Tag: Grammar

Q: I believe “He’s shorter than I” is grammatically correct, but it sounds awkward to my ear. Is “shorter than me” a crime punishable by heaven knows what?

A: No, there’s nothing wrong with it. But there’s more to this subject than meets the eye. Here’s the story.

A pedant may tell you that “than” is only used properly as a conjunction, a word that can link one clause with another.

Here’s an example of “than” as a conjunction: “You ate more than I did.” (There, “I did” is a clause, a group of words that includes both a subject and its verb.)

The pedant would also say that even if the verb (“did”) were left out, what follows “than” is a clause in which the verb is understood, so the pronoun must be in the subject case: “You ate more than I.”  But the pedant would be behind the times.

Modern grammarians (and lexicographers, the people who write dictionaries) recognize that “than” is not only a conjunction but a preposition. And prepositions are normally followed by object pronouns (like “me” or “her”) rather than a subject pronoun (like “I” or “she”).

So in a simple comparison, where there’s no verb (and thus no clause) after “than,” you have a choice: “I” or “me.” You’re free to use whichever sounds more natural to your ear.

In her book Woe Is I (4th ed.), Pat uses the examples “Trixie is fatter than I” and “Trixie is fatter than me.” In modern English, both both are correct and they mean exactly the same thing. A sentence with “me” is treating “than” as a preposition; a sentence with “I” is treating “than” as a conjunction.

Some people consider “than I” a little stuffy and old-fashioned, and they’re right. But it’s not more correct.

The truth is that great writers have used “than” as both a preposition and a conjunction since the 16th century, according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage.

You can find prepositional uses of “than” in the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson, and others. Here’s an example from “To Stella, Visiting Me in Sickness,” a 1720 poem by Swift: “And, though the Heaven’s severe Decree / She suffers hourly more than me.”

In fact, until the mid-18th century, nobody seemed to mind that these writers were using “than” as a preposition.

Then along came Robert Lowth, the Latin scholar who helped popularize the myth that it’s wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. In a 1762 grammar book, Lowth decreed that “than” should be treated as a conjunction, not a preposition, before a personal pronoun.

Despite Lowth and his followers, millions of educated people use “than” as a preposition and you can too. There’s nothing wrong with it, even in formal contexts.

But one caveat. Sometimes a simple comparison using “than” can create ambiguity. Take these examples, also from Pat’s book: “Trixie loves spaghetti more than I” and “Trixie loves spaghetti more than me.”

The first, “Trixie loves spaghetti more than I,” clearly means she loves it “more than I do.” But “Trixie loves spaghetti more than me” could mean either (1) she loves spaghetti more than I do, or (2) she loves it more than she loves me.

If ending a sentence with “than [I or me]” could cause any confusion, just  restore the missing verb: “Trixie loves spaghetti more than I do.”

[Note: This post was updated on Feb. 15, 2022.]

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Q: I’m often confused about whether to use “also” or “too” in a sentence, and exactly where to put it. Should I write “Include Jim in the email too,” or “Also include Jim in the email,” or “Include Jim too in the email,” or whatever?

A: I can see why you’re confused. These two little words can be confusing in the best of circumstances.

Traditionally, the terms “also” and “too” – meaning “in addition” or “besides” – are adverbs (words that modify or describe verbs).

Some usage or style guides are critical of placing them at the beginning of a sentence, but Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage finds nothing wrong with the practice.

My ear objects to beginning a sentence with “too.” But if it sounds OK to you, go ahead and do it. As Merriam-Webster’s puts it, “the best guide in matters such as this is your own sense of idiom.”

My only concern with using “also” and “too” is the potential for ambiguity. What exactly does the following sentence mean? I also emailed Jim.

Does it mean that I sent an email to Jim in addition to other people? Or does it mean that I, in addition to other people, sent an email to Jim?

In speech, we usually emphasize the words “also” and “too” to clarify our meaning. But in writing we have to be more precise when using these words.

So, think of what you want to say and then make sure you’re saying it, either by putting “also” or “too” in the most logical place, or by adding a few extra words. I’m sorry that I can’t give you a more definitive answer.

As for your examples, all three are clear enough, but the third one sounds clunky to me. This is a matter of taste, though, so let your own ear be the judge.

On a related issue, some language experts object to using “also” as a conjunction (or linking word) in place of “and.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) describes the usage as a regionalism and gives this example: “It’s a pretty cat, also friendly.”

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Q: My dictionary says the English word “surname” comes from the French sur (“over”) and nom (“name”). I speak French, but I can’t for the life of me understand why a “surname” (or “over-name”) should be a family name. In French, a family name is a nom de famille, a given name is a pénom, and a nickname is a surnom. Would you kindly explain the logic behind “surname”?

A: We got the word “surname” from French – actually the Anglo-French spoken by the Norman rulers of England – probably before 1300, according to The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology.

The English word originally referred to a title or epithet or nickname added on to someone’s name. The first published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary, dating from around 1330, refers to a knight whose “surname was: hardi of hert.”

Within a few decades, however, the word was being used to refer to a family name, perhaps because of a misunderstanding about the etymology of the term.

The word was sometimes spelled “sirename” or “sirname” or “sir-name,” suggesting that the “sur” of “surname” was thought by some to be related to “sire.”

As for your question, there may not be much logic behind why a surname is a family name in English, but the same can be said for a lot of idiomatic English words and expressions.

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Q: A recent guest on WNYC kept referring to “a home or an apartment.” Since when is an apartment not a home? I thought “home” meant the place you live. And yet many people use the word as if it were synonymous with a house. As an apartment dweller, I find this unsettling; it seems to suggest that I am homeless.

A: The noun “home” has many different meanings, from the headquarters of a company to a residence for the elderly to the place where a cursor hangs out in the upper-left-hand corner of a computer screen.

