Q: My question is about metaphors/similes. When someone says, “He’s strong as an ox,” it’s a simile. When someone says, “He’s an ox,” it’s a metaphor. When my teenage cousin says, “He’s, like, an ox,” which is it?

A: It’s correct that “He’s an ox” is a metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which something that normally designates one thing is used to designate another.

It’s also correct that “He’s as strong as an ox” (or “He’s like an ox”) is a simile. A simile is a figure of speech in which “like” or “as” is used to compare dissimilar things.

Your teenage cousin’s sentence, “He’s, like, an ox,” is a metaphor. Here, the word “like” isn’t used as a preposition for purposes of comparison, so we don’t have a simile. Critics see this form of “like” as merely a verbal tic, but linguists argue that it serves a purpose.

As Pat once wrote in an article for The New York Times Magazine, this “like” is used “to emphasize something (‘I was, like, exhausted!’) or to hedge a statement (‘We had, like, six hours of homework!’).”

Both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) categorize “like” as an adverb when used in this way. AH calls the usage “nonstandard,” but M-W notes that it’s “used interjectionally in informal speech.”

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Q: As a former newspaper editor, I can’t help noticing when English goes astray, which brings me to the Woe Is I Jr. page on your website. Is the following sentence correct? “Just like Woe Is I, her national bestseller for adults, the junior version uses simple language and entertaining examples to make good English fun.” It seems to me there should be an “as,” not a “like,” construction here.

A: That bit of promotion on our website is, I’m glad to say, perfectly good English.

First, let’s simplify the sentence somewhat: “Like book X, book Y uses simple language.” (Or, rephrased: “Book Y, like book X, uses simple language” … “Book Y uses simple language, like book X.”)

Here “like” is being used not as a conjunction but as a preposition meaning “in the same way as” or “in the manner of.” This kind of construction is recognized as standard English. (See the entries for “like” in both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed.)

The phrase “like book X” is considered an elliptical clause of comparison, minus a verb. If a verb were included, you could legitimately choose the conjunction “as” and write “as book X does.”

The grammarian George O. Curme has this to say in A Grammar of the English Language. Vol. II: Syntax: “The clause of comparison is often elliptical. … Where there is no finite verb expressed or understood, and there is present a noun or pronoun, like is not opposed by grammarians; it is indeed the usual form even in the best literary style, here felt as a preposition, forming with its object a prepositional phrase: ‘He treats his wife like a child.’ ‘His coat fits him like a glove.’ ‘He laughs like her.’ “

I hope this clarifies things a bit. In general, especially in more formal writing and speeches, “as” should introduce a clause – a group of words with both a subject and a verb.Here’s an example from my grammar book Woe Is I: “Homer tripped, as anyone would.” If no verb follows, “like” is correct: “Homer walks like a duck.” I discussed this once before in a posting to the blog.

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Q: I’ve heard the expression “come a cropper” many times, but when a commentator used it the other night to describe one of the economic plans floated recently, I decided it was time to call on the maven. Enlightenment, if you please.

A: The phrase “come a cropper” originated in the late 1850s when it meant to fall heavily, according to Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (8th ed.).

Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang explains that the expression came from fox-hunting and referred to a rider’s being thrown from a horse.

The word “cropper” here, Cassell’s says, may refer either to the rider’s tendency to be tossed over the horse’s crop (that is, neck), or to an earlier phrase, “neck and crop,” which means “bodily” or “totally.”

(No reliable sources mention any connection with the riding crop, the small whip that’s a familiar piece of equestrian equipment.)

The Oxford English Dictionary, which leans toward “neck and crop” as the probable source of “come a cropper,” cites a 1791 poem with these lines: “The startish beast took fright, and flop / The mad-brain’d rider tumbled, neck and crop!”

The word sleuth Michael Quinion notes that the “crop” in “neck and crop” might refer to the horse’s other end (its rump). On his website World Wide Words, he writes:

“It could be that crop is a variant of croup, suggesting that a horse that fell neck and crop collapsed all of a heap, with both head and backside hitting the ground together. Or perhaps crop had its then normal meaning, so the expression was an intensified version of neck, perhaps linked to an older expression neck and heels that’s similar to head over heels.”

However it came into being, the phrase “come a cropper” has appeared in other forms too, including “get a cropper” and “go a cropper.” In fact, the first published reference in the OED for the expression is of the “get” variety.

Here’s an expanded version of the OED citation, from a comic novel by Robert S. Surtees, Ask Mamma (1858): “Gameboy Green, thinking to show off, rode at an impracticable fence, and got a cropper for his pains.”

Gameboy, h-m-m.

Soon the expression was being used figuratively for situations other than horsemanship. Anthony Trollope used it in his 1874 novel The Way We Live Now to describe a matrimonial disaster: “He would ‘be coming a cropper rather,’ were he to marry Melmotte’s daughter for her money, and then find that she had got none.”

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Q: Are the stative passive and the participial adjective the same construction? Examples: “He was born”  … “I am surprised.” Is this a question of the existence (or mention) of the agent?

A: The general answer to both of your questions is a qualified yes: the constructions are similar, though not necessarily identical, and the presence of an “agent” does makes a difference.

But let me back up a bit and explain some of those terms for readers of The Grammarphobia Blog who may not be acquainted with them.

The issue you bring up has to do with the passive voice, something most of us are familiar with.

When a verb is in the active voice, the subject is the agent who does the acting (“John walks the dog regularly”).

But when the verb is in the passive voice, the agent who does the acting is not the subject of the sentence (“The dog is walked by John regularly”). There, the former object has become the subject.

And the agent may even be omitted if the dog walker is irrelevant or unknown (“The dog is walked regularly”).

Notice that a sentence in the passive voice generally uses a form of the verb “be” as an auxiliary (in this case, “is”), and the verb is a past participle (“walked”).

Now, there are two kinds of passive voice, and this is where your question comes in. There’s the “dynamic” (also called actional) passive, and the “stative” (also called statal) passive.

