Tag: Linguistics

Q: Here in America, we have cans and can openers. But in Britain, they have tins and tin openers. Our canned goods come from canneries. Do the British get theirs from tinneries? Yes, I know that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds (or something like that).

A: Excuse me for stealing the punny subject line of your email for the title of this post.

The short answer to your question is that a cannery is a cannery on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “cannery” simply as a “factory where meat, fruit, etc. are canned.” Another British reference, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, says it’s “a factory where food is put into cans.”

As for this “can” vs. “tin” business, it’s far too interesting to be dismissed as merely one of the minor language quirks that separate British and American English. In fact, the story of why we have these two usages begins back in Anglo-Saxon days.

The noun “can” has meant a container for holding liquids since it first showed up in Old English, spelled canne, around the year 1000. Here’s a typical example, from Every Man Out of His Humor, a 1598 comedy by Ben Jonson: “Two cannes of beere.”

In the early years, according to the OED, a can could be made of various materials, but the word eventually came to be used primarily for a metal container.

So how did a container of beans or tuna or soup come to be called a “tin” at a Sainsbury’s in Liverpool and a “can” at a Safeway in San Francisco?

It all began with the development of canning in the early 19th century as a method of preserving food for Napoleon’s armies. Nicolas Appert, considered the father of canning, boiled the food in airtight bottles.

So, the first cans used in canning were actually bottles. And we still use the term “canning” for preserving fruit and vegetables at home in Mason jars.

Canning soon spread from France to other countries in Europe as well as to the United States, but commercial canneries found the glass bottles costly and difficult to transport.

A year after Appert’s discovery, an Englishman, Peter Durand, patented a method for preserving food in sealed tin cans.

By the late 19th century, people in Britain were referring to these metal containers as “tins” while people in the US were calling them “cans.”

The first published reference in the OED for this British use of “tin” is from Isabella M. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861): “Many cooks use the tinned turtle … preserved in hermetically-sealed canisters…. The cost of a tin … is about £2.”

The first OED citation for the American usage is from Albert D. Richardson’s 1877 book about the West, Beyond the Mississippi: “Mitchell … was fined two cans of oysters for contempt.”

These containers are primarily made of steel or aluminum now, but the British still refer to them as “tins.” We Americans can’t laugh, though. Our pie pans are usually made of aluminum these days, but we call them “tins.”

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Q: My son’s English teacher taught the children this song: “1, 2, 3, 4, 5 / Once I caught a fish alive. / 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 / Then I let it go again.” Next, she showed them “Wh-“ questions, one being: “Who caught the fish? Me.” Is the object pronoun correct here? I would much prefer the nominative, “I did.”

A: A great many speakers of English – probably most – use “me” (an object pronoun) rather than “I” (a subject or nominative pronoun), even though the pronoun would appear to be the subject of a verbless sentence.

Here are some examples:

“Who’s there?” “Me.” (Alternatives using the nominative: “I” or “I am.”)

“I left early.” “Me too.” (Alternatives using the nominative: “I too” or “I did too.”)

“Did you flunk?” “Me?” (Alternative using the nominative: “I?”)

“Who has time?” “Me.” (Alternative using the nominative: “I” or “I have” or “I do.”)

A response of “I am” or “I did ” or “I have” isn’t at all unusual. But the use of “I” in a short reply without a verb seems unnaturally stiff to most speakers.

So we seldom hear a reply of “I” or “I too.” The use of “me” in these cases has become recognized as acceptable, even standard, English.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) says this in a usage note:

“Me is used in many constructions where strict grammarians prescribe I. This usage is not so much ungrammatical as indicative of the shrinking range of the nominative form.”

Merriam-Webster’s adds that “me began to replace I sometime around the 16th century largely because of the pressure of word order.”

“I is now chiefly used as the subject of an immediately following verb,” M-W says. ”Me occurs in every other position: absolutely (who, me?), emphatically (me too), and after prepositions, conjunctions, and verbs, including be (come with me … you’re as big as me … it’s me).”

The note concludes that “almost all usage books recognize the legitimacy of me in these positions, especially in speech; some recommend I in formal and especially written contexts after be and after as and than when the first term of the comparison is the subject of a verb.”

My grammar book Woe Is I touches on this issue in discussing the use of “It’s me” instead of “It is I.” Here’s how I put it:

“In all but the most formal writing, some of the fussiest grammarians now accept It’s me. Most of us find the old usage awkward, though I must admit that I still use ‘This is she’ when somebody asks for me on the phone. Old habits die harder than old rules.”

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Q: I have a question about using “a/an” before consonant/vowel sounds. Why is the long “u” considered a consonant sound? After all, the long “a” in “atrium” and the long “i” in “island” are vowel sounds. Why can’t the long “u” in “universe” be a vowel sound too? Can we have any wiggle room here?

A: Nope, no wiggle room.

In deciding whether to use “a” or “an” before a word, use your ears, not your eyes. If the word begins with a consonant sound, use “a.” If it begins with a vowel sound, use “an.”

As I’ve written before on the blog, don’t be distracted by the letter of the alphabet. Some letters play dual roles.

For instance, the vowel combination “eu” at the beginning of a word like “European” is a consonant sound. The word is pronounced just as if it began with “yoor.”