But the primary meaning in modern dictionaries is the place where one lives, whether a house, an apartment, an Airstream, a Quonset hut, or an igloo.

The noun “home” has been with us since Anglo-Saxon days. In its earliest published reference, from around the year 900, the word meant a village or town – that is, a group of dwellings. But it soon came to mean a dwelling place, especially one’s principal residence, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Over the last century or so, according to citations in the OED, the word “home” has been used increasingly in place of “house.” Although this usage is most common in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the dictionary says, it is spreading elsewhere in the English-speaking world.

Interestingly, the first published reference I see in the OED for “home” used to mean “house” comes not from a North American or an Australasian, but from the 19th century English poet Felicia Hemans.

The stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand!
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
O’er all the pleasant land.

The poem, which was first published in 1827 in Blackwood’s magazine, was parodied by Noël Coward in his 1938 musical Operette:

The Stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand,
To prove the upper classes
Have still the upper hand.

Is this usage legit? Well, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) lists “house” as one of the meanings of “home.” But The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) doesn’t include this sense in its entry for “home.”

Bryan Garner, in Garner’s Modern American Usage, recommends against using “home” to refer to a house. “In the best usage,” Garner writes, “the structure is always called a house.” I’ll second that.

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Q: I often hear people use “as” to mean “because,” as in the sentence, “We have to clean out our basement as we will need more room for your things.” This usage sounds horribly stuffy, though I don’t necessarily think it’s wrong per se. Are there any rules or recommendations for using “as” vs. “because” vs. “since”?

A: Both Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) say the conjunction “as” can mean “since” or “because” or “for that reason.”

But American Heritage warns that this sense of the word can be confused with the use of the conjunction “as” to mean “at the same time that”: “She was finishing the painting as I walked into the room.”

The dictionary recommends, therefore, that “as” should be preceded by a comma when used in place of “because” in the middle of a sentence: “She won’t be coming, as we didn’t invite her.”

When beginning a sentence with “as,” according to American Heritage, “one should take care that it is clear whether as is used to mean ‘because’ or ‘at the same time that.’”

The dictionary gives this example of a confusing sentence: “As they were leaving, I walked to the door.“ It’s unclear whether “I walked to the door” because, or at the same time that, “they were leaving.”

But back to your question. Dictionaries may say it’s OK to use “as” in place of “because” or “since,” but that doesn’t mean a careful writer should do it.

Bryan A. Garner, in Garner’s Modern American Usage, says this usage “should generally be avoided” because “it may be misunderstood.” I’m with Garner on this, and I don’t think sticking a comma in front of “as” will do much good, no matter what the AH lexicographers think.

On the issue of “because” vs. “since,” some sticklers insist that “since” should be used only to indicate a time period, as in “I’ve been sick since you saw me last.” I disagree.

As I say in my grammar book Woe Is I, “since” can also mean “because” or “for the reason that,” as in this sentence: “Since you asked, I’ll tell you.” People have been using “since” in this way for 500 years.

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Q: Hi, guys. Is it true that the term “guy” is derived from Guy Fawkes?

A: Yes, it’s true, according to John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins, but there were a few twists and turns along the way.

To begin at the beginning, the word “guy” first appeared in English in the mid-1300s, meaning a guide or a conductor, but that usage is now considered obsolete.

In the early 1600s, the term came to mean a rope used to guide or secure something on a ship. It still has that nautical meaning today. And we often refer to guide wires as “guy” wires.

So who’s responsible for the “guy” that refers to a man or a fellow? The culprit, as Ayto points out, is indeed Guy Fawkes, one of the leaders of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament in England.

The term “guy” later came to mean an effigy of Guy Fawkes paraded through the streets and burned on the anniversary of the plot. The first published reference for this usage in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1806.

By the 1830s, the word “guy” was being used for a person of grotesque appearance, especially someone dressed in a bizarre way. And a decade later, bingo, it meant a man or a fellow – that is, a regular guy. (These days, even gals are often referred to as “guys.”)

Although the OED says the use of guy to mean man or fellow is of American origin, the first citation in the dictionary is from Swell’s Night Guide (1847), a book about nightlife in London: “I can’t tonight, for I am going to be seduced by a rich old Guy.”

The OED doesn’t go as far as Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins in linking this usage to Guy Fawkes, but it says the “earliest examples may be influenced” by the grotesque sense of the word “guy.”

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Q: When I got the New York Times Book Review recently, I was surprised to see this headline on the cover: “Who Do You Love?” Shouldn’t it be “whom,” since it’s the object of a verb? I know there’s no longer much distinction made in informal usage, but I never thought this would apply to the Book Review.

A: You’re right – “whom” would be technically correct. But it would look stuffy in that headline and raise more eyebrows than “who.”

I used to write headlines myself at the Book Review, and I’d guess the headline writer in this case was aiming at a colloquial feel. In colloquial English, “who” is often used to begin sentences and clauses that should technically start with “whom.”

Besides, the expression “Who do you love?” is a pretty well established idiom by now. (What famous rock band hasn’t recorded Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?”)

I talk about this more liberal use of “who” in a section of my grammar book Woe Is I called “A Cure for the Whom-Sick” (page 9 of the third edition) and in the section on grammar myths (page 215).

In a blog entry last fall, I discussed taking liberties with “I/me” and “who/whom.” And here’s a link to the online version of the grammar myths section in Woe Is I.

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[Note: An updated post about “the whole nine yards” appeared on Dec. 14, 2016.]

Q: You made a comment on the Leonard Lopate Show that the phrase “the whole nine yards” came from the space program. I am aware of two other possible origins, one involving machine guns and the other cement mixers. I would be interested in hearing more about your space-program reference.

A: Both of the supposed origins you mention for “the whole nine yards” have been disproved, along with many, many others (involving nuns’ habits, Scottish kilts, ships’ sails, shrouds, garbage trucks, a maharaja’s sash, a hangman’s noose, and more).

