Category: Grammar

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English English language Etymology Grammar Punctuation Usage

A sense of wonder

Q: I was typing out dialogue for a play, and wrote this sentence: “I wonder who they’ll move into Mr. Anderson’s cubicle?” I see dialogue like this all the time, written as if the speaker is asking a question. But then it struck me; is this truly a question? Should it be punctuated with a question mark or a period?

A: Obviously, someone who wonders about something has a question on his mind.

But a sentence beginning “I wonder” is a statement, not a question, and a statement should end with a period: “I wonder who they’ll move into Mr. Anderson’s cubicle.” (In case any readers are wondering, we’ll discuss “who” versus “whom” later.)

This is an example of an indirect question, and as The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.) says, “An indirect question never takes a question mark.”

The Chicago Manual gives these examples of indirect questions: “He wondered whether it was worth the risk” and “How the two could be reconciled was the question on everyone’s mind.”

This is a subject we touched on in 2010, but it’s worth mentioning again.

Sometimes a mini-question (like the single word “who,” “when,” “how,” or “why”) is embedded within a statement. Here, too, no question mark is used, though the word may be italicized.

The Chicago Manual illustrates this with two examples: “She asked herself why” and “The question was no longer how but when.”

Similarly, as Chicago says, “A request disguised as a question does not require a question mark.”

A typical example: “Would you kindly respond by March 1.”

So much for indirect questions. But as conscientious language mavens, we should mention one other point about your sentence, “I wonder who they’ll move into Mr. Anderson’s cubicle.”

A purist would remind you that technically, the grammatical construction calls for “whom” instead of “who.” But we believe that “who” can be defended here.

As we’ve written before on our blog, in speech or in casual writing it can seem stuffy and unnatural to begin a sentence or clause with “whom.” So in what appears to be an informal office conversation, you can certainly justify your use of “who” instead.

By the way, the verb “wonder” is very old, dating back to
Anglo-Saxon days. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from King Alfred’s translation of Boethius into Old English, circa 888, when “to wonder” meant to be struck with surprise or astonishment.

The noun “wonder” is even older, according to OED citations, first appearing in “Caedmon’s Hymn,” an Old English poem from around 700, when it referred to something that causes astonishment.

The noun (wunder in Old English) is similar to words in Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old High German, and other Germanic languages.

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English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Spelling Usage

Equatorial currents

Q: When did “Ecuadoran” become “Ecuadorian”? Why do we need “Ecuadorian”? It sounds illiterate, Bushlike.

A: We’re sorry to be the bearers of bad news, but we checked half a dozen dictionaries and none of them consider “Ecuadoran” the preferred  English adjective or noun for Ecuador and its citizens.

Most of the dictionaries list “Ecuadorian” as the standard noun and adjective. The most common alternative given is the spelling variant “Ecuadorean.”

The two standard dictionaries we consult the most—The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.)—don’t include “Ecuadoran” as a variant. Neither does the Oxford English Dictionary.  

We could find only two standard dictionaries that consider “Ecuadoran” a variant spelling: the Collins English Dictionary and Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th ed.).

In the OED’s entry for “Ecuadorian,” the earliest example of the adjective (defined as “of, belonging to, or characteristic of Ecuador”) is from an 1860 issue of The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London.

The earliest example of the noun (“a native or inhabitant of Ecuador”) is from an 1861 issue of the same journal.

Though the spellings do vary a bit in the OED’s earliest examples (“Equatorian,” “Ecuatoreans,” etc.), the number of syllables is consistent, and all entries end in either “-ian” or
“-ean.”

As the OED explains, the suffixes “-ian” and “-an” are used to form adjectives and nouns that convey the meaning “of or belonging to.” Some words have the extra letter (“Parisian,” “Bostonian,” “Italian”) and some use the shorter “-an” suffix (“American,” “Ohioan,” “Roman”).

Not surprisingly, the word ecuador is Spanish for “equator,” the imaginary circle that divides the earth into northern and southern hemispheres. And Ecuador is one of 14 countries through which the equator passes.

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English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Phrase origin Usage

Why is a turkey leg a drumstick?

Q: I have a Thanksgiving question: Why is a turkey leg called a “drumstick”? Why not a “club” or a “bat” or a “bowling pin”?

A: You’re right. The leg of a turkey isn’t as long and skinny as a real drumstick. Even the bone alone isn’t quite like a drumstick—it has big knobs at each end instead of a single knob or padded head.

So calling this part of the bird a  “drumstick” seems to be stretching a metaphor. But why use a metaphor at all?

Etymologists think that people started calling this part of a fowl the  “drumstick” because the word “leg” wasn’t polite table talk in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Neither were the words “thigh” and “breast,” so discreet (OK, prudish) diners referred to them as “dark meat” and “white meat.”

Sometimes the breast of the turkey was referred to as—ahem—the “bosom.” And occasionally the term “upper joint” was used instead of “thigh,” and “lower joint” or “limb” instead of “leg.”

Yes, really. There actually was a time when “leg,” “breast,” and “thigh” were considered too coarse for the ears of ladies and unfit for mixed company.

The word “drumstick,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was first used in the mid-18th century  to mean “the lower joint of the leg of a dressed fowl.”

The OED’s earliest citation is from Samuel Foote’s play The Mayor of Garret (1764): “She always helps me herself to the tough drumsticks of turkies.”

Our fellow word maven Hugh Rawson recently discussed
dinner-table euphemisms like these on the Cambridge Dictionaries Online blog.

As he writes, “By the end of the eighteenth century, drumstick was being used by the authors of cookbooks, and it eventually was lumped in with other dinner-table euphemisms.”

Rawson cites a lecture, “The Laws of Disorder,” by the Unitarian minister and speaker Thomas Starr King, who died in 1864: “There are so many that love white meat, so many that can eat nothing but dark meat, two that prefer a wing, two that lie in wait for drumsticks.”

Such terms, particularly in America, made table talk easier for everyone, Rawson explains: “Polite guests at American tables knew that asking a poultry-serving hostess for white meat instead of ‘breast meat,’ dark meat instead of a ‘thigh’ and a drumstick in place of a ‘leg’ saved embarrassment all around.”

The 19th-century British novelist and naval captain Frederick Marryat pokes fun at this kind of squeamishness in Peter Simple (1834). In one episode, Rawson points out, the novel’s hero describes a dinner party on the island of Barbados.

“It was my fate to sit opposite a fine turkey, and I asked my partner if I should have the pleasure of helping her to a piece of breast. She looked at me very indignantly, and said ‘Curse your impudence, sar, I wonder where you larn your manners. Sar, I take a lily turkey bosom, if you please. Talk of breast to a lady, sar! – really quite horrid.’ ”

The OED cites another example from Marryat’s works as an example of “limb” as a euphemism for “leg,” a usage it describes as “now only (esp. U.S.) in mock-modest or prudish use.”

In his book A Diary in America: With Remarks on Its Institutions (1839), Marryat says a young American woman told him that “leg” was not used before ladies; the polite term was “limb.” She added: “I am not so particular as some people are, for I know those who always say limb of a table, or limb of a piano-forte.”

That example, like several others from the OED, seems to have been used with humorous intent.

For example, Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his novel Elsie Venner (1861), has this bit of dinner-table conversation: “A bit of the wing, Roxy, or the—under limb?”

And John S. Farmer, in his Slang and Its Analogues, Past and Present (1885), uses this illustration: “Between you’n me, red stockings ain’t becomin’ to all—ahem—limbs.”

Euphemistic language has proven itself useful, not just at the dinner table. It comes in handy for swearing, too.

We’ve written before on our blog about euphemistic oaths like “doggone it,” and “gosh a’mighty,” milder substitutes for “God damn it” and “God almighty.”

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Putting an adverb in its place

Q: An über-editor at the New York Times recently criticized the placement of “also” in this sentence from the paper: “Among them are Facebook and Google, which also have redesigned their hardware.” He wrote on a Times blog that “it’s smoother to place the adverb between parts of the verb: ‘which have also redesigned.’ ” Always? Your thoughts?

A: Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, made his comment on the paper’s After Deadline blog, which is adapted from a weekly newsroom critique he oversees.

What do we think of the advice he offers in his Oct. 2, 2012, posting?

