Q: When you were on the Leonard Lopate Show last month, you used the term “earthenware” for an embankment made of earth. You meant to say “earthworks,” didn’t you? Earthenware is a type of low-fired pottery, like a flowerpot or a majolica dish. But you knew that, of course. We potters get upset over things like that. Otherwise, I love both Leonard and you. Kindred souls and fellow language nerds!

A: You’re right of course. I thought I was saying that an “earthwork” (a man-made construction of earth) could be called an “embankment.” I must have misspoken and said “earthenware”! Sorry about that. And thanks for nudging me.

By the way, “earthenware” first showed up in English in the late 17th century, but it was often written as two words until the 19th century.

In a 1673 account of his travels through the Netherlands, the English naturalist John Ray said Delft “is noted for good earthen Ware, as Stone-jugs, Pots, etc.”

The adjective “earthen” and the noun “ware” are much, much older, of course.

The word “earthen” merely meant “composed of earth” when it first appeared in English in the early 13th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It wasn’t until the late 14th century that it came to mean “made of baked clay.”

The first citation in the OED for “earthen” in relation to pottery comes from the English theologian John Wycliffe’s 1382 translation of the Bible: “Go and tac the erthene litil wyne vessel of the crockere.”

The word “ware” is a lot older, probably dating back to Alfred the Great, the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon king, according to the OED. The noun, waru in Old English, originally meant watchful care, then apparently came to mean an object of care.

By around the year 1000, according to the OED, “ware” was being used in our modern sense as a collective term for merchandise or goods.

Here’s a late 14th century citation from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: “Greet prees at market maketh deere ware.”

And may you and your fellow potters get a “greet prees” for your “deere ware”!

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Q: I teach English as a second language and this question came up in class: John and Frank are brothers. John is married to Jennifer. Frank is married to Francine. Are Jennifer and Francine sisters-in-law? I think they are, but the ESL students insist they aren’t in other languages.

A: Yes, women who are married to brothers are sisters-in-law to each other.

The Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) give three definitions of “sister in law”:

(1) The sister of one’s spouse.

(2) The wife of one’s brother.

(3) The wife of the brother of one’s spouse.

I think the confusion here is over the English term “in-law,” an idiomatic phrase that indicates someone is related by marriage, not blood.

Your students apparently think the expression “sisters-in-law” refers to legal (that is, actual or birth) sisters. It doesn’t. Here’s how the OED defines “in-law”:

“A phrase appended to names of relationship, as father, mother, brother, sister, son, etc., to indicate that the relationship is not by nature, but in the eye of the Canon Law, with reference to the degrees of affinity within which marriage is prohibited.”

Other languages have terms to describe such a relationship, though the wording may not include the legal terminology that English uses. For example, a sister-in-law is a belle-soeur in French, a cuñada in Spanish, and a cognata in Italian.

Interestingly, the term “in-law” was once used in English to describe relationships that are now referred to with the term “step.” So, the expression “sister-in-law” once also meant stepsister. The OED says this sense “though still locally or vulgarly current, is now generally considered a misuse.”

For what it’s worth, the first published reference in the OED for “sister-in-law” dates from the early 1400s, more than a century after the first appearance of “brother-in-law.”

I’ve gone on a bit, but I hope this helps.

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Q: Why does corporate America keep trying to change the meaning of words? (I think I know the answer!) Sometimes it’s comical, but at other times it’s condescending and deceptive. I’m an account executive at a large company (60,000 employees) and this is an example: Instead of telling us we’ll have to “pay more” for medical insurance, the powers that be say there’ll be more “cost sharing.” Thank you for your time.

A: There’s no mystery here. And, of course, you do already know the answer.

When corporate bureaucrats (or anyone else, for that matter) want to sweeten a distasteful message, they use rhetoric. The ancient Greek orators knew this thousands of years ago.

Meaning is obscured when officials speak of being “incented” instead of “influenced” or “bribed.”

Responsibility gets clouded when a direct statement like “We made mistakes” becomes “Mistakes were made.”

Reality is blunted when “civilian deaths” become “collateral damage.”

And guilt becomes less clear when a “fatal drug reaction” is termed an “adverse event.” If you were doing public relations for the pharmaceutical company, which term would you choose?

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Q: Your discussion of podiums and lecterns made me think of pulpits, specifically bully pulpits. I sometimes hear the phrase “bully pulpit“ used for a public position that lets one bully people, not merely expound one’s views. I always thought that when Teddy Roosevelt coined the expression, he used “bully” the way we might use “perfect” or “great.” That is, unless this is a language urban legend.

A: No, your explanation of “bully pulpit” isn’t an urban legend. And you’re right that no “bullying” was implied in the phrase, at least originally.

The first person to use it was indeed Theodore Roosevelt. In the February 27, 1909, issue of The Outlook magazine, a reporter wrote that Roosevelt “swung round in his swivel chair, and said: ‘I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!’”

The adjective “bully” had been used in 17th-century England to describe people who were worthy or jolly or admirable, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

But in mid-19th-century America, the term was widened to apply to anything that was first-rate, as in “The cook will give you a bully dinner” (1855). In the 1860s, Americans said “bully for you” or simply “bully” to mean “job well done.”

Roosevelt’s quote took on a life of its own. The OED now defines a “bully pulpit” as “a public office or position of authority that provides its occupant with an outstanding opportunity to speak out on any issue.”

No bullying there. But politics often makes for fuzzy—or wooly—thinking. As Sam the Sham and Pharaohs sang back in the ’60s, “Wooly Bully”!

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Q: In a recent radio appearance, you said the idea that “he” can refer to any human being – man or woman – was introduced in the 18th century by a female grammarian. I think you’re wrong. The concept of male as universal has been around much longer.

A: If by “male as universal,” you mean using male pronouns (“he,” “him,” and “his”) for women as well as men, the idea did indeed begin in the 18th century.

Before then – for two centuries, in fact – it was considered acceptable to use “they,” “them,” and “their” as singular or plural pronouns for either men or women.

[Note: An updated post on the use of “they” in singular references was published on May 22, 2017.]

Anne Fisher, the first woman to write an English grammar, was also the first grammarian to suggest that the pronoun “he” be used generically for either sex.

In the mid-18th century, she proposed that “he” be a sex-neutral, third-person singular in cases where gender was indefinite. For example, on second reference to “someone,” “anyone,” and so on, as in “Does anyone think he knows the answer?”

There’s no surviving copy of the first edition of Fisher’s book, A New Grammar With Exercises of Bad English, but it was advertised for sale in 1745. It was followed in 1750 by a second edition (which we do have), and 30 more editions came later, making the book one of the most popular guides of its time.

One reason her book is so important historically (there are other reasons, too) is its suggestion that “he” and company be used as a blanket term for both sexes.

“The Masculine Person,” Fisher wrote, “answers to the general Name, which comprehends both Male and Female; as, any Person who knows what he says.”

Fisher’s book was widely pirated. Another grammarian, John Kirkby, said the same thing soon after Fisher’s first edition came out, but language scholars feel he plagiarized the idea from her.

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, a linguist at Leiden University in the Netherlands and an expert on early English grammars, has written a fascinating paper that includes much information on Fisher. The paper, which was originally published in the journal Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics, is available online.

From the 16th to the 18th centuries, it was acceptable to use “they,” “them,” and “their” as all-purpose pronouns. “They” and the rest could be either masculine or feminine, singular or plural – as “you” can be today.

