is modified with a numerical phrase, as in “20 years’ experience.” How much experience? The experience “of 20 years.” Again, the apostrophe signifies an unspoken “of.” 

The “of” (whether present or not) is also characteristic of possessives. Possession is sometimes indicated with an apostrophe and sometimes with “of.” Examples: “the boy’s feet” … “the feet of the boy.” 

As we said, one function of the genitive is to denote possession. However, the definition of “possession” is sometimes hazy, as with “the river’s edge” (or “the edge of the river”). This is why “genitive” is a wider term than “possessive” alone.

With genitive phrases, whether they include numbers or not, you can usually picture an imaginary “of,” as in these examples:

“two weeks’ pay” … the pay of two weeks

“six hours’ time” … the time of six hours

“for convenience’ sake” … for the sake of convenience

“three days’ work” … the work of three days

“a summer’s day” … a day of summer

“for old times’ sake” … for the sake of old times

“in harm’s way” … in the way of harm

“at wits’ end” … at the end of one’s wits

These genitive constructions are different from simple adjectival phrases. They have a different kind of relationship with the noun they modify (as we discussed in that blog entry).

A special note about names of wars. The names for historical events are handed down by tradition—sometimes you’ll see a hyphen and sometimes not.

That accounts for why we see both “the Thirty Years’ War” (a genitive usage for “a war of thirty years”), and “the Six-Day War” (a simple adjectival phrase).

Historical names like these develop through common usage, and not according to grammatical rules.

To sum up, when numbers are used in modifying phrases, MOST of the modifiers will be singular and hyphenated: “Senators serve six-year terms” (note the singular “year”).

But when the phrase isn’t merely adjectival, but functions as a genitive—as if it owns, or possesses, the noun it modifies—then drop the hyphen and use an apostrophe:

“He has six years’ experience in the Senate.” (Imagine it as “the experience OF six years.”)

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Parsing the Preamble

Q: I’m puzzled by this phrase from the Preamble: “in order to form a more perfect union.” What part of speech is “in order to”? It looks like a preposition. But how can the verb “form” be an object of a preposition? I struggle with this.

 A: You’ve raised an interesting Constitutional question. The short answer is that “in order to” is an idiomatic phrase that might be translated “so as to” and is followed by a verb.

As to what parts of speech are in play here, we think you can regard “in order to form” and similar constructions in two different ways:

(1) “In order to” is a compound preposition that has a bare infinitive (“form”) as its object.

(2) “In order” is a compound preposition that has a “to” infinitive (“to form”) as its object. The “to” here isn’t actually part of the infinitive, as we’ve written before on the blog.

In our opinion, arguing for one view over the other would be splitting hairs.

“In order” may not look like a preposition, but it functions like one, resembling “so as.” And as we’ll explain later, an infinitive can indeed be the object of a preposition.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language has an explanation that agrees with our option #2 above. Cambridge describes “in order” as a preposition followed by either a “to” infinitive or by a clause starting with “that.”

The “in order that” construction, according to Cambridge, “is somewhat more formal and considerably less frequent” than one with the “to” infinitive. 

And “in order that” requires the use of more words. As Cambridge notes, it often calls for “a modal auxiliary,” such as “might” or “can.”

Take a sentence like “I left work early in order that I might go to the gym.” It’s much wordier than “I left work early in order to go to the gym.” (In fact, as we’ve written before on the blog, you can often drop “in order” and be even less wordy!)

The Cambridge Grammar adds that the subjunctive mood is sometimes used with “in order that,” giving this example: “The administration had to show resolve in order that he not be considered a lame-duck president.” (Note the subjunctive “be.”)

But getting back to “in order to,” we were surprised to find only one standard dictionary that analyzes how the phrase functions as a part of speech.

The Collins English Dictionary calls “in order to” a preposition that is followed by an infinitive. Collins defines the phrase as meaning “so that it is possible to.”

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English language (5th ed.) simply say the phrase means “for the purpose of.”

But that definition is problematic on a literal level, since you can’t swap one expression for the other.

“For the purpose of” is followed by a gerund, like “forming,” while “in order to” is followed by an infinitive, like “form.” (A gerund ends in “-ing” and acts like a noun.)

The Oxford English Dictionary says “in order to” is used “with infinitive expressing purpose.” It defines the phrase as meaning “so as to do or achieve (some end or outcome).”

The OED’s first example of the usage is from the 1609 Douay translation of the Bible: “These are they that speak to Pharao, king of Egypt, in order to bring out the children of Israel from Egypt.”