Well, it’s true that “also” often sounds better between the parts of a verb phrase (“have also redesigned”). But there’s no rule that says “also” can’t come first (“also have redesigned”).

In fact, many writers deliberately put “also” and other adverbs before both the auxiliary and main verb in a misguided effort to avoid splitting a verb phrase.

As we say on our Language Myths page, the belief that it’s wrong to split the parts of a verb phrase is a byproduct of the infamous myth against splitting an infinitive.

However, the question of where to place “also” in a sentence like the one cited on the Times blog can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.”

In an informal survey of Google Books, scholarly journals, and general writing on the Web, we found no single pattern for the placement of “also” in relation to verb phrases.

Educated writers use “also” before verb phrases, in the middle of them, and even at the beginning of sentences.

In our opinion, the best place to put “also” is where it seems most natural and makes the most sense.

The linguists Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum say that “only rather broad and approximate flexible generalisations” can be made about the placement and order of adverbs.

“There is a great deal of variation in use,” Huddleston and Pullum write in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, “and features of context, style, prosody, and euphony play a role in some decisions.”

They say that adverbs like “always,” “usually,” “often,” “sometimes,” “never,” “possibly,” “probably,” and “certainly” tend to precede a single verb (as in “they probably go”) and to follow an auxiliary (“they have probably gone”).

But they note that these adverbs can sometimes precede the auxiliary in verb phrases (as in, “they probably have gone”).

The position of the adverb here affects its “emphatic polarity”—that is, the part of the sentence that the adverb influences.

As for “also,” Huddleston and Pullum describe it as a “focusing modifier” because it can focus on different parts of the sentence.

Sometimes, however, it’s not clear which part “also” is focusing on. The Cambridge Grammar illustrates this ambiguity with the example “Jill had also attended the history seminar.”

As the authors point out, that sentence can be interpreted in different ways. Does it mean Jill, as well as other people, attended? Or that she attended other seminars too? Or perhaps that she did other things besides attending a seminar?

In that example, “also” is unavoidably ambiguous. It wouldn’t have helped much to move it around. But sometimes the placement of “also” makes a difference.

Take, for instance, the phrases “also have worked” and “have also worked.” We can imagine sentences in which one might be preferred over the other:

(1) “I have traveled in Italy, and I also have worked there.” (Here, “also” focuses on the entire verb phrase “have worked” rather than on the main verb, “worked.” As a result, the two verb phrases, “have traveled” and “have worked” are parallel.)

 (2) “I have worked in Greece, and I have also worked in Italy.” (Here, “also” focuses on the main verb “worked,” emphasizing that the writer has worked in two different countries. So the two phrase “worked in Greece” and “worked in Italy” are parallel.)

We’re talking about subtle differences. And other writers might prefer “also” in different places in those sentences. The point is that moving “also” can change its focus, its orientation to one part of a sentence or another.

As we noted above, the use of “also” with a verb phrase is often ambiguous. And it’s ambiguous in that sentence from the Times: “Among them are Facebook and Google, which also have redesigned their hardware.”

Have companies OTHER than Facebook and Google redesigned their hardware? Or have Facebook and Google redesigned things OTHER than their hardware?

Here’s the entire paragraph, from a Sept. 22, 2012, article about how Internet data centers pollute the environment:

“A few companies say they are using extensively re-engineered software and cooling systems to decrease wasted power. Among them are Facebook and Google, which also have redesigned their hardware. Still, according to recent disclosures, Google’s data centers consume nearly 300 million watts and Facebook’s about 60 million watts.”

Sometimes context can help clear up an ambiguity. But in this case, the context doesn’t help. We still can’t tell where the emphasis of “also” belongs.

If the reporter means that Facebook and Google, like some other companies, have revamped their software and cooling systems, that sentence could simply read “Among them are Facebook and Google.” Period.

But you know what? At some point, questions like this make us cross-eyed. And that point has been reached!

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Did Winston want discipline?

Q: I was listening to a Churchill biography in which someone older says Winston wants discipline. In fact, that’s the last thing he wanted. But the context suggests that “wants” here means both “lacks” and “needs.” Is this a British usage?

A: We think so, and so do two of the UK dictionaries we checked (Collins and Macmillan), which describe it as “mainly British.”

Collins, for example, gives this example of the British usage: “your shoes want cleaning.”

However, all the US dictionaries we consulted include, without qualification, “need” and “lack” among the definitions of the verb “want”—that is, they consider those meanings standard American English.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) gives this example: “the motor wants a tune-up.”

And The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) gives this one: “ ‘Your hair wants cutting,’ said the Hatter” (Lewis Carroll).

Of course that American Heritage example is from a British writer. And we see the “need” and “lack” senses of “want” a lot more in British writing than in American.

In fact, all but one of the 14 citations in the Oxford English Dictionary for the “lack” sense are from British writers. And all of the OED’s 21 citations for the “need” sense are British.

“Etymologically,” John Ayto writes in his Dictionary of Word Origins, “to want something is to ‘lack’ it (a sense still intact in the noun want).”

As Ayto explains, the common contemporary sense of the verb (to desire to have or do something) “is a secondary extension” of the earlier “lack” usage.

He says English adopted “want” from vanta, an Old Norse verb meaning to lack, which in turn came from a prehistoric Germanic word reconstructed as wanaton (lacking).

The ultimate source of “want,” according to Ayto, is the prehistoric Indo-European root wan, which has also given English the verb “wane.”

The OED says the verb “want” entered English around 1200 with the “lack” sense, which the dictionary defines this way: “Not to have; to be without, to lack; to have too little of; to be destitute of, or deficient in; to fail to have, or get.”

Oxford’s earliest citation is from the Ormulum, a collection of Middle English homilies explaining biblical texts: “All thatt wannteth cristess hald / All sinnketh inn till helle.” (We’ve changed the runic letter thorn to “th.”)

The OED defines the “need” sense, which appeared in the late 1400s, this way: “To suffer the want of; to have occasion for, need, require; to stand in need of (something salutary, but often not desired).”

Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 3 (circa 1591): “Oh welcome Oxford, for we want thy helpe.”

Although Americans sometimes say things like “The house wants cleaning,” they usually say “The house needs cleaning” or “The house needs to be cleaned.”

We wrote a post on the blog some time ago about a related regional usage in the US: “The house needs cleaned.”

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Not for the squeamish?

Q: A colleague and I are debating whether “of” is a proper preposition to follow “squeamish.” I believe a subject can be “squeamish of” an object. He thinks it should be “squeamish about” it. Thoughts?

A: You’re both right. The Oxford English Dictionary says “squeamish” is normally used with “about,” “as to,” “at,” “of,” “to,” or “toward.”

The adjective began life in the early 1300s as “squeamous,” adopted from the Anglo-Norman escoymous, which the OED describes as “of obscure origin.”

The word with the “-ish” suffix first showed up in the 1400s.

Although both the “-ous” and “-ish” suffixes coexisted for several centuries in various spellings of the word, the versions with “-ous” are now considered obsolete or dialectal.

The adjective meant disdainful or fastidious when it entered English, but it took on the additional sense of easily shocked or prudish in the 1500s.

Here’s the earliest OED example for “squeamish” used with each of its prepositions:

1608: “If we would … not be so squeamish as to refuse those wholesome medicines which are easie to be had.” (From Edward Topsell’s Historie of Serpents; Or, the Second Booke of Living Creatures.)

Before 1625: “If you please sir; I am not squeamish of my visitation.” (From The Womans Prize, a comedy by John Fletcher.)

1654: “Squemish towards the present, and longing for Innovation.” (From Zootomia, a treatise by Richard Whitlock.)

1676: “When they are nice, curious, and squeamish about undetermined circumstances in forms of administration.” (From a speech about religious nonconformists, by William Allen.)

1784: “We found that he was too squeamish to drink turtle’s blood.” (From A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, by James Cook and James King.)

1843: “But now the uneasy stomach of the time / Turns squeamish at them both.” (From “A Glance Behind the Curtain,” a poem by James Russell Lowell.)

We get many questions, both from native speakers of English and from newcomers to the language, about the sometimes perplexing use of prepositions.

The book Words Into Type (3rd ed.), familiar to journalists, has a handy section called “The Right Preposition,” consisting of a long list of words together with the prepositions they usually take. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include “squeamish.”