The grammarians of the late 18th and early 19th centuries who condemned the use of “they” as a singular pronoun (and deprived us of one of the handiest usages) were perhaps influenced by Fisher. If you’d like to read more, I’ve written about “they” on the blog before.

Etymologically speaking – that is, focusing only on word formation – this male-vs.-female business has given rise to many myths. Here are a few facts:

(1) “Female” isn’t related etymologically to “male. We got it from the Latin femella, a diminutive of femina, the Latin for “woman.” The word “male,” on the other hand, comes from the Latin masculus. When “female” entered English in the early 1300s it was spelled “femelle,” similar to the word in Old French. The spelling “female” arose later out of confusion with the spelling of “male.”

(2) “Woman” isn’t derived from “man.” In Anglo-Saxon times, manna and other early versions of our modern word “man” referred merely to a person regardless of sex – that is, a human being. A single or married man was a wer (“male person”) or a waepman (“weapon person”). A single or married woman was a wif or a wifman (both meant simply a woman). Over many hundreds of years (roughly, from 700 until 1400), wer and waepman fell out of use and were replaced by “man”; meanwhile, wif became “wife” and wifman became “woman.” So both “man” and woman” were derived from a universal term that was neither masculine nor feminine.

(3) There’s no “man” in “human.” We got the word “human” in the 14th century from the Latin humanus (of or belonging to humankind). Humanus in turn is related to the Latin homo. The Romans used homo for a person in general, vir for a male, and femina for a female.

(4) There’s no “his” in “history.” We got the word “history” from the Latin historia (an account or narrative). The English pronoun “his” isn’t part of the word.

My husband and I discuss these and many other myths about English in Origins of the Specious, a new book that’s coming out next spring from Random House.

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Q: I often notice new trends in English. One that bugs me is the increasing use of “concerning” instead of “worrying” or “alarming.” For example, I hear people on radio or TV describing a news event as “concerning.” Have you noticed?

A: No, I haven’t noticed this use of “concerning” as an adjective (as in, “We’re having a concerning week on Wall Street”). But you have, so it must be out there.

The word “concerning” is a participle form of the verb “concern,” as in “His mismatched socks were barely noticeable, and were concerning him unnecessarily.”

It’s also used as a preposition meaning regarding or in reference to: “Concerning his socks, I would say nobody noticed.”

As for “worrying” and “alarming,” it’s standard English to use those participles as adjectives, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. For example, “We’re having an alarming week on Wall Street.”

But it’s not considered standard to use “concerning” that way, at least not in modern times. In the past, though, “concerning” was indeed used as a participial adjective, according to the OED.

The dictionary has a few citations for this usage, dating from 1649 to 1834, including this one from Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela (1741): “I cannot bear anything that is the least concerning to you.”

Richardson seems to have had a thing about using “concerning” as an adjective. In The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1781), he describes Lady L. as “speaking for her sister on this concerning subject.”

The adjectival use of “concerning” is considered archaic today, according to the OED. Is it now being revived? Will it stick this time? We’ll have to wait and see.

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Q: Now that the verb “comprise” has come to mean “compose,” what word are we supposed to use for the old meaning of “comprise”?

A: “Comprise,” as you’ve noticed, has become ambiguous through misuse.

The traditional rule is that the whole “comprises” (consists of, includes, or contains) the parts, and the parts “compose” (constitute or make up) the whole.

The whole, meanwhile, is “composed of” its parts, not “comprised of” them, as people are increasingly saying and writing.

My advice is to stay away from “comprised of” altogether. It makes no sense, and to a stickler it makes you sound uninformed. In addition to saying something is “composed of” this, that, and the other, you can say it “includes” or “consists of” or “is made up of” them.

As I said, that’s my advice, but “comprised of” is now a very common usage, and dictionaries are bound to accept it without qualification one of these days.

R.W. Burchfield, the editor of The New Fowlers Modern English Usage, said in 1996 that opposition to the use of “comprised of” for “composed of” was getting weaker. He was right.

Both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) agree with Burchfield that opposition to the usage is abating.

But the two dictionaries warn that you’re still likely to be criticized by traditionalists for using “comprised of” to mean “composed of.”

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Q: In the following sentence, which verb – “is” or “are” – is correct? “Only one in ten business-method patents is/are granted to a financial institution.” (FYI, a business-method patent is a patent for a new method of doing business.)

A: A subject like “one in ten” or “one out of three” or “one in every six” always takes a singular verb: “One in ten is” … “One out of three comes” … “One in every six says” … and so on. The subject here is “one.”

This is true even if you insert a clause (a group of words with its own subject and verb) between the “one in ten” part and the main verb.

Here’s the kind of sentence I’m talking about: “Only one in ten business-method patents that are issued is granted to a financial institution.”

When you insert a clause beginning with “that” or “who” in such a sentence, the main verb (the one following the clause) stays singular, but the verb inside the clause is plural.

Here are some more examples. I’ll put the inserted clauses in brackets:

“One in ten plumbers [who claim to be licensed] is an impostor.”

“One out of the three [that are most popular] comes from Japan.”

“One in every six women [who vote Republican] says she’s an independent.”

The verbs are sometimes easier to figure out if you rearrange the sentence:

“Of every ten plumbers who claim to be licensed, one is an impostor.”

“Of the three that are most popular, one comes from Japan.”

“Of every six women who vote Republican, one says she’s an independent.”

(And, by the way, please ignore those fake statistics. I made them up for purposes of illustration.)

“One” may be a simple number, but it raises lots of grammatical questions. People often ask, for instance, whether they should say “one less” or “one fewer.” Here’s a Grammarphobia Blog posting on that one.

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Q: I hear thirty-somethings around the newsroom where I work use a phrase that sets my teeth on edge: “reach out,” as in “Why don’t you reach out to correspondent Jane Doe and see if she’ll file a piece for us?” Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with “reach out,” but it seems out of place for a phone call to a reporter. If you wouldn’t mind reaching out to me, what are your thoughts?

A: Only a psycholinguist can answer this question. My guess is that ordinary language (“Why don’t you ask Jane Doe to file a piece for us?”) sometimes seems inadequate.

If one’s purpose is to make asking Jane Doe sound subtly complicated, weighty, and significant (in other words, a brilliant idea!), then one says “reach out to Jane Doe.” Corporate language is full of stuff like this.

But on to the expression itself: “reach out.” It always brings to mind AT&T’s famous “Reach out and touch someone” ad campaign, which had its debut in 1979 (the first commercial ran on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show”). Perhaps we have AT&T to thank for the ubiquitous use of “reach out” today.

The verb “reach,” meaning to extend one’s hand or arm or whatever, is very old. The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from a book written in Latin in the 6th century by Pope Gregory and translated into Old English by King Alfred around the year 897. Alfred’s translation reads, Ic ræhte mine hond to eow (I reach mine hand to you).

From the beginning, as you can see, the word had almost a figurative sense when used in religious writings. Since about the year 1000, “reach” has also been used metaphorically to mean to strive after something, to jump to a conclusion, to extend one’s power or influence, to spread or run into, and so on.

Here’s a citation, using the verb phrase “reach out,” from Henry Hammond’s commentary on the Psalms (1659): “As if by his own right hand from heaven, his holy seat of mansion, he should reach out deliverance to him.”