Similarly, “universe” is pronounced just as if it began with “yoon.” Would you really want to say “I attend an university” or “He has an universe of things to learn”? Of course you wouldn’t.

So again, pay no attention to the LETTER a word begins with. Listen to the SOUND. It’s what determines whether you use the article “a” or “an.”

That’s the long and the short of it.

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Q: I use expressions like “ten of five” to mean 4:50 and “a quarter to ten” to mean 9:45. I’m from Connecticut, but people from other parts of the country have no idea what I mean. Where did this method of telling time come from?

A: Your using “of” to tell time is perfectly legitimate. And it’s by no means confined to Connecticut, either. I can tell you that it’s also common in the Midwest, where I come from.

The earliest sense of the preposition “of” was “away” or “away from,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (This sense is retained in the spelling “off.”) When we say it’s “ten of five,” we mean that five o’clock is ten minutes away.

Your method of telling time has been common since the early 19th century, though the preposition “to” has been used in the same way since roughly the year 1000.

In North American, Scottish, and Irish English, “of” is commonly used “in expressing the time: from or before (a specified hour),” the OED says. Here are the dates and partial citations given.

1817: “At 15 minutes of 10 a.m.”

1857: “Five minutes of nine.”

1912: “It is a quarter of twelve.”

1956 (from Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Blunderer): “His watch said twenty of six.”

1995 (from a story by T. C. Boyle): “It was a quarter of one.”

The usage is also seen with the hour unstated but understood, as in Ira Levin’s novel The Boys from Brazil (1976): “I leave at five of.”

So don’t be apologetic. And now that it’s a quarter of one, I’m quitting for lunch.

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Q: At my senior complex, I’ve heard a word that sounds like “flibber-de-gidget” used to describe a certain yenta. It seems to be archaic but describes the individual to a T. Would you source the word and give the correct spelling?

A: The word you mean is spelled “flibbertigibbet” in modern English.

The adjective, which is even better, is “flibbertigibbety.” I’m not making this up!

You can consult The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), or the Oxford English Dictionary.

The noun is defined variously as a flighty, silly, frivolous, scatterbrained, meddlesome, chattering, or gossipy person. In other words, a yenta.

According to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, the word entered English sometime before 1450, when it was spelled “flepergebet” or “flypyrgebet.” The word is thought to be imitative of the sound of meaningless chatter.

The current spelling, “flibbertigibbet,” which seems to add a syllable to the original word, was first recorded in King Lear (1605). Shakespeare uses it for one of the five fiends possessing Edgar: “This is the foule fiend Flibbertigibbet.”

Note: A reader of the blog has contributed this appearance of “flibbertigibbet” (spelled with a “j” instead of a “g”), from the song “Maria” in The Sound of Music, the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical:

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o’-the-wisp! A clown!

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Q: Why is an egg cream called an “egg cream”? My parents had a candy store with a soda fountain in Brooklyn. I started making egg creams at age three, while standing on the ice cream freezer in the store and reaching over to the fountain handles. There was no egg in our egg creams!

A: The modern incarnation of the egg cream has neither egg nor cream – just chocolate syrup, seltzer, and milk. So why do we call the drink an “egg cream”?

There are quite a few theories about the origin of the name, some eggier and creamier than others.

A common eggless explanation is that the word “egg” here is a corruption of the Yiddish echt or ekht, meaning genuine or real. So an egg cream was the genuine article. That seems a bit far-fetched to me.

Although the origin of the name is uncertain, the evidence tends to suggest that egg creams may once have been made with eggs and cream.

The story most often mentioned involves Louis Auster, who in the 1890s opened the first of his family’s several candy shops/soda fountains on New York’s Lower East Side.

Many egg-cream authorities – I wouldn’t be surprised if NYU has an endowed chair in the subject – consider Auster the creator or popularizer of the beverage.

After the New York Herald Tribune ran an article entitled “The Egg Cream Mystique” in 1964, Louis Auster’s son Emanuel replied with a letter to the editor.

“Allow me to enlighten you on a few facts,” he wrote. “We are in business since 1892. We started in at Stanton-Lewis Streets on the lower East Side. About 1900, my father originated egg cream chocolate. We made all our syrups.”

He went on: “Sodas in those days were 2 cents a 15 oz. glass. or 1 cent you got seltzer with a little syrup on top. Chocolate was 2 cents, and egg cream (pure, cream and eggs, proportioned in a batch of syrup, not an egg to each glass) was 3 cents.”

(I am indebted to Barry Popik for quoting Emanuel Auster’s letter on his Big Apple website.)

Did the original Auster’s egg cream really have egg and cream, as Emanuel said? Perhaps, but not every member of the Auster family agreed with him.

Stanley Auster, a grandson of Louis, got his two cents in when he was interviewed for Jeff Kisseloff’s You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II (1989).

“The name egg cream was really a misnomer,” he said. “People thought there was cream it in it, and they would like to think there was egg in it because egg meant something that was really good and expensive. There was never an egg, and there was never any cream.”

Stanley ought to know. He was given the family’s secret recipe when he was about 13 years old, according to the interview, and made egg creams for Auster’s right through college.

In two articles in the journal American Speech, however, David Shulman provided additional evidence that egg creams may indeed once have had both egg and cream in them.