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English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Phrase origin

Did you early vote?

Q: President Obama “early voted,” or that’s how he put it, rather than “voted early.” And he’s not the only one. A distinction without a difference? Or do we have a new, and rather awkward, phrasal verb crafted out of the noun phrase “early voting”?

A: As you’ve noticed, President Obama isn’t the only person to say he “early voted” after casting a ballot well ahead of the big day. The verb phrase to “early vote” (past tense “early voted”) was all over the airwaves this fall.

As a contributor to the American Dialect Society’s mailing list recently noted, the MSNBC commentator “Rachel Maddow used the verb ‘to early-vote’ and the past participle ‘early-voted’ many times in the week leading up to the election.”

But this wasn’t the first election cycle for the verb “early vote.” The subject came up in the fall of 2008 as well.

Back then the linguist Arnold Zwicky, writing on both the Language Log and the ADS list, commented on usages like “We early voted Friday” and “Thousands line up to early vote.”

Zwicky also noted a few instances of “to absentee vote” (as in “You can also absentee vote this week”) as well as some for “to advance vote.”

What goes on here?

“These formations look to me not like an unusual placement of the modifiers ‘early’ and ‘absentee,’ ” Zwicky wrote in 2008, “but rather like back-formations” from noun phrases like “early voting,” “early voter,” “absentee voting,” and “absentee voter.”

(A back-formation is a new term formed by dropping part of an old one.)

Zwicky explains why he thinks the verb “early vote” makes sense: “There’s a clear advantage to having such a unit, since ‘vote early’ could refer to voting early on election day, while ‘early vote’ refers specifically to institutionalized procedures for voting before election day.”

We agree with Zwicky about the origin of to “early vote”— that it’s a back-formation from the nouns “early voting” and “early voter.”

Since writing about “early vote,” Zwicky has written about similar formations, which he calls “two-part back-formed verbs.”

In a 2009 post on his own blog, he gave dozens of examples, some familiar and some more recent, including “to gay marry” (from “gay marriage”); “to spellbind” (from “spellbinding”); “to bartend” (from “bartender”); “to fence-sit” (from “fence-sitting”); “to air-condition” (from “air-conditioner”); “to offshore drill” (from “offshore drilling”); “to substitute teach” (from “substitute teacher”), and others.

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“In” a paper vs. “on” the Net

Q: Why is something “in” a newspaper but “on” the Internet, or “in” a movie” but “on” television?

A: The prepositions “in” and “on” have had many different meanings since they showed up in Anglo-Saxon times, though they were sometimes used interchangeably in Old English.

In the simplest terms, “in” refers to being within a given space while “on” refers to being on top of it. However, these two words are often used idiomatically—that is, in unusual or distinctive ways.

H.W. Fowler, in The King’s English, says there are so many idiomatic uses of prepositions that it would be impossible for dictionaries, grammar books, or usage guides to cite all of them.

We won’t use Fowler, though, as an excuse to avoid answering your question.

When the preposition “in” entered English sometime before the year 700, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it referred to being within an actual place, such as a house, a forest, a cave, and so on.

By the late 800s, though, people began using “in” more loosely to refer to being within things like a book or the writings of an author. The preposition is being used in this sense when we say something is “in” a movie or an article or a newspaper.

But why, you ask, do we say something is “on” the Internet or “on” television?

In early Old English, according to the OED, the preposition “on” meant to be on the upper surface of a physical thing.

Over the years, though, people began using the preposition figuratively to refer to a judge “on the bench,” a truant “on the carpet,” a job applicant “on tenterhooks,” and so on.

In the late 19th century, English speakers started using “on” to refer to a medium of communications—the telephone at first, then radio, television, and the Internet.

The earliest written example of this usage in the OED is from Ogilvie’s Imperial Dictionary (1882): “Telephonist, a person versed in telephony, or who operates on the telephone.”

The next OED citation, from a 1929 letter by the English artist Roger Eliot Fry, refers to being on the radio: “I have still two ‘talks’ hanging over me—one at the Athenaeum Club and one on the wireless.”

And here’s a television example, from Up Your Banners, a 1969 novel by Donald E. Westlake: “The beautician hollered from the living room, ‘Leona, come quick! You’re on the TV!’ ”

In case you’d like to read more, we had a post in 2009 about “on” television versus “at” a movie house. And we had an item in 2008 about some of the idiomatic use of prepositions.

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English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Pronunciation Punctuation Slang Spelling Usage

Pat in NY Times on Web. 3 furor

Read Pat’s review in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review on the furor over Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. She’s reviewing The Story of Ain’t: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published, by David Skinner.

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Is this not cool?

Q: I was listening to the radio the other day when Michelle Obama met a bunch of kids and said, “Is this not cool?” Now, I’ve heard this before and it was obvious from her tone that she meant “Isn’t this cool?” But once I turned off the radio, I started to think about the strangeness of this structure. What exactly is that “not” doing? How is it doing what it’s doing? And why is its meaning so obvious? Or is it?

A: In her remarks at a White House state dinner for kids last August, Michele Obama could have said, “Isn’t this cool?” But instead she made good use of a common rhetorical device and chose “Is this not cool?”

You’re right to think that something’s going on here with “not.” Mrs. Obama’s choice of words called attention to “not,” thus compelling her audience to agree with her.

As you know, a negative verb used in a question can be either contracted or uncontracted. Someone could say “Isn’t this the best lasagna you’ve ever had?” or “Is this not the best lasagna you’ve ever had?”

While the two questions are grammatically equivalent, there’s a rhetorical difference between them. The second example is more emphatic.

Rather than simply asking a question, it seems to be urging agreement with an implied statement, as if the speaker had said, “This is the best lasagna, you must agree.”

One reason the uncontracted form seems more emphatic is that the subject (“this”) changes places. Instead of “Isn’t this …” we have “Is this not ….”

The result is that instead of being buried within the contraction, “not” emerges as a word on its own, and in a more noticeable position to boot.

As Sidney Greenbaum writes in the Oxford English Grammar, “In negative questions, contracted n’t is attached to the operator [the verb] and therefore comes before the subject, whereas not generally follows the subject.”

Using some other examples, notice the contrast between the contractions and the stretched-out forms:

“Aren’t you a smarty-pants?” … “Are you not a smarty-pants?”

“Isn’t she the best teacher?” … “Is she not the best teacher?”

“Aren’t I cool?” … “Am I not cool?”

As it turns out, this emphasis on “not” is more effective in some sentences than in others. In the “smarty-pants” example, for instance, it would be more effective to emphasize the pronoun (as if to say, “Aren’t YOU a smarty-pants?”) than the “not.”

In English, a word’s position in relation to others—that is, its syntax—can play an important role in the meaning of a sentence or a phrase. And the choice of a contracted or an uncontracted verb is a good illustration of this principle.

Update: A reader of the blog reminds us of these lines from Shylock in The Merchant of Venice: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? / if you tickle us, do we not laugh? / if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

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Does “sign off on” tick you off?

Q: When I was in the Carter administration, one of the most grating forms of bureaucratese was “sign off on.” The other day, I noticed with alarm that a Wall Street Journal article stated, “The board would have to sign off on any deal.” Am I too squeamish? Is “sign off on” now standard English?

A: Yes, you’re being too squeamish. There’s nothing wrong with “sign off on,” though some people might consider the usage colloquial—that is, more appropriate to speech or informal writing.

If what bugs you is the apparent contradiction of the words “off” and “on” in that Journal article, there is no contradiction.

The word “off” here is an adverb used in the sense of “to a finish” (as in “drink off,” “sign off,” “pay off,” and so on). The word “on” here is a preposition meaning “with reference to,” “concerning” or “about” (as in “He refused to comment on the bailout”).  

There are many examples of such apparently contradictory terms used in a legitimate way. A speaker may go “off on” a tangent, a ballplayer go “out in” a blaze of glory, and a soggy person come “in out” of the rain.

The verbal phrase “sign off” by itself means to conclude or to end a communication (as in “Click here to sign off”). The verbal phrase “sign off on” means to express approval (as in “Click here to sign off on the terms of use”).