In the more earthly sense, “reach out,” meaning to offer tangible services or help, dates from the early 20th century. Here’s an example from 1919: “a system of motorized transport which will operate as a public service reaching out to every home.”

In the last half-century, the usage has become a cherished part of the corporate vocabulary, as in this example from 1950: “The old basing point mills, since they can reach out to new markets through freight absorption, tend to overdevelop.” The rest is history.

A related noun, “outreach,” was probably inevitable. The OED‘s entry for “outreach” includes several figurative meanings. One of them uses the word loosely to mean “the area or extent of influence; scope.”

The OED gives this example from the Atlantic Monthly in 1893: “No subject has come up in New Hampshire with a larger outreach, or that more requires far-sighted men to handle it properly.”

Another figurative meaning uses the word loosely for “the action of reaching out.” The OED has an 1859 citation from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel The Minister’s Wooing: “His mind and life were a constant channel of outreach through which her soul held converse with the active and stirring world.”

An 1884 example comes from a collection of sermons by Phillips Brooks, who was an Episcopal bishop in Massachusetts (and the author of the hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem”): “What a different thing this life and this outreach toward man becomes.”

Later, these figurative uses gave rise to a new sense of “outreach,” specifically meaning an organization’s activity in seeking out, and developing relationships with, outsiders.

The first example cited in the OED is from 1899: “We met many who discovered at once the fundamental principles of sympathy outreach and information underlying and mellowing each department of the Congress.”

And later (1918): “In its natural outreach to control its own trade at home, and under its great necessity to make new trade abroad … it pushes on serenely.”

And to think I always considered “outreach” some new kind of sociobabble. On the contrary, it’s old sociobabble! It certainly doesn’t convey the intimacy or the one-to-one quality its inventors were looking for. Instead, it seems cold and bureaucratic (or, to borrow your own words, “out of place”).

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Q: Why is “iron” pronounced EYE-urn, not EYE-run? Also, is “iron” related to “irony”?

A: I’ll answer the easy part first. No, the word for the metallic element isn’t related to the word for saying one thing and meaning another.

“Iron,” which the Oxford English Dictionary describes as the “most abundant and useful” metal, has roots in Old Frisian (isern), Old Saxon (isarn), Old Norse (isarn), and many other ancient Germanic languages, including Old English.

John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins suggests that it ultimately comes from the prehistoric Celtic isarnon, which may in turn be related to the Latin aes (bronze) and the Sanskrit isira (strong).

“Iron,” spelled isern when it first entered Old English around the year 700, had all sorts of spellings (isen, ysen, iren, irin, yrin, yron, and so on) before settling down in the 17th century to its present form.

Why did the letter “r” replace the “s” seen in the early spellings of “iron”? The OED says this apparently began in poetry and later gained wider acceptance. Interestingly, the “s” has survived in the modern German word for iron: eisen.

As for “irony,” it’s derived (via the Latin ironia) from eironeia, a Greek term for feigned ignorance. It first appeared in English in the early 16th century in the works of Thomas More, who gave as an example of “ironye” the description of a “good sonne” as a “noughty lad.”

Finally, why do we pronounce “iron” as EYE-urn, not EYE-run?

Well, I can’t give you a definite answer, but the OED suggests that the present pronunciation of “iron” evolved after the “diphthongation” of the vowel “i.”

As modern English developed, speakers began pronouncing the long “i” in words like “bite” and “hide” and “wise” as a diphthong, a spoken sound that glides from one vowel to another.

The linguist and grammarian Otto Jespersen, who first studied the evolution of “i” and other vowel sounds, called this development “the Great Vowel Shift.”

In his book Essentials of English Grammar (1933), Jespersen described the vowel changes as the “greatest revolution that has taken place in the phonetic system of English.” He said the changes began in the 14th century, but other scholars have given both earlier and later dates.

Linguists disagree about what caused the changes in pronunciation. Theories have ranged from the impact on language of mass immigration after the Black Death to a linguistic backlash against England’s French-speaking Norman rulers.

I haven’t seen any phonological studies dealing specifically with the pronunciation of “iron,” but my guess is that English speakers simply found it easier to say EYE-urn than EYE-run.

Perhaps that’s also why we have EYE-ur sounds in so many other common English words: “buyer,” “fire,” “liar,” “mire,” “tire,” “wire,” and so on.

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Q: My boss wrote a memo with this phrase: “in order to display an EULA.” The acronym “EULA,” which stands for “End User License Agreement,” is usually pronounced “YOO-la.” So was he correct to write “an EULA”? Does how a word looks on the page trump the way it sounds? Just wondering.

A: We generally use “an” in front of a word that begins with a vowel (“a,” “e,” “i,” “o,” or “u”), and “a” in front of a word that begins with a consonant (a letter with a hard sound like “b,” “c,” “d,” “f,” “g,” “h,” and so on).

But not all the time. Whether we’re speaking or writing, the choice of “a” or “an” depends not on the actual letter that follows, but on the way the letter is pronounced.

The rule is that we use “a” before a word that starts with a consonant sound even if the first letter is a vowel (“a university,” “a European,” a “EULA,” etc.), and we use “an” before a word that starts with a vowel sound even if the first letter is a consonant (“an honor,” “an hour,” “an M&M”).

And, remember, an acronym (like “EULA”) is a word: it’s a word made up of the initial letters of other words.

I’ve talked about this “a”-vs.-“an” business on the blog once before. You might find the earlier posting helpful.

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Q: Could you please tell me the root of the word “Syriana”? I believe it was used to refer to the area between present-day Iraq and Lebanon, perhaps in the 18th or 19th century.

A: Originally, “Pax Syriana” was the name given to a brief truce between warring Christian and Muslim factions in Lebanon in early 1976 – “pax” because it’s Latin for “peace” and “Syriana” because the truce was enforced by Syria. The expression appeared in Time magazine on May 31, 1976.

The phrase echoes such Latin or Latinized expressions as “Pax Britannica” and “Pax Romana” and “Pax Sovietica.”

In fact, the English adjective for “Syria” is “Syrian,” not “Syriana.” None of the English dictionaries that I usually consult, including the Oxford English Dictionary, include entries for, or references to, the Latinized adjective “Syriana.”

Since it first appeared, “Pax Syriana” has been used more broadly to refer to the post-civil war period in Lebanon (1990-2005).

The 2005 movie “Syriana,” starring George Clooney, took its name from “Pax Syriana,” according to the film’s director and screenwriter, Stephen Gaghan.

Gaghan explained in a Washington Post online discussion in 2005 that “Syriana” was a term he’d heard in think tanks. “I believe it referenced the Pax Syriana, but in the fall of ’02 it seemed to stand for a hypothetical redrawing of the boundaries in the Middle East,” he said.

“For my purposes,” he added, “I thought it was just a great word that could stand for man’s perpetual hope of remaking any geographic region to suit his own needs, a dream that in the case of the Middle East has been going on at least since the time of Caesar in 80 BC.”

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Q: Is there any reason to use the subordinate conjunction “how” after a verb of being? Here’s my example: “The challenge with freelancing is how to manage all of these issues.” The “how” doesn’t seem necessary, but is it grammatically incorrect? I’m perplexed.

A: The construction you use (“how” following “is”) isn’t necessary – there are other ways to phrase the sentence – but it’s not grammatically incorrect either. The “how” in this kind of construction isn’t a conjunction but an adverb.

First, a grammar refresher. The verb “be” is seldom used by itself. It usually connects the subject with some kind of description. Because it’s often a mere connection, it’s called a “copula” or linking verb.