In a 1987 article, Shulman cited an egg-cream recipe in W. A. Bonham’s Modern Guide for Soda Dispensers (1896) that called for both cream and eggs.

And in a 1995 article, he insisted that “the original drink with that name did have egg and cream in it.” He added that the Oxford English Dictionary had accepted the results of his research on the subject.

The OED does in fact now define “egg cream” as “any of various kinds of rich sweet drink made orig. with eggs and milk or cream and more recently with milk, soda water, and flavouring.”

The OED’s earliest published reference for the term “egg cream” used in reference to a beverage is from 1906, half a dozen years after Louis Auster was said to have created the drink.

In closing, I’d like to quote a few lines from Lou Reed’s song “Egg Cream”:

When I was a young man, no bigger than this
A chocolate egg cream was not to be missed.
Some u bet’s chocolate syrup, seltzer water mixed with milk,
You stir it up into a heady fro, tasted just like silk.

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Q: Are “dethaw” and “unthaw” words? They don’t make sense to me, yet I hear both of them. Hearing and believing = two separate things.

A: Well, you won’t find them in standard dictionaries, but as you point out a lot of people use them. I got more than 52,000 hits when a googled “dethaw” and over 31,000 for “unthaw.”

Are they words? Yes. Are they standard English? No. Or maybe I should say not yet. English is a living language, but I wouldn’t put any money on these newbies.

I can find only two references that have entries for them: Urban Dictionary, whose definitions are written by readers, and WordNet, “a large lexical database” put together by linguists, computer scientists, and psychologists at Princeton.

What people mean when they use “dethaw” and “unthaw” is “thaw.” If these terms made sense, however, they would mean the opposite of “thaw” – that is, “refreeze.”

Of course English doesn’t always make sense. That’s why you don’t need a hammer and saw to make your bed in the morning.

My guess is that “dethaw” is a mistaken combination of “defrost” and “thaw.” For example, someone wonders how to quickly defrost or thaw a chicken, so he asks, “How do I quickly dethaw a chicken?”

People make similar mistakes when they use “unpeel” and “unloosen” and “I’m still unpacked” (for “I’m still packed”).

The verb “thaw” comes from old Germanic sources and has been in English since roughly the year 1000. It originally meant to turn a frozen substance (like ice or snow) back into a liquid by raising its temperature.

In the 1500s, it also came to mean to unfreeze a nonliquid substance (like a chicken). And if you want to know how to quickly thaw or defrost a chicken, you’ll have to go to a different source!

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Q: I would like to know if the term “sliding pond,” meaning a playground slide, is specific to the NYC area. Could it be a corruption of “slide upon”?

A: My husband, born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, remembers the playground slide as a “sliding pond,” as do many New Yorkers and New Jerseyites. Others recall it as a “sliding pon.”

The expression was a new one on me (I’m from the Midwest) until a few years ago when a reader from New Jersey asked me about it.

In looking for an answer, I came across an item on the Mavens’ Word of the Day website that says “the expression ‘sliding pon(d)’ is almost exclusively connected to the New York City area.”

The origin of the expression is obscure, according to the Random House site, but one possibility is indeed your suggestion that it’s derived from “slide upon.”

However, the writer points out two problems with this theory: (1) “upon” is a more formal word than children would normally use, and (2) “slide upon” is not known to have ever been used for a children’s slide.

“A somewhat more likely possibility is that it comes from a Dutch source,” the website tells us. “A Dutch dictionary in 1599 gives the term glijd-baene, literally ‘glide-road,’ for a children’s slide (on ice, in this case).”

The term “sliding pond,” the writer adds, “could thus represent a partial translation of the Dutch term, with the glijd translated as ‘sliding’ and the baene taken as ‘pond.’ ”

Although the website mentions two similar German terms, it says glijd-baene is a more likely source because of the Dutch influence on New York speech.

It also notes that the term “sliding pond” hasn’t shown up in other cities influenced by large concentrations of German immigrants.

All this talk about gliding and sliding, reminds of these lines from Simon and Garfunkel: “We’re workin’ our jobs, collect our pay / Believe we’re gliding down the highway, when in fact we’re slip sliding away.”

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Q: I’m writing this from under my bed in a hut on Kilimanjaro, where I’ve been hiding since the first time I heard the word “veggie.” One theory is that this type of baby talk is the verbal equivalent of comfort food, to which people are drawn in times of insecurity. A second theory is that this form renders vegetables less threatening. Here, too, I am at odds, because I like vegetables. What’s your (educated) prediction … will it die out or should I get used to snowy winters?

A: I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the word “veggie” lasts longer than the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro, where scientists say the ice cap is melting.

As it turns out, the word (also spelled “veggy” and “vegie”) isn’t all that new. It’s been around for more than half a century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest published reference in the OED is from a book called Lost Girls (1955), by Caroline Brown: “I did get a job for myself, selling vegies at a stall in the market.”

The first OED citation for the “veggie” spelling is from a 1978 article in the Washington Post about a World Vegetarian Day conference: “Special veggie conference events on Saturday include a ‘space vegetarian’ lunch.”

I even found a 1976 article in the New York Times archive that mentions a vegetarian restaurant in Paris called Veggie. A typical meal, according to the Times, might include soup, vegetables, prunes, and cake.