The phrase “sign off on” originated in the US in the first half of the 20th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED defines is as meaning “to assent or give one’s approval to, by or as if by signing an agreement.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation for the phrase is from a 1930 issue of the New York Times: “Princeton has signed off on graduate coaching for baseball.”

In this 1973 citation from the New Yorker, the writer felt it necessary to explain the term:

“The military bureaucracy, most notably the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would have to ‘sign off’ on (Washington jargon for ‘approve’) the American proposal.”

That citation suggests that “sign off on” was common in government circles (though not with the general public) even before Jimmy Carter became president in 1977.

You ask whether “sign off on” is considered standard English. It’s certainly a common idiomatic usage, but lexicographers differ on whether it’s standard.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) labels it “informal,” but the OED and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) find it unremarkable and attach no usage label to it.

Under an entry for “sign off,” Merriam-Webster’s uses this example: “sign off on a memo.” We conclude that the OED and M-W consider it standard English.

And with that, we’ll sign off on your question.

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Hear Pat live today on WNYC

She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 PM Eastern time on Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012, to discuss the English language and take questions from callers. Today’s topic: an update on “the whole nine yards.” If you miss the program, you can listen to it on Pat’s WNYC page.

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Etymology Grammar Usage

A symptom of medical English

Q: I’m participating in a research project that uses a consent form with the following wording: “Only consent forms that include the Johns Hopkins Medicine logo should be used to consent research participants.” This is the first time I’ve seen “consent” used as a transitive verb.

A: Johns Hopkins is a distinguished medical institution. But its English? You were right to seek a second opinion.

Let’s take a look at the relevant sentence in that permission form (we’ll underline the odd usage):

“Only consent forms that include the Johns Hopkins Medicine logo should be used to consent research participants.”

There are two problems here—one of grammar and one of usage.

You’ve identified the grammar problem correctly. The hospital uses “consent” as a transitive verb, while in modern usage it’s intransitive.

We’ll pause here to explain our terms.

A transitive verb needs a direct object to make sense; it’s called “transitive” because the action is being transmitted from the subject to an object. But an intransitive verb doesn’t need an object to make sense.

Johns Hopkins used “consent” transitively. And it can’t be an accident since the same error occurs twice in the consent form. We were as startled by this as you were.

An intransitive verb like “consent” is often followed by a prepositional phrase (“consented to the sharing of information”), but never by a direct object (“consented the sharing of information”).

In addition to the screwy grammar, there’s also a usage problem. To “consent” is to give one’s consent, not to get the consent of another. It’s not the hospital that does the consenting, it’s the research participants.

Except for rare occasions, the verb “consent” has been intransitive since it entered English in the 1200s.

In today’s standard dictionaries, including The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), it’s intransitive, and means to agree or give assent to something.

Here are two early examples cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, one with a prepositional phrase and the other without:

From the Chronicle of Robert Mannyng (circa 1330): “Hir frendes alle consent.” (“Her friends all consent.”)

From the Wycliffe translation of the Bible (1382): “He consentide not to the counceil.” (“He consented not to the counsel.”)

We can’t resist this later (and more romantic) OED citation, from Lord Byron’s long poem Don Juan (1819): “A little still she strove, and much repented, / And whispering ‘I will ne’er consent’ —consented.”

This is generally the way the word has been used ever since—intransitively.

But for brief periods centuries ago, “consent” was sometimes used transitively, though such uses are now labeled obsolete in the OED.

Here’s an example, from Robert Parke’s 1588 translation of J. G. de Mendoza’s History of China: “In the end … they consented a conclusion amongest themselues.”

Even this construction would be in line with modern usage if one added the preposition “to” after the verb: “they consented to a conclusion.”

Our prescription for Johns Hopkins: Give your English a checkup. Think of it as preventive medicine.

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Etymology Grammar Punctuation Usage

Plural jam

Q: After being so careful to say “daughters-in-law” and “passersby,” it seems wrong to say “cupfuls” or “handfuls.” Can you explain?

A: The convention here, according to usage guides, is that you use a normal plural ending for a solid compound and that you pluralize the most important part of a compound that’s split into parts.

But what about “passersby”? It’s the exception that proves the rule (an expression we’ve discussed on the blog).

“Passerby” was two words when it first showed up in the 16th century as the plural “passers by,” according to published references in the Oxford English Dictionary.

A hyphenated version appeared in the mid-18th century and a one-word version in the late 20th century. When the hyphen was lost, though, the plural “s” remained in the middle of “passersby.”

Here’s how Pat, in her grammar and usage book Woe Is I, explains the pluralization of compound words:

“• If a compound word is solid and has no hyphen (-), put the normal plural ending at the end of the word:

Churchmen love soapboxes. Kipling appeals to schoolchildren and fishwives. Doormen are good at getting taxicabs. You don’t find Biedermeier bookcases in alleyways. Babies dump spoonfuls of jam on footstools.

“• If the word is split into parts, with or without hyphens, put the plural ending on the root or most important part (underlined in the examples):

Mothers-in-law like to attend courts-martial. Are they ladies-in-waiting or just hangers-on? Those counselors-at-law ate all the crêpes suzette. Do rear admirals serve on men-of-war?

“• Watch out for general when it’s part of a compound word. In a military title, general is usually the important part, so it gets the s. In a civilian title, general isn’t the root, so it doesn’t get the s:

Two attorneys general went dancing with two major generals. Those consuls general are retired brigadier generals.”

We’ve discussed hyphens and compound words many times on the blog, including a posting a couple of years ago.

As we said then, “Often nouns begin life as two separate words (like ‘home school’ and ‘try out’), then become hyphenated words (‘home-school,’ ‘try-out’), and finally lose their hyphens as they become more common (‘homeschool,’ ‘tryout’).”

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Etymology Grammar Poetry Usage

Till the cows come home

Q: Your posting about the grammar in Leigh Hunt’s “Jenny Kissed Me” reminds me of a similar singular/plural issue in the opening of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” I’ve seen both “wind” and “winds” in the second line, which makes me wonder if Gray himself might have written it both ways.

A: Let’s begin with the opening lines of the elegy, as they appear in our dusty copy of the Palgrave Golden Treasury:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

As you’ve noticed, however, the verb in the second line is “wind” in some published versions of the poem and “winds” in others.

Did Gray use both verbs at different times? No, the poet himself used only the plural verb “wind,” according to the Thomas Gray Archive, a digital collection supported by the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford.

Although the verb appears as “winds” in the first printed edition of the poem (published in 1751), it’s “wind” in Gray’s manuscripts and in all reprints of the “Elegy” approved by him.

Why “wind,” not “winds”?

The commentary on the poem in the Gray archive cites this analysis by William Lyon Phelps, editor of a late 19th-century collection of Gray’s works:

“ ‘Wind’ is better for two reasons: it is more melodious, as it avoids the hiss of a double s; it has more poetical connotation, for it suggests a long, slowly-moving line of cattle rather than a closely packed herd.”

Gray began working on the poem around 1745, according to the archive, and finished it early in June 1750.

But years earlier, Alexander Pope used a similar bovine image in his 1726 translation of the Odyssey: “As from fresh pastures and the dewy fields … The lowing herds return.”

We could go on about the elegy (the Gray archive is fascinating), but we’d be writing “till the cows come home,” an expression that first showed up in the early 1600s, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.

So let’s end with this cow-minded quip by Groucho Marx (a k a Rufus T. Firefly) in Duck Soup (1933): “I could dance with you till the cows come home. On second thought, I’d rather dance with the cows till you came home.”

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English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage

Hear Pat live today on WNYC

She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 PM Eastern time on Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012, to discuss the English language and take questions from callers. Today’s topic: Why do British pop stars sound American when they sing? If you miss the program, you can listen to it on Pat’s WNYC page.

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Etymology Grammar Usage

Ask us anytime (or any time?)

Q: My cousin and I were just reviewing a business letter, and the word(s) “any time” became a question: Is there a difference between “any time” and “anytime”?

A: The two-word version, “any time,” is a noun phrase that means something like “any amount of time” or “any particular time.”

Examples: “You never seem to have any time for your mother” … “Is there any time when you’re free next week?”

The single word, “anytime,” is an adverb (that is, it modifies a verb), and its meaning is similar to “whenever,” “on any occasion,” or “at any time.”

Examples: “You can call me anytime” … “Do this anytime your iPad freezes” … “He can sleep anytime.”