I discussed this once before on the blog. But that item was written in the fall of 2006, and now it’s time for an update.

Language researchers have long scoured archives in an effort to find a clue to the origin of this expression, and one of them may have finally found it. Last year, a philologist named Sam Clements discovered what is so far the earliest printed reference to “the whole nine yards.”

In a posting to the Linguist List, the American Dialect Society’s mailing list, Clements reported finding the expression in an April 18, 1964, article about lingo in the space program. The article, in the San Antonio Express and News, said: “Give ’em the whole nine yards” means an item-by-item report on any project.

Of course, questions remain. Why “nine yards” instead of, say, “ten pounds” or whatever? All we know (as of this writing, anyway!) is that the expression appears to be an Americanism from the 1960s and a product of the space program.

I’ll keep readers of the blog posted on any late-breaking developments!

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Q: I know what a “mash up” is – a digital recording that combines elements from different musical works – but I can’t find the term in my dictionary. What’s going on here?

A: Not all terms make it into all dictionaries, especially not all at once.

I can’t find the expression “mash up” (or “mash-up” or “mashup”) in the two references I consult most: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

But I do see an interesting draft entry for “mash-up” in the Oxford English Dictionary, with a published reference for the term going back a century and a half, well before anyone ever dreamed of making digital mash ups.

In the earliest citation, as well as a couple of recent ones, the expression meant a “mixture or fusion of disparate elements,” according to the OED. A character in an 1859 play, for instance, is said to speak “a mash up of Indian, French, and Mexican.”

The OED says the term was rarely used before the late 20th century, when it took on its musical meaning. Here’s how the dictionary defines the term now:

“A fusion of disparate musical elements. Now usually: a piece of popular music created by merging the elements of two or more existing songs using computer technology and production techniques, esp. one featuring the vocals of one song over the instrumental backing of another.”

The first published reference in the OED for this usage comes from a June, 1994, article in the Times of London: “So what is Jungle, this frantic, weirdly fragmented mash-up of eerie samples, dub bass lines, jittering snare drums, ragga chat and soul vocals and why should we care?”

The term, spelled “mashup,” has another meaning in computer technology – a Web page or application that combines data from two or more sources. Example: a real-estate site with data from MapQuest and a multiple listing service.

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Q: It seems to me that the unnecessary use of “sort of” has become ubiquitous. I’m not talking about saying something is “a sort of iPod,” which is another way of saying it’s like an iPod. I mean a sentence such as this: “It’s time to, sort of, fill up our car.” Why on earth would “sort of” be used like that?

A: I agree with you that the “sort of” in your second example is unnecessary. It’s similar to “you know,” “I mean,” “um,” and other superfluous words, phrases, and grunts that litter our speech. They’re sometimes called “fillers,” sometimes “verbal tics,” and they can become terrible habits once they get hold of you.

I’m one of the people who struggle not to say “you know” in every other sentence. I do my best to avoid it when I’m on WNYC, but once in a while I let loose a “you know” and get angry email in response! If you’d like to read more about these other verbal tics, check out my Sept. 7, 2006, blog item.

As for the superfluous “sort of,” A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, by Eric Partridge, describes it this way: in some people’s speech merely a verbal tic or hiccup, a “noise to keep the lines open,” with no more meaning than “er … um … er.”

The phrase “sort of” has been used since the 1500s to mean “kind of” or “type of” or “variety of” – the most common ways we use it today. Here’s an example from Milton’s Samson Agonistes (1671):

Have they not Sword-players, and ev’ry sort
Of Gymnic Artists, Wrestlers, Riders, Runners,
Juglers and Dancers, Antics, Mummers, Mimics,
But they must pick me out with shackles tir’d,
And over-labour’d at thir publick Mill,
To make them sport with blind activity?

The expression has been used since the late 18th century to mean imperfectly or somewhat or to express “hesitance, diffidence, or the like, on the speaker’s part,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Here’s a diffident example from Shaw’s Man and Superman (1903): “I’ll sort of borrow the money from my dad until I get on my own feet.”

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Q: Sometimes I see graffiti that adds to, or comments on, an actual sign. For example, someone once scribbled the following over the name “Yo-Yo Ma” on a sign at Lincoln Center: “How Sylvester Stallone summons his mother.”

A: I never saw the sign you mention, but I did read about it some years ago in the “Metropolitan Diary” column in the New York Times.

Speaking of Yo-Yo Ma, I was just listening to his recording of the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. Which reminds me of a joke I’ve seen online.

In one version, Steven Spielberg is making a movie about famous composers. He asks Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger which composers they want to portray. Stallone chooses Mozart and Schwarzenegger says, “I’ll be Bach.”

Seriously, your comment raises an interesting question about English usage: Is “graffiti” singular (as you used it) or plural?

The word comes from Italian, of course, where the singular is “graffito” and the plural is “graffiti.” And that’s the way it was when the word entered English in the mid-19th century, though it was primarily used in the plural.

The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from an 1852 book on archeology that describes Viking inscriptions in Scotland as forms “of what, it must be remembered, are mere graffiti.”

The first published reference in the OED for “graffiti” used as a singular noun comes from a May 28, 1967, article in the Chicago Tribune: “Graffiti was written in San Francisco, Berkeley … and Montreal.”

So what’s the scoop on “graffiti” today?

The main entry for the word in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) is entitled “graffito,” but a usage note says “graffiti is far more common than the singular form graffito and is mainly used as a singular noun in much the same way data is.”

Although the singular “graffito” is etymologically correct, American Heritage says, it “might strike some readers as pedantic outside an archaeological context.”

The dictionary goes on to say that there’s “no substitute for the singular use of graffiti when the word is used as a mass noun to refer to inscriptions in general.” It gives this example: “Graffiti is a major problem for the Transit Authority.”

Over the years, many foreign plurals have been Anglicized as singulars in English: “agenda,” “erotica,” “insignia,” “opera,” “stamina,” “trivia,” etc.