I’m a vegetable lover too, though my husband (a meat-and-potatoes guy) wonders how a lover of vegetables can bear to kill a poor innocent Brussels sprout.

As for “veggie,” I’m not particularly bothered by the word, no matter how it’s spelled. I fear that you’d better stock up on woolies.

Thanks for the entertaining question.

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Q: I listen to you on my iPod from Martinez, CA, home of John Muir. I’ve been thinking lately about the words “vindicate” and “vindictive.” Why did one embrace the light side and the other the dark?

A: “Vindicate” and “vindictive” were once more complicated words than they are today, and the first one originally had a lot of negative connotations that were lost over the years.

The verb “vindicate” comes from the Latin vindicare, meaning to claim, set free, punish, or avenge. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the English word reflected both the negative and positive sides of its Latin heritage.

First, it meant to avenge or exercise vengeance. Later it came to mean punish; rescue or set free; justify or clear (as from suspicion or dishonor); establish possession of something; and make good or defend against encroachment.

The adjective “vindictive” (from the Latin vindicta, meaning revenge), was preceded by an earlier form, “vindicative,” in the 1500s, and has had a generally grim history since entering English.

When “vindictive” first showed up in the early 1600s, it described someone “given to revenge; having a revengeful disposition,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In other words, someone who liked punishing people or holding a grudge.

In former days, “vindictive” was also used to describe anything punitive, retributive, or avenging. Today we use the legal phrase “punitive damages,” but the OED cites a quotation from 1813 about “vindictive damages.”

The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology suggests that “vindicate” could be a back-formation from an earlier word, “vindication,” which first appeared in English in the late 1400s and originally meant the act of avenging. (A back formation is a word formed by dropping a real or imagined part from another word.)

The OED says that “vindication” made its first published appearance in William Caxton’s printing of Aesop’s Fables (1484): “An asse … smote hym [the lion] in the forhede with his feete by maner of vyndycacion.”

So both “vindicate” and “vindictive” come from notions of vengeance and punishment. Although “vindictive” has continued to embrace the dark side, “vindicate” has lightened up.

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Q: My grandma has a question about the word “formidable.” She’s read that it has two meanings that are opposite of each other, and she was wondering if that’s correct.

A: “Formidable” has three related meanings: (1) arousing fear or apprehension; (2) inspiring awe, admiration, or wonder (similar to “impressive”); (3) difficult to undertake or overcome, as in “a formidable challenge.”

None of the meanings are really opposites; they’re just variations on a theme.

The source of “formidable,” which has been in English since the early 1500s, is the Latin formidare (to fear or dread).

The words “awe” and “wonder” in the second meaning above were once negative terms, since they meant fear and dread. “Wonderful,” odd as this may seem, once was a negative word, and “awful” still is.

But some words have truly opposing meanings. They’re called “contronyms.” Examples are “cleave,” “sanction,” and “oversight,” which all have opposing meanings.

I’ve written about words like these before on the blog. Here a link to a posting from last year and here’s a link to one from two years ago.

By the way, the pronunciation of “formidable” may be changing in the United States, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).

Traditionally, the first syllable has been stressed, but an increasing number of Americans have begun accenting the second syllable, a common variant pronunciation in British English.

American Heritage lists both pronunciations as standard English, but its Usage Panel overwhelmingly prefers the traditional one.

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Q: I saw this sentence on Slate: “Bush came up with the plan to put 10 anti-missile interceptors and radars on Czech and Polish soil in 2007, and the Russians have been clamoring about it ever since.” Can one clamor “about” something? I thought one could only clamor “for” it.

A: Generally, people clamor “for” or “against” or “to do” something, or they clamor “in support of” or “in opposition to” something.

But they can clamor “about” something as well. And of course they can simply clamor, with no prepositions at all.

The verb “clamor,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), means to make a din or insistently complain or demand, as well as to influence or bring something about by making a hubbub.

American Heritage says the verb can be both intransitive (meaning it doesn’t need an object), as in “clamored for tax reforms,” and transitive (it has a direct object), as in “clamored their disapproval” or “clamored the mayor into resigning.”

I don’t see any published references in the Oxford English Dictionary for “clamor about,” but I do see a couple for making “a clamor about” something.

Here’s a citation from Fraser’s Magazine in 1837: “No people … make such a blaring about apostasy, and such a clamour about consistency, as the Liberals.”

The verb “clamor” has been in use since about 1400, according to the OED. It was preceded by the noun “clamor,” meaning a shouting or outcry, which has been around since the late 1300s.

The word “clamor’ has been spelled all sorts of ways over the years: “clamur,” “clamure,” “clamoure,” “clamour,” “clamor,” etc. Today, it’s “clamor” in American English and “clamour” in British English.

The source of all this clamor is the Latin clamare, to cry out or shout.

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Q: I do ESL tutoring and I would like to be clear about “sit” vs. “set” and “rise” vs. “raise.” We sit at a table and rise from a chair. We set a table and raise flowers. Why does the sun rise in the east (as of its own volition), but it sets in the west?

A: When we speak of the sun’s rising and setting, we’re using “rise” in the sense of to ascend or mount up.

This meaning of “rise,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, has been in use since about 1200 in reference to heavenly bodies coming up above the horizon.