A linking verb lets us connect the subject with what we state or affirm about it. What we state (or predicate) is called the predicate. And several different kinds of predicates can follow “is”: a predicate noun, adjective, adverb, or prepositional phrase.

For example, your sentence, which I’ve simplified for purposes of illustration, could be phrased at least three ways and still be grammatically correct. All of the italic phrases in the three examples below act as predicate nouns:

(1) “The challenge is how to manage these issues” (though “how” is an adverb here, the entire phrase functions as a predicate noun).

(2) “The challenge is to manage these issues” (infinitive phrase functioning as a predicate noun).

(3) “The challenge is managing these issues” (gerund phrase functioning as a predicate noun).

In those three sentences, you could easily swap subject and predicate (“Managing these issues is the challenge”).

Now here are examples of “is” followed by a predicate adjective, adverb, and prepositional phrase:

(4) “The challenge is difficult” (adjective).

(5) “The challenge is here” (adverb).

(6) “The challenge is on the table” (prepositional phrase).

Now, back to your question. The Oxford English Dictionary, in its entry on the adverb “how,” explains that the word can be used in front of an infinitive to mean “in what way” or “by what means.”

A search of the OED‘s citations turns up dozens of such usages. Here are some of them:

1621: “His Colophon is how to resist and repress Atheism.”

1689: “All their consult is how to cheat him.”

1754: “The Difficulty is, how to apply this Rule.”

1885: “One thing he can never learn, and that is how to vacate.”

1902: “The problem is how to give normal emotional channelization.”

1958: “One of the main problems the Russians are wrestling with to-day is how to achieve ‘gracious living.’”

1961: “The subject of this paper is … how to analyse linguistic signs.”

1963: “What we’re going on with now, muchachos … is how to catch squid.”

I hope this clarifies things, and that I haven’t just muddied the waters. I apologize for all the grammatical terminology – something I usually keep to a minimum on the blog. But you asked for it!

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Q: I think it’s incorrect to insert “and” into numbers in the hundreds, but a fellow school mom thinks it’s either correct or it doesn’t matter. Her daughter lost in a multiplication bee at school when she answered that 12 X 11 was “one hundred and thirty-two.” The correct answer was “one hundred thirty-two.” (Further info: The kids had practiced their times tables all summer for the contest, but were only told the day before that they couldn’t use “and,” so many of them fell into old habits.) Just wondered what your take on it would be.

A: Gee, that’s a shame about those kids at the multiplication bee. The other mom is right: there’s no grammatical (or mathematical) rule that either requires or condemns the inclusion of “and” in a spoken or spelled-out number in the hundreds. So saying or writing the number 132 as “one hundred and thirty-two” is neither inappropriate nor less than proper English.

No grammar or usage guide I know of has any such rule against this use of “and” in speaking or writing out numbers. In a number of three digits or more, the use of “and” is optional.

In fact, the “and” is generally more idiomatic. I can’t imagine that anyone would say, “Whew, I’ve driven five hundred three miles since breakfast!” (Not very euphonious.) The more natural construction would be, “Whew, I’ve driven five hundred and three miles since breakfast!”

Of course, if the final element were larger – say, “ninety-six” – one would be more likely to skip the “and”: “I’ve driven five hundred ninety-six miles since breakfast!”

But enough about assumptions. When in doubt, always go to the mother lode, the Oxford English Dictionary.

Lo and behold, the OED’s entry for “and” lists this as one of its definitions: “to connect (units or) tens to hundreds (or thousands), as two hundred and one, three thousand and twenty-one, six thousand two hundred and fifty-six.”

The earliest published references we have for this use of “and” are in Old English, from the Lindisfarne Gospels of the late 7th or early 8th century. And it’s been common ever since.

The OED further explains that the “and” in these numbers “is frequently omitted colloquially in North American usage.” Aha! This would seem to imply that including the “and” is the more standard usage, while omitting it is nonstandard (or “colloquial”).

I think that teacher should go stand in a corner, after apologizing to the kids who fell into old habits – very old habits that have been acceptable English since Anglo-Saxon times.

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Q: Should “Mr.” be spelled out when it is quoted? For example: “Mr. Jones went to town,” she said. Or: “Mister Jones went to town,” she said.

A: I’d use the abbreviated version before a name, whether it’s quoted or not, but I’d spell out the word when it stands alone in a sentence: “Hey, mister, what are you doing?” he yelled.

I’m not at all bothered, though, when I see the courtesy title spelled out, especially for comic effect in literary writing.

In fact, the title was spelled out for hundreds of years after it first showed up in English in the early 16th century, according to published references in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The first OED citation is a 1523 entry from a ledger in Canterbury: “Paied to a carpenter by grete for mending of Myster Collettis house.”

The abbreviated version didn’t appear until the mid-19th century. The earliest citation in the OED is from Robert S. Surtees’s comic novel Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour (1853).

Although both versions have been around for quite some time, the OED says the courtesy title “is now usually written in its abbreviated form, and tends only to be given in full in cases where some humorous or ironic emphasis is intended.”

Here’s a humorous example from the Dickens novel Nicholas Nickleby (1839): “Yes; and indeed and indeed again, Mister Jackanapes,” said the excited lady.

Back to your question. I’d recommend the abbreviated version (“Mr. Jones went to town,” she said), and The Chicago Manual of Style seems to agree with me, though it doesn’t deal specifically with the question of quotations.

The Chicago Manual says “Mr.” should be abbreviated in front of a name, whether a full name or just a last name. It adds, however, that when the title “is used without a name, in direct address, it is spelled out.”

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Q: I work for a state agency in the Midwest responsible for employment assistance. The question of the day at my office: ‘”Jobseeker” or “job seeker,” which is correct? There’s nothing in the old style book from my days as a reporter. And my dictionary is no help. While it lists “jobholder,” it’s silent on “jobseeker” or “job seeker.” Please help.

A: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), one of the references I use the most, has an entry for “job seeker” that includes “jobseeker” as an acceptable though a less frequently used variant.

The Oxford English Dictionary, on the other hand, has an entry for “jobseeker,” but has many published references for the two-word version.

H-m-m! From the OED citations, it seems that the two-word version is more popular in the US and the one-worder in the UK. I’d recommend using “job seeker” in the US

In fact, the one-word “jobseeker” has taken on a somewhat different sense in Britain than “job seeker” has in the United States.

In the US, the term means simply one who seeks work. But in Britain, the OED says, it has the additional meaning of “an unemployed person required to demonstrate efforts to find work in order to qualify for government benefits.”

The term was two words when it first appeared in print a century and a half ago. It seems to have gained its somewhat pejorative sense in Britain about 30 years ago.

By the way, the term “job hunter,” which has appeared as one word, two words, and hyphenated, has been around even longer. The earliest citation in the OED is from an 1834 comment in The Royal Lady’s Magazine about “harangues of the parliamentary job-hunters.”

Should it be one word? Two words? Or hyphenated? Well, American Heritage lists the two-word “job hunter,” while the Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary prefers the hyphenated “job-hunter.” In other words, it’s your call.

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Q: I ran into a problem when I was writing a friend about a trip my son (Connor) and I (Kevin) took to Rome last spring. If someone else were writing, he’d refer to “Connor and Kevin’s trip.” But what if I want to write about our trip. Is it “Connor’s and my trip” or “Connor and my trip” or something else? I could write “the trip that Connor and I took,” of course, but I’m stubborn and curious.

