Tag: Grammar

Q: I’ve been hearing the word “conversate” around my office lately. Is it a legitimate substitute for “converse”? I need your expertise!

A: “Conversate” is not legit. The proper word is “converse.”

I suspect your co-workers are using (perhaps humorously) an inventive back-formation from “conversation.” Although I got 201,000 hits when I googled “conversate,” many were complaints about the usage.

Back-formations (new words formed by dropping prefixes or suffixes from older ones) are pretty common in English. Examples of verbs that began as back-formations from nouns are “diagnose” (from “diagnosis”), “escalate” (from “escalator”), and “babysit” (from “babysitter”).

Among back-formations that are often frowned upon by American usage experts are “incent” (from “incentive”), “enthuse” (from “enthusiasm”), and “orientate” (a mid-19th century back-formation from “orientation,” which itself is derived from a verb, “orient”).

Another example of a humorous back-formation that’s not (yet) in the dictionary is “adolesce” (from “adolescence”), as in “He hasn’t finished adolescing yet.”

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Q: I find the subject of possessives both maddening and confusing. I’ll often read things like “The New York Times’s Thomas L. Friedman,” but I’ll just as often see something like “The Daily News’ Mike Lupica.” Shouldn’t that be “News’s” because “News” is the name of the newspaper? Other examples I’ve seen: “Brian Williams’ family” and “Joan Rivers’ daughter.” Should that read “Williams’s” and “Rivers’s” because their names end in “s”?

A: Lots of people are spooked by possessives, so let’s exorcise some ghosts. Here are three simple rules for making a noun possessive:

1) If the word is singular, add an apostrophe followed by s: “I love London’s theaters and Paris’s museums.”

2) If the word is plural and doesn’t already end in s, add an apostrophe followed by s: “The children’s room was a mess.”

3) If the word is plural and ends in s, add just an apostrophe: “The victims’ car was recovered.”

So you’re right. It should be the Times’s Thomas L. Friedman, the News’s Mike Lupica, Brian Williams’s family, and Joan Rivers’s daughter.

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Q: Which is correct: “I am free to be I” or “I am free to be me”?

A: Traditionally, the pronoun “I” should follow the verb “be” in the present, past, future, and other tenses, as in “It is I,” or “The lottery winner was I,” or “The next mayor will be I.” But the pronoun “me” should follow the verb “be” when it’s an infinitive – that is, “to be.”

In answer to your question, the correct sentence is “I am free to be me.” So, Sammy Davis Jr. was right when he sang “I’ve Got to Be Me.” And Marlo Thomas got it right when she wrote Free to Be … You and Me.

I should mention that language is a living thing, and the traditional view of “I” and “me” is loosening. In all but the most formal writing, it’s now OK to say “It’s me” or “The lottery winner was me” or “The next mayor will be me.” But you’re still NOT free to be I.

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Q: I was born in England and came to the U.S. when I was 10. I pronounced “ate” as “et” in the U.K., but I was told that educated people pronounced it as “eight” here. You may enjoy this story. I later visited England and went for a drive through Richmond Park with my grand aunt in her chauffeur-driven Daimler. I asked her whether she’d say, “I et my breakfast” or “I eight my breakfast.” She repeated the question and quipped: “Neither. I would say, ‘I’ve ‘ad me breakfast.’”

A: Thanks for sharing that story! Americans pronounce “ate” with a long “a,” as in “mate,” but the British pronounce it to rhyme with “yet.” Joseph E. Davis, in his book Divided by a Common Language: A Guide to British and American English, has this to say on the subject:

“The pronunciation of ate is a little tricky. Americans pronounce the word exactly like eight. In Britain one is taught to pronounce it as et. This is confusing, but if you wish to have a command of English wherever you are, it is necessary to change the way you pronounce ate.”

This distinction is well established. It’s confirmed in Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926) as well as Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English, 4th ed. (2006). Both give “et” as the standard British pronunciation.

By the way, the verb “eat” is one of the oldest words in the English language, dating back to Anglo-Saxon days. The first published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary is from around 825. In the early days, it was spelled “eotu,” “yte,” “ete,” and other variations on the theme. I have no idea how Alfred the Great would have pronounced them!

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Q: I got these from newspapers: “The elderly couple are charged with counterfeiting” and “A group of Dutch investors are building 25 homes.” Shouldn’t the verbs be “is,” not “are,” since “couple,” “group” and other collective nouns take the singular? I vaguely recall a grammatical rule to that effect.

A: Many words that mean a collection of things – “couple,” “group,” “total,” “number,” “majority,” and so on – can be either singular or plural, depending on whether you mean the group as a whole or the individuals in the group. With all these two-faced words, ask yourself whether you’re talking about the whole or the parts. Sometimes this can be a close judgment call.

Let’s look at “couple” first. Here are two examples from my grammar book Woe Is I: “A couple of tenants own geckos. The couple in 5G owns a family of mongooses.” In the first sentence, you’re talking about two separate tenants who own geckos. In the second, you mean one couple that owns mongooses.