As for the sun’s setting, we’re using “set” here in the sense of to sink or descend. This meaning of “set” has been in use since about 1300 in reference to heavenly bodies going down below the horizon.

“Set” has had a great many meanings over the years, which accounts for some of the confusion with “sit.” In fact, people have been confused about “set” and ”sit” as far back as the early 1300s, according to the OED.

This is partly because of the close similarity of their past tenses and past participles, and partly because of the similarity in their meanings in some uses.

For example, one meaning of “set” is to cause someone to be seated or to sit (as in “to set the king on his throne” or “to set the child in his highchair”).

You don’t have to be an ESL student to find this confusing.

In “Mixed Doubles,” a section on confusing pairs in the new third edition of my grammar book Woe Is I, I explain the difference between “set” vs. “sit” and “raise” vs. “rise” this way:

“RAISE/RISE. To raise is to bring something up; there’s always a ‘something’ that’s being lifted. To rise is to get up. When they raise the flag, we all rise.”

“SET/SIT. To set is to place something; there’s always a ‘something’ that’s being placed. To sit is to be seated. Set the groceries on the counter and sit at the table.“

I hope this helps.

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Q: I’m reading Origins of the Specious and enjoying it, but I have a question prompted by this line on page 39: “Lassie is a dog who could direct her own movie.” Lassie was a female character played by a male animal. Do we use “her” or “his”? This is a question that is dogging me.

A: The question occurred to Stewart and me, too, when we were writing the book.

The female character was portrayed by many male dogs over the years. You might say the actors were in drag! But we decided to go for the feminine pronoun, since the character was feminine.

All those Lassie movies, TV shows, novels, comics, toys, etc. began with a female rough-coated collie in a 1938 short story by Eric Knight in the Saturday Evening Post.

Knight later expanded the story into a novel, Lassie Come Home (1940), and MGM turned it into a move in 1943.

Pal, the first dog to play Lassie, sired a long line of male collies that succeeded him in the role. In fact, fans have protested when unrelated collies appeared as Lassie.

Why a male dog in a female role? In checking various Lassie sites on the Web, I find these two explanations most often mentioned:

Male collies tend to have thicker coats, so they’re more photogenic during the summer when dogs shed. Also, male dogs are generally larger, which lets them play opposite growing child actors for longer.

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Q: My British-born boss corrected me for preparing a letter that said “I am writing you” instead of “I am writing to you.” He sniffed that dropping the preposition “to” in the first example was an Americanism and bad English. Is there a difference between UK and US English on this? Help!

A: WELL! What a snippy comment! And wrong besides.

This is not bad English. It’s standard American English (which is why we invite readers of our website to “Write us”), and it was once standard British English too. Here’s the story.

In a sentence like “Write me a poem” or “Write your mother a letter,” the preposition is understood and is properly omitted in both British and American English. In fact, it would be unusual to hear “Write for me a poem” or “Write to your mother a letter.”

Several verbs, including “hand,” “pass,” “give, “offer,” “send,” and “write,” are commonly used without prepositions when they’re immediately followed by an indirect object (like “me” and “your mother” in the sentences above).

However, if the direct object comes first (“a poem,” “a letter”), the preposition is used: “Write a poem for me,” and “Write a letter to your mother.”

Here are a few more examples: “Pass Dad the salt,” but “Pass the salt to Dad.” … “Hand me the hammer,” but “Hand the hammer to me.” … “Offer her tea,” but “Offer tea to her.” … “Give them a break,” but “Give a break to them.” … “He left her his fortune,” but “He left his fortune to her.”

In the case of “write,” it’s long been correct English to drop the preposition even if the only object is an indirect object, as in “Write me when you can” or “Write your parents at least once a week.” (In this respect, we use “write” in much the same way that we use “call.”)

As for your British-born critic, he is right in one respect. A sentence like “Have you written your mother?” or “Write me,” once standard English on both sides of the Atlantic, is now frowned upon in the UK though it’s still fine in the US.

Only when both objects are present and the indirect object comes first – as in “Have you written your mother a thank-you note?” or “Write me a letter” – do British speakers today omit the preposition.

Under its entry for “write,” The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage explains that preposition-dropping in Britain “is now in restricted use unless accompanied by a second (direct) object, as in I shall write you a letter as soon as I land in Borneo.”

“In old-fashioned commercial correspondence,” the usage manual adds, “the types We wrote you yesterday; Please write us at your convenience were often used, but nowadays to would normally be inserted before you and us.”

And this old British usage wasn’t limited to commercial writing, according to published references in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The 18th-century Scottish clergyman and poet Thomas Blacklock, for instance, used it in a these lines from 1746: “Pray write me soon, to let me see / How much superior you can be / To doctors in divinity.”

In other words, the American use of “write” isn’t incorrect – it’s old-fashioned!

Interestingly, some speakers in the UK colloquially say “Give it me” (meaning “Give it to me”), omitting the preposition after the direct object, which Americans seldom do. We might say “Give me it” or “Give me that,” but we’d never drop the preposition in “Give it to me.”

We hope this takes away the sting, even if just a bit.

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Q: Are the words “plethora” and “dearth” like “sanction” and “invaluable” – i.e., does each have two meanings that are contradictory? I hear “dearth” being used as meaning many, and “plethora” as meaning few. I always thought “dearth” meant few and “plethora” too many.