In her grammar and usage book Woe Is I (3rd ed.), Pat uses an example that combines the terms: “The boss will see you anytime she has any time.”

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage explains the use of these terms by citing the advice given by the language writer Edward D. Johnson.

In The Handbook of Good English (1982), Johnson says one word is all right when it can be replaced by the phrase “at any time,” but otherwise the two-word spelling should be used.

“Johnson’s rule of thumb is a sensible one,” M-W adds, “though occasionally it is not observed.”

Interestingly, “anytime” is a relatively recent usage.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) says the adverb dates back only to 1926, but the Oxford English Dictionary has an earlier, century-old example.

Under the OED entry for the verbal phrase “to send round” is this quotation from 1912: “I will leave the basket; you can send it round anytime. I will send round tomorrow to inquire how the patient is.”

Although “anytime” shows up in a couple of dozen OED citations, the dictionary doesn’t yet have an actual entry for the adverb.

It does, however, have entries for such compounds as “anyhow,” “anyhoo,” “anyplace,” “anyways,” “anywhat,” “anywhen,” “anywhence,,” “anywhither,” and “anywise.”

Some usage guides say “anytime” is typically American. For instance, Fowler’s Modern English Usage (revised 3rd ed.) says “anytime” (meaning “at any time”) is “another characteristically American adverb.”

So is “anytime” American? Well, many of the OED citations are American, but some are from British, Australian, South African, and other sources.

Other one-word adverbs favored by Americans, according to Fowler, are “anyplace” (in the sense of “anywhere”) and “anymore” (meaning “any longer”).

But Fowler adds that “anymore” is gaining acceptance with British writers and publishing houses.

We’ve written on our blog, by the way, about another use of “anymore”—to mean “now” or “nowadays.”

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Etymology Grammar Usage

None sense

Q: I was listening to a TED talk the other day when the presenter mentioned a few things and then said, “I want to talk about none of that.” Shouldn’t it be “I don’t want to talk about any of that”? It just struck me as odd. Hoping you can help.

A: There’s nothing wrong with saying, “I want to talk about none of that,” though (as you suggest) it may be more idiomatic in some cases to say, “I don’t want to talk about any of that” or “I don’t want to talk about any of those things.”

You probably wouldn’t find it odd, for example, to hear something like this: “At times I’ve felt all of that, and at other times I’ve felt none of that.”

Or something like this: “The pro at the golf club wanted to change Ben’s swing, stance, and grip, but he was having none of that.”

It seems to us that the use of “none” in those two examples (and perhaps in that TED talk) accentuates the negative. 

For readers who are unfamiliar with TED, it’s a nonprofit group (the acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design) that arranges conferences and makes talks available on video.

The word “none,” by the way, is one of the oldest English words and one of the most misunderstood.

A lot of people mistakenly believe that it’s always singular and always means not one. In fact, it’s usually plural and usually means not any (of a number of people or things), according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In Origins of the Specious, our book about language myths, we say “none” has been both singular and plural since Anglo-Saxon days:

“Alfred the Great used it as a plural back in the ninth century, when he translated a work by the Roman philosopher Boethius. Although the OED lists numerous examples of both singular and plural ‘nones’ since Alfred’s day, it says plurals have been more common, especially in modern times.”

If you’d like to read more about “none,” we’ve discussed it on the Language Myths page of our website as well as on the blog. And we had a posting last year about “having none of it.”

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Grammar

Whom truths

Q: Which is correct, “who” or “whom,” in the following sentence? “It involves all girls, of all races and backgrounds, many of who/whom are held back by societal barriers.”

A: It should be “whom.” The clause at the end of that sentence should read “ … many of whom are held back by societal barriers.”

As you know, a clause has its own subject and verb. In this clause, the subject is “many,” and the verb is “are.”

Don’t be misled 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.” The prepositional phrase beginning with “of” merely modifies the subject.

Grammarians say that in phrases like these, a word such as “some” or “many” is a quantifier; it expresses quantity. And the prepositional phrase “of whom” functions as a partitive; it hints at the whole of which only a part is being referred to.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language gives several examples of this kind of “preposition + whom” construction: “some of whom, all/both/many/few/none/two of whom, etc.”

In his book Essentials of English Grammar, Otto Jespersen illustrates the partitive use of the preposition “of” with these examples: “He had two daughters, both of whom were married. … He had two daughters, one of whom married a judge.”

A simpler way to look at all this might be to compare a similar clause: “Many of them are held back by societal barriers.”

Here too, the subject is “many,” and the prepositional phrase “of them” is a partitive.

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Grammar Usage

Guess who’s coming to dinner

Q: Would you ever use “Who are …” in a question? I always say “Who is …” even if I know the answer will be plural. For example, I’d say, “Who’s coming to dinner?” and not “Who are coming to dinner?”

A: We found an interesting juxtaposition of “who is” and “who are” in an old book, Richard Marsh’s Frivolities (1899). One character says, “It is they who are coming,” and the other replies, “And pray who is coming?”

The convention here is that in an interrogative sentence—one that asks a question—“who” (as well as “what”) is generally used with a singular verb, even when it’s understood that the pronoun refers to more than one person (or thing).

If the sentence were turned around and made declarative (that is, a statement rather than a question), a pronoun understood to be plural would be used with a plural verb.

That’s why we say things like “Who is [singular] complaining?” … “They’re the people who are [plural] complaining.” And “Who is [singular] at that table over there?” … “You must mean my neighbors, who are [plural] at the table by the door.”

As Bergen Evans and Cornelia Evans write in A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, “An interrogative pronoun is usually treated as a singular. That is, we may say who is coming? and what is in the box? regardless of how many people or things are to be expected.”

Note the word “usually” there, because this is not a universal rule with interrogative pronouns. The interrogative “who” is used with a plural verb, for instance, when plural elements are present. Examples: “Who are they?” … “Who are your favorite authors?”

The Evanses’ guide, by the way, was first published in the 1950s, but it’s still “contemporary” and sensible, and it’s worth picking up if you spot it in a sale of old books.

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Grammar Usage

Modal children

Q: What is the difference between “can” and “could” in these two pairs? (1) “You did the best you could” … “You did the best you can.” (2) “Can you please wash the floor?” … “Could you please wash the floor?”

A: “Could” differs from “can” in two respects: it’s not only the past-tense form of “can” but it sometimes represents a change in attitude as well.

The two sets of examples you’ve given illustrate these aspects very nicely.

Let’s start with your first pair: “You did the best you could” and “You did the best you can.”

The first sentence is correct. It’s written in the past tense (“You did the best …”), and the tense of the auxiliary verb matches (“you could”).

But in the second sentence, the sequence of tenses is askew. If the sentence began with the present (“You do the best …”), the tense of the auxiliary verb would match (“… you can”).

An English teacher would tell you that “can” and “could” are modal auxiliary verbs. The term isn’t as intimidating as it sounds.

They’re “auxiliary” because they’re what people sometimes call helping verbs, always used with another verb whether present or implied (in your first set of examples, there’s an implied “do” at the end).

And they’re “modal” because (like the pairs “will/would,” “shall/should,” and “may/might”) they add a dimension or modality to the verb they help along. They add the notion of probability, necessity, permission, or obligation.

Here’s how the different forms of these verbs are used to refer to present and to past time:

Present: “They say you can [will/shall/may] get there on time.”

Past: “They said you could [would/should/might] get there on time.”

So much for the past-tense aspect of “could.” Now it’s time for a change of attitude.

Let’s look at your second set of sentences: “Can you please wash the floor?” and “Could you please wash the floor?”

Both sentences are correct. “Can you …?” and “Could you …?” here mean “Is it possible for you to …?”

But the two sentences reflect different attitudes on the part of the speaker. We sometimes use “could” instead of “can” when we want to be more tactful or polite.

As Sidney Greenbaum writes in the Oxford English Grammar, the past-tense forms “could” and “would” may be used to refer to present or future action “as a more tentative or more polite alternative to the present tense.”

For example, “Could you pass the salt?” is more polite than “Can you pass the salt?” And “Would you help me?” is more deferential than “Will you help me?”

We touched on this subject once before, in a posting about the phrase “would like.”