Here’s a hint: If the word in front of a collective noun is “the,” then the noun is usually singular. If the word in front is “a,” especially when the noun is followed by “of,” then it’s usually plural. So you’d say “A couple of defendants are charged with counterfeiting,” but “The elderly couple is charged with counterfeiting.”

The same holds true for “group” and other collective nouns. If you’re talking about the individuals in the group, it’s plural; if you mean the group as a whole, it’s singular. So, you’d say “A group of Dutch investors are building 25 homes,” but “The Dutch investment group is building 25 homes.”

If you’d like to read more about collectives, see the “majority” and “none” items on The Grammarphobia Blog.

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Q: Should we wait “awhile” or “a while” between servings?

A: Both of the following sentences are correct: (1) “You should wait awhile between servings.” (2) “You should wait for a while between servings.”

“Awhile” is an adverb meaning for a time. (The “for” is inherent in the word, so “for awhile” would be redundant.) But “a while” is a noun phrase meaning a period of time.

So you could correctly say, “We sat awhile, drank coffee for a while, and laughed once in a while.”

More than a little confusing, aren’t they? The general rule is that you use two words (“a while”) after a preposition and one word (“awhile”) after a verb.

If you want to while away more time on this subject, check out my Aug. 28, 2006, blog item.

I hope this helps, and don’t gulp your food!

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Q: I have noticed the virtual disappearance of the distinction between “lie” and “lay.” Do I have to put up with this?

A: Of course not! Don’t give up.

This is how I explained “lie” and “lay” in my grammar book Woe Is I (you know this already, but here it is in case you need to instruct others):

Lie (to recline): She lies quietly. Last night, she lay quietly. For years, she has lain quietly.

Lay (to place): She lays it there. Yesterday she laid it there. Many times she has laid it there. (When lay means “to place,” it’s always followed by an object, the thing being placed.)

So hold the fort! Dictionaries are doing so. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) still continue to give the same old principal parts of “lie” and “lay” that our grandparents learned.

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Q: I find it inscrutable that I never see the word “scrutable.” Why is this?

A: We don’t see much of “scrutable” these days, but it is indeed a legitimate word.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) says “scrutable” means capable of being understood. It comes from the Latin word scrutari (to search or examine), which also gives us the word “scrutiny.”

“Inscrutable,” which means mysterious or not readily understood, is much more popular. I did some googling and got 1.9 million hits for “inscrutable,” but only 41,900 for “scrutable.”

Nevertheless, “scrutable” has been around for hundreds of years.

The first published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1600, but the citation I like best is from 1856: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in Aurora Leigh, describes poets as democrats “loyal to the low, and cognizant / Of the less scrutable majesties.”

You may be interested in a blog item I had a couple of months ago about words (like “gruntled” and “ruth”) that are usually seen only within other words (“disgruntled” and “ruthless”). If you check out the item, don’t forget to look up the Jack Winter story. It’s really hilarious.

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Q: I know you’ve discussed word “literally” on the radio (literally a half-dozen times or more), but a colleague and I are at odds over its use in the phrase “literally driven crazy.” He thinks it’s all right, but I believe it’s incorrect to use the word “literally” with a figurative expression like “driven crazy.” Would you please arbitrate? There’s a bar tab at stake.

A: With a bar tab at stake, I’ve rolled up my sleeves and given your question special attention. It turns out that all three words – “literally,” “driven,” and “crazy” – have had many interesting twists and turns over the years.

Let’s start with “crazy.” It first showed up in English in the 1500s, meaning full of cracks or flaws, but by the early 1600s it was being used to refer to a person of unsound mind. The Oxford English Dictionary‘s first citation for this usage, dating from 1617, refers to someone who “was noted to be crazy and distempered.” People began using the word more loosely, however, in the 1800s with phrases like “to be crazy about something” or “to be crazy for somebody.”

Now on to “driven.” The verb “drive” is a very old word in English, dating back to Anglo-Saxon days, according to the OED. It initially meant to force living beings, whether people or animals, to move on or away.

By 1300, it also meant to force someone into a state or condition, such as to drive someone to scorn, suspicion, or impatience. By the early 1800s, it was used for driving someone crazy. The earliest reference for this usage is in Shelley’s first big poem, Queen Mab (1813): “Or religion Drives his wife raving mad.” So “driven” isn’t really being used in a metaphorical sense when you say someone is driven crazy. You don’t need an oxcart or a limo to be driven.

Finally, let’s look at “literally.” In contemporary usage, it means actually or to the letter. It doesn’t mean figuratively or virtually or emphatically, though it’s often used that way. I should mention, however, that “literally” has a long and complicated history. It originally meant to the letter, but it was being used for emphasis by the late 17th century.

Over the last century or so, usage authorities have insisted on a return to a literal use of the word “literally.” I agree with them. But if you’d like a second opinion, check out the lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower’s article on “literally” in Slate.

Now, back to your question: is “literally driven crazy” correct English? In my opinion, it’s correct as long as you’re referring to someone who’s actually driven insane. In most cases, however, “driven crazy” is used loosely and it would be wrong to add “literally.”