It’s time to admit that “graffiti” has joined other Italian plurals that now take singular verbs in English: “zucchini,” “fettuccine,” “spaghetti,” and so on.

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Q: During your last appearance on the Leonard Lopate Show, a caller corrected Leonard’s pronunciation of “imprimatur” (im-PRI-muh-tur). Not knowing what the word meant, I looked it up and found (in my Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary), that Leonard’s version was one of three acceptable pronunciations. Since this was near the end of the show, I was unable to call.

A: You’re right about Merriam-Webster’s. My 11th edition lists these three pronunciations: im-pri-MAH-tur, im-PRI-muh-tur, and im-PRI-muh-tyur.

But The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) lists only two acceptable pronunciations, im-pri-MAH-tur and im-pri-MAY-tur.

The Oxford English Dictionary has only one: im-pri-MAY-tuh. And the other British reference I consult the most, Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English, has two – im-pri-MAH-tuh and im-pri-MAY-tuh (it says Americans may pronounce the “r” at the end).

The score: 3-to-1 against im-PRI-muh-tur. But I’d go easy on Leonard, since M-W gives his version its imprimatur.

The word “imprimatur,” which means “let it be printed” in Latin, entered English in the 17th century, according to the OED. It comes from the verb imprimere (to press or imprint).

At first, an “imprimatur” was an official license to print a book. But by the end of the 17th century, it was being used figuratively for any sign of approval.

Here’s an example from a 1672 pamphlet by the poet-satirist Andrew Marvell: “As things of Buffoonery do commonly, they carry with them their own Imprimatur.”

The use of the word in a publishing sense is still around, but it’s primarily seen in the Roman Catholic Church, where an “imprimatur” is a declaration that a book is doctrinally or morally acceptable to be read by the Catholic faithful.

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Q: In your July 9, 2008, blog item, the questioner asks why we talk of “borrowing” words from another language when we don’t give them back. That’s not always true. Look at “budget,” a word that we borrowed from French in a different form and then returned to the French with its modern spelling and meaning. But perhaps it’s normal for a financial term to be stricter as to the terms of borrowing.

A: You’re right. We borrowed the word “budget” (originally “bowgette” in English) in the 1400s from the French bougette (a diminutive of bouge, a leather bag).

The English word initially referred to a leather pouch or bag or wallet. A citation in the Oxford English Dictionary from around 1530 refers to a “boget with leteers hanging at his sadel bow.”

By the late 16th century, the word was being used to refer to the contents of a bag or wallet. And by the early 18th century (after an etymological hop, skip, and jump) the contents of the wallet had become a statement of projected revenues and expenses.

The earliest OED citation for the new financial usage, dating from 1733, refers to a budget of “publick Revenues” as “this Art of political legerdemain.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The French, as you say, borrowed this handy word back, in the early 19th century, spelled the English way: budget.

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Q: Does the name “Sally” have anything to do with the verb “sally,” as in “Let’s sally forth”? Is the name “Ginger” related to the spice “ginger”? Did people named “Ernest” and “Frank” make such an impression that their names became ensconced in the language as the adjectives “earnest” and “frank”? Or is this all coincidence?

A: In other words, what’s in a name? A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but did the flower give us the woman’s name? I’ll have more about this rose business later, but first your questions.

“Sally,” it turns out, is a nickname for “Sarah” and has nothing to do with the look-alike verb. The r’s in names sometimes become l’s in nicknames (“Dorothy/Dolly,” “Harold/Hal,” and others). For more, see the May 6, 2008, blog item on nicknames.

“Ginger,” on the other hand, does indeed come from the English word for the spice as well as the reddish-brown color. But it can also be a diminutive of the name “Virginia” (think Ginger Rogers).

“Ernest” is derived from an Old English word, eornust, meaning seriousness, while “Frank” comes from a Teutonic word for the West Germanic tribes known as the Franks.

“Frank,” as you probably know, is also a nickname for Francis (yes, that was Frank Sinatra’s first name).

As for “Rose,” a bunch of websites say it’s derived from various old Germanic words, including the name of “a giantess of Norse mythology.” But the Oxford English Dictionary gives a more prosaic source – the Latin word rosa, which means (you guessed it) a rose.

P.S.: The famous Gertrude Stein remark, often misquoted, is “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, is a rose.” The “Rose” in question was the English painter Francis Rose.

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Q: Is there any other kind of shrift than a short shrift?

A: The short answer is yes. But this question deserves a longer answer.

The word “shrift” is very old, dating back to Anglo-Saxon days. It was spelled scrift in Old English and meant a penance imposed by a priest after confession. So someone would take shrift or do shrift or give shrift.

The noun “shrift” is derived from an even older word, the verb “shrive,” meaning to hear confession, impose penance, or give absolution. The verb, spelled scrifan in Old English, dates back to around 776, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Although the original meaning of “shrift” is considered archaic today, the OED has published references from as recently as the late 19th century for the word used in the sense of penance or confession. An 1880 translation of Goethe’s Faust, for example, mentions going “to shrift with nothing to disclose.”

As for “short shrift,” the expression originally referred to the brief period of time that a prisoner was allowed for confession before being executed.

The phrase first appears in Shakespeare’s Richard III (1594), when Lord Hastings is sentenced to be beheaded and told: “Make a short Shrift, as he longs to see your Head.”

By the 19th century, the phrase “short shrift” was being used in the sense of making short work of something or giving it little consideration.

In 1887, for example, the Times of London criticized a measure before Parliament and said “it is to be hoped that the House of Commons will give it short shrift to-night.”

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Q: The recent Supreme Court decision about the Second Amendment, which guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” seems to hinge on the word “people.” It’s my understanding that “people” was once a singular noun, and the plural of “person” was “persons.” If “people” is singular, doesn’t this suggest that the right is guaranteed to the people as a group – i.e., militias – rather than to individuals? Of course, that’s not how the case was decided.