As we wrote in that blog item, the authors of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language say that “would” often “introduces a rather vague element of tentativeness, diffidence, extra politeness, or the like.” The same might be said of “could.”

We’ve barely scratched the surface here, but we hope this answers your questions.

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Grammar

Coming to terms

Q: In a recent post, you agreed with a questioner that the instructor on a grammar video was wrong to refer to a prepositional phrase as an indirect object. As a 20-year veteran of college-prep ESL, I think the instructor may have known the correct terminology but simplified his explanation. I’ve found that grammar terms are unbearably confusing and intimidating to most students in the classroom.

A: We certainly agree that grammatical terminology can be “unbearably confusing and intimidating” (that goes double for those studying English as a second language). And proper grammar can often be explained without using bewildering terms.

This is what inspired Pat to write Woe Is I, which is an attempt to make problems in English understandable—to put “Better English in Plain English,” as the subtitle says. Although the book oten mentions grammatical terms, it always explains them in plain English.

But readers of our blog sometimes (in fact, quite often) ask questions that require a close analysis of what’s going on grammatically. And while we try to answer as clearly and plainly as possible, we have to beware of oversimplification.

As we say in the posting that got your attention, the sentence “I gave the book to her” can be used instead of “I gave her the book.” In the first sentence, “to her” is a prepositional phrase; in the second, “her” is an indirect object.

We explain that “a prepositional phrase can be used in place of an indirect object,” and “you might even say that the indirect object in this sentence has been paraphrased as a prepositional phrase.”

But we were asked a specific question about terminology. And it would not be correct to say that the prepositional phrase IS an indirect object.

We do sympathize with teachers who try to make English as plain and simple as possible—we do too! But we think it can be done without letting an error slip in because of oversimplification.

Thanks for your comments. And don’t hesitate to let us hear from you again.

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English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage

Meet Pat today in New York

She’ll be at the Mid-Manhattan Library, 40th St. and Fifth Ave., on Wednesday, July 18, 2012, at 6:30 p.m. to discuss “The Ear of the Beholder: What Makes a Word Beautiful?”

Everybody, it seems, has a favorite word or two.  For some people, a beautiful word is one that means something beautiful to them—like “bucolic” or “love.”

For others, music is everything, and a word isn’t beautiful unless it has a pleasing blend of sounds—like “cellar-door.”

Some words satisfy both camps; they not only sound pleasing, but they have emotional associations that add to their beauty. Henry James’s favorite phrase, “summer afternoon,” comes to mind.

In her talk, Pat will discuss notions about beauty in language, and share her thoughts about what makes a word beautiful.

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Grammar Usage

Are you for sure about that?

Q: I have a close friend and any number of acquaintances who say “I’m not for sure” when they’re not certain about something. I hold my tongue, but that “for” is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Is there anything remotely correct about it?

A: The prepositional phrase “for sure” is generally used as an adverb, not as an adjective.

So a sentence like “I don’t know for sure that it’s true” is idiomatically normal. (“For sure” functions as an adverb modifying the verb “know.”)

But a sentence like “I’m not for sure that it’s true” seems off-kilter. (“For sure” here functions as an adjective.)

Obviously, “for” is redundant in the adjectival usage. In sentences like “I’m sure” and “I’m not sure,” the adjective “sure” is sufficient. It follows the verb “be” and thus it essentially modifies the subject.

Yet many people add “for,” as in “I’m for sure we’re going to be late” … “I’m not for sure where I left my keys.”

The negative version is especially common. In a Google search, “I’m for sure” got 1.6 million hits while “I’m not for sure” turned up 4.7 million.

Why does “for” creep into the picture? We suspect this trend was influenced by other common uses of “for sure.”

These include the colloquial expression “that’s for sure,” generally used alone or placed at the end of a sentence. This is another adjectival usage.

But in the other familiar usages, “for sure” functions as an adverb, since it modifies a verb. Examples: “She’s going for sure” … “He can’t say for sure” … “They’ll know for sure” … “Tell them for sure that you’re quitting.” Such usages often intensify or add emphasis to a statement.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) labels this adverbial use of “for sure” informal and defines it as meaning “certainly” or “unquestionably.”

The Oxford English Dictionary labels it colloquial and says it means “as or for a certainty, undoubtedly.”

In its entry for the preposition “for,” the OED says it’s sometimes used adverbially before an adjective to create a sense of “attributed or assumed character.”

This kind of construction is evident in many familiar verb phrases—not only “to know for sure” and “to say for certain,” but also “to take for granted,” “to leave for dead,” “to give it up for lost,” and “to take … for better or for worse,” from the marriage vow in the Book of Common Prayer (1549).

In short, “for sure” often functions as an adverb and nobody finds that remarkable. But it’s less idiomatic when used as an adjective (as in “She’s for sure that it’s over”).

So far, we haven’t found any evidence that lexicographers or usage authorities have commented on the adjectival usage that bugs you.

What’s the conclusion? Well, it’s hard to ignore millions of Google hits, but we find “I’m for sure” and “I’m not for sure” to be unidiomatic. The “for” isn’t necessary and adds nothing. That’s for sure.

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Etymology Grammar Spelling Usage

The borne conspiracy

Q: I recently submitted an essay that discussed whether the French Revolution had sprung from the philosophical tenets of the Age of Reason. One sentence referred to the belief the revolution was so horrific that it “couldn’t be born of a time of reason.” I now wonder if I should have written “borne” instead of “born.” What are your thoughts?

A: You used “born” correctly in your essay. As we’ll explain later, “born of” is sometimes used figuratively to mean “sprung from.”

But first things first. The verb “bear” has two past participles that sound identical and look very similar: “borne” and “born.” You’re not alone in finding them confusing!

The thing to keep in mind is that “bear” has two distinct meanings: (1) to carry, support, endure, uphold, and so on; (2) to bring forth or give birth to.

The simple past tense, “bore,” is the same for both meanings, as in (1) “She bore a heavy burden” … “He proudly bore his father’s name”; (2) “The tree bore both flowers and fruit” … “She bore a child.”

But the past participles (the ones used with auxiliary verbs) differ.

“Borne” is used for all senses, both No. 1 and No. 2, when the auxiliary verb is a form of “have.” For example:

(1) “She had borne a heavy burden” … “He has proudly borne his father’s name”; (2) “The tree has borne both flowers and fruit” … “She had borne a child.”

The other form, “born,” is used only in passive constructions referring to birth (literally or figuratively), and is accompanied by a form of the verb “be”: “I was born in Cincinnati” … “Has the baby been born yet?” … “Puppies are born with their eyes closed” … “His wisdom was born of experience.” (Think of the familiar expression “Man is born of woman.” 

The differing forms have had a long and complicated history, with three past participles—“bore,” “borne,” and “born”—being shuffled like cards over the years since “bear” was first recorded in Old English (as beran) in Beowulf, perhaps as early as 725.

The various past participles didn’t sort themselves out until the mid-1700s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

That’s when “bore” disappeared as a past participle, leaving “borne” and “born,” which took on separate functions in conventional usage.

“Born,” according to convention, is used only in the sense of giving birth, either literally or figuratively, and only in the passive voice without the preposition “by” (“Sarah’s twin sons were born”).

“Borne” is used in every other sense—carrying, supporting, enduring, and giving birth in the active voice (“Sarah has borne twin sons”) or in the passive with “by” (“Twin sons were borne by Sarah”).

Getting back to your question, you used the word “born” correctly in your essay when you wrote that the revolution “couldn’t be born of a time of reason.”

As the OED says, “born” is used figuratively when it means “come into existence, sprung.”

The dictionary provides examples in which authors have used “born” figuratively as you did, including the following two:

“These distinctions, born of our unhappy contest” (from a speech on American taxation by the politician Edmund Burke, 1775).

“The Roman Empire and the Christian Church, born into the world almost at the same moment” (from Charles Kingsley’s novel Hypatia, 1853).

 If you’re still confused, here’s a tip: “born” is misused a lot more often than “borne.”

As the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage notes, “Our collection of errors shows that born is used in place of borne about twice as often as borne for born. The errors are both British and American.”

We hope we haven’t bored you! (No, the verbs “bear” and “bore” are not related.)