So, you’re probably right, but for the wrong reason. Maybe you and your colleague should split the bar tab. Drink up!

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Q: My question is about the pronunciation of “Moscow,” the city in Russia. I had always heard and spoken the word as MOS-cow, with the last syllable pronounced like the animal that says moo. Lately, I have heard many people (mostly on the news) pronounce it as MOS-coh, with the last syllable rhyming with “go.” To me, this is a pretentious and annoying pronunciation. Just curious if you have any insight on this. Also, how would one determine the “correct” English pronunciation of a place that is pronounced Mosk-VAH in Russian?

A: Both the “cow” and the “coh” pronunciations are acceptable, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

American Heritage lists the “cow” pronunciation first and Merriam-Webster’s puts the “coh” version first. The first pronunciation in dictionaries is usually the most common, but the differences in popularity may be negligible.

I looked up “Moscow” in a reference book from the 1950s, my unabridged Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language (2d ed.), and I found both pronunciations there too: the “cow” was first and the “coh” was second. So it would appear that both versions have been standard English for at least a half-century.

How, you ask, do we determine the “correct” English pronunciation of a foreign city? It’s a messy process that’s pretty much a popularity contest. If educated English speakers overwhelmingly prefer one pronunciation, that’s the correct one. If there’s no clear-cut winner, two or more pronunciations are considered correct. When in doubt, go to the dictionary. All the pronunciations listed are considered standard English unless labeled otherwise.

If you’re interested in reading more, I had an item on my blog last September about the spelling and pronunciation of foreign names.

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Q: I’ve learned a lot about English from listening to you on the radio, but I take exception to your criticism of teaching approximations in arithmetic. I worked as an engineer for more than 40 years, and I found approximations invaluable. Punching errors are common when using a calculator, so approximating the answer helps protect against doing exact calculations with the wrong data. Approximating requires a solid knowledge of arithmetic, and practicing it enhances that knowledge. I hope you reconsider your stand on this issue.

A: I agree that it’s extremely valuable to know how to make calculations based on approximations. For instance, mathematical errors are apologized for almost every day in the Corrections column of the New York Times, errors that could have been avoided if someone had stopped to make simple approximations.

A recent article in the Times, for example, referred to 100,000 gallons of heating oil instead of 100 million gallons. And another article referred to 2.5 billion in investment funds instead of 2.5 trillion. I could go on, but I’m sure that as a person interested in “numeracy,” you see this stuff too.

Obviously, I’m not opposed to the kind of approximating that you’re talking about. But if this is what kids are being taught in the public schools, it isn’t getting through to them. I see little evidence that these students are achieving anywhere near the level of skill you describe.

For instance, this kind of thing happens to me all the time, and I’m sure it must happen to you, too, especially during the summer-job season: I purchase articles totaling $19.15 and hand the college-bound cashier a twenty and a quarter; he or she stares at the money in utter paralysis. At last I have to explain, “Give me back one dollar and a dime.”

It seems to me that in order to make the kinds of calculations you’re talking about, one has to begin with a rudimentary knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. But the multiplication tables are no longer part of the curriculum in many school districts. And neither is English grammar.

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Q: Whence the term “used to”? If you think about it, a sentence like “I used to shoot cans out there” doesn’t make much sense. And the question form (“What did you use to shoot out there, cans or duck?”) looks and sounds even stranger.

A: Once upon a time, a meaning of the verb “use” was to be accustomed, or to be in the habit, or to usually do. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage gives this example from Samuel Pepys in 1667: “I did this night give the waterman who uses to carry me 10 shillings.”

This meaning of “use” has died out in the present tense. We wouldn’t say “he uses to carry me”; we’d say “he usually carries me.”

But it’s alive and well in the past tense: “used” or “did use.” We now say, for example, “Normally I shoot cans, but I used to shoot duck.” Or: “Well, I did use to shoot cans. What did you use to shoot?”

Since the “d” in “used to” is not pronounced, it sounds like “use to.” In speech we don’t notice the difference, but the error shows up in writing. Many people mistakenly write “use to” when they ought to write “used to” or “did use to.”

Another error is using both “did” and “used” together, as in “Did he used to shoot duck?” With “did,” the correct form is “use” (“Did he use to shoot duck?”). This is because “did use” means “used,” just as “did walk” means “walked.” So “did used” makes no more sense than “did walked.”

The British treat “use” differently than we do in questions and negative statements. We say “did” in the United States: “Did he use to shoot cans?” Or: “He didn’t use to shoot cans.” But the British say “used” instead: “Used he to shoot cans?” Or: “He usedn’t [or “used not”] to shoot cans.”

Thanks for your question, and I hope this will be of use to you.

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Q: Please comment on the much-used term “transparent.” It has crept out of the political dialogue into general usage. Most people who use the word to mean frank or open are in fact more opaque than transparent. In fact, they’re about as transparent as jabberwocky.

A: I agree with you that many of the people who use “transparent” to refer to openness or frankness probably aren’t all that open or frank themselves! But I wouldn’t go so far as to compare them to the Jubjub bird or the frumious Bandersnatch.