A: I’ll let the legal scholars and law reviews reargue District of Columbia v. Heller. As for “people” versus “person,” I don’t believe the etymological history supports your argument.

Although some language authorities have declared that the plural of “person” must be “persons,” not “people,” the people who actually speak the language have been doing otherwise for hundreds of years.

English speakers have used “people” as well as “persons” for the plural of “person” since at least the 1300s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In The Canterbury Tales, for instance, Chaucer writes of “a thousand peple in thraste to save the knyght.”

In the past, “people” was sometimes used in a general sense and “persons” in a specific sense (that is, to emphasize individuality). Nowadays, though, most people use “people” in all cases.

Bryan A. Garner, in Garner’s Modern American Usage, says this general-versus-specific distinction “is now a pedantic one,” and the use of “people” for more than one person is “the more natural phrasing.”

As for your question, using “people” as the plural of “person” was perfectly acceptable English when the Second Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1791.

It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that some language pundits began questioning the use of “people” as a plural for “person,” according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage.

The first known complaint came in 1861 when Henry Alford, a clergyman and grammarian, reported receiving a letter from someone who insisted that the expression “several people” should be “several persons.”

Alford, who’s chiefly responsible for the myth that it’s wrong to “split” an infinitive, didn’t buy this one. But many other so-called language authorities did. By the early 20th century, newspapers were adopting all sorts of rules for when “people” could or could not be used as a plural for “persons.”

When I worked for the New York Times in the 1980s and ‘90s, for example, the newspaper permitted the use of “people” for round numbers (“one million people”), but insisted on “persons” for precise numbers (“1,316 persons”).

By the end of the 20th century, though, the Times (as well as most other newspapers) had accepted “people” as the standard plural for “person” – no ifs, ands, or buts.

Needless to say, the people were merrily using “people” all along.

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Q: My mom says that I’m “immune from” the mumps since I had the disease as a child. And she ought to know! But I’m not sure she knows the correct preposition to use with “immune”? Shouldn’t she say I’m “immune to” the mumps?

A: I’m on your side. Medically speaking, somebody is “immune to” a disease or has “immunity to” it.

In its entry for “immune,” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) uses “immune from” in the sense of exempt or protected (“immune from further taxation … immune from arrest”), but “immune to” in the sense of not susceptible or responsive, as well as in the sense of medically resistant (“immune to all pleas … immune to diphtheria”).

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) appears to agree. The examples it gives in its entry for “immune” use the preposition “from” in the sense of exempt, or not subject to an obligation: “immune from taxation; immune from criminal prosecution.” But it uses “to” in the sense of not susceptible or responsive (“immune to persuasion”). There’s no example given for medical immunity, but the definition uses the phrase “resistance to infection.”

The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, edited by R.W. Burchfield, says a person is “immune to an infection” but “immune from some undesirable factor or circumstance.” Burchfield adds, however, that “the division is not clear-cut; in some contexts from is idiomatically used in type (a) and to in type (b).”

In fact the Oxford English Dictionary has many examples of “immune to” and “immune from” that don’t follow the predictable pattern. Your mom, for instance, could reasonably argue that she says “immune from” because she means that you’re “protected from” the mumps rather than “resistant to” the mumps.

Here’s an interesting aside. “Immunity” is the original word, dating from the 1380s. “Immune” is the latecomer, a back-formation dating from the mid-1400s. Also, the sense of “exempt from” preceded the medical meaning (“resistant to”). That may explain some people’s belief that “immune from” is the preferred form.

Anyway, this is an issue of usage or idiom rather than grammar. It all reminds me of a particular irritant of mine—folks who say so-and-so “died from cancer” rather than “died of cancer.”

We wouldn’t have problems like these, of course, if English weren’t so rich in prepositions!

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Q: I’m not much of a stickler. I believe that language is (and should be) a bottom-up rather than a top-down thing. But I’m bothered by a malapropism that I hear all the time: the use of “to the extent that” to mean “to the effect that,” as in “He said something to the extent that he did not accept her point of view.” Do you agree?

A: Yes, I’m with you. It’s definitely incorrect to use “to the extent that” in place of “to the effect that.” But this may not precisely be a malapropism, which is mixing up two similar-sounding words with an unintentionally comic result.

An example of a malapropism (from The Sopranos) is saying someone is “prostate with grief” instead of “prostrate with grief.” For more on malapropisms, check out my Jan. 2, 2007, blog item.

The noun “extent” dates back to the late 13th century. For the first few hundred years, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it referred to the value of land, taxes on that land, rent from it, or the seizure of land to pay debts.

Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1600) in which Duke Frederick uses the word “extent” for the seizure of land:

More villain thou. Well, push him out of doors;
And let my officers of such a nature
Make an extent upon his house and lands.
Do this expediently and turn him going.

By the 16th century, though, we find the word also being used to mean the degree to which something happens, exists, occupies space, or is understood, according to various citations in the OED.

Here’s an example from a 1533 medical book: “An appetite to eate or drynke mylke, to the extent that it shal not arise or abraied in the stomake.”

The expression “to the effect that” has been used since the late 14th century to refer to a result or purpose or meaning.

In The Canterbury Tales, for example, Chaucer writes: “Wherfore I pray yow, lat mercy been in youre herte, to th’ effect and entente that God almighty have mercy on yow in his laste juggement.”

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Q: We’ve been seeing the word “subprime” a lot lately because of the mortgage and banking crisis. Can you tell me anything about it?

A: It’s interesting that you should ask. The Oxford English Dictionary added a draft entry last month on this very subject.

Although the adjective “subprime” has been in the news lately, as you point out, it’s been around in one sense or another for the good part of a century, according to the OED.

The word, which initially meant inferior or below the highest quality, appeared in a 1920 Federal Trade Commission report about the pricing of products that “arrived at market in subprime condition.”