The dynamic passive describes an event (“The dog was walked”), while the stative passive describes a state (“The dog was exhausted”). You might say that one denotes an act (expressed as a verb) and the other denotes the result of an act (expressed as a participial adjective).

Sometimes the difference between the two is very subtle. In his book A Grammar of the English Language. Vol. II: Syntax, George O. Curme gives this example: “The door was shut at six when I went by, but I don’t know when it was shut.”

The first “was shut” is a stative passive (denoting a state), and the second is a dynamic passive (denoting an act). Curme adds: “Thus the one form is employed to denote two quite different things.”

Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, make a similar point when they discuss what they call “verbal passives” versus “adjectival passives.”

They use the example of “The vase was broken,” a sentence that could qualify for either definition. It could be interpreted as denoting either an event or the resulting state. In the first interpretation, “broken” is a verb, and in the second, “broken” is a participial adjective.

Elsewhere, Huddleston and Pullum note that there’s “a large-scale overlap between adjectives and the past participle forms of verbs, and since the verb be can take complements headed by either of these categories we find a significant resemblance, and often an ambiguity” between adjectives and past participles.

You ask whether the existence of an agent makes a difference. Generally, yes.

If an agent is mentioned (“I was surprised by Susan,” the passive form of the sentence “Susan surprised me”), then “surprised” can only be interpreted as a dynamic passive because it describes an event.

If no agent is mentioned (“I was surprised”), then “surprised” could be interpreted either as a passive verb or as an adjective describing a state.

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Q: We’re being subjected to a lot more Wall Street lingo than usual. One example that bothers me is “seize up.” I can’t count the number of times pundits have said the credit market markets are seizing up. Is it the same as freezing up? This usage is a new one to me. Have I missed something?

A: Yes, you apparently have missed something here. The term “seize up” (meaning to freeze or lock fast) has been around for more than a century.

When the verb “seize” entered English in the late 1200s, it had two different meanings: (1) to put in possession, or (2) to take possession.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, to “seize of” or “seize with” or “seize in” meant “to put (a person) in legal possession of a feudal holding; to invest or endow with property; to establish in a holding or an office or dignity.” At the same time, to “seize” simply meant to take possession or confiscate.

This sense of grabbing and holding on led to another usage centuries later. In the 1870s, the terms “seize” and “seize up” were used in reference to machines or mechanisms. Thus, the OED says, to “seize up” meant “to stick, jam, or lock fast; to become unworkable, as by reason of undue heat or friction.”

This meaning led to a figurative usage of the term beginning in the 1950s. The OED gives these citations:

1955, from a book on social work: “When the social service system was primitive it could do without case-work: the more elaborate modern machine would seize up.”

1960, from The Buried Day, an autobiography by Cecil Day Lewis: “I read the book; then, for hour after hour, I sat trying to think of something to say about it. I could not…. My brain had seized up.”

1976, from Testkill, a novel by Ted Dexter and Clifford Makins: “Any exercise … might make me seize up.”

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Q: If you’re tip-top and someone asks “How are you?” do you say “I’m well” or “I’m good”? Or, for that matter, “I feel well” or “I feel good”? I can never get these straight. Thanks, and I hope you’re feeling … um … super-terrific.

A: Some people who say “How are you?” object to hearing “I’m good” or “I feel good” in reply. But you can correctly say either “I’m well” or “I’m good,” and “I feel well” or “I feel good,” depending on your meaning.

Most usage guides will tell you that “well,” when applied to a person, means “healthy.” So if you said, “I’m well” or “I feel well,” you’d be talking about your state of health.

If you said “I’m good” or “I feel good,” according to these usage guides, you’d be talking about your state of being (how you felt in general). A dying person might say on his deathbed, “I feel good, knowing my affairs are in order.” He wouldn’t mean that he felt well.

Here’s the reasoning.

When health isn’t involved, adjectives (like “good”) are used instead of adverbs (like “well”) to modify linking verbs (like “is” or “feel” or “smells”). A linking verb is one that describes a state or condition rather than an action. That’s why we say “He smells good,” “It tastes good,” “He looks good,” and so on.

But adverbs (like “well”) are used to modify verbs showing activity (such as “skate” or “tango”). That’s why we say “He skates well” and “She tangos well.”

One way to remember this is to recall the song lyric “I feel pretty.” With a linking verb like “feel,” you use an adjective (“pretty”), not an adverb (“prettily”). Same with “is” and “smells” and “seems” and other linking verbs: “He is nice” … “They seem nice” … “That smells nice.”

In theory, you can “feel badly” when your sense of touch is awry, or “smell badly” when your nose is stuffed, but I’ve never actually heard anyone use those expressions in real life. (“Feel” and “smell” are action verbs here: they refer to the acts of feeling and smelling, not the conditions.)

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Q: Your posting on whether a legal document can “state” something reminded me of my days editing in a law office. The attorneys used to say they wrote such long-winded briefs because they got paid by the word.

A: Mark Twain was sometimes paid by the word too, but he came to a different conclusion. He had this to say in praise of short words and short-windedness:

“I never write ‘metropolis’ for seven cents, because I can get the same money for ‘city.’ I never write ‘policeman,’ because I can get the same price for ‘cop.’”

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Q: I have a strange question. Do you know the etymology of the expression “doggone it”? Please help!

A: Strange? Not by a long shot. You should see some of the questions I get!

As for “doggone it,” the expression probably originated as a euphemism for “goddamn it.” The Oxford English Dictionary says “dog-gone” is “generally taken as a deformation of the profane God damn.”

In the 1800s, the exclamations “doggone!” and “doggone it!” (I’ll skip the hyphens when I’m not quoting a source) were used in the same way as “hang!/hang it!” and “damn!/damn it!” and even the old imprecation “pox on it!”