Although the adjective “transparent” may sound modern to many ears, it’s actually been around for quite some time. The first published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1413.

The word initially meant (and still does mean) capable of transmitting light and being easily seen through, but the metaphoric use of “transparent” for candid or open is pretty old too. In fact, the OED’s first citation is from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1590):

Transparent Helena, nature shews art,
That through thy bosome makes me see thy heart.

To be honest, I haven’t noticed a huge surge in the use (or abuse) of “transparent.” But now that you’ve mentioned it, I’ll probably start seeing and hearing it everywhere.

Meanwhile, have a frabjous day!

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Q: I keep coming across “ain’t” in the dialogue of characters, whether they be upper class or lower, in Victorian novels, most recently in A. Trollope’s The Way We Live Now. Since I was brought up to avoid that word, I am puzzled by its presence. Is it OK in the UK but not in the USA?

A: “Ain’t” is quite a phenomenon. It has kept linguists busy for generations (and knuckle-rapping grammarians for centuries), but I’ll try to summarize.

Historically, “ain’t” appears to have evolved in the late 1700s from an earlier form, “an’t,” which was first recorded in the late 1600s but was probably common in speech early in that century. So let’s start with the earlier form.

“An’t” was originally a contraction of “am not” (as in “I an’t going”) and “are not” (as in “you an’t” or “we an’t” or “they an’t”). The earliest published citations are 1695 (for “an’t” = “am not”) and 1696 (for “an’t” = “are not”).

But as early as 1710, “an’t” was also being used in place of “isn’t” as a contraction for “is not,” as in “that an’t fair,” or “he an’t here.”

These citations come from Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, and are earlier than those in the Oxford English Dictionary.

As for correctness, the OED labels “an’t” = “are not” simply as a contraction (presumably as correct as, say, “isn’t” or “don’t”). But it labels “an’t” = “am not” as a colloquial usage; that is to say, it was somewhat less correct. And finally the OED labels “an’t” = “is not” as an illiterate usage.

Thus, so far we have (1) the legitimate “an’t” – a contraction of “are not”; (2) the colloquial “an’t” – a contraction of “am not”; and (3) the illiterate “an’t” – a contraction for “is not.”

Strictly speaking, by the way, the contraction for “am not” should be “a’n’t” or “amn’t,” and in fact people once used “amn’t”; they still do in Irish English and Scots English.

Meanwhile, in the late 1700s people began spelling “an’t” as “ain’t,” which may have been closer to the way it was pronounced at the time. (A common pronunciation of “are,” for example, was “air.”) Before long, “ain’t” became the usual spelling, and by the late 1800s, “an’t” had disappeared. What disappeared along with it were any claims that “ain’t” may have had to being a legitimate contraction.

Keep in mind that “an’t” came along at a time when a large family of English contractions was being formed: words like “don’t,” “won’t,” “can’t,” “isn’t,” and many more that we now consider standard English.

“An’t” (and later “ain’t”) was just one of the crowd for many years, and was used by the upper classes as well as the lower, educated and otherwise. You see it in a lot of late 18th-century and early 19th-century English novels in the mouths of ladies and gentlemen.

But “ain’t” was different from the rest, and in the 19th century, criticisms arose. The other contractions seemed to have a clearly traceable parentage, while “ain’t” was all over the place. It just wasn’t as clear in its derivation as a word like “don’t” (do not), or “can’t” (cannot), or “won’t” (will not).

And to complicate the picture even further, uses of “ain’t” started multiplying, so that it was used as a contraction of “has not” (as in “he ain’t been here”) and “have not” (as in “we ain’t seen him”). Chaos!

For all these reasons, since the 19th century “ain’t” hasn’t been considered a legitimate contraction and is still described in dictionaries as “nonstandard.” But it does live on, and probably always will. When educated people use it now, though, they probably intend a kind of reverse snobbery or are trying for a humorous effect.

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(A new posting on “back in the day” appeared Sept. 12, 2012.)

Q: If you haven’t already addressed this subject, could you shed some light on the expression “back in the day.” Perhaps it maintains the illusion of youth – not sounding as fogy-like as “when I was young” or “years ago.”

A: The expression is derived from African-American or hip-hop slang dating back to the late 1970s and early ‘80s. Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang describes it as black teenage slang meaning, roughly, “once upon a time.”

I think its meaning is more nuanced than that, though. A WNYC listener once explained the phrase to me, and her explanation was so helpful that I’ll just share it with you:

“Those of us who grew up in the Bronx (or ‘da Bronx’) during the inception of hip hop use the phrase ‘back in da day’ to refer to the years (early 1980s) when we were pioneers molding and shaping hip-hop culture. In other words, the days when the boundaries were being pushed and we were making it up as we went along.

” ‘Da Day,’ at least for my age group, usually refers to the times of ‘old school rap’: Doug E Fresh, Slick Rick, Funky Four, Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash (whereas Run DMC would be at the tail end of old school).