A: The kind of two-faced word you refer to is sometimes called a “contronym” or a “Janus word,” after the god with two faces. “Cleave,” “sanction,” and “oversight” are examples of contronyms, since they have opposing meanings.

If you’re interested in reading more about these words, I’ve discussed contronyms before on the blog, in a posting last year and in another two years ago.

“Invaluable,” by the way, isn’t one of these words. It has only one meaning: priceless, or beyond value. It never means without value. The negative prefix “in” here suggests something that’s so valuable it can’t be valued.

“Plethora” and “dearth” aren’t contronyms, either. They too have only one meaning each.

We got “plethora” from post-classical Latin, and it has meant the same thing ever since entering English in the 1500s: an overabundance, a plenitude, a large amount.

“Dearth,” first recorded in the 1200s, is from Germanic sources and means a scarcity, an inadequate supply. (It’s related to “dear” in the sense of costly, which once was one of its meanings.)

Anyone who uses “plethora” to mean a scarcity or “dearth” to mean an overabundance is misusing the words.

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Q: Does anyone ever pronounce the first “r” in February?

A: Dictionaries list two proper ways to say “February”: with either one “r” or both of them pronounced.

Most people, however, do not pronounce the first “r,” according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

In fact, Merriam-Webster’s points out that FEB-yuh-ware-ee is “the most widespread pronunciation of this word among educated speakers.”

This pronunciation is an example of what linguists call “dissimulation.”

M-W explains that dissimilation “may occur when a word contains two identical or closely related sounds, resulting in the change or loss of one of them. This happens regularly in February.”

“The y heard from many speakers is not an intrusion,” the dictionary adds, “but rather a common pronunciation of the vowel ‘u‘ after a consonant, as in January and annual.”

This reminds me of the house in Brooklyn where a bunch of creative types, including W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Benjamin Britten, Paul and Jane Bowles, and Gypsy Rose Lee, lived communally in the early 1940s.

Anaïs Nin called it “February House” because so many of the occupants were born in that month.

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Q: I’m a network news producer. I recently tried to use the phrase “a bevy of frenzied activities,” but it was deemed an inaccurate use of the word “bevy.” My dictionary says “bevy” can be used for a group of people or things. Isn’t an activity a thing? Can you please clarify?

A: The word “bevy” is a noun meaning, roughly, a group – and the group is usually one of people or animals.

The Oxford English Dictionary explains that the origins of “bevy” are uncertain. When it first appeared in the 15th century, it was “the proper term for a company of maidens or ladies, of roes, of quails, or of larks.”

The OED‘s first published citation is from a book on hawking that appeared in 1430 and referred to “a bevey of quayles.”

In the 1600s, people began using “bevy” to refer to “a company of any kind,” as when Ben Johnson referred in 1603 to “a bevy of Fairies.”

But, according to the OED, only “rarely” is the word “bevy” used to refer to “a collection of objects.”

As for a collection of activities, that would be a very unusual usage. “A frenzy of activity” might have been better.

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Q: What bothers me is how the use of “author” has changed. I thought it was a “relational” noun, so Dickens should be referred to as the author of David Copperfield, not merely as an author. It also hurts my ears to hear someone referred to as simply a mother, rather than someone’s mother.

A: A “relational noun” is one that implies a relationship, and that relationship is often expressed in the possessive.

“Leg,” for example, can be described as relational because it usually belongs to someone or something, as in “John’s leg,” or “the leg of the chair.”

The same can be said of a word like “mother”; it often appears in phrases like “John’s mother,” or “the mother of three.”

But relational nouns can also be nonrelational – that is, independent – when used without reference to a possessor.

For example, in a sentence like “He hurt his leg,” the word “leg” is relational, but in “The leg has large major veins” it’s independent.

And in the sentence “She is John’s mother,” the word “mother” is relational, but in “She is a mother” it’s independent.

In the same way, a noun like “author” or “composer” can be relational (“author of a book,” or “composer of the symphony”), but it can be independent too (“She’s a popular author,” or “He’s an arranger and composer”).

Similarly, words that we would never think of as relational, like “flower” and “season,” become relational when used with “favorite”: “Her favorite flower is the rose” … “The favorite season of lovers is spring.”

The only relational noun I’m aware of that can’t be independent too is “sake.” This word is always used in a possessive phrase because it always belongs to someone or something.

We say “for heaven’s sake,” “for goodness’ sake,” “for the sake of my family,” “for the children’s sake,” and so on. “Sake” is never used without reference to a possessor.

In short, “author” can be a relational noun or an independent one. It’s grammatically correct to say either “She’s the author of Middlemarch” or “Eliot is a great author.”

Writers have been using “author” in a nonrelational way for centuries. As John Gay wrote in his Fables (1726): “No author ever spar’d a brother.”

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Q: Should “soignée” and “trompe l’oeil” be underlined? Where can I obtain a list of foreign words (especially French) to be underlined and those to be left alone?

A: The Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.) advises italicizing, not underlining, isolated foreign terms. But it recommends using italics only if the foreign terms “are likely to be unfamiliar to readers.” Otherwise, roman (that is, upright) type should be used.