A: The first thing you have to decide when writing about two people who possess something (or some things) – like a trip to Rome or a bunch of books – is whether they possess the stuff together or individually.

If two people possess the things individually, each name gets an apostrophe plus “s,” as in this example: “The carry-on bag was crammed with Connor’s and Kevin’s books – Connor’s Harry Potters and Kevin’s Lincoln biographies.”

If two people possess something jointly, they’re considered a unit and need only a single apostrophe plus “s” at the end of the twosome: “Connor and Kevin’s trip was a big hit.”

Now, back to your question. Can a pronoun be substituted for the second name when two people possess something jointly? (“Connor and my trip to Rome was a big hit.”)

The short answer is no. Both members of the pair – Connor and Kevin – shared the trip to Rome, but the possessive pronoun “my” is a stand-in for only one member.

You may be stubborn, but if you want to use a pronoun, you’ll have to rewrite the sentence. Here’s one possibility: “My trip with Connor to Rome was a big hit.” Better yet: “Our trip to Rome was a big hit.”

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Q: I’m a WNYC listener out here on the prairie plains of Missouri. As an American-born Chinese who speaks Mandarin, I’d like to comment on the “Peking”-vs.-“Beijing” question that came up during your last appearance on the the Leonard Lopate Show. “Peking” is derived from the Cantonese pronunciation of the city. In Mandarin, it’s “Bei (north) Jing (capital).” If you recall, Britain’s 19th-century foray into China was through Canton, which is why many old English versions of Chinese place names are of Cantonese origin.

A: Thanks for your comments. Interestingly, the Mandarin pronunciation of the Chinese capital’s name used to be similar to the Cantonese pronunciation, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In fact, from what I’ve read, Cantonese has preserved many sounds from older versions of Chinese that modern Mandarin has lost or modified. That may help help explain the “Peking”-vs.-“Beijing” question.

In Middle Chinese (the language spoken in the 6th to 9th centuries) and Old Mandarin (spoken in the 14th century), the consonant sound beginning the second part of the city’s name had a “k” sound, according to the OED.

This “k” pronunciation was still prevalent in the 16th century when Jesuit missionaries began arriving in China and communicating the name of the city to the West, according to the dictionary.

The name first appeared in English in the early 17th century as “Paquin” and “Pequin.” The spellings “Pekin” and “Peking” showed up later in the 17th century.

The first published reference in the OED for “Beijing” as the Chinese capital is from a 1979 Time magazine article about the Chinese government’s decision to change the way it transliterated Chinese names into English:

“The changeover was started by Peking (um, er, Beijing) on Jan. 1, when the government of Zhongguo (otherwise known as China) decreed that in all of its foreign-language publications Pinyin would replace the traditional Wade-Giles system of romanization.”

Nowadays, “Beijing” is the usual English name for the Chinese capital, while “Peking” primarily survives in phrases like “Peking duck” and “Peking man.” The breed of dog once referred to as “Peking spaniel,” though, is now a “Pekinese.”

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Q: For an English assignment, my sixth-grade daughter wrote, “That’s a lot of books you’re carrying.” My wife, puzzled, ask for my opinion. I thought the sentence was fine, then wondered if it should be “Those are a lot of books you’re carrying.” Any rationale for either?

A: Some dictionaries will tell you that “lot” is singular, and that the plural form is “lots.” But in fact, the singular form, “lot,” can take either a singular verb or a plural one. You can have “a lot” of one thing, like milk (singular), or “a lot” of a collection of things, like cookies (plural).

So when “lot” is the subject of a sentence, the verb (singular or plural) depends on what follows. You would say “A lot of milk is spoiled” (singular), but “A lot of cookies are stale” (plural).

To use a more bookish example: “A lot of the book is boring,” but “A lot of books are boring.” In both cases, the subject is “a lot.”

The choice isn’t so clear when “a lot” is the object of the verb instead of the subject, as in the case with your daughter’s sentence: “That’s [or “Those are”] a lot of books you’re carrying.”

When “a lot” follows the verb, some speakers choose the plural (“Those are a lot of books…”), but many more treat “a lot” as a singular collective noun (“That’s a lot of books…”).

To my ear, the second choice sounds more natural and idiomatic. Why? Probably because of what linguists call “notional agreement” – a sense that “a lot” is singular even when it’s technically plural.

In my opinion, either “That’s a lot” or “Those are a lot” would be correct. But “That’s a lot” sounds more like good old idiomatic English

I hope this helps.

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Q: Barack Obama said last year that he had stopped wearing his flag-lapel pin because he disapproved of “jingoism.” After listening to his recent speech at the convention, it occurred to me to look up the origin of the word “jingoism” in several online dictionaries. It apparently began life as “jingo,” a magician’s expression, like “presto” and “abracadabra.”

A: I may be missing something, but I can’t find a single reliable source that says Obama ever used the word “jingoism” in his flag-pin comments. A lot of other people, though, have used the term in referring to his remarks.

Is this another urban legend?

But back to the origin of “jingoism.” Although you’ve looked up the word in several online dictionaries, let’s go to the mother of all etymological resources, the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED says the word originated in the 17th century as “jingo,” which the dictionary defines as “a piece of conjuror’s gibberish.” However, the earliest citation for “jingo” in the OED refers not to a magician’s incantation but to a clergyman’s trimming – or, rather, mangling – of a biblical text.

In a 1670 satirical book about clerical life, a clergyman gets hold of a biblical passage, “then tanutus, high jingo, come again … minces the Text so small, that his Parishoners … can scarce tell what’s become of it.” (I’ve expanded on the OED citation by going to the original source.)

In 1694, the expression “by jingo” was used for par Dieu in a translation of Rabelais, suggesting that “jingo” may have also been considered a euphemism for God, similar to “golly” or “gosh.”

A more recent theory cited by the OED is that “jingo” may be related to a similar Basque word. “Such an origin is not impossible, but is as yet unsupported by evidence,” the dictionary says. It discounts as a 19th-century joke the idea that “jingo” might be short for St. Gengulphus. (The jokester must have had an odd sense of humor!)

The word “jingo” took on its political meaning in the 19th century when it was used as a nickname for a supporter of the British policy to use the Royal Navy to resist the advance of Russia during the Russo-Turkish War in 1877 and 1878.

This new sense apparently arose from the use of the word “jingo” in “We Don’t Want to Fight,” an 1878 song by the English composer G.W. Hunt: “We don’t want to fight, but, by jingo if we do, / We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.”

An 1878 newspaper citation refers to “The Jingoes – the new tribe of music hall patriots who sing the jingo song.” And an 1879 citation says, “The Jingoes ought to rejoice and be glad that their ‘tall talk’ did not drive us into a war with Russia last year.”

By the end of the 19th century, the term was being used more generally, according to the OED, for “one who brags of his country’s preparedness for fight, and generally advocates or favours a bellicose policy in dealing with foreign powers; a blustering or blatant ‘patriot’; a Chauvinist.”

The earliest citation for the actual word “jingoism,” which the OED defines as “the policies or practices of the jingoes,” is from an 1878 letter by the English essayist Abraham Hayward: “Another year must pass away before ‘Jingoism’ receives its death-blow.”

Finally, here’s an amusing 1881 citation from a British magazine: “We call it Jingoism in England; in France it is called Chauvinism; and in the United States, Bunkum.”