“As the phrase spread, the white community seemed to use it to refer to its high school years or a ‘back in the day when I was cool’ kind of thing.

“Since I am a bit older (pushing 40), I think that this phrase may have taken on a different meaning for younger kids, but among those of us who participated in the intensely segregated culture of the late ’70s and early ‘80s, I think that we universally refer to those times.

“One other point: Although my generation really founded this phrase, we also use it to describe the ‘hard days’ of our parents and grandparents. Such as back in the days of the Civil Rights movement, or back in the days of Jim Crow, or back in the days when they lived in the islands.

“The important distinction is that ‘da day’ always refers to a significant period where people had to make the decision as to whether they were going to break through certain cultural boundaries or not.”

Thanks for the question, and I hope this helps.

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Q: I am helping a friend translate a letter from Italian into English. He wants to use the English phrase “interested to do,” but I told him the proper construction is “interested in doing.” He said he did a Google search and found more hits for “interested to” than “interested in.” Would you offer your opinion?

A: The standard construction is “interested in” followed by a gerund, like “doing.” We show an interest in something, not to it. (There’s a very handy book, Words Into Type, that has a long list of verbs together with the prepositions they usually take.)

It’s true that in casual speech many people say things like “I was interested to hear such and such,” but this wouldn’t be acceptable in formal writing.

By the way, I did my own googling and found just over 2 million hits for “interested to” and 346 million hits for “interested in.” It looks as if the ins have it by a wide margin.

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Q: Why is the reign of King James I of England referred to as Jacobean instead of Jamesian? Answer me that one! We don’t use the term “Jacobean” to refer to The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, do we?

A: You can blame Latin for your confusion. In New Latin (the Latin used since about 1500), the name “James” was Jacobaeus. In Late Latin (the Latin from the 3d to 7th centuries), it was Iacobus.

Hence the reign of James I and his times came to be referred to as Jacobean, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).

King James himself, however, wasn’t responsible for this. No one used the term “Jacobean” to refer to his period until the mid-19th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

James I reigned from 1603 to 1625, succeeding Elizabeth I, who ruled from 1558 to 1603. In 1933, the English poet John Betjeman coined the term “Jacobethan” to refer to the combined Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.

A Jacobite, by the way, refers to someone who supported the return of the Stuart Kings to the English and Scottish thrones in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term comes from James II and other Jacobite Stuarts.

I’ve probably given you more history than you wanted. So, I’ll quit now before adding another turn of the screw.

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Q: Hi! I would like to know if it is correct to use “orientate” instead of “orient.”

A: Although “orientate” is a very common usage in Britain, the simpler and older and more straightforward “orient” is preferred in the United States.

The verb “orientate” originated in the mid-19th century and may be a back-formation from the noun “orientation.” (A back-formation is a word created by dropping a prefix or suffix from an existing word – in this case, dropping the “ion” at the end of “orientation.”)

The noun “orientation” itself is derived from “orient,” which was originally both an adjective and a noun. By the 18th century, however, “orient” had also evolved into a verb.

“Orientate,” the longer word that’s popular in Britain, is considered a needless variant by most American usage experts. It’s easy to see why. The verb “orient” is older and more succinct. But the British have their ways, we have ours.

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Q: Some supposedly educated people pronounce the word “mischievous” as mis-CHEE-vee-us instead of MIS-cheh-vus. Surely that rather demonstrates an ignorance of the word’s spelling, if nothing else. I’ve always thought that unless one keeps one’s standards up, the language will degenerate into a series of grunts and snarls. Am I right, or am I just an old fuddy-duddy?

A: You may be an old fuddy-duddy, but you’re also right.

“Mischievous” is among the most frequently mispronounced words in American English, according to Garner’s Modern American Usage. As you point out, it’s correctly pronounced MIS-cheh-vus.

In addition to being mispronounced, “mischievous” is often misspelled, but both vices have a long history. The common misspelling “mischievious” (note the extra “i”) goes back to the 16th century, so the mispronunciation (mis-CHEE-vee-us) probably does too.

I can’t explain why this mispronunciation is so common. It may be that people are picking up the sounds of words like “previous,” “devious,” and “lascivious”

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Q: I see no significant reason to have both “oblige” and “obligate.” Any subtle differences in meaning seem fatuous. The first version is sufficient to provide the sense of its usage. (I’m British, so I may be a bit of a pedant.) I’d love to hear your thoughts.

A: I’m obliged to you for your comments, but I disagree with you about those two words. They serve different purposes in ordinary usage, and in fact are treated differently by lexicographers.

The verb “oblige” (to bind by oath, contract, promise, etc.) dates back to 1325, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. “Obligate,” which came along in 1533, adds a moral dimension to the sense of obligation; it means to bind morally, or to put (a person) under a moral obligation.

Certainly there is some overlapping, especially in modern usage. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), for example, says one of the meanings of both words is to cause to be grateful or indebted. But on the whole most people, I believe, use “oblige” and “obligate” differently.

We usually say “I was obliged to move,” not “I was obligated to move.” When we say “I am obliged to you,” we may simply mean “Thank you”; there is no moral imperative to do something in return. But when we say “I am obligated to you,” we imply a duty or responsibility to pay the debt back in kind.