Where did “doggone!/doggone it!” originate? The OED says “dog-gone,” which in former times was also written as “dog-on,” is a 19th-century Americanism. But according to other sources, the expression may have gotten its start in Scotland.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) says “doggone” is an “alteration of the Scots dagone,” which is in turn an “alteration of goddamn.”

And the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, citing the Scottish National Dictionary, offers published references for “dog on it” dating to 1826 and 1828.

Within a few years of those early references, “dog gone” began appearing in writings about the American Old West.

A semi-fictional book called Life in the Far West, by the English writer George Frederick Ruxton, appeared in serial form in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1848. I found these quotations from the Ruxton work in Google Book Search: “‘Fire be dogged,’ says old Rube.” … “I’m dog-gone if it wasn’t.”

The OED‘s first print references for “dog-gone” are from a book by the Irish-American novelist Thomas Mayne Reid called The Scalp-Hunters: Or, Romantic Adventures in Northern Mexico (1851). Here are the OED citations: “‘I’m dog-gone, Jim’, replied the hunter.” … “Dog-gone it, man! make haste then!”

For most of the 19th century, the expression was found as both “dog gone” and “dog on” (with and without hyphens). An appearance in about 1860 in Southern Sketches has the “dog on” version: “No, says I, I won’t do no sich dog on thing.” Edward Eggleston’s novel The Hoosier School-Master (1871) has this: “She was so dog-on stuck up.”

Other versions appeared as well: “If there’s a dog-goned abolitionist aboard this boat, I should like to see him” (about 1860); “He looks the dogondest cuss” (1868); “I’ll be dog-oned” (1872, Eggleston again); “I’ll be dog-goned” (1879); and even “dagont” (1893).

In 1892 a writer in The Nation had this opinion: “I think ‘Dog gone it’ is simply ‘Dog on it.’”

I hope this helps.

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Q: I have a background in journalism and print media. At work, I use one space after a period. However, I was taught throughout school to use two. Which is correct?

A: The Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.) has this to say: “In typeset matter, one space, not two (in other words, a regular word space), follows any mark of punctuation that ends a sentence, whether a period, a colon, a question mark, an exclamation point, or closing quotation marks.” See section 6.11.

That’s good enough for me!

Interestingly, this whole idea of separating English sentences with periods and spaces evolved over hundreds of years. In the early days, punctuation was largely a rhetorical device, used as an aid to reading aloud.

Modern English punctuation – with points, marks, and spaces used primarily to separate grammatical rather than rhetorical units – evolved in fits and starts after the introduction of printing with movable type in the late Middle Ages.

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Q: I wonder if you can answer a question for me. I often hear people from eastern New Jersey say “I could have went” instead of “I could have gone.” Are they both correct? Or is one the more proper usage?

A: “I could have gone” is correct. “I could have went” is not. Here’s how to use the verb “go” in various tenses.

Simple tenses: I go … I went … I will go … I would (or could) go.

Perfect tenses: I have gone … I had gone … I will have gone … I would have (or could have) gone.

Use “could” in the same way you’d use “would”:

Simple: I would (or could) go.

Perfect: I would have (or could have) gone.

I hope this helps.

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Q: I am a former English teacher and I am bothered by people who insert the indefinite article in front of a noun when it is not necessary. For example, I recently called a dentist to make an appointment, and the receptionist said, “What kind of an appointment do you want to make.”

A: Here’s the situation with “kind of” and company, at least in modern usage. When you use expressions like “kind of” or “sort of” or “type of” or “breed of” to refer to a member of a larger class, it isn’t necessary to use “a” or “an” afterward.

Although many people add the article in speech, common practice today is to omit it. The article “a” isn’t needed, for instance, in “This is an odd kind of word” … or … “What breed of dog is that?”

But when you use “kind of” or “sort of” as an adjectival phrase meaning “rather,” the article is commonly used if a noun follows (“Our assignment is kind of a drag” … or … “Jack is kind of a jerk”).

Naturally the article isn’t used when “kind of” is an adverbial phrase – that is, when it modifies an adjective or a verb – and it means “in a way” (as in, “Our assignment is kind of difficult” … or … “Our class kind of flunked”). These uses of “kind of” are frowned on by many purists, but they’re extremely widespread in informal English.

By the way, “kind” is an extremely old word, and has been part of English since at least as far back as the 800s when it meant a class or division of things. (The adjective originally meant natural or innate.)

Over the centuries, the noun “kind” has been used to refer to a person’s nature, origin, gender, sexual organs (in the case of men, their semen), race, kin, offspring, and many other things.

Since the 1400s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, we’ve used twin constructions with “kind,” so that “all kinds of trees” is the equivalent of “trees of all kinds,” and “this kind of thing” is the same as “a thing of this kind.”

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Q: A question regarding the expression “wreak havoc.” I find much information online about the “wreak” part, but very little about “havoc.” Would you shed some light on this when you have a moment? Also, I see in an Internet dictionary that one of the roots of “wreak” is a word in “OHG.” I assume that doesn’t stand for Old Hungarian Goulash.

A: “Havoc” is one of those words that we nearly always find in tandem with another. We rarely see “flotsam” without “jetsam,” or “wrack” without “ruin,” or “hunky” without “dory,” or (these days at least) “wreak” without “havoc.”

The origins of “havoc” are a bit shadowy.

The word entered English in the 1300s with the meaning of devastation or destruction. It was adapted from an Anglo-French word, havok, which the Oxford English Dictionary says was “altered in some way” from the Old French term havot.

In the 14th century, to “cry havoc” (crier havot) to one’s armies was to signal them to pillage and rob. We don’t know how the French got the word, but the OED says it was probably of Teutonic origin.

Shakespeare used the expression in several plays, including Julius Caesar (1599), “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war”; Coriolanus (1608), “Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt”; and King John (1596), “Cry, ‘havoc!’ kings; back to the stained field.”

“Havoc” hasn’t always been this bloody. It has also been used to mean confusion and disarray, as in the expressions “make havoc,” “work havoc,” “play havoc,” “create havoc,” and of course the familiar “wreak havoc.”

