Q: I want to report a cringe moment on NPR: Seymour Hersh said, “They will try and fix the situation….” What? The expression “try and” from such a well-respected journalist? I asked you about this some time ago and you agreed with me on the blog.

A: As you mentioned, we wrote a blog item a few years ago about “try and” (often substituted for “try to”). As we said at the time, “try to” is correct in formal English, but “try and” is gaining acceptance in spoken and informal usage.

Now we’d like to defend the usage a little more vigorously. As we write in our new book, Origins of the Specious, the expression “try and” has been around since at least the early 1600s, and nobody minded until the late 1800s.

In fact, “try and” may be older than “try to,” according to etymologists. We often find “and” between two related verbs, and nobody squawks.

Similar expressions, like “come and” (as in “come and visit me”) and “go and” (as in “go and see if it’s there”) have been around since the 1200s.

Why object to “try and see him” when it’s acceptable to say “come and see him” or “go and see him” or “stop and see him”?

The phrase has history on its side and we should try and get used to it. But be aware that some sticklers may find it trying!

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Q: This one may be easy for you, but quite a few other people don’t know which of these forms is correct: “I have to cut down that damned tree” or “I have to cut down that damn tree.” What’s your verdict?

A: Both sentences are correct.

The Oxford English Dictionary (a damn good dictionary and pretty damned authoritative) says “damn” and “damned” can be either adjectives or adverbs.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) agrees. M-W says either word can be an adjective (as in “a damn/damned shame”) or an adverb (as in “a damn/damned good job”).

The OED says these adjectives and adverbs are derived from the verb “damn,” which English borrowed from Old French around the year 1300. The ultimate source of the word is the Latin verb damnare, meaning to inflict damage or condemn.

That damn near sums it up, dammit (which the OED defines as a version of “damn it”).

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If you missed hearing Pat on the Leonard Lopate Show today, you can listen to her by clicking here.

She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 PM to discuss her new book, Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, and to take calls from listeners.

To buy the book, visit your local bookstore, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com.

Q: The phrase in the Declaration of Independence about “the pursuit of happiness” is used to justify almost anything these days, but I don’t believe the Founding Fathers used “happiness” in the modern sense. In the 18th century, I’ve heard, “happiness” meant the right to better oneself based on merit. Is this true or am I totally off base?

A: I find three definitions of “happiness” in the Oxford English Dictionary, all of them in use well before the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.

(1) “Good fortune or luck in life or in a particular affair; success, prosperity” (first recorded in 1530).

(2) “The state of pleasurable content of mind, which results from success or the attainment of what is considered good” (1591).

(3) “Successful or felicitous aptitude, fitness, suitability, or appropriateness; felicity” (1599).

As a former philosophy major in college, I can tell you that Aristotle considered happiness (eudaimonia in Greek) to be the ultimate good, the highest goal. All other goods (pleasure, wealth, health, power, honor, etc.) are subordinate. He was closer to definition #2, since he said attainment of happiness consists not merely in virtue but in virtuous activity (that is, good works).

I’m reluctant to try to get into the minds of the Founding Fathers. It’s not exactly my bailiwick. You’d have to ask a Constitutional scholar or perhaps a psychoanalyst about this. But as far as I can tell the three definitions of “happiness” listed above were the only ones around at the time the Declaration of Independence was written.

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Q: A lot of people “would like” to do things instead of “wanting” to do them or actually doing them. Examples: “I would like to thank the people who put this event together” and “I would like to apply for the position of assistant pastry chef.” This usage is driving me nuts. I hope you can help me make peace with it.

A: People tell a waiter “I would like (or I’d like) the braised sirloin tips with artichoke hearts” because it sounds more indirect, hence more polite and less demanding, than “I want the braised sirloin tips with artichoke hearts.”

Don’t think of “would” here as merely a conditional auxiliary. Think of it as what some grammarians call it, a term of “tentative volition” – that is, a less demanding way of saying you want something.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language discusses this issue in some depth. Take the use of “would” in a sentence like “I would like to see him tomorrow” (vs. “I want to see him tomorrow”) or “Would you tell them we’re here” (vs. “Will you tell them we’re here”).