Furthermore, when we say “Can you oblige me by doing such-and-such?” or “I can oblige you in this,” we are usually speaking of something done as a favor or an accommodation (in this sense, “oblige” is a synonym for “accommodate”).

So I think the subtle differences are enough to justify the two different words.

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Q: I used to listen to you live on WNYC when I lived in the NY area. Now that I’m in Idaho, I hear you on the Web. We recently bought an iron at Macy’s (yes we have them in Boise, too.) The owner’s manual, along with a few awful academic papers, has some of the worst writing I’ve read. I’m attaching a scan of the cover and an inside page so you know I’m not making this up.

A: I would have believed you even without the scans. You can’t make this stuff up. I’ll copy a sentence from the manual for readers of The Grammarphobia Blog:

“The inside of the soleplate can be cleaned after some usage calcium build up has occurred inside the soleplate by holding the iron over the ironing table placing a towel on the ironing table and allowing it to steam freely for a minute or 2 under the self cleaning position on the variable steam button-some dirty water droplets will come out onto the towel.”

I know some very good technical writers, but the bad ones can be b-a-a-d! It’s actually difficult to write like that. You have to work for a small-appliance manufacturer that sends you to a special school where you’re deprogrammed and then infused with great gobs of obfuscation.

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Q: After years of using the phrase “not to mention,” I wonder if I should be writing “not to forget” instead. It seems illogical to use “not to mention” to introduce something that you’re about to mention, as in this sentence: “My favorite desserts are apple pie and cheesecake, not to mention chocolate ice cream.”

A: The phrase you mention (“not to mention”) is an idiomatic expression in English similar to another one, “let alone.” What the speaker means is that the thing that follows, whatever it is, hardly needs to be mentioned, or is to be taken almost for granted, or is so obvious that it’s practically unnecessary to say it.

Examples: “She has three dogs and five cats, not to mention the goldfish.” Or: “We’ve never been to Canada or Mexico, let alone Asia.”

It’s true, as you say, that the thing not to be mentioned is in fact mentioned, just as the thing to be let alone is NOT let alone; it is in fact very relevant. Such are the oddities of idiom!

Although “not to mention” may not make literal sense, it’s been in common use in English since at least the 17th century. The earliest published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from Milton’s 1644 treatise Of Education: “Not to mention the learned correspondence which you hold in forreigne parts ….”

However, we’ve found earlier 17th-century uses, including this one from a treatise on the Anglican liturgy, criticizing the servants of “Don Beel-zebub” for encouraging equivocation and deception:

“Not to mention here their vnsufferable correcting, yea corrupting of all Authors” (An Exposition of the Dominicall Epistles and Gospels Used in Our English Liturgie, 1622, by John Boys, Dean of Canterbury).

We were asked not long ago about another idiomatic expression, “it’s not for nothing that” (meaning “it’s significant that” or “there’s a reason that”). We found many citations for this usage in the OED, including this one from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice: “It was not for nothing that my nose fell a bleeding on blacke monday last.”

Speakers (or writers) use expressions like these – “not to mention,” “let alone,” “not for nothing,” and so on – as signals to clue the listener/reader in to the greater (or lesser) significance of what follows.

[Note: This post was updated on Feb. 16, 2023.]

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Q: As a child, I attended an all-girls’ academy up in Albany, NY. Every year, we had a field day that included sports and a picnic. This outing was traditionally called a Bacon Bat. The bacon part I get (there was a barbecue involved in the original Bacon Bat). But what is a “Bat”? I don’t think this has anything to do with baseball. Is there some kind of old-fashioned meaning for “Bat”?

A: A slang meaning for “bat,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) is binge or spree. So, a Bacon Bat could be a bacon binge. But the term “bat” suggests drinking and carousing. I’m not sure your girls’ academy had that in mind.

The Oxford English Dictionary speculates that this usage may be derived from “on the batter,” meaning on a binge, a British expression that originated in the early 19th century.

The first published reference in the OED for “bat” as binge dates from 1848: “Zenas had been on ‘a bat’ during the night previous.” The last citation is in Evelyn Waugh’s 1941 novel Put Out More Flags: “Why don’t you switch to rum? It’s much better for you …. When did you start on this bat?”

Again, I doubt that your school had booze in mind when field day was named a Bacon Bat. But it’s the best that I can come up with.

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Q: When I was a young lad, I learned to use “a” in front of words that start with a consonant and “an” in front of words starting with vowels. I was taught to make an exception for words pronounced differently than they are spelled. For example, it is “a Ouija board” because the “O” is pronounced like “w.” And it is “an hour” because “hour” sounds as if it starts with “o.” However, I hear people, especially politicians, say “an historic” while pronouncing the “h.” Isn’t this incorrect? Some British speakers use “an historic” with a silent “h,” which is OK for me, but “an” in front of a hard “h” sounds wrong.

A: You’re right on all counts. The short answer is that “an history,” in the mouth of somebody who pronounces the “h,” is an affectation.