Today, the “wreak” version far outnumbers the others in a Google search.

The first published reference for “wreak havoc” in the OED comes from an Agatha Christie mystery, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926): “Annie is not allowed to wreak havoc with a dustpan and brush.”

Note that we “wreak” havoc; we don’t “wreck” it. To “wreak” is to inflict, to cause, to bring about. To “wreck” is to ruin or destroy or dismantle. So “wreck havoc” is a misuse caused by confusing the two terms.

Speaking of “wreak” and “wreck,” people sometimes ask us about another confusing pair, “rack” and “wrack.” Here’s how Pat explains them in Woe Is I:

Are you racked with guilt, or wracked? Is tax time nerve-racking, or nerve-wracking? Are you on the brink of rack and ruin, or wrack and ruin? Most of the time, you are racked (tortured, strained, stretched, punished). Just think of the rack, the medieval instrument of torture. If you’re wracked, however, you’re destroyed—you’re wreckage on the beach of life (the words wrack and wreck are related). In sum: You are racked with guilt, you’ve had a nerve-racking time, and you’re facing wrack and ruin. You need a less stressful life!

And by the way, we devoutly wish that OHG stood for Old Hungarian Goulash. But it’s an abbreviation for Old High German.

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Q: I’m tired of seeing and hearing “misnomer” used to mean a mistake or a mistaken belief. I recently read it again on Salon. Argh! We need to proclaim the correct usage – on blogs, TV, radio, billboards … everywhere.

A: I’ve often thought the same thing. In fact, this occurred to me not long ago when I read a column by the humorist Colin McEnroe, who used “misnomer” correctly.

He made a passing reference to “common sense, a misnomer given how few people have any.” The usage stuck out only because he, unlike many writers, used the word properly!

In the article you refer to, Salon quoted Rep. Robert Wexler, co-chairman of the Obama Florida campaign, as saying: “There’s this misnomer among some in the press that the Jewish community is a one-issue community. It isn’t.”

Wexler, of course, should have used a word like “misapprehension” or “misunderstanding.”

We got the noun “misnomer” from the Anglo-Norman and Old French verb mesnomer (to misname). The noun was first used in the 1400s as a legal term.

To plead or allege “misnomer,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was to claim there had been “a mistake in naming a person or place; an inaccurate description of this nature.”

In the 1600s, another meaning came into use: “A wrong name or designation, esp. one which conveys a misleading impression.”

Both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed) now define “misnomer” as an error in naming a person or thing.

To use it as a synonym for “mistake” is a misnomer!

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Q: I recently saw an incredible production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and the word “dast” was used several times. Miller also uses it in the requiem speech in Death of a Salesman. I’ve never heard the word used other than in these plays and was wondering about its derivation. I can’t find it in the dictionary, but the meaning seems clear enough when heard in context.

A: When Arthur Miller uses “dast” in All My Sons and Death of a Salesman, he’s using a form of the verb “dare.” In the requiem speech of Salesman, for example, Miller’s character Charley says of Willy Loman, “Nobody dast blame this man.”

“Dast” is a bit of American dialect that’s found in plays and novels depicting working-class or countrified speech.

Sometimes it means “dare” (or “dares”), sometimes “dared,” and sometimes the tense is ambiguous or irrelevant. Ogden Nash covered all the bases when he wrote: “I’d rather, if I dared or dast, conceal my academic past.”

You’re more likely to find “dast” in older works of fiction than in contemporary ones. Here’s an example from Sweet Cicely: Or Josiah Allen as a Politician (1885), by Marietta Holley, who was a best-selling satirical novelist in her day:

“I dast not, I dast not let my companion go from me into Washington. No! I felt that I dast not, as his mind was, let him go into temptation.” (Holley wrote this novel, and several others, in the folksy rural dialect of her first-person narrator Samantha Allen, Josiah’s wife.)

And here’s a quote from another novel, The Shepherd of the Hills (1907), by Harold Bell Wright: “Ain’t ‘nother man or woman in the whole country would dast spend the night here, Dad; except Pete, of course.”

Some authorities have speculated that “dast” may have come about as a back-formation of the negative “dasn’t” – also spelled “dassn’t” or “dassent” – a regional American contraction once used for forms of “dare” plus “not.” (A back formation is a word formed by dropping a real or imagined part from another word.)

[Note: We’ve also written a post about “dasn’t.”]

Apparently, “dasn’t” was easier to say than “daren’t” or “daresn’t.”  Another American playwright, Eugene O’Neill, used this one in Mourning Becomes Electra (1931): “You dasn’t stay there till moonrise at ten o’clock.”

At any rate, “dast” isn’t so far-fetched when you consider that a past-tense form of “dare” used to be “durst.” What’s more, back when people used “thou” instead of “you” for the second-person singular, they said “thou darst” (pronounced DAIRST).

In the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, the second-person singular was “dearst,” “darst,” “daerst,” or “derst,” and the Oxford English Dictionary has a “dearst” citation from Beowulf.

No wonder the lexicographer R. W. Burchfield described “dare” as “one of the subtlest and most variegated verbs in the language.”

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Q: Where does the term “punch-drunk” come from? Does “punch” refer to the spiked drink or being punched in the face and staggering around as if drunk?

A: Your second guess is correct, though either “punch” can leave you staggering around like a drunk.

The expression “punch-drunk” comes from boxing, according to A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (8th ed.), by Eric Partridge. It describes the dopey, bewildered behavior of someone who has taken a lot of hard punches to the head.

The phrase “slap-happy” may have originated in the same way, a product of the boxing ring. Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang says it started with boxing in the 1930s and described someone whose brain was scrambled in the ring.

The earliest published reference for “punch drunk” in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from a 1912 issue of a Wisconsin newspaper, the Sheboygan Press: “”Punch-drunk through the first round, and floundering around like a great helpless calf, his mouth and nose shedding blood in a thick stream.”