[Update, Sept. 17, 2021. A reader asks, “The 3M company has long used the tagline ‘Borne of Innovation.’ Shouldn’t that be ‘Born of Innovation’?” You are right. Used figuratively, “born of” means sprung from.  As we mentioned above, most people err in the other direction, using “born” where “borne” belongs. But here, it seems, 3M has taken innovation a step further!]

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Grammar Usage

Driver education

Q: I’m a court reporter, so it’s important to keep an accurate written record, but I’m always confused about “driver side” versus “driver’s side.” I have the same problem with “passenger side” and “passenger’s side.” What confuses me is that darned “s” in the word “side.” I’ve pulled out my hair in frustration many times.

A: It can be a tough job to translate speech into writing, and we’re not going to be of much help to you on that score. But as for grammar and usage, we can assure you of one thing: you can’t go wrong here.

Both “driver side” and “driver’s side” are fine, and both are quite common. People can correctly modify the noun “side” with whichever word they prefer—“driver” or “driver’s.”

In one case, the modifier is an adjective (in fact, an attributive noun, which is a noun used as an adjective); in the other, the modifier is a possessive adjective.

We use constructions like this all the time. Examples include “dog collar” vs. “dog’s collar,” and “ship captain” vs. “ship’s captain.” At times a speaker might prefer one, and at times the other.

The difference is clear when the word being modified doesn’t start with “s.” But when it does, as with “driver side” and “driver’s side,” the phrases sound virtually identical when spoken. That’s a real challenge to court reporters, who try to record speech in people’s exact words.

The best we can do is tell you how popular the various versions are.

A Google search shows that people prefer “driver side” to “driver’s side” by a margin of roughly two to one (25.7 million hits vs. 14.6 million).

People are much more emphatic in their preference for “passenger side” over “passenger’s side.” When we Googled both versions, “passenger side” was the preference by more than twenty to one (45.4 million hits vs. 2.1 million).

So we suppose you’d be justified in choosing the version that’s more prevalent in common usage.

We’ve written several times on the blog about attributive nouns, including postings in May and June of 2010.

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Grammar Usage

When the complement was roses

Q: I was taught (cue the “harrumph, harrumph”) that a “what” or “all” clause takes a singular verb: “What I’m asking for is people who follow the rules.” But all I hear now is plural verbs in these constructions. This is obviously a sign of the approach of the Last Days. Can you comment on this thrilling topic?

A: Your question raises two common problems in subject-verb agreement, a topic that can be notoriously confusing:

(1) When a subject is singular and its complement (the word or phrase that completes the sentence) is plural, do we use a singular or a plural verb? (The short answer: singular.)

(2) Are the pronouns “all” and “what” always singular and accompanied by a singular verb? (The short answer: no.)

Now on to the longer answers.

It can be hard to choose a verb when the subject of a sentence is clearly singular and the complement, on the other side of the verb, is clearly plural.

For example, should we say, “The thing that annoyed me most was the grammatical errors,” or “ … were the grammatical errors”?

The answer is “was.” As we’ve written before on the blog, the verb agrees with the subject, not its complement.

Here’s Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.): “When a subject and a complement of different number are separated by the verb to be, the verb should agree with the number of the subject.”

You might rephrase the sentence as “The grammatical errors were the thing that annoyed me most.” In that version, “errors” is the subject and “the thing that …” is the complement.

But correctness is one thing and graceful English is another. Even when it’s correct, a sentence whose subject and complement are different in number—one singular and the other plural—can sound awkward.

In this case, we’d advise substituting “what” for “the thing that,” since “what,” as we’ll explain below, can be construed as either singular or plural.

So we end up with “What annoyed me most were the grammatical errors” (or “The grammatical errors were what annoyed me most”).

Which brings us to problem No. 2: clauses beginning with “what or “all.”

A clause, as you know, is part of a sentence with its own subject and verb, and a clause that starts with “what” (or “all”) can present a thorny problem in subject-verb agreement.

Whether the “what” in such a clause is the subject or the object, the verb may be either singular or plural.

When “what” is the subject of the clause (and the same is true of “all”), it agrees in number—singular or plural—with the complement (as we said, the word or phrase that completes the sentence).

For example, both of these sentences are correct: “She’s eating what looks like caviar” … “She’s eating what look like tiny black marbles.” Note that “what” is construed as singular when the complement is singular, and plural when the complement is plural.

The situation is a bit more complicated when “what” (or “all”) is the object of a clause that is itself the subject of a sentence, like the one you mention: “What I’m asking for is/are people who follow the rules.”

The question here is what verb to use in the main clause. The complement is plural (“people who…”), so we would use a plural verb in the main clause (“are”).

There are many good discussions of this problem. One of the more succinct can be found in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.):

“When the what in the what-clause is the object of the verb and the complement of the main clause is singular, the main verb is always singular: What they wanted was a home of their own.”

The usage note continues: “When the complement of the main sentence is plural, the verb is most often plural: What American education needs are smaller classes.”

But, the editors add, “one also encounters sentences such as What the candidate gave the audience was the same old empty promises.” In a sentence like that, the writer is treating “the same old empty promises” as a singular concept.

Now (take a breather, if you like), there’s one other case we haven’t covered yet, and it’s the thorniest of all.

In this case, “what” is the subject of a “what” clause that is itself the subject of the sentence as a whole. Here’s American Heritage (we’ve broken the usage note into smaller paragraphs):

“When what is the subject of a what-clause that is the subject of a main clause, there is greater variation in usage. When the verb of the what-clause and the complement of the main clause are both plural or both singular, the number of the verb of the main clause generally agrees with them.

“When the verb in the what-clause is singular and the complement in the main clause is plural, one finds both singular and plural verbs being used. Sentences similar to both of the following are found in respected writers: What drives me crazy is her frequent tantrums; What bothers him are the discrepancies in their accounts.

“When the complement of the main clause consists of two or more nouns, the verb of the main clause is generally singular if the nouns are singular and plural if they are plural: What pleases the voters is his honesty and his willingness to take on difficult issues; On entering the harbor what first meet the eye are luxurious yachts and colorful villas.

“Occasionally the choice of a singular or plural verb may be used to convey a difference in meaning. In the sentence What excite him most are money and power, the implication is that money and power are separable goals; in What excites him most is money and power, the implication is that money and power are inextricably bound together.”

So what’s known as “notional agreement,” a subject we’ve written about on our blog, plays a role here.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage has another good perspective on this most troublesome of “what” clauses. M-W concludes: “It is desirable to be consistent, but, in an area where notional agreement appears to hold absolute sway, it is perhaps even more desirable to be natural.”

We’ll second that, naturally. And now, presumably, we know what’s what!

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Etymology Grammar Usage

Is “done” on the “finish” line?

Q: I cringe every time I hear “I am done” instead of “I am finished.” Am I right in thinking the correct terminology here is “finished“?

A: Well, “finished” is correct in that sentence, but so is “done.”

In fact, the adjective “done” has meant finished since well before the adjective “finished” entered the English language.

But you’re not alone in mistakenly thinking that there’s something fishy about the use of “done” to mean finished. Here’s the story.

The adjective “done” (meaning finished, performed, accomplished, etc.) first showed up in writing during the early 1400s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

However, the OED has citations dating from the early 1300s of the past participle “done” used in a similar way.

The slowpoke here, the adjective “finished,” didn’t show up until the late 1500s, according to OED citations.

As we’ve said, “done” has been used steadily since the beginning of the 14th century to mean finished. Here are some examples:

“When the Clerkes have dooen syngyng,” Book of Common Prayer, 1549;

“And having done that, Thou haste done, I have no more,” John Donne, 1623;

“Now the Chime of Poetry is done,” John Dryden, 1697;

“It was a done thing between him and Scrooge’s nephew,” A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, 1843.

So how did “done” get its bad reputation?

In early examples, “done” is usually accompanied by the verb “have,” as in the citation from the Book of Common Prayer (“have dooen syngyng”). In later examples, it’s usually accompanied by the verb “be,” as in the Dryden example (“is done”).

As far as we know, nobody complained about either usage until the 20th century, when some language mavens got it into their heads that it was OK to use “done” with “have,” but not with “be,” in a sentence like the one in your question.

The first objection to the “be” usage appeared in the Manual of Good English (1917), by H. N. MacCracken and Helen E. Sandison, according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage.