A less lofty example is this caption from a 1994 issue of Food and Wine magazine: “True risotto must be stirred continuously in order to develop its unique texture.”

You expressed some doubt as to whether a verb can be the object of a preposition.

As we wrote on the blog in 2010, an infinitive as well as a gerund can be a direct object. We’ve also written about bare versus “to” infinitives several times, including posts in 2009 and 2013. 

We’ll add here that it’s not unusual for an infinitive—bare or not—to be the object of a preposition. For example, in all of these sentences, infinitives (both bare and with “to”) are the objects of prepositions:

“He can do everything but cook” … “She had no choice except to lie” … “I’d rather starve instead of steal” …  “We have better things to do than to argue” …”They were about to leave” … “He opened his mouth as if to speak.” (When used in this way, “as if” has a prepositional function, according to Cambridge.)

Finally, a Constitutional footnote. In case you’re bothered by the Founders’ use of  “more perfect” in that passage from the Preamble, take a look at our post on the subject.

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Who-whomery

Q: Could you provide 100 examples of the correct use of “who” vs. “whom”?  Most authorities explain the principles, but don’t provide enough examples. Also, is it “First  … Second … Third” or “Firstly … Secondly … Thirdly” in a prose list of things?

A: First (or firstly), we’ll answer your second question. As we explained in a posting a few years ago, both versions are OK.

Now for “who” versus “whom,” a subject we’ve often discussed on the blog.

We won’t give you 100 examples, just a handful of typical sentences in which “who” and “whom” are used correctly, followed by the relevant rules, plus links to the posts in which we discuss them.

 (1) “Nathan wouldn’t tell Miss Adelaide whom he invited to his crap game.”

Rule: If it’s an object, it’s “whom.” Don’t be misled by extraneous information—strip the sentence down mentally and rearrange to find the subject, verb, and object of the relevant clause: “he invited whom.” (May 12, 2012)

(2) “Nathan invited only guys who he thought played for high stakes.”

Rule: If it’s a subject, it’s “who.” Don’t be misled by extraneous information—strip the clause down to “who played for high stakes.” (May 12, 2012)

(3) “It involves all girls, of all races and backgrounds, many of whom are held back by societal barriers.”

Rule: Don’t be confused by “of whom” in phrases like “many of whom,” “several of whom,” “most of whom,” “all of whom,” “few of whom,” “one of whom,” and so on. The subject in such a phrase is what precedes “of.” (Aug. 5, 2012)

(4) “Who does the manager think will be the most efficient employee, she or he?”  … “This is the friend who I said wanted to meet you.”

Rule: Don’t be misled by information that comes between subject and verb. In the examples, “who” is the subject of the verbs “will” and “wanted.” (May 12, 2012)

(5) “Give it to whoever needs it.”

Rule:  When the pronoun is the subject of a verb (“needs” in this case), it’s “who” (or “whoever”), even when it directly follows a preposition. The object of the preposition isn’t the pronoun; it’s a clause in which the pronoun is the subject. (Sept. 1, 2008)

(6) “Who else was there for me to talk to?”

Rule: The main clause in this sentence—“Who else was there”—is an interrogative clause with “who” as its subject. The additional information afterward doesn’t change that. (April 18, 2013)

Now for some wiggle room:

(7) “Who [or Whom] did you go to the movies with?”  … “Who’s [or Whom is] the letter from?” In these sentences, “whom” is grammatically correct but “who” may be used informally.

Rule: At the beginning of a phrase or clause, “whom” can be grammatically correct but unnatural in everyday usage. In such cases, “who” can be used. We don’t recommend this after a preposition, though, as in “That depends on whom you ask.” (Nov. 18, 2010)

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The well-coordinated modifier

Q: What do you call a string of noun phrases that share the same noun? Example: “The English, French, and math teachers all have lunch together.”

A: A construction like “English, French, and math teachers” is simply a noun (“teachers”) modified by several adjectives (“English,” “French,” “math”).

Grammatically, it’s not regarded as a string of noun phrases (“English teachers,” “French teachers,” “math teachers”) from which the repetition has been removed.

What, you ask, is a construction like this called?

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language would describe it as a head noun (“teachers”) with coordinate modifiers (“English,” “French,” and “math”).

In discussing this kind of construction, Cambridge uses the examples “new and used cars” and “London and Oxford colleges.” In each phrase, two “coordinate modifiers” apply to a single noun.