The expression soon came to be used more generally to refer to confused or stupefied behavior outside the ring. Here’s a citation from a 1925 issue of The American Mercury magazine: “The tattered standard is thrust into the broken hands of a punchdrunk politician.”

And physicians began using the expression to refer to the medical condition suffered by boxers and other athletes, as in this 1928 citation from the Journal of the American Medical Association: “The early symptoms of punch drunk usually appear in the extremities.”

I don’t want to leave you punch-drunk from information overload, but here’s one more OED citation, from a 2004 issue of Current Sports Medicine Reports:

“For soccer, there has been some concern that heading may be associated with the development of cumulative traumatic brain encephalopathy, or the ‘punch drunk’ syndrome described in boxers.”

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Q: In a blog entry a few months ago, you said the British used to speak with an accent similar to the one Americans have now. This was pretty stunning to me. Without recordings, I can’t quite figure out how you know this. If it’s correct, I’m surprised that all the colonists in the recent John Adams series on HBO speak with British accents. Given the research that must have gone into that project, how could such a big blunder be made?

A: I explained in the blog item that the familiar characteristics of what we now think of as a British accent – that broad a (as in PAHST for “past”), the dropped r (FAH for “far”), the dropped syllables (SEC-ruh-tree for “secretary”) – developed relatively recently, in the late 18th and early to mid-19th centuries.

Before the Revolution, the Colonists as well as Englishmen in the mother country had similar accents. In many ways, you might say, we we kept the original.

How do we know? Because there were written accounts. People wrote about these changes at the time they were happening – in books on speech and elocution, in articles in contemporary newspapers and journals, in pronouncing dictionaries, and so on.

If you’d like to know more, I can recommend a couple of books by scholars of the subject:

Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol, by Lynda Mugglestone (Oxford University Press).

American Pronunciation, by John Samuel Kenyon (George Wahr Publishing Co).

I can’t explain why the colonists in the HBO series speak with a modern British accent rather than the “American” accent used by English speakers on both sides of the Atlantic at the time.

But this is apparently not the only blunder in the John Adams series. The Wikipedia item on the series lists more than a half-dozen other examples of what it describes as “historical inaccuracies.”

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Q: Is the use of the word “organic” incorrect here? “I don’t want to go speed dating. I want to meet someone in a more organic way.”

A: The word “organic” isn’t being used incorrectly – just metaphorically. In fact, “organic” has undergone many changes – both literal and metaphorical – over the centuries.

The ultimate source is the Greek organon, which means an implement, a musical instrument, or a part of the body. Organon, in turn, is related to the word ergon, or work. So “organic” and “ergonomic” are relatives!

When the noun “organ” was first used in Old English in the 8th century, it was a musical term for a type of stringed or wind instrument. “Organ,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, didn’t mean a functional part of the body until the 1400s.

But back to the adjective, “organic.” When it first appeared in English in the 1300s, it was an anatomical term referring to the jugular vein. The earliest OED citation is from an English translation of a Latin medical text by Lanfranc of Milan, a famous surgeon of his day.

Soon after it appeared, “organic” was being used in biological and medical writings to mean having to do with the organs of the body.

Later it was applied to living organisms; to things derived from living matter; to things that were instrumental; to things that had developed continuously or naturally; to a coordinated whole (that is, something that was “organized”); and to things having the characteristics of a living organism.

In the early 1940s, the term was first used in reference to farming methods that avoided chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and so on. Thus began the greening of the word “organic.”

As with any word that becomes widely popular, “organic” has taken on metaphorical uses. During the 1970s, according to Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, “organic” was used on college campuses to mean “fashionable.” Cassell’s says the meaning developed in “acknowledgment of ‘green’ politics.”

I’ve heard many people use “organic” as a synonym for “natural,” which isn’t technically correct (particularly in the food and farming industries) but it’s a reasonable metaphorical usage.

In fact, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) has this as one of its definitions of “organic”: “simple, healthful, and close to nature.”

Back to your question. I can understand that speed-dating might be considered artificial and contrived, whereas meeting a person spontaneously, as part of the ordinary course of events, might be seen as simple and natural – hence “organic.”

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Q: I’m a novelist and I’m not entirely confident that my copy editors will get these two usages right, as the variants are so common that the correct way is now unclear. Is it “uncharted” or “unchartered” waters? (My bet is with the first.) Is it waiting with “bated” or “baited” breath? (I’m going with the first again.)

A: Waters that aren’t mapped (that is, charted) are “uncharted waters.” Only Mrs. Malaprop sails on the “unchartered” kind. Boats are “chartered,” or hired, but not waters.

“Baited breath” is another malapropism. Breath that’s held in suspense is “bated breath,” because the breathing has temporarily stopped (that is, abated). Only fish have the “baited” kind.

You’re right, of course, that the two malapropisms are growing in popularity, but the standard usages are still predominant.

Here’s the result of some googling: “baited breath,” 265,000 hits, and “bated breath,” 471,000; “unchartered waters,” 66,000 hits, and “uncharted waters, 412,000.

I couldn’t find any published references for “unchartered waters” in the Oxford English Dictionary, but “baited breath” did make it – in a humorous comment on trendy expressions.

Will these malapropisms ever become proper English? I hope not, but now we’re in uncharted waters.

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A: I’ve often said that a writer who knows the rules has a right to break them. And Wallace certainly earned the right to break a few rules.

Generally, however, “couple of” is standard usage before a plural noun, which is what I advise in my book Woe Is I: “a couple of changes,” not “a couple changes.” Better English – that is, more formal English – demands the “of.”

The reason for this is that “couple” is traditionally regarded as a noun, so it needs a preposition to link it to another noun, like “changes.” Except in informal English, it’s not an adjective, like “two” in the expression “two changes.” For a parallel example, think of the word “pair,” as in “a pair of shoes,” or “brace,” as in “a brace of pheasants.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) agrees with this, but Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) is more flexible. M-W accepts the use of “couple” as an adjective (without “of”) in casual usage.