The authors, Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, say that “would” often “introduces a rather vague element of tentativeness, diffidence, extra politeness, or the like.” They go on to describe “would like” as “more or less a fixed phrase, contrasting as a whole with want.”

This “would”-vs.“-will” business is nothing to get upset about.

In your first example, “would” strikes me as more polite than “want.” And using neither one seems too abrupt: “I thank the people who put this event together.”

I agree, however, that someone applying for a job should show more audacity than to say “I would like to apply for the position of assistant pastry chef.”

In everyday conversation, though, a little politeness goes a long way.

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Q: My 11-year-old son just asked me why the kitchen isn’t called a “cooking room,” since the other rooms in our house have the word “room” in them: “dining room,” “living room,” “playroom,” “bedroom,” etc. I immediately thought of you.

A: Your son is right: We incorporate “room” into most parts of our homes. In addition to the rooms you mention, here are a few more: “bathroom,” “mud room,” “laundry room,” and “guest room.” But the kitchen is the kitchen – it’s not the “cooking room.”

Why is this? Perhaps because the word “kitchen” is so old, and has been in the language longer than the other terms.

The word “kitchen,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was first recorded in the year 1000, when it was used in two separate writings (the Old English spellings used back then were cycene and kycenan).

In fact, we got the word “kitchen” at about the same time we got the word “room” (spelled rum in Old English). But the words for the separate rooms in the house came along hundreds of years later.

The word “bedroom,” for example, was first recorded in 1590, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Then by your side, no bedroome me deny.”

“Guest room” was first recorded, as far as we know, in 1638; “dining room” in 1601; “playroom” in 1725; “bathroom” in 1780; “living room” in 1825; “mud room” in 1950; “laundry room” in 1967.

You would think that “bathroom” would be among the oldest words (since people have always had use for such facilities!). But before the invention of modern plumbing, people who relieved themselves at home used chamber pots and washed in their bedrooms – that is, if their homes had more than one room!

While we don’t say “cooking room,” we once used a similar term, “cook room” (first recorded in 1553), but it didn’t catch on. People apparently were happy with the word “kitchen.”

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Q: I often hear “onboard” used in a bureaucratic sense, as in “The entire committee was onboard with the decision to move forward.” However, I’ve looked the word up in my dictionary and it only has it in a nautical sense. Is there such a word? And if so, what does it mean?

A: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) has the word “onboard” both as an adjective (“an onboard child-safety seat”) and as an adverb (“come onboard”). The only definition given is “carried or used aboard a vehicle or vessel.”

But under its entry for “board,” American Heritage lists the phrase “on board” as an idiom meaning either “aboard” or “on the job.” That second meaning (“on the job”) is similar to the now familiar bureaucratic jargon.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has both “onboard” and “on board” (see under “board”) as adjectives.

M-W defines “onboard” as carried within or aboard a vehicle. “On board” is defined as meaning either “aboard” or “in support of a particular objective.” The example given is “needed to get more senators on board for the bill to pass.”

So, the lexicographers at both dictionaries give two separate words, “on board,” for figurative meanings similar to the one you are asking about.

The Oxford English Dictionary hasn’t yet recorded this newer meaning of “on board.” (It does, however, include “board shorts,” the baggy shorts originally worn by surfers, a word born in Australia, circa 1975.)

The OED explains that in common usage, “on board” means on or in a ship or boat. It’s a shortened form of “on ship-board,” a term that’s been around since Middle English (originally, “within schippe burdez”). Here “boards” supposedly means the deck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope this helps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stiff upper lips: British vs. American English.

Sense and sensitivity: Politically correct facts and fictions.

An oeuf is an oeuf: Fractured French.

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

Jeepers creepers: Misbegotten word and phrase origins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eek!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1) Was “ain’t” ever legit?

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

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

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

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

Answers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(2) Why don’t Frenchwomen wear brassières?

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

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

(5) Are négligées worn in Parisian boudoirs?

Answers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1) Did Americans once speak with British accents?

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

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

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

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

Answers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is its ultimate origin? Here opinions differ.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I could make do with less of this making due!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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