How can you tell whether a foreign word or phrase is familiar or not? Consult a dictionary.

“Soigné” and “trompe l’oeil” are regular entries in both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

This indicates that the two terms have been adopted into English. Thus, they shouldn’t be italicized when used in an English sentence.

American Heritage lists only those foreign terms that have been adopted into English. Merriam-Webster’s lists both adopted foreign terms and the less familiar ones.

M-W includes adopted foreign terms in the main A-Z section, alongside other English words. It lists less familiar foreign terms – those not fully adopted into English – in a separate section at the back called “Foreign Words & Phrases.”

For example, M-W lists “enfant terrible” in the main section, but the less familiar “enfant chéri” in the back. This indicates that the first would not be italicized, while the second should be.

M-W explains: “Foreign words and phrases that have not been fully adopted into English are italicized. In general, any word that appears in the main A-Z vocabulary of this dictionary does not need to be italicized.” (Page 1613)

The dictionary gives these examples: “At the club such behavior was distinctly mal vu. The prix fixe lunch was $25.”

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She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 PM Eastern time to discuss the English language and take questions from callers. If you miss a program, you can listen to it on Pat’s WNYC page.

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Q My boyfriend corrects me when I say something like “the house needs cleaned.” Do I have to say “the house needs to be cleaned” in order to be grammatically correct? Please help!

A: Your grammar may not be spotless here, but I wouldn’t call it outrageous either. In some parts of the country, in fact, it’s quite common.

There are two correct ways to say this: “The house needs to be cleaned” or “The house needs cleaning.”

Your variation, “The house needs cleaned,” is widely frowned upon in usage guides, but it’s an established regional idiom in Scotland, Ireland, and parts of the US. I touched on this two years ago in a blog posting.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), under its entry for the verb “need,” has this interesting Regional Note about the subject:

“When need is used as the main verb, it can be followed by a present participle, as in The car needs washing, or by to be plus a past participle, as in The car needs to be washed. However, in some areas of the United States, especially western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, many speakers omit to be and use just the past participle form, as in The car needs washed. This use of need with past participles is slightly more common in the British Isles, being particularly prevalent in Scotland.”

The Oxford English Dictionary explains that in Scottish, Irish, and some kinds of American English, the verb “need” is often used with a participial adjective (like “cleaned” or “walked”) as its complement.

These regional usages date from the middle of the 19th century. The OED gives examples including “the car needs washed” (that one seems to be pretty popular!) and “Does my hair need combed?”

The OED also says that “need,” used with a verbal noun (such as “cleaning” or “walking”) as its subject, has been common since about 1400. Here are a few of the OED‘s citations from major authors:

1681, John Dryden: “Young appetites are sharp, and seldom need twice bidding to such a banquet.”

1844, Charles Dickens: “That needs no accounting for.”

1847, Charlotte Brontë: “Her feelings are concentrated in one – pride; and that needs humbling.”

1915, Willa Cather: “If she wasn’t disturbed, she needed no watching.”

1916, George Bernard Shaw: “Her hair needs washing rather badly.”

1928, Eugene O’Neill: “The collegiate clothes are no longer natty, they need pressing and look too big for him.”

1940, William Faulkner: “It would need painting again this year; he must see to that.”

So “The house needs cleaning” is perfectly fine. As for “the house needs cleaned,” it isn’t the best English and shouldn’t be used for formal occasions.

But if you live in certain parts of the country, this usage is as ordinary as “standing on line” in New York or “y’all” in the South.

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Q: In a hearing transcript I was reading the other day, an attorney complained that a proposed settlement would cause “issues” for his client. As a law professor, I’ve noticed that “issue” has come to replace “problem.” Do you have any idea how this linguistic evolution or devolution has occurred?

A: You aren’t the first to notice or take issue with this use of “issue.” Many of my readers and listeners have noticed it too.

The noun “issue” (as well as the verb) entered English in the 1300s and has had a variety of meanings over the centuries, all of them arising more or less out of its early meanings of egress, outflow, exit, discharge, or output.

The “issue,” in other words, is what comes out, whether from a drain pipe, the human body, a stressful situation, or a problematic legal settlement.

Thus “issue” has been used to describe progeny (that is, children); bodily fluids (as in blood from a wound); the outlets of streams and rivers; the proceeds from rental property, and an outcome, product, event, or consequence.

Also, it has meant a distribution or a giving out (as when a soldier is given an “issue” of rations or pay), an “issue” of a newspaper or magazine; and a point in question (a legal usage dating from 1308).

The legal usages, with their contentious overtones, might have influenced a relatively new meaning of the noun, as exemplified in the phrase “to make an issue of” (that is, to make a fuss about or make a subject of contention).

The Oxford English Dictionary dates this sense of the word from 1927, when a writer in the New Statesman remarked, “There seems to be an attempt to create a big issue of Communism versus anti-Communism.”

And we’ve been making issues of things ever since.

The use of “issue” to mean an emotional or psychological problem seems to have cropped up about 30 years go.

Here’s one of the entries under “issue” (noun) in the OED: “In pl. orig. and chiefly U.S. Emotional or psychological difficulties (freq. with modifying word); points of emotional conflict.”