Merriam-Webster’s considers dropping the “of” to be “an Americanism, common in speech and in writing that is not meant to be formal or elevated,” and says this informal usage is especially common before “periods of time (a couple weeks) and numbers (a couple hundred, a couple dozen).”

I agree that “couple” alone is often enough before numbers and periods of time, but I still advise “couple of” before ordinary plural nouns except in very relaxed usage. Dropping “of” conveys a folksiness that you might not want in your writing or speech.

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Q: I am curious about the current usage and meaning of the word “colleague.” My understanding is that it used to mean an associate of one in the same profession (e.g., an attorney is a colleague of another attorney). Now, it seems to be synonymous with “coworker.” Please advise me of the proper usage.

A: “Colleague” has become a more inclusive word than it used to be.

The source of the word is the Latin collega, “one chosen along with another.” John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins and The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology say the Latin word was formed from col (together) plus legare (to send or choose as a deputy).

Other English words derived from legare include “delegate,” “legation,” “legacy,” and “college” in the older sense, as in “the College of Cardinals.” (But not “league,” which comes from a different source: the Latin ligare, to bind.)

Strictly speaking, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “colleagues” are associates or partners with roughly the same standing in a governmental or ecclesiastical office. In this strict sense, the OED says, the word should not apply “to partners in trade or manufacture.”

The earliest uses cited in the OED come from ecclesiastical writings. An early citation, dated 1533, for example, refers to St. Paul and “Peter hys colleague.”

But in ordinary usage (that is, not ecclesiastical or governmental), and in ordinary dictionaries, “colleague” is now defined more loosely and indeed has its place in the business world.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) defines it as “a fellow member of a profession, staff, or academic faculty; an associate.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) is not quite so all-embracing: “an associate in a profession or in a civil or ecclesiastical office” (mere staff members don’t qualify).

R. W. Burchfield, in The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage (3d. ed., 1996), says: “The word has been sharply democratized in the 20th century. Representatives of trade unions speak of their colleagues … fellow-strikers, fellow-prison officers, associates of any kind, now qualify for the term colleagues. The word is on a downward spiral.”

I hear “colleagues” used not only for nonprofessionals but also to describe people who toil on different rungs of the corporate ladder. An editor, for example, might refer to her assistant as “my colleague.” In this sense, it does appear to be synonymous with “coworker.” But it may also be a subtle way for a superior to confer status on a valued subordinate.

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Q: I’ve always thought “correspondence” was a plural noun, but if I’m referring to various forms thereof, am I to use “correspondences”? Example: “I’ve received various correspondences from different employers.” I’m sending a letter and need to get it right.

A: “Correspondence” is a singular noun for the letters and emails and so on that are exchanged by parties who communicate with one another. In ordinary English, it’s not used in the plural (“correspondences”). But “correspondents,” meaning people who correspond, is plural.

I wouldn’t say “various correspondence” or “various correspondences.” I’d simply use “correspondence,” as in, “I’ve received correspondence from different employers.”

If you want to emphasize the variety of the various pieces of correspondence, you could say “various forms” or “various replies” or “various letters” or whatever.

The plural term “correspondences” does appear in scientific, mathematical, and philosophical terminology, but in ordinary usage it’s simply “correspondence.”

Another word that stumps a lot of people is “incidence,” which is singular. It is not the plural form of the word “incident,” which is “incidents.”

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Q: You’re the perfect person to resolve a small controversy in our office. We’re attorneys and disagree as to whether an inanimate object, like a document, is capable of stating anything. Example: “The document clearly states that.” Your input on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

A: The short answer is that I can’t find any specific prohibition against the use of “state” in a sentence like “The document clearly states that.” It appears to me that either a person or a piece of writing can “state” something.

A little history: The verb is an outgrowth of the noun “state,” which originally meant (and still does mean) a condition or manner of existing.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the original noun was related to the word “estate,” which was adapted from Old French, and is derived from the Latin status, which in turn comes from stare, to stand.

The noun entered English in the early 1200s. The verb followed in the late 1500s, with a number of meanings that are now obscure and had to do with placing a person or thing in a certain condition, or giving someone a particular status.

The modern meaning of the verb “state” (to declare in words) didn’t come about until the mid-1600s, according to the OED. Later in the century it came to be used in law, where it meant to set out facts for consideration by a court.

There’s no hint in the OED definitions, or in the quotations that are cited, as to whether a person has to do the stating, or whether a document or other piece of writing can “state” something.

Although the majority of the relevant published references in the OED have people doing the stating, a quick search revealed several in which documents are stating something.

For example, here’s an 1860 citation from the Times of London: “That document stated that the transfer of a barony by tenure must be confined to the blood of relations of the first purchaser.”

Frankly, this may be a case of splitting hairs. But that’s what attorneys are for, isn’t it? Sorry I can’t be more definitive.

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Q: I heard it again on TV this week and my teeth are still on edge. A new public figure running for national office used the incorrect term “verbage” twice in a seconds-long film clip. You’ve probably tackled this before but would you do it again?

A: I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there are two acceptable ways to pronounce “verbiage” in modern English: as three syllables or two.

Both Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) list these pronunciations as standard English: VUR-bee-idj and VUR-bidj.

This may be a relatively recent development, though. My old Webster’s Second from the 1950s lists only the three-syllable version.

A little history: The word “verbiage” (from the Latin verbum, or “word”) entered French in the 17th century and was adopted by English in the 18th century.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “verbiage” as “Wording of a superabundant or superfluous character, abundance of words without necessity or without much meaning; excessive wordiness.”

Now, that’s a mouthful!

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Q: On a recent radio appearance, you discussed word borrowings, which reminded me of an incident some years ago. I was in Paraguay when General Alfredo Stroessner was in power. He was known as “El Líder” and I remarked to a Paraguayan friend that the word “líder” was borrowed from English. “Oh, no!” he said. “It’s a good Spanish word.”