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Q: I’ve been reading Woe Is I Jr. and loving it. (I’m an English teacher turned librarian.) I do have a question, however. On page 43, “Fang” is identified as the subject of the sentence “My dog Fang is all muddy.” If “Fang” is the subject, what is “dog”? I picked “dog” as the subject and identified “Fang” as an appositive.

A: The full subject of that sentence is, of course, the phrase “My dog Fang.” The noun phrase “my dog” and the noun ”Fang” are appositives. (An appositive is a noun or pronoun or noun phrase put beside or near another to explain it.)

So which of the appositives – “My dog” or “Fang” – is the simple subject of that sentence? The simple answer is both of them. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by Randolph Quirk and others, offers a fuller explanation.

The authors say appositives can be in full or partial apposition. In full apposition (as in “my dog Fang”) either appositive can be omitted and what remains will be a proper sentence.

Each appositive, according to Quirk, serves the same grammatical function – that is, either “My dog” or “Fang” could be regarded as the simple subject.

Appositives can be tricky. Some usage experts would identify only the second element (“Fang”) as an appositive; others would insist that just the explanatory part (“my dog”) is the appositive. I’m with Quirk: I consider them both appositives.

I’m glad you’re enjoying Woe Is I Jr., which I tried to write in plain English without using technical terms like “appositives.”

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Q: In a recent interview on WNYC, the head conservator at the Guggenheim Museum used the verb “travel” in a strange way when discussing Ad Reinhardt’s paintings: “We rarely travel them because they’re so fragile.” I find this transitive use of an intransitive verb very annoying. You don’t travel something; something travels.

A: That art conservator’s use of “travel” as a transitive verb sounds like new bureaucratic jargon, doesn’t it? But it isn’t so new after all. In fact, the verb “travel” has had a very interesting journey indeed, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

It began life as “travail,” from an Old French word meaning to torment or harass. In fact, our modern nouns “travel” and “travail” were once the same. I’ve discussed the painful evolution of “travel” before in a posting to the blog.

The verb “travel” entered English in the 1200s (though the modern spelling took several hundred years to develop). Over the centuries it has meant, among other things, to torment, to work, and to make a journey (as we all know, a journey can be arduous at times!).

From its earliest years, “travel” was used both transitively (that is, one traveled something, as in “He traveled the road” or “She traveled her horse”) as well as intransitively (one traveled somewhere or just traveled, as in “They traveled to Singapore” or “We loved to travel”).

In the early 1300s, to make a trip was to travel a journey, as in this quotation by a medieval monk, Robert Manning of Brunne, from his long devotional poem Handlyng Synne (1303): “Tharfore, y am come to thys cyte, / And haue trauayled many a iurne.” (Roughly, “Therefore, I am come to this city, and have traveled many a journey.”)

The verb was also used transitively to mean to cause to travel, as in this 1598 quotation from Richard Hakluyt, an Elizabethan writer who produced several books on exploration in the New World: “Their horses are but smal, but very swift and hard, they trauell them vnshod both winter and Sommer.”

This usage has survived into modern times, as in these examples from the OED:

1930: “She had sapphire rings and clips … of an incredible value, and she ‘travelled’ them, as they say in theatrical circles.”

1966: “The taller of these two guests travelled a broken concertina with him.”

The OED also notes that in publishing to “travel” a book is to take it around for promotional purposes:

1937: From a letter by Virginia Woolf: “We’re taking Tuesday off at Rodmell to travel our books in Sussex.”

1977: George Routledge, the publisher, “liked to travel his own books in the north country so that he could keep in touch with book-sellers.”

There are no examples in the OED of anyone traveling a painting, and I must admit that the usage sounds funny to my ear. But it has precedent on its side.

Some less familiar uses of verbs will never sound right to me, though they have come to be accepted, at least in dictionaries: “impact” as a verb (“How will this impact me?”); “grow” in some transitive uses (“He hopes to grow the economy”); and “eat” used backward (“This soup eats like a meal”).

But that’s English for you.

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Q: God, I’m turning into a grump, but when it comes to politics and language, abuses get me downright dyspeptic. One common mistake has surfaced during the recent heady convention days. It’s the misuse of “podium” for “lectern.” I suppose I’m a lone voice crying in the wilderness on this one, but the podiumbrage has left me daised.

A: You’re not a lone wolf on this “podium”-vs.-“lectern” business, but I suspect you’ll be a lonelier one before long.

Traditionally, a podium has been a raised platform and a lectern has been a stand for a speaker’s notes. But dictionaries now accept the use of “podium” for “lectern,” though not the other way around.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), for example, includes this meaning in its “podium” entry: “a stand for holding the notes of a public speaker; a lectern.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) also lists “lectern” as one definition of “podium.” Thus does language change.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes this sense of the word “podium” as an “extended use” in North America. The OED’s first published reference for it is from a 1954 issue of The New Republic:

“Pounding the podium and talking loudly, Rover accused the judge – Judge Luther W. Youngdahl.” (I’ve used an expanded version of the quotation from Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage.)

By the way, the Merriam-Webster’s usage guide describes the use of “podium” in place of “lectern” as “a favorite bugbear” of journalistic sticklers, but M-W says it’s standard English nevertheless.

I’m sorry to hear that you’re daised by this podiumbrage. God only knows where it comes from. Perhaps it’s a dais ex machina.

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Q: Why do newspaper headlines refer to “investment banks” as “banks”? By using the same word for free-wheeling financial institutions on the one hand and government-regulated banks on the other, the papers have muddied the waters and perhaps contributed to the present financial crisis.

A: I don’t think newspaper copy editors (the modestly paid folks who write those headlines) should be blamed for the blunders of the fat cats at investment banks – or the politicians who ignored the shenanigans.

And as a former copy editor, I sympathize with the need to trim words to get a headline to fit the assigned space.

Nevertheless, I too have been taken aback by the frequent use of “bank” for “investment bank” in headlines as well as first references in newspaper articles.

I began noticing this about two years ago, and a quick search of the New York Times archive suggests that I wasn’t imagining it.

There has indeed been a drop in the use of “investment bank” in Times headlines over the last two years.

The full term was used four times in the first half of 2006, but not at all during the rest of the year. Since then, the full term hasn’t been seen much in headlines—only once in 2007 and once so far in 2008.

As you might imagine, there’s been no shortage of articles about investment banks in the Times over the last two years. At least seven headlines in 2007 and five in 2008 referred to them merely as “banks.”

I’m not quite sure what to make of all this, since the use of the term “investment bank” in headlines has gone up and down over the years.

For instance, it was used quite often in the late ‘90s (at least eight times in ’98 and another eight in ’99), but much less in the early years of the new millennium.

It would take a lot more research to determine how much of this had to do with editorial decisions at the Times or the ups and downs in investment banking.

By the way, I couldn’t find any citations in the Oxford English Dictionary for “bank” used on its own to refer to an investment bank. The earliest published reference in the OED for “investment banking” dates from 1922. The earliest for “investment banker” is from 1938 and for “investment bank” from 1963.

In Anglo-Saxon days, according to the OED, the word “bank” (banca in Old English) referred to a bench or platform or stage. By the 15th century, it had come to mean a money changer’s place of business (from his table or counter).

The word was first used in its modern sense (an establishment to keep money, lend it, or invest it) in the 16th century.