Coordination works the other way too. You can have two or more “coordinate nouns” with a single modifier. Cambridge illustrates this with the examples “new cars and trucks,” and “London schools and colleges.”

The principle here is clear, even if the terminology is a bit dense.

When a modifier plus a noun form what Cambridge calls “a composite nominal”—like “used cars”—the authors say that “the component parts can enter separately into relations of coordination.”

This means that the modifier can be joined by other modifiers, or the noun can be joined by other nouns.

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English English language Grammar Usage

Myself abuse

[Note: An updated post about “myself” and other “-self” words appeared on Aug. 27, 2018.]

Q: One of my favorite books on English, A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, says “myself” may always be used where the rules of grammar require “I” but people traditionally prefer “me.” However, another of my favorite books, Woe Is I, says one should not use “myself” if either “I” or “me” will work. Your thoughts?

A: A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, by Bergen and Cornelia Evans, is a favorite with us, too, and over all it holds up remarkably well for a usage guide written in the ’50s. But in its entry on the use of “myself,” it begins to show its age.

We agree (and so does Pat’s book Woe Is I) with much of what the Evanses say about “myself.” But we disagree with them that “myself” may always be used instead of “I” or “me” after “than” and the verb “be.”

The issue here is what to do when there’s a conflict between the formal rules of English grammar and the usual practice of it.

In the 1950s, many usage authorities looked askance at a sentence like “She’s prettier than me” and insisted on “She’s prettier than I,” never mind that most speakers of English used “me” rather than “I” in that construction.

Similarly, many usage authorities of the ’50s condemned a sentence like “It’s me,” and insisted on “It’s I” or “It is I,” even though English speakers generally preferred “me.”

Torn between the formal rules and common practice, the Evanses offer this advice: “Myself may always be used where the formal rules of grammar require I but me is the traditionally preferred form.”

But times have changed. Usage authorities these days generally accept “me” in the examples above, making it unnecessary to substitute “myself.”

As we wrote on the blog back in 2008, most lexicographers and grammarians treat “than” as a legitimate preposition in constructions like “no man was more qualified than me” or “I’m taller than her.”

We’ve seen a similar evolution in the use of object pronouns after linking verbs, as in constructions like “it’s me” and “that’s him.”

In a posting written two years ago, we say the belief that a nominative pronoun (like “I”) should be used after the verb “be” came from a convention of Latin grammar. Today the choice between “I” and “me” in this situation is regarded as one of style—formality versus informality—rather than one of correctness.

In short, you can now confidently use the more natural “me” without apologetically resorting to “myself.” And that’s what we recommend.

As we say in another blog entry, reflexive pronouns like “myself” are normally used for emphasis (“I offered to do it myself”) or to refer to a subject already named (“He feels good about himself”).

But in our opinion, many people rely on “myself” for another purpose. They substitute it for “I” or “me” simply because they’re not sure which is right.

When this is the case, the speaker’s confusion generally shows, as in “Wendy and myself will plan the party” or “The bank sold the house to my husband and myself.”

Sentences like those reveal a weak grasp of English. “Wendy and I” is a better subject, and “my husband and me” is a better object.

Reflexive pronouns are best used for emphasis or to refer back to a subject. Otherwise, “I” or “me” is almost always better than “myself.”

So if you’re using “myself” merely because you’re inclined toward “me” but think that it’s wrong, or that “myself” is more elegant, think again. Have a little more faith in “me.”

We’re not saying that “myself” is never a good alternative to “I” or “me.” 

For example, you might use “myself” deep into a sentence when an ordinary pronoun would seem to get lost. Example: “There were a hundred people at the lecture—half the English class, a dozen friends of the speaker, most of the faculty, and myself.” 

Or you might use a reflexive to add a specific and more emphatic reference to a general subject, as in “An old fuddy-duddy and inveterate nit-picker like myself.”

But before using “myself,” one should at least know what the traditional alternative is, then decide which is preferred for reasons of style, euphony, and the intended degree of formality.

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English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Phrase origin Usage

Should we watch our language?

Q: My question concerns your recent article about the origins of “Johnny-come-lately.” How is this grammar? You should watch your language!

A: As the banner on our website indicates, we answer questions on “grammar, etymology, usage, and more.”

Many of our readers write in to ask about the origins of various expressions and slang terms.

Others ask about problems in grammatical structure—sequence of tenses, problems with pronoun case, and so on.

Still others write us with questions about spelling, pronunciation, punctuation, and plural formation, and ask about how such usages developed.