The rule is that you use “a” before a word or acronym that starts with a consonant SOUND (“a eulogy,” “a hotel,” “a unicorn,” “a YMCA”), and you use “an” before a word or acronym that starts with a vowel SOUND (“an uproar,” “an hour,” “an unending saga,” “an M&M cookie”).

It’s not the LETTER at the start of the word or acronym that determines the article; it’s the SOUND. So a word starting with “h” can go either way. Similarly, it’s correct to say “a rhinoceros” but “an RFP from a client,” because the letter “R” is pronounced as if it begins with a vowel.

There has been a long fluctuation in the pronunciation of the initial “h” in an unstressed syllable (as in “historic”), according to the grammarian George O. Curme.

In literary usages, it was long common in England to drop the “h” sound if the syllable was not stressed, and to use “an” instead of “a.” This is no longer the case. (In the US, in Ireland, in Scotland, and in extreme northern England, people never did drop their aitches.)

Nowadays standard English pronunciation, both here and in Britain, calls for sounding the “h.” Not all Brits do, though, so it’s natural they would say “an ’istory.” 

When you see “an” before a word beginning with “h” in British literature, that means the “h” was pronounced either weakly or not at all. In the 1500s, this was true even for words of one syllable (“hill”), and of words in which the first syllable was stressed (“history,” “hundred,” “humble”). That’s why you will see “an hundred” in Shakespeare and “an hill” in the King James version of the Bible.

Later on, aitches were dropped in literary usage only with unstressed syllables, and to this day some British writers persist in using “an hotel” or “an historic.” But that too is now falling away and is considered overly “literary,” even in England. In fact, Henry Fowler called it “pedantic” back in 1926.

In my opinion, the persistence of some Americans in writing and saying “an historic” or “an hotel” is another example of Anglophilia gone haywire.

This is probably more than you wanted to know. But if you’re still game, I have two related items on the blog: one about “herb” and the other about “homage.”

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Q: Time flies. Halloween will be here before long. Last year, you talked about names for the night before Halloween. When growing up in the 1950s, the night before Halloween was known as Goosey Night in the Paterson/Clifton area of New Jersey. It was Cabbage Night in Jersey City when my grandfather was growing up. It was the generic Mischief Night in other parts of northern NJ.

A: Thanks for your comment, but before I respond let me say a few words about Halloween itself, a holiday with roots in the pre-Christian British Isles. It began with a Celtic festival, Samhain, that marked the end of the harvest season.

The Celts referred to the last night of October, the eve of Samhain, as the night of all witches, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

As Christianity took hold, Samhain was transformed into All Hollows’ Day (or All Saints’ Day). And the eve of Samhain, in turn, became All Hallow Even (the Eve of All Saints’ Day). All Hallow Even, of course, evolved into Halloween.

Although the Oxford English Dictionary has references for “all hallows,” meaning all saints, dating back to Anglo-Saxon days, the first citation for “All Hallow Even” doesn’t appear until the mid-16th century.

As for your comment, it confirms what a great many listeners wrote to tell me last fall. Cabbage Night, Goosey Night, Devil’s Night, Mischief Night, and so on, were the night BEFORE Halloween, not Halloween itself.

Now I know when I should be doing all that mischief!

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Q: A word from France on your post about stop signs. Using the verb stopper to mean stop is considered a barbarism here because we have a perfectly acceptable equivalent, arrêter. But stopper has another meaning that is quite acceptable – to darn or repair small tears and holes in clothing. Stoppage – stopping a hole from getting larger – used to be a common service here, but as the price of labor has risen and the price of clothing has dropped, this painstaking repair service has disappeared. Is there a similar usage in English?

A: One meaning of the verb “stop” in English is to close an opening or a hole (“Her hair stopped the shower drain”). Another meaning is to fill up, repair, or make good (The plumber stopped the leak”).

Indeed, the verb “stop” has been used in English as far back as the 15th century to refer to mending a garment, though I don’t see any modern references for this usage in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Nevertheless, I remember hearing the word “stop” used to refer to interrupting the course of a run in a nylon stocking – this was back in the days when nylon stockings were common.

If a woman saw or (and this was an odd sensation as I recall) felt a run start creeping up or down her leg, she grabbed a bottle of nail polish to “stop” the run.

This really dates me, I know! Microfiber stockings have put a “stop” to that, for the most part.

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Q: I was looking through some letters online from people who lived in the 19th century and I noted that they wrote more, shall I say, elegantly than we do. I’ve read collected letters from contemporary people and have not found near the level of style and sophistication that I see exhibited in the letters of people who lived more than a century ago. We tend to use lots of $50 words where a $1 word will do, but the people from the past had a flair for sophisticated prose without seeming pretentious. Why is this?

A: That is the $64,000 question. The fact is that in the 19th century people understood more about sentence structure (they learned grammar in school, for example), read more (and I’m talking about literature), and regarded letter writing as an invaluable skill.

If you have a chance, look at some letters that Civil War soldiers wrote home. Privates with only a few years of formal education wrote more clearly than many college students do now. Simple language became eloquent in their hands.