“They do not say what is wrong with it but prescribe have finished in its place,” Merriam-Webster’s says.

Other language mavens joined in, but by the late 20th century most of the objections had been dropped and the use of “done” to mean finished was considered standard English, according to the M-W usage guide.

We could stop here, but we’re not done yet. We’ll finish with a proverb that first showed up in writing in the 1700s but had probably been heard in speech much earlier:

“Man’s work lasts till set of sun; woman’s work is never done.”

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Grammar Usage

Doing a number on amount

Q: I become nauseated when someone confuses “amount” with “number” in quantifying something. For example, “the amount of cars in the parking lot.” I hear this error all too frequently out of the mouths of people who should know better.

A: In contemporary English, “amount” is generally used with mass nouns and “number” with count nouns. (Mass nouns, like “water” and “love,” are usually singular while count nouns, like “boy” and “car,” can be singular or plural.)

However, the distinction between “amount” and “number” wasn’t always so clear, and we’re simplifying the way these two words are used now.

In fact, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage takes more than a page of small  type to describe the variations in the way the two words are used.

Here are a couple of examples from Merriam-Webster’s of “amount” used with singular mass nouns:

“a reasonable amount of prosperity,” from The Olive Tree, a 1937 collection of essays by Aldous Huxley;

“a ridiculous amount of erudition,” from “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” a 1917 essay by T. S. Eliot.

And here are two examples from M-W  of “number” used with plural count nouns:

“a number of misprints,” from the October 1966 issue of the journal Notes and Queries;

“a number of other schools,” from Slums and Suburbs: A Commentary on Schools in Metropolitan Areas (1961), by James B. Conant.

However, the usage guide says “amount” is sometimes used “with plural count nouns when they are thought of as an aggregate.” Here are some examples:

“he’d be glad to furnish any amount of black pebbles,” from the Sept. 20, 1952, issue of the New Yorker;

“the high amount of taxes,” from the Sept. 29, 1975, issue of Harper’s Weekly.

Merriam-Webster’s gives seven other citations from respectable sources, including one that’s very much like the example you find nauseating:

“One of the minor mysteries of modern life is the large amount of police cars with flashing lights and sirens,” from a July 15, 1975, issue of Punch.

We would have preferred “number” in the Punch example, as well as in the one you mentioned. But Merriam-Webster’s sees nothing wrong in using “amount” with count nouns that act like mass nouns:

“This less common use of amount is sometimes criticized, but the critics bring forth no cogent reason for condemning it, only the condemnation itself.”

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Etymology Grammar Usage

Open wide, please!

Q: I am a dental hygienist practicing in New Jersey. For the past 28 years, I have been asking patients to “Open widely, please.” But I have recently been informed by two of my patients that this is incorrect. They argue that the correct usage is “Open wide, please.” Is this true?

A: Your patients are right, though we wonder how they managed to correct you.

Our own dental hygienist is a very engaging person, and we love listening to her. But usually we’re in no position to answer back, with all those fingers and tools in our mouths!

Both “wide” and “widely” are adverbs, with many overlapping meanings, but “wide” is idiomatically correct when you mean completely or fully, as in “Open wide, please.”

A great many adverbs have two forms—they can come with or without the tail (the “-ly”).

The versions without tails are sometimes called “flat adverbs,” and you can spot them at work in phrases like “sit tight,” “go straight,” “turn right,” “work hard,” “rest easy,” “aim high,” “dive deep,” “play fair”—and, yes, “open wide.”

We’ve written about flat adverbs in our book Origins of the Specious as well as on our blog in 2011 and 2006.

The Oxford English Dictionary says plain old “wide” has been used as an adverb for well over a thousand years. The newcomer, “widely,” didn’t show up until the 17th century.

The adverb “wide” was first recorded in Beowulf, which may have been written as far back as the year 725, and it’s been quite common ever since, according to the OED. (The adjective “wide” is just as old, and can also be found in Beowulf.)

Here’s an example of the adverb from the Coverdale translation of the Bible (1535): “Open thy mouth wyde, & I shal fyll it.” (The reference was not to dental hygiene.)

But “open” isn’t the only verb that’s often modified by “wide.”

The OED has scores of examples, with things springing wide, standing wide, wandering wide, lying wide, shooting wide, floating wide, landing wide, bowling wide, going wide, flying wide, and circling wide.

And we can’t overlook things that are being flung wide, thrown wide, spread wide, carried wide, and blown wide.

Finally, “wide” is an adverb in two very common phrases.

When anything is said to be “wide open,” a phrase dating from the 1300s, “wide” is an adverb (it modifies the adjective “open”).

And when the phrase “far and wide” modifies a verb—which it generally does—“wide” is an adverb then too. “Far and wide” was first recorded sometime before the year 900.

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Grammar Usage

Parallel universe

Q: I see this kind of sentence so often I’m starting to wonder if I’m wrong and it’s OK: “He also berated Ravi for attempting to cover-up the crime, including deleting text messages, tweets and trying to influence a witness.” Am I too cranky?

A: No, you’re not too cranky. Parallel structure is a notion that eludes many journalists, including some who work for the BBC website where you spotted that sentence.

We’ve touched on the subject of parallelism in sentence structure in previous postings, including blog items in 2008 and 2011.

What it generally amounts to is making sure that the parts of a sentence are in balance. For example, if a sentence includes a series, then all the items in the series should be grammatically equivalent.

The sentence you spotted on the BBC’s website has a series that isn’t composed of parallel terms. But it has another strike against it: the series is introduced with a word (“including”) that’s too vague.

Here’s the sentence again (the “he” is a judge): “He also berated Ravi for attempting to cover-up the crime, including deleting text messages, tweets and trying to influence a witness.”

That “including” is fuzzy, as it often is when it precedes a list. What includes the series that follows—the berating, the attempting, or the crime itself?

We had to do some reading to get to the facts.

The BBC article was about the so-called “cyberbullying” case in which a Rutgers University student used a webcam to secretly spy on his gay roommate, who later committed suicide.

Among other more serious charges, Dharun Ravi was convicted of tampering with evidence (specifically, deleting text messages and altering a Twitter post) and tampering with a witness.

It turns out that Ravi’s attempts to cover up the crime included that subsequent list of items. So the sentence should have begun “He also berated Ravi for attempting to cover up the crime by …” (No, there’s no hyphen in the verb phrase “to cover up.”)

Then we come to the list itself: “… deleting text messages, tweets and trying to influence a witness.” This series isn’t parallel—that is, the terms in the list aren’t grammatically similar. Besides, it implies, inaccurately, that tweets were deleted.

Armed with the facts, we can complete the sentence, making each term in the series parallel with the first: “He also berated Ravi for attempting to cover up the crime by deleting text messages, altering a Twitter post, and trying to influence a witness.”

Parallel structure isn’t all that difficult to master. As The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.) says, a parallel construction is a “series of like sentence elements” and when “linked elements are not like items, the syntax of the sentence breaks down.”

In one of the examples in the Chicago Manual, a series is unparallel because a verb phrase appears in a list of noun phrases:

“WRONG: The candidate is a former country judge, state senator, and served two terms as attorney general. RIGHT: The candidate is a former country judge, state senator, and two-term attorney general.”

In another pair of examples, the Chicago Manual corrects a series that needs parallel prepositions:

“WRONG: I looked for my lost keys in the sock drawer, the laundry hamper, the restroom, and under the bed. RIGHT: I looked for my lost keys in the sock drawer, in the laundry hamper, in the restroom, and under the bed.”

We’ll continue with some examples of our own.

The verbs in a series should not be in different tenses, as in “He had eaten dinner, showered, and was in bed by 10. (Make it, “and gone to bed by 10.”)

A list of adjectives shouldn’t include a verb phrase, as in “She’s tall, heavy, blond, and has blue eyes.” (Either make it “and blue-eyed,” or rewrite: “She’s tall and heavy, with blond hair and blue eyes.”)

And a list of phrases shouldn’t be dissimilar, as in “He likes reading, taking long walks, and has a weekend place in the Berkshires.” (Either make the second phrase “enjoys long walks,” or change the last phrase to “and spending weekends at his place in the Berkshires”).

When a sentence feels wrong, there’s always a reason, and sometimes the problem is lack of parallel structure.

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