It wasn’t used in a banking sense until the mid-1970s. At first, “subprime” was a positive term that referred to a low lending rate (one below the prime rate) offered to the most desirable borrowers.

In 1976, for example, an article in the Times of London reported a rise in “the volume of big loans granted at sub-prime rate levels” as US banks competed for “the most credit-worthy clients.”

By the 1990s, though, the adjective was being used negatively to refer to a high interest rate for borrowers with poor credit histories. Here’s a 1998 example from Time magazine: “As a so-called subprime lender, Green Tree makes high-interest loans to people with damaged credit.”

Similarly, “subprime” has been a noun since the mid-1970s, at first referring to a low-interest loan for a desirable borrower, and later to a high-interest loan for a questionable borrower.

The most recent published reference in the OED, from the October, 2007, issue of Vanity Fair, uses the term for high-interest debt of dubious value: “Smart investors began wondering how many other institutions held worthless subprime, too.”

And those smart investors are still wondering, no doubt.

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Q: I love pound cake, but I’ve never come across one that weighed exactly one pound. Why then is a pound cake called a pound cake?

A: In the early 1700s, when the pound cake was born, recipes generally called for a pound each of the principal ingredients – butter, sugar, eggs, and flour, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The first published recipe that I could find comes from The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) by Hannah Glasse, one of the most successful British cookbook writers of the 18th century. Here it is (note that the recipe calls for a dozen eggs, not a pound of them):

“Take a pound of butter, beat it in an earthen pan with your hand one way, till it is like a fine thick cream; then have ready twelve eggs, but half the whites; beat them well, and beat them up with the butter, a pound of flour beat in it, a pound of sugar, and a few caraways. Beat it all well together for an hour with your hand, or a great wooden spoon, butter a pan and put it in, and then bake it an hour in a quick oven. For change you may put in a pound of currants, clean washed and picked.”

Yikes! All that hand beating? Nowadays, we use baking soda and electric mixers to give our hands a break. And we improvise on the proportions. As a result, our pound cakes are usually much lighter and a lot less rich.

Why a pound of each ingredient in the original recipes? At a time when many people couldn’t read, according to the What’s Cooking America website, “this simple convention made it simple to remember recipes.”

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Q: I was having a very pleasant brunch with two friends when the subject turned to the rules for using numbers. Friend One, a medical transcriptionist, complained that the style manual for her profession insisted that all numbers be expressed as numerals. Friend Two, a college librarian, offered that style manuals differed about numbers but one should follow the style for one’s profession despite objections. My contribution was that consistency should be the rule. I’d like to hear what you think. Do manuals of style rule in ordinary usage? How about manuscripts, novels, short stories? Help!

A: I do recommend using a style guide for ordinary usage as well as anything you write for a publisher. As far as the writing of numbers goes, the guidelines in Garner’s Modern American Usage, by Bryan A. Garner, make sense to me.

In general, unless you’re writing something technical, Garner suggests spelling out all numbers of ten and below, and using digits for 11 and above. But he gives several exceptions (“$9 million,” “9 inches,” “4 p.m.,” “8 percent,” etc.) and recommends spelling out any number that begins a sentence.

If you consult his book you’ll find other exceptions. The style recommended by Garner is similar in many ways to that used in newspaper writing.

On the other hand, if you’re writing a scholarly article or book, you might be better off using The Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition). Its style is very different (though it includes a chapter by Garner on grammar and usage).

The Chicago Manual generally spells out numbers one through one hundred, centuries, physical quantities and measurements, plus all round numbers in the hundreds, thousands, millions, and so on. (I wouldn’t use Chicago‘s style for numbers in personal writing, though; it’s much too cumbersome for correspondence and such.)

Different book and magazine publishers have their own styles for using numerals vs. words. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Use the publisher’s style manual if you have it. Otherwise, use your own judgment and be consistent. The publisher will change the style to suit itself.

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Q: In The American Way of Birth, Jessica Mitford writes, “It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word ‘travel’ is derived from ‘travail,’ denoting the pains of childbirth.” Does “travel” really come from “travail”? And does it have anything to do with childbirth?

A: Yes, “travel” is derived from “travail,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and it originally meant “Bodily or mental labour or toil, especially of a painful or oppressive nature; exertion; trouble; hardship; suffering.”

We got the word from the Old French travail, meaning suffering or trouble. The first published reference in the OED (spelled trauail) is from the Old Kentish Sermons (circa 1250), a collection of Old English sermons and proverbs.

And, yes, the word did once refer to the pain of childbirth. An OED citation from 1297 uses the phrase “in travail” pretty much the way we would use “in labor” today.

In spite of the word’s painful beginnings, the noun “travel” was being used to mean the act of traveling by the late 1300s. It was spelled all sorts of ways (“travall,” “trawaile,” ”trauaille,” “travale,” and so on) before “travel” became the dominant form in the 1600s.

The verb “travel” has a similar pedigree since entering English in the late 13th century. It has meant, among other things, to torment, to work, and to make a journey.

It’s interesting that a word for suffering or trouble in Old French has evolved over the years to mean work in modern French and travel or trouble in modern English. But I’m not sure what, if anything, that says about our two languages.

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Q: Your thoughts, please, about the past tense of “sneak.” I tend to use “snuck.” I also hear “sneaked,” but it sounds wrong to my ear. (I must admit that seeing “snuck” spelled doesn’t seem so right either, but it sounds fine.)

A: In formal written English, the traditionally accepted past tense (and past participle) of “sneak” is “sneaked.”

“Snuck” cropped up in the 19th century as a nonstandard variant, first recorded in print in a New Orleans weekly in 1887.

Since then, “snuck” has become so common in the US that American dictionaries now accept it without comment (that is, without calling it slang or nonstandard or dialectical or whatever).

Usage experts, who are stricter than lexicographers, list it as nonstandard but generally say it’s now acceptable in informal speech and writing.