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Q: I am frequently hearing speakers, especially on NPR, using the verb “devolve” to refer to a negative development or change, e.g., “The political debate devolved into a brawl.” Has the meaning of the word evolved? Or have NPR announcers never learned about the War of Devolution?

A: “Devolve,” a word that dates back to 1420 (almost 250 years before the War of Devolution between France and Spain), literally means to roll or revolve downward. It was originally used in the physical sense (for example, rivers devolving to the sea), according to the Oxford English Dictionary, but those literal uses are all now obscure or archaic.

By the mid-1500s “devolve” was used to refer to the handing down or passing down of something to a successor or heir. (The thing devolved might be property, duties, responsibilities, rights, or obligations.) And that’s roughly how we use it today.

A briefly used negative sense, “to fall or sink gradually, to degenerate,” is considered obscure by the OED, which has no citations for it since the early 1800s. This negative usage isn’t even listed in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.). However (and I think oddly), Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), does include it as the last among its definitions.

Perhaps the NPR folks you mention are reviving an old obscurity? It’s more likely, though, that the verb they mean is “degenerate.”

As for that 17th century war, it was fought over the devolution of Spanish-ruled Belgium and Luxembourg (in other words, who would get them) when the Spanish king’s daughter married the king of France. No Belgian waffling in those days!

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Q: I saw a story on the NPR website with this title: “Kansas City’s Wholesome Image Belies Mob Past.” I would have expected Kansas City’s mob past to belie its wholesome image, not the other way around. How can an image belie a reality? Have I got things backwards?

A: I checked out the NPR story. Who knew Kansas City had such a rich history of mob bosses and rubouts? But on to your question about “belie,” which means, among other things, to show something to be a lie or to give a false impression.

Other definitions include to picture falsely, to misrepresent, or to show to be false, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).

Additional references, including the Oxford English Dictionary, give even more meanings: to falsify, to disguise a person or thing so it appears other than it is, to deny the truth of, to contradict as a lie, or to run counter to.

So it would be correct, according to these definitions, to say either that Kansas City’s past belies its reputation (fact belies image) or that its reputation belies its past (image belies fact). I think many people use “belie” simply to mean to conceal or distort the truth, which is a legitimate usage.

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Q: Thanks for the lessons! And I’d like your opinion of the phrase “ever since,” which sounds redundant to me. My little Random House dictionary prefers “It has been raining since noon” to “It has been raining ever since noon.”

A: My big Random House dictionary doesn’t have anything to say against “ever since” and uses “ever since then” in an example. In that expression, the “ever” serves to add emphasis.

You may regard “ever since” as redundant (and sometimes it is), but it has its uses and is firmly entrenched in idiomatic English. The Oxford English Dictionary has citations for it dating back to the early 18th century: “The Coffee-houses have ever since been my chief Places of Resort” (Joseph Addison, 1714).

The grammarian Otto Jespersen, in Essentials of English Grammar, explains that “ever” is often used loosely in casual speech, as in “Who ever told you that’s a robin’s egg?” or “We saw ever so many bluebirds.” In some expressions, he adds, it corresponds roughly to “always,” as in “Ever since their marriage.”

There may be times, though, when “ever” is redundant. It certainly is in the phrases “rarely ever” (“rarely” or “rarely if ever” is better), and “seldom ever” (“seldom” or “seldom if ever” is preferred).

Many times, though, the uses of “ever” are idiomatic (“Did she ever!” or “I’m ever so sorry”). They don’t always make sense literally, but are used as intensifiers or for emphasis.

I think “ever” serves a purpose if it helps to clarify something. For instance, someone might say her roses “bloomed yesterday for the first time ever.” That would mean they had NEVER bloomed before. If she’d said they “bloomed yesterday for the first time,” it might mean for the first time this season.

The issue isn’t one of correctness or incorrectness, but of gracefulness of expression. Sometimes “ever” serves a purpose, sometimes not.

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Q: I know the words “preprandial” and “postprandial” refer to before and after dinner, respectively. Are there words for before and after breakfast?

A: In English, the adjective “prandial” means “of or relating to a meal,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), so it could refer to any meal.

“Preprandial” and “postprandial,” says American Heritage, mean before and after a meal, especially dinner. But they too could refer to before or after breakfast, lunch, supper, whatever.

In fact, if you were speaking to great Caesar’s ghost and you used the term “preprandial,” he’d probably think you meant before breakfast or lunch, not dinner! That’s because “prandial” comes from the Latin prandium (a late breakfast or lunch).

The first published reference for “prandial” in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from the mid-1700s. The befores and afters, “preprandial” and “postprandial,” arrived on the scene in the early 1800s. For a while, both “anteprandial” and “preprandial” referred to before eating, but “pre” eventually bested “ante.”

The word “breakfast,” by the way, dates from 1463. It refers to the meal that we eat to “break” our overnight “fast.” That reminds me of a poem by Shelley that compares breakfasts “professional and critical” to dinners “convivial and political.”

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