The entries for “bank” in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) make no mention of investment banks. (American Heritage has a separate entry for “investment bank,” but it doesn’t include the short form.)

The New York Times’s online financial glossary defines investment banks as financial institutions that provide such services as “aiding in the sale of securities, facilitating mergers and other corporate reorganizations, acting as brokers to both individual and institutional clients, and trading for their own accounts.”

The glossary doesn’t define plain old banks.

Should the Times (as well as every other paper) be clearer in its news pages about the difference between banks and investment banks? I think so. After all, investment banks aren’t subject to the same stringent regulations that banks are. And it never hurts to remind us of that.

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Q: In an essay on the “reality” of visual images, the filmmaker Errol Morris uses the word “fauxtograph” to describe a picture that has been doctored. He says the web designer Charles Johnson, who runs the blog Little Green Footballs, originated the term. It’s a keeper, don’t you think?

A: I love It. I predict that “fauxtography” will stay in the language (or it should, if the English-speaking public has any sense).

This neologism – or new word (from the Greek roots for “new” and “word”) – has already made a good start, with 150,000 hits on Google. Seems like the real thing!

Neither “fauxtograph” nor “fauxtography” has made it into any of the dictionaries I usually consult, but “fauxtography” and “fauxtographer” are in Merriam-Webster’s Open Dictionary, an online list of proposed entries submitted by readers.

The word “fauxtography” is defined as photography “that has been digitally manipulated to achieve a specific editorial impact.”

And a “fauxtographer” is described as someone “who takes digital images and manipulates them in a way as to appear real.”

In other words, a fauxny.

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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: I have always thought the word “empathetic” should be banned from the language since “empathic” covers it. Perhaps people who prefer “empathetic” are thinking of “empanada.” Am I correct in my thinking?

A: “Empathic” dates back to 1909 and “empathetic” to 1932, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, so both adjectives are relatively new.

The two words are considered standard English in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.)

The two dictionaries define “empathetic” and “empathic” the same way: relating to or characterized by empathy – that is by identifying with another person’s feelings, motives, situation, etc.

Both words are widely used, but “empathetic” is more popular, with 2 million Google hits to 1.35 million for “empathic.” Why is “empathetic” hot?

I don’t think empanadas enter the picture. My guess is that “empathetic” has become more popular than “empathic” over the years because of its similarity to “sympathetic.” The OED makes the same case, suggesting that “empathetic” is modeled “after such derivatives as sympathetic from sympathy.”

If you associate empathy with sympathy, it’s natural to think of the corresponding words “empathetic” and “sympathetic.” (There is no modern word “sympathic.” There once was, but it’s now considered rare or obscure.)

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Q: I was taught – lo, these many years ago – that it is never correct to begin a sentence with “and.” In recent years, I have noticed more and more sentences, spoken and written by those who I thought would know better, begin with “and.” Has this become acceptable usage or is it still incorrect to use “and” in this manner?

A: Contrary to popular opinion, it has never been incorrect to begin a sentence with a conjunction (a linking word like “and,” “but,” “or,” etc.). It’s perfectly acceptable to use conjunctions to join words, phrases, sentences, and even paragraphs.

I discussed this in a posting to the blog two years ago, but I think it’s time for an update. No one’s quite sure where the old prohibition came from, but it’s mythological.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says few language authorities “have actually put the prohibition in print.” In fact, it could find only one such reference – an 1868 comment by George Washington Moon, a literary gadfly who criticized the grammarians of his day: “It is not scholarly to begin a sentence with the conjunction and.”

Merriam-Webster’s cites speculation that the belief may have come from the efforts of teachers to correct children for using “and” excessively to string together clauses and sentences.

“As children grow older and master the more sophisticated technique of subordinating clauses, the prohibition of and becomes unnecessary,” M-W adds. “But apparently our teachers fail to tell us when we may forget about the prohibition. Consequently, many of us go through life thinking it wrong to begin a sentence with and.”

And that’s the story.

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Q: I appreciate this forum and the opportunity it offers to comment and question freely. Speaking of which, when did “for free” begin to replace just “free” in a financial sense?

A: The word “free” (the adjective as well as the adverb) is quite old, dating from Anglo-Saxon days, when it referred to not being enslaved or restricted in other ways. It wasn’t until the early 17th century that it took on the meaning of without charge or payment.

One of the earliest published references, from around 1631, is in a poem by John Donne: “Love is not love, but given free; / And so is mine; so should yours be.”

Most of the early uses of “free” in a financial sense are in the phrase “free gratis,” as in this 1682 citation, via the Oxford English Dictionary, from the Liverpool municipal records: “Hee was admitted free gratis.”

The first OED citation for “free” used by itself in this sense is from an 1872 ad in the Dubuque (Iowa) Herald for Kress Fever Tonic: “Box of pills free with every bottle.”

The earliest published references in the dictionary for the phrase “for free” used instead of plain old “free” date from the late 1930s and early ’40s.

A 1943 article in the journal American Speech speculates about the origin of this new and expanded expression: “It might be reasonable to assume that for free results from the confusion of free and for nothing.”

From the OED citations, it appears that the phrase “for free” has been well-established among English speakers since the 1950s.

Here’s a colorful example from a 1957 article in the Chronicle-Telegram of Elyria, Ohio: “He … aroused the anger of Miss Hayworth’s movie boss who felt that chopping the skull off a $6,000-a-week star for free was pushing things a little.”

And here’s one from Kingsley Amis’s novel I Like It Here (1958): “Bowen tried to buy some drinks, conscious of having been fed and made drunk for free.”

The old expression “free gratis” is still popular too. I got more than 1.5 million hits when I googled it, though a surprisingly large number were for software downloads and sexual-enhancement drugs.

I see nothing wrong with using either “for free” or “free gratis” for emphasis when “free” alone doesn’t seem to have enough oomph. If emphatic redundancy is a sin, I’m a sinner.

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Q: Actors, politicians, churchgoers, and chefs are claiming that scripts, policies, psalms, and ingredients resonate with them. It’s everywhere just now. Enough already. All this resonating doesn’t strike a chord with me.

A: I agree. The strings of my heart don’t exactly zing over all the resonating in the air. The usage is stale, tired, and boring. Aside from that, however, there’s nothing wrong with it.

Although “resonate” originally meant to produce resonance in a musical sense, the word has been used figuratively for more than 30 years.

Both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) say it can mean to evoke a shared feeling or to relate harmoniously.

The word, which comes from the Latin resonare (to resound), is relatively new. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from an 1873 treatise on musical sound: “The wires of the corresponding note will of course resonate with it.”

The OED’s first reference for “resonate” used figuratively is in a 1976 issue of Publishers Weekly in which prose is described as “resonating with the illustrations.” (The editors at PW started something: the word went on to become numbingly familiar in literary criticism.)

The much older words “resonance” and “resonant” have been used in both an acoustic and a figurative sense for far longer.

The noun “resonance” referred to prolonging sound by vibration when it entered English in the late 15th century, according to the OED, but it was used figuratively as early as 1607: “So ought our hearts … to haue no other resonance but of good thoughts.”

The adjective “resonant” could refer to either resounding words or music in the 16th and 17th centuries. A 1592 citation mentions “earnest and resonant, but vndigested words,” while Milton writes in Paradise Lost (1667) of a “resonant fugue.”

In a clearly figurative use, an 1842 essay by Elizabeth Barrett Browning refers to the “resonant majesty” of the English dramatist Philip Massinger.