“Snuck” is more common in the US and Canada, but it is on the rise in British and Australian English. Currently it appears about as often as “sneaked” in North America, but “snuck” may eventually replace it.

“Snuck,” in the opinion of Merriam-Webster’s Concise Dictionary of English Usage, “stands a good chance to become the dominant form.”

I don’t use “snuck” myself (simply because I’m in the habit of saying “sneaked”), but I have nothing against it.

The “sneak/snuck” pattern (though relatively new) has a familiar Anglo-Saxon ring, along the lines of “drive/drove,” “stick/stuck,” “weave/wove,” “speak/spoke,” and similar verbs from Old English.

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Q: A former boss once vehemently argued with me that the verb “assist” was used correctly in these examples: “They were asked to assist Dave learn math” and “I will need to assist you write that memo.” I had learned that “assist” followed by a noun needed either “in” or “to” before a verb. I was sure he was incorrect, but he was the boss, so I tried to find other ways to write sentences rather than write them incorrectly.

A: There are several ways to use “assist” correctly, but your former boss’s isn’t one of them. Here are the correct meanings and uses.

(1) to be present (this takes the preposition “at”), whether as a participant or supporter or just a spectator: “He will assist at the wedding.”

(2) to give assistance to (without a preposition): “Please assist that elderly woman.” … “His guide dog assisted him.”

(3) to give assistance (with a preposition): “His wife assisted in his success.”

(4) to give assistance (with the infinitive form of a verb): “She assisted to get him promoted.”

The two sentences you give are examples of the fourth kind, where “assist” should be followed by an infinitive: “They were asked to assist Dave to learn math” and “I will need to assist you to write that memo.”

I believe your former boss was using “assist” the way “help” is normally used. When “help” is followed by an infinitive, it doesn’t need “to.”

For instance, we can say either “He helped me to move,” or “He helped me move.” In both cases, “move” is in the infinitive.

But with “assist,” the infinitive must be accompanied by the preposition “to,” as in “He assisted me to move.”

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Q: What’s the origin of the phrase “happy as a clam”? I don’t see what clams have to be happy about. If ever an expression doesn’t make sense, this is the one.

A: The expression makes sense, according to my 1970 edition of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, if we think of it as a shortened version of “happy as a clam at high tide.”

“In America especially, clams are esteemed a delicacy and are gathered only when the tide is out,” the dictionary explains.

Many language sleuths who’ve looked into the subject agree with Brewer’s, and I have no reason to doubt this explanation. But the earliest published reference for the phrase in the Oxford English Dictionary is the clipped version.

Here’s the citation from an 1834 issue of the short-lived undergraduate literary journal Harvardiana: That peculiar degree of satisfaction, usually denoted by the phrase “as happy as a clam.”

A fuller phrase (though not the exact one cited by Brewer’s) shows up 10 years later in a book of fictional essays by Ann Sophia Stephens: They seemed as happy as clams in high water.

Another near-miss appears in John R. Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms (1848): “As happy as a clam at high water,” is a very common expression in those parts of the coast of New England where clams are found.

In fact, the exact phrase mentioned by Brewer’s doesn’t show up in print as far as I know until an 1873 book by John Hanson Beadle that describes a visit to Galveston, Texas: A thousand or more negroes thronged the streets “happy as clams at high tide.”

An 1898 edition of E. Cobham Brewer’s dictionary, though, does include an entry for “happy as a clam at high tide” with the following comment: The clam is a bivalve mollusc, dug from its bed of sand only at low tide; at high tide it is quite safe from molestation.

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Q: A friend emailed me about a Canadian New Wave group from the 1980s. Should he have said Martha & The Muffins’s [or Muffinses’] record “Metro Music”? In my reply, I want to mention another Canadian New Wave group. Should it be The Spoons’s [or Spoonses’] “Arias & Symphonies”?

A: Whether a musical group is singular or plural depends on whether its name is singular or plural. The Arrows are plural. Platinum Blonde is singular. The Spoons are plural. Martha & the Muffins are too.

If the band’s name is already a plural word ending in “s,” then just add an apostrophe to the end to make it possessive: Martha & the Muffins’ record “Metro Music” … The Spoons’ “Arias & Symphonies” (many fans drop the article and refer to the band simply as Spoons).

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Q: Which is better: “I’m going to loan you $500” or “I’m going to lend you $500”? Many thanks.

A: Let me begin by citing the “lend/loan” entry from my book Woe Is I:

“Only the strictest grammarians now insist that loan is the noun and lend is the verb, a distinction that is still adhered to in Britain (Lend me a pound, there’s a good chap). American usage allows that either loan or lend may be used as a verb (Loan me a few bucks till payday). To my ears, though, lend and lent do sound a bit more polished than loan and loaned.”

To this I might add that both verb forms are very old, with “loan” dating from the 1200s and “lend” from the 1400s.

As John Ayto writes in his Dictionary of Word Origins: “Originally there was no d. The Old English verb ‘lend’ was laenan, which in Middle English became lene.”

“But gradually during the Middle English period,” Ayto adds, “the past form lende came to be reinterpreted as a present form, and by the 15th century it was established as the new infinitive.”

The Oxford English Dictionary says the adoption of “lend” may have been influenced by the “preponderance of analogy,” citing similar verbs like “bend,” “rend,” “send,” and “wend.”

Which word is better, “loan” or “lend”? It’s your call. But “lend” seems to be the more popular, at least in Google land. I got more than 9 million hits for “to lend” and not quite 2.9 million for “to loan.”

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Q: I sometimes hear people use “what” where I’d expect “that.” For example, “I need to make a list of the things what I want to buy,” or “This is the book what he gave me.” Is this acceptable? It sounds horribly wrong to me.

A: No, your instincts are right and those sentences are wrong. They could correctly be written as follows:

(1) “I need to make a list of the things that I want to buy.”