A: The Spanish noun líder is indeed a good Spanish word and can be found in any Spanish dictionary. But you’re right – it was borrowed from the English “leader,” which has its roots in the Old English verb laedan (to lead), which was first recorded in the ninth century.

If you’re a language, borrowing is a common and perfectly legitimate way to build your vocabulary!

Here are some other Spanish borrowings from English:

comité: from “committee,” which was adapted into English from Anglo-French.

mitin: from “meeting,” which came from Old English.

bicicleta: from “bicycle,” coined in English in the 19th century.

reportero: from “reporter,” a 14th-century English word (it didn’t mean a journalist, though, until the 18th century).

suéter: from “sweater,” which has roots in Old English.

champú: from “shampoo,” which English probably adapted from Hindi.

fútbol, gol, tenis, golf: from English sports terms.

túnel, tren: from “tunnel” and “train,” both of which entered English, with different meanings and spellings, from Old French.

Perhaps the most interesting Spanish borrowing of all is guerra (war), which originally came from the Old High German werra (meaning confusion, discord, or strife). The word was wyrre or werre in late Old English.

Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and medieval Latin all got guerra – and French got guerre – from this old Teutonic source. The romance languages did this, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, because the Latin word for war (bellum) was too similar to the adjective for beautiful (bello).

Of course this borrowing business goes both ways. English has borrowed lots of words from Spanish, such as “barbecue,“ “chocolate,” “embargo,” “guitar,” “lasso,” “patio,” “ranch,” “stampede,” “tornado,” “vanilla,” and many, many more.

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Q: Where does the additional “r” sound come from when people in certain areas of the Northeast want a drink of “soder” or think of an “idear”?

A: This “r” business is a bit more complicated than you might think. The short answer is that the addition of an “r” sound at the end of a word like “soda” or “idea” is a regionalism and isn’t considered a mispronunciation. Here’s the story.

In English words spelled with “r,” the consonant used to be fully pronounced everywhere. But today, some speakers (particularly in certain parts of England and the Eastern US) give “r” its full sound only before a vowel, either in the same word or in the word immediately following.

Take the word “better” as an example. These speakers pronounce it bettuh, but they add the “r” if a vowel sound follows. For example, the same speaker would say, “I’m bettuh paid,” but “I’m better off.”

To use another example, the same speaker would say, “New York isn’t fah,” but “New York isn’t far away.” Such speakers are basically using the “r” to link what they pronounce as two vowel sounds. Linguists have called this phenomenon the “linking r.”

Because of the tendency to pronounce an “r” when it occurs between vowel sounds, many of these same speakers go a step more and add an “r” where it doesn’t belong, once again between two vowel sounds.

Linguists call this the “intrusive r,” and that’s what you hear when someone says, “My soder [soda] is flat.” The “r” is inserted AFTER words ending in “uh” sounds just BEFORE words starting with vowels. So the same speaker would say things like this:

(1) “My old sofa died,” but “My new sofer is great.”

(2) “That’s a bad idea,” but “That idear annoys me.”

(3) “England and America joined,” but “Ameriker and England joined.”

(4) “The law says so,” but “It’s the lawr of the land.”

(5) “Tuna grills nicely,” but “Tuner is my favorite fish.”

This explanation of the “linking r” and the “intrusive r” is greatly simplified. Some speakers will add “r” more generally, pronouncing “idea” and “soda” as idear and soder even at the end of a sentence. And some speakers will drop “r” more generally, saying things like bettuh and fah even before vowels.

But this should give you a general idear about what’s going on!

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Q: In your radio conversations with Leonard Lopate, you both dismiss some usages as unworthy because they’re pretentious. Is being pretentious such a bad thing? I want to stand up in support of pretentiousness! I love to appall people, for example, by pronouncing “penchant” as pawn-SHAWN instead of PEN-chunt. It’s a French word and I enjoy saying it authentically.

A: Well, at least you have the courage of your convictions. I’ll bet you pronounce “homage’ as oh-MAHZH instead of HOM-idj or OM-idj.

Well, many people do, but “homage” has been part of the English language for 800 years and “penchant” for 400. There’s really no reason to pronounce them as French anymore.

You may be interested in a blog entry a while back on the pronunciation of “homage” and another on the tendency of some people to use “an” before “homage,” “hotel,” “historic,” and such words.

Formality has its place, certainly. And informality is very often out of place. But even formal English can be simple and clear, avoiding unnecessary obfuscation and needless showing off.

Don’t confuse the unpretentious with the incorrect. One can be well-educated without being pretentious, you know. But if you don’t mind appalling people, go ahead and satisfy your penchant for pretentiousness.

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

Q: I’m a DJ and music director at a public-radio station in New Jersey. I’m also a bit of a language nut. Recently some underwriting copy was recorded using the phrase “on premises.” It’s my contention that unless there are multiple locations the phrase should be “on premise.” Help!

A: There’s nothing wrong with using “premises” to refer to a single place, as in the sponsor acknowledgement you mentioned. Although “premises” is a plural noun, it usually refers to one place.

However, “premises” is generally used with “the,” as in “All baking is done on the premises.” The dropping of “the” by the sponsor’s copywriter strikes me as odd.

How did this plural word come to be used in a singular sense? Here’s the story.

The singular noun “premise,” which entered English in the late 1300s, was borrowed from Anglo-Norman and Middle French.

It began as a term in logic, meaning “a statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (Now, it’s used more generally to mean a basic assumption or a starting point for reasoning.)

In the 1400s, the plural “premises” took on various meanings in legal terminology. Among other things, it was used as a sort of shorthand for “the aforesaid” or “the foregoing” – that is, things previously stated in a legal document like a deed.

For example, “premises” might refer to already mentioned land or buildings or rental income being bequeathed or deeded or conveyed to someone else.