So, “resonate,” “resonance,” and “resonant” have a history. But that’s no reason to work these poor words to death. Let’s give them a rest. And one day, they may resonate again. Or, as Judy Garland, sang: “All nature seemed to be in perfect harmony / Zing! Went the strings of my heart.”

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Q: You recently suggested on WNYC that the adjective and adverb “gingerly” may be related to the noun “ginger.” In fact, “gingerly” comes from an Old French word for “gentle” while “ginger” is derived from a Sanskrit word for the root that gives us the spice.

A: You got me. And so did quite a few other listeners to the Leonard Lopate Show. The two words have two entirely different roots, so to speak.

“Ginger,” which is by far the older of the words, has been studied exhaustively by etymologists – “deservedly so, for its ancestry is extraordinarily complex,” says the lexicographer John Ayto in his Dictionary of Word Origins.

One of the more exhaustive studies cited by Ayto is a 74-page monograph by the British linguist Alan S.C. Ross. (Professor Ross is perhaps better known for coining the terms “U” and “non-U” in reference to upper-class and not-so-upper English.)

Ayto traces the English noun “ginger” back to the Sanskrit srngaveram, a word that describes the horn-shaped root of the plant. But the Oxford English Dictionary speculates that the origin of “ginger” might go back even further – to a pre-historic Dravidian name.

Either way, a vernacular version of the Sanskrit word passed into Greek and Latin before showing up in Old English as gingiber and gingifer around the year 1000.

The adverb and adjective “gingerly,” on the other hand, comes from the Old French word gensor, meaning pretty or delicate.

The earliest citation in the OED for the adverb is from a 1519 play: “Daunce we, daunce we … I can daunce it gyngerly.”

The adjective first appeared in a 1533 English translation of the works of the Latin playwright Terence: “We staye and prolonge our goinge with a nyce or tendre and softe, delicate, or gingerly pace.”

At first, “gingerly” referred to walking or dancing with elegant steps. But by the early 17th century, the word was being used to describe moving with extreme caution, reluctance, or distaste.

Here’s an example from The Parliament of Love, a 1624 comedy by Philip Massinger: “Prithee, gentle officer, / Handle me gingerly, or I fall to pieces.”

What about the name “Ginger”? Does it come from “ginger,” “gingerly,” or something else? I discussed this in an Aug. 4, 2008, blog item about nicknames.

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Q: I was writing dialogue for a short-story class when it occurred to me that I had seen five different spellings of a word I was about to use: “O.K.,” “OK,” “okay,” “o.k.,” and “ok.” Which is correct? Is the two-letter version an acronym? If so, what does is stand for? Where does this odd word come from? Sadly, my dictionary isn’t much help.

A: The first three spellings are OK. Forget about the last two. As for which of the three legitimate ones should go in the mouth of your character, this is a matter of style, not grammar or usage.

The New York Times stylebook, for instance, prefers the dotted “O.K.” while the Associated Press stylebook favors the dotless “OK.” Garner’s Modern American Usage says all three are legit.

“Although OK predominates in highly informal contexts,” Garner says, “okay has an advantage in edited English: it more easily lends itself to cognate forms such as okays, okayer, okaying, and okayed.”

Yes, the two-letter version is an acronym. It stands for “oll korrect” or “orl korrect,” jocular 19th-century spellings of “all correct.” You may be surprised at how much has been written about this little two-letter word.

The etymologist and lexicographer Allen Walker Read, perhaps the world’s leading authority on OK-ness, wrote six articles about the subject in 1963 and 1964 in the journal American Speech.

Read, in his research, discovered that “o.k.” (it originally had lower-case letters and dots) was just one of many whimsical acronyms coined in the 19th century: “O.W.” for “oll wright,” “K.G.” for “know good,” “K.Y.” for “know yuse,” and so on.

The earliest known published reference for “OK” is from an 1839 editor’s note in the Boston Morning Post: “He … would have the ‘contribution box,’ o.k. – all correct – and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward.”

But soon after “OK” made its initial appearance (no pun intended), wordies began imagining that the initials stood for all sorts of other phrases.

An 1840 article in the Lexington Intelligencer, cited by the Oxford English Dictionary, includes several of these mythical phrases and suggests that the real one is a phony:

“Perhaps no two letters have ever been made the initials of as many words as O.K. … When first used they were said to mean Out of Kash, (cash;) more recently they have been made to stand for Oll Korrect, Oll Koming, Oll Konfirmed, &c. &c.”

Hugh Rawson, in his book Devious Derivations, lists 13 of the more interesting apocryphal sources of “OK,” including these: “Old Kinderhook” (President Martin Van Buren’s nickname), a Choctaw term hoke or okey, Oberst Kommandant (German for “colonel in command”), and a word for “good” in a West African language spoken by slaves in the American South.

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Q: What is the difference between the prefixes “a” and “un,” as in “apolitical” and “unpolitical”?

A: English has a vast supply of small negative prefixes: “a,” “de,” “dis,” “il,” “im,” “in,” “ir,” “mal,” “mis,” “non,” and “un.” (There are larger ones, too: “ante,” “anti,” “counter,” “contra,” and others.) Conventions for using them have developed over the years through common usage, rather than through a set of rules.

These little bits of negativity can be bewildering, especially to people learning English as a second language. We all know the difference between “misinformation” and “disinformation,” but often the distinction between negative pairs is more subtle.

“Irreligious” suggests a hostility to religion, while “nonreligious” means a lack of religion. “Amoral” means denying that there are moral distinctions, or not caring about right or wrong; “unmoral” and “nonmoral” mean unrelated to morality. And “illiterate” means unable to read and write, while “nonliterate” means without a written language.

Sometimes, however, there’s no difference (“defrocked” and “unfrocked” pop to mind), and that’s the case with “apolitical” and “unpolitical.”

The prefix “a” means not or without, and “un” means not or the opposite of. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed) defines “apolitical” as having no interest or involvement in political affairs, having an aversion to politics or political affairs, or having no political significance. M-W defines “unpolitical” as meaning “apolitical.”

In short, only the dictionary can tell you whether two negatives with the same stem but different prefixes mean the same thing or not.

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Q: The first grown-up I heard refer to his father as “my daddy” was Lyndon Johnson (I was new to America) and I took it to be a Texan thing until I noticed that it was common in the Southern states and in books by Southern writers – who could forget Big Daddy? For some years now, I’ve noticed that women who would not dream of calling their mothers “mommies” speak of their fathers as “daddies.” Comment, please?

A: The term “daddy” isn’t a Texan thing or a Southern thing or even an American thing. It’s an English thing that was around well before the days of Shakespeare.

The first published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Chester Mystery Plays, a cycle of biblical plays from the 15th and 16th centuries, and perhaps even earlier.

In The Death of Abel (circa 1500), the Cain character says, “As my daddye hath taughte yt me, / I will fulfill his lore.” And here’s a 1529 citation from the poet John Skelton: “Now God save these dadyes / And all ther yong babyes.”

The Chester plays, named for the town in Cheshire where they were performed, were banned as “Popery” by the Church of England during the Elizabethan era but they were revived in modern times.

I haven’t heard many grown-up women refer to their fathers as “daddies,” but perhaps those who do feel more free to act girlish with dads than with moms.

When I think of women and daddies, though, I think of Mary Martin singing that her heart belongs to her da-da-da, da-da-da, da-daddyah.

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