A reader of the blog once asked us why we use the term “grammarphobia,” not “grammarphilia,” in the name of our website.

As we said in a posting six years ago, the name of the website comes from the subtitle of Pat’s 1996 book, Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English.

The website, like the book, tries to explain grammar (and other language issues) in terms that won’t intimidate grammarphobes, and won’t turn off grammarphiles.

By the way, we can’t take credit for coining either “grammarphobe” or “grammarphobia.”

Steven Pinker uses “grammarphobe” in his 1994 book The Language Instinct: “And who can blame the grammarphobe, when a typical passage from one of Chomsky’s technical works reads as follows?”

(The passage that follows includes terms like “L-markers,” “chain coindexing,” and “head-head agreement.”)

As for “grammarphobia,” we’ve found examples of the usage in two words (“grammar phobia”) or hyphenated (“grammar-phobia”) dating back to the 1920s and ’30s.

The single-word version (“grammarphobia”) showed up in print in the mid-1990s, about 10 years before we began using it on our website.

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English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage

Is there a “their” there?

[Note: An updated post on this same subject was published on May 22, 2017.]

Q: I love your Language Myths page. It’s so refreshing to see language mavens allow English some wiggle room! However, I still cringe at some current trends, like the use of the plural pronoun “they” with a singular subject. I don’t have the heart to recalibrate my internal editor to accept this change. I’d love to hear what you think about it.

A: This is a tough one, but you shouldn’t recalibrate your inner editor just yet (but stay tuned).

Almost everyone it seems (especially in speech, if not in writing) uses “they/them/their” at some time or another in reference to a singular, indefinite someone. We occasionally catch ourselves in the act.

What’s indisputably true is that anyone who uses these plurals in this way is using at best casual, informal English. In formal, grammatically correct English, these are third-person plural pronouns, inappropriate in reference to a singular. 

We’ve written about this subject many times on our blog, including a post in 2008 and another in 2011. We’ve also written an article about it for the New York Times.

The plural pronouns “they,” “them,” and “their” were often used as indefinite singulars centuries ago, and are quite commonly used that way today in informal (some would say substandard) English. But in formal English, they’re restricted to the plural.

And anyone who wants to be correct without resorting to “he/she” or some variant can always recast the sentence and make the antecedent plural. Instead of “Every parent loves his or her (or their) child,” make it “All parents love their children.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) labels “they” as a “usage problem” when “used to refer to the one previously mentioned or implied, especially as a substitute for generic he.”

The dictionary gives this sentence as an example: “Every person has rights under the law, but they don’t always know them.”

In an excellent usage note, American Heritage explains that the “use of an ostensibly plural pronoun such as they, them, themselves, or their with a singular antecedent dates back at least to 1300.”

Over the years, the dictionary says, “such constructions have been used by many admired writers, including William Makepeace Thackeray (‘A person can’t help their birth’), George Bernard Shaw (‘To do a person in means to kill them’), and Anne Morrow Lindbergh (‘When you love someone you do not love them all the time’).

“The practice is so widespread both in print and in speech that it generally passes unnoticed,” AH continues. “Forms of they are useful as gender-neutral substitutes for generic he and for coordinate forms like his/her or his or her (which can sound clumsy, especially when repeated frequently). Nevertheless, many people avoid using forms of they with a singular antecedent out of respect for traditional pronoun agreement.”

The dictionary says most of its usage panel “still upholds the practice of traditional pronoun agreement, but in decreasing numbers.”

“In our 1996 survey, 80 percent rejected the use of they in the sentence A person at that level should not have to keep track of the hours they put in,” AH adds. “In 2008, however, only 62 percent of the Panel still held this view, and by 2011, just 55 percent disapproved of the sentence Each student must have their pencil sharpened.”

In 2008, the dictionary notes, a majority of the panel “accepted the use of they with antecedents such as anyone and everyone, pronouns that are grammatically singular but carry a plural meaning. Some 56 percent accepted the sentence If anyone calls, tell them I can’t come to the phone, and 59 percent accepted Everyone returned to their seats.”

American Heritage’s conclusion:

“The trend, then, is clear. Writers who choose to use they with a singular antecedent should rest assured that they are in good company—even if a fair number of traditionalists still wince at the usage. For those who wish to adhere to the traditional rule, one good solution is to recast the sentence in the plural: People at that level should not have to keep track of the hours they put in.”

In other words, write around the problem. We hope this helps, though it’s probably not as clear-cut an answer as you’d like.

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