In the 1600s, as an extension of this legal usage, “premises” (always in the plural) came to mean, according to the OED, “a house or building together with its grounds, outhouses, etc., esp. a building or part of a building that houses a business.”

We’re using “premises” in that way when we say “All work done on the premises” or “No alcohol allowed on the premises.”

While “premises” is a plural noun, it’s often used with a singular verb. So people might write or say “premises is” as well as “premises are,” and “premises was” as well as “premises were.”

As for the usage you mention, “on premises,” that strikes me as a bit show-offy. I’ve noticed a lot of “the”-dropping in broadcasting. Examples: “from bullpen” (as in “The manager is bringing Rivera in from bullpen”), or “on scene” (as in “This is Geraldo, reporting on scene”), or “in studio” (“Now back to Brian in studio”).

Why the missing “the”? Is it an attempt to emulate British usage (“in hospital” and so on)? You may be interested in a blog entry I’ve written about this and other Britishisms.

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She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 P.M. Eastern time to discuss the English language and to take questions from callers.

Q: Why is the paper from a doctor that is filled at a pharmacy written “prescription” but pronounced “perscription”?

A: The thing your doctor writes should be pronounced “prih-SKRIP-shun.” The vowel in the first syllable sounds like the “i” in “rib,” and it follows the “r” sound. Anyone who says the first syllable as “per” is mispronouncing the word.

This transposing of consonant and vowel sounds is called metathesis. (That’s pronounced muh-TA-thuh-sus.) Other examples include transpositions like hunderd (for “hundred”), modren (“modern”), interduce (“introduce”), prespiration (“perspiration”), and purty (“pretty”).

When “prescription” entered English in the early 1400s, it referred to the use or possession of something for a long period of time or to the legal right to it because of such use or possession.

The word didn’t appear in a medical sense until the mid-1500s. The first published reference for this usage in the OED is from Gilbert Skeyne’s Ane Breve Description of the Pest (1568). The book, which describes an outbreak of the Black Death in Edinburgh, is said to be the earliest Scottish medical text.

By the way, the term “Rx” is an alteration of the medical symbol for a prescription (a capital “R” with a cross on the diagonal leg).

Some people have speculated that the medical symbol is derived from various ancient symbols, but the OED has a more prosaic explanation: it comes from the first letter of the Latin imperative recipe, or “take,” as in “Take one amoxicillin capsule every eight hours.”

The dictionary’s first citation for the medical symbol (the capital “R” with a cross) is from a 1559 translation of a Latin work on distilling medicine from plants.

The first citation for the letters “r” and “x” used together in place of the medical symbol is from an 1855 article in the New Hampshire Journal of Medicine: “The following prescription was most useful. Rx Valerian Fl. Ext.”

The earliest published reference for the two letters used in an everyday way simply to describe a prescription ordered by a doctor is from a 1911 ad in a Syracuse, NY, newspaper that mentions “RX prescription shoes.”

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Q: I probably have too much time on my hands, which may be why I’ve been wondering where the phrase ‘”time on my hands” comes from. Can you help me?

A: For almost a millennium, people have used the expressions “on hand” and “upon hand” to describe things that were in their possession or that they were responsible for.

The things could be belongings, property, work to do, responsibilities, or business to be dealt with or disposed of. The Oxford English Dictionary cites printed references going back to the year 1025.

In Le Morte d’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century collection of the Arthurian legends, for example, Merlin tells Arthur of 11 kings who have “more on hand than they are ware of.”

In the 16th century, the plural forms of the expressions, “on one’s hands” and “upon one’s hands,” showed up. The OED defines them as meaning “resting upon one as a charge, burden, or responsibility, or as a thing to be dealt with or attended to; opposite to off one’s hands.”

The earliest citation in the OED for these expressions used in reference to time is from a 1700 satirical work that mentions people with “a great deal of Idle Time lying upon their Hands.”

And we’ve had time on our hands ever since.

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Q: I had an interesting question in my ESL conversation group this week. What is the meaning of “ship” in words like “friendship,” “relationship,” etc.? It really stumped me. Any suggestions? (The group is made up of students from China, Iran, Peru, Mexico, Kosovo, Japan, and Turkey.)

A: You ask a very interesting question.

In Old English, the suffix “ship” – then spelled sciepe, skiepe, scipe, or scype – was added to adjectives, past participles, and nouns to create nouns that meant a state or condition (that’s how, for example, “ship” got added to “friend”).

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, many old Germanic languages used this device to make compound words, and it had the meaning of “creation, creature, constitution, condition.”

In Anglo-Saxon times, “ship” was a very common suffix, though many of the old “ship” words have since disappeared or been replaced with competing words ending in another very old suffix: “ness.”

For example, “goodship” (godscipe) and “goodness” (godnes) competed for centuries until “goodness” won the popularity contest. In one familiar case, we kept both forms – “hardship” and “hardness” – though their meanings diverged.

The compounds that have mostly disappeared were ones that added “ship” to adjectives and past participles. The OED says: “Such compounds were numerous in Old English, and many survived (or were re-coined) in Middle English, but few have a history extending beyond the 15th century.”

Examples of such Old English words that didn’t make the cut are druncenscipe (roughly meaning drunkenship), glædscipe (gladship), dolscipe (foolishship or errorship), and prútscipe (prideship).

The only survivals of this kind are our modern words “hardship” and “worship” (formed from an old adjective that meant worthy).

The surviving “ship” words that are common today are mostly formed from nouns, and they’re almost countless: “partnership”, “fellowship,” “craftsmanship,” “lordship,” “professorship,” “courtship,” “township,” and so on.

By the way, the suffix “ship” doesn’t seem to be related to the noun “ship.” The Old English word for the seagoing vessel, scip, is related to similar Germanic words: skip (Old Frisian), skip (Old Norse), scheep (Old High German), and so on. The OED says “the ultimate etymology is uncertain.”

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