Or: “I need to make a list of what I want to buy.”

(2) “This is the book that he gave me.”

Or: “This is what he gave me.”

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Q: I’m a reporter at a newspaper where an argument recently erupted between a copy editor and an assignment editor over how a person’s height should be designated. Is someone “5-foot-6” or “5-feet-6”? I would argue that it’s “5-feet-6” on the analogy that someone doesn’t weigh “150 pound.” Thanks for your help.

A: There’s no absolute right-vs.-wrong way to state dimensions in numbers (spell them out or not? use hyphens or not? pluralize the noun or not?). It’s a style issue, and one that’s likely to vary from publisher to publisher.

The New York Times’s style, for example, is “5 feet 6 inches tall” or “5-foot-6.” The Chicago Manual of Style, on the other hand, recommends “five feet nine,” though it accepts “more colloquially, five foot nine.”

Why does the Times (and many other publications) prefer the singular “foot” instead of the plural “feet” in a statement like “She’s 5-foot-6”? The Times stylebook doesn’t offer an explanation, but here’s my take on this.

When you say, “She’s 5-foot-6,” it’s really a clipped way of saying, more or less, “She’s a 5-foot-6 woman.” So “5-foot-6” here is actually an adjectival phrase (a group of words acting like an adjective).

Just think of the adjectival phrases “five-card” and “seven-card” in the question “Do you want to play five-card or seven-card stud?” You’d answer, “Five-card” or “Seven-card,” not “cards.”

We use singular nouns in nearly all adjectival phrases that indicate durations or amounts: “two-car garage,” “three-week vacation,” “four-bedroom house,” “five-month-old puppy,” “three-year lease,” and so on.

The only exception is with fractions, where the plural is often used in adjectival phrases: “a two-thirds turnout,” “a three-fifths margin,” etc.

Although there’s no hard-and-fast rule about the clipped forms, I think most of us commonly use singular nouns: “What size apartment are you looking for? A two-bedroom or a three bedroom?”

But back to your question about height. The Times style on this seems reasonable and natural to me. There’s nothing wrong with saying “She’s 5 feet 6 inches,” but if you drop the word “inches,” it sounds more idiomatically correct to my ear to say “She’s 5-foot-6.”

Now, the Chicago Manual does appear to be on your side. But this is largely irrelevant in a newsroom, since newspapers don’t follow Chicago style.

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Q: What’s the scoop on “optimal” vs. “optimum”? The company I work for says its technology is designed “to maintain the optimal temperature.” To my ear “optimal” is correct, but our chief scientist, a Brit, prefers “optimum.” Are they interchangeable?

A: As adjectives, “optimum” and “optimal” mean the same thing: most favorable, advantageous, desirable.

“Optimum,” which is also a noun, is the older word. It was borrowed directly from Latin (optimum: the best), and entered English as a noun in the mid-19th century.

The earliest published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary (from 1848) describes the cultivation of mulberry to reach “its maximum of extent and its optimum of quality.”

The word was first used as an adjective in an 1885 work that discusses the “optimum point” at which plant life “is carried on with the greatest activity.”

“Optimal” was formed from “optimum” and entered English in 1890. Again, the first OED citation comes from scientific writing: “There is probably an optimal temperature, or one at which the process proceeds most rapidly or most favourably.”

Both words have been used as adjectives up to the present time. In my opinion, it’s a toss-up. Use either one.

But here’s another opinion. Bryan A. Garner, in Garner’s Modern American Usage, prefers “optimal” to differentiate the adjective from the noun “optimum.”

“It serves the principle of differentiation to distinguish between the two forms,” he writes. He adds, however, that the adjective “optimum” is edging out “optimal” in popularity.

In the end, public opinion will choose the winner.

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She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 P.M. Eastern time to take your phone calls about the English language. (If you missed today’s program, you can listen to it in WNYC’s archive.)

Q: I recently read on Yahoo News that Matt LeBlanc’s ex-business manager had filed a breach-of-contract suit against the former Friends star. In the article, LeBlanc is referred to as an “erstwhile” Friends star. I thought “erstwhile” was an adverb, but I see it in some references as an adjective as well. Is it common for words to do double duty as adjectives and as adverbs?

A: The word “erstwhile” began life in the 16th century as an adverb meaning formerly. The first published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary is from a sonnet by Edmund Spenser: “That which erstwhile so pleasaunt scent did yelde, / Of Sulphure now did breathe corrupted smel.”

But “erstwhile” has been used as an adjective meaning former since the early 1900s. Here’s a 1909 citation from the Westminster Gazette, a London newspaper that later merged with the Daily News: “A tottering pleasure-resort, whose erstwhile patrons look more longingly every year at the pretty and easily reached villages of Normandy and Brittany.”

It is indeed common for words to do double duty as adjectives and adverbs. The technical term for an adverb that has the same form as its related adjective is “flat adverb.”

Some typical examples are “slow,” “sure,” “bright,” “hard,” “right,” and of course “flat” itself (as in “you’re singing flat”).

Flat adverbs were once “more abundant and used in greater variety” than they are today, according to Merriam-Webster’s Concise Dictionary of English Usage.

You might be interested in an item on The Grammarphobia Blog a year and a half ago about flat adverbs.

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Q: I recently came across this line in a computer book: “Most temporary files are automatically deleted whenever you close an application.” I was wondering if “when” should have been used instead of “whenever.”

A: I don’t think “whenever” is necessary in that sentence. A simple “when” would do.

“When” means “at what time” or “at the time that.” It’s an old word, dating back to the year 1000 or so, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

“Whenever,” a stronger word, means “at any time when” or “every time that” or “at whatever time, no matter when.” The OED says it came along in the late 1300s.

So the two aren’t interchangeable, and often “when” is enough. However, you’d want something stronger in a sentence like this: “I’ll be happy to see you whenever you can get away.”

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