And here’s the OED‘s first published citation, from the New York Times on Dec. 8, 1982: “Then it becomes how do you deal with the emotions and intimacy issues that were largely dealt with previously through alcohol?”

As we all know, by the time a term shows up in a major newspaper it’s probably been in use for a while. So this sense of the term might have been in the air before 1982.

As of this writing, the online version of the OED doesn’t deal with “issue” as a synonym for a plain old problem (as in “he has cholesterol issues”).

But both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) include problem as a meaning of “issue.”

Clearly this sense of the word has grown out of the earlier psychological use of the term.

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Q: I was delighted to meet you at the Port Washington Public Library on Long Island. I’m the knitting lady. I have a question about the old E. J. Korvette chain of discount department stores. I used to believe the name stood for the eight Jewish Korean War veterans who founded the chain. But I’ve read recently that this is a myth. What’s the story?

A: Hi, knitting lady, it was a real pleasure to see you, and the lovely sweater coat you knitted. And, yes, that business about E. J. Korvette and the Korean veterans is a myth.

The name actually combined the first initials of the two founders – Eugene Ferkauf and Joe Zwillenberg (or Swillenberg) – along with a respelling of “Corvette,” the naval term for a small, fast, lightly armed warship.

It’s an urban legend that the name stood for eight (or eleven) Jewish Korean War veterans. In fact, E. J. Korvette, which was in business from 1948 to 1980, was founded before the Korean conflict began.

Ferkauf, in his 1980 memoir Going Into Business: How to Do It by the Man Who Did It, explains the origin of the name this way:

“I had a name picked out for the store, E. J. Korvette. ‘E’ is for Eugene, my first name, and ‘J’ stands for Joe Swillenberg, my associate and my pal…. As for ‘Korvette,’ it was originally meant to be spelled with a ‘C’ after the Canadian marine sub-destroyer, simply because I thought the name had a euphonious ring. When it came time to register the name, we found it was illegal to use a naval class identity, so we had to change the spelling to ‘K’.”

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Q: I heard a football play-by-play man use “times-out” as the plural of “timeout.” I think that’s incorrect, in contrast to a sportscaster who referred to “R’sBI” as the plural for “runs batted in.” That, I believe, is right. Or, is it overly fussy?

A: Could the play-by-play guy have said “time’s out,” the contracted form of “time is out”? Otherwise, the plural of “timeout” is “timeouts,” though a Google check suggests that not everyone has gotten the word.

In case you’re interested, the term “timeout” entered English more than a century ago as a football term.

The first published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary is from an 1896 book about football: “Time out, time taken out by the referee when play is not actually in progress.”

Over the years, the term has been written as two separate words (“time out”), two words hyphenated (“time-out”), and a single word (“timeout”).

In sportswriting and parenting, it’s increasingly being spelled as one word, according to Garner’s Modern American Usage.

I wrote a blog item earlier this year about how compound terms begin life as separate parts and then get mushed together over time.

How do we pluralize these terms?

If a compound is one solid word, put a normal plural at the end of the word: “Doormen are good at getting taxicabs.”

If the compound is split into parts, with or without hyphens, put the plural ending on the most important part: “Do rear admirals serve on men-of-war?”

(The two examples above are from the new third edition of my grammar book Woe Is I.)

As for runs batted in, forget you ever heard “R’sBI.” That would be like using “P’sOW” instead of POWs.” I wrote a blog entry recently on how to pluralize “RBI.”

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Q: I’m puzzling (or jousting) with another copy editor over which, if any, of these sentences should take a singular verb: (1) The bride, and the groom, look lovely. (2) The bride – and the groom – look lovely. (3) The bride (and the groom) look lovely. (4) The bride, as well as the groom, look lovely. (5) The bride, along with the groom, look lovely. Would you care to weigh in?

A: In general, two singular and separable nouns joined by “and” take a plural verb. (Sometimes, though, the two nouns refer to the same person and so are inseparable, as in “Our cook and housekeeper has resigned.”)

We find nothing indicating that the commas in sentence No. 1 would change this rule, though I find them awkward and unnecessary.

As for 2 and 3, parentheses and sets of dashes are functionally alike in that they isolate information that’s grammatically extraneous to a sentence. By this reasoning, the two sentences ought to take singular verbs, at least in theory.

But in fact, these sentences are constructed incorrectly, whether the verb is singular or plural. That’s because an extraneous element should not be included within the part of the subject that determines the form of a verb.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (page 1750) gives this as an example of such an “inadmissible” sentence: “Kim (and Pat) have still not been informed.” Sentences 2 and 3 fall into this category and should be recast.

As for numbers 4 and 5, phrases like “as well as,” “accompanied by,” “added to,” “in addition to,” “along with,” “coupled with,” or “together with,” when inserted between subject and verb, don’t change the number of the verb. So if mere adjunct phrases like these follow a singular noun, the verb remains singular.

To sum up, we’d use a plural verb (“look”) with numbers 1, 2, and 3, after eliminating the commas from 1, the dashes from 2, and the parentheses from 3. We’d use a singular verb (“looks”) with 4 and 5.

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Q: A “mistress” is a kept woman supported in secret by a married man who’s cheating on his wife. What do we call the man? My husband says a “lucky dog,” but he’s joking … I hope. Seriously, is there a word for this?

A: I’ve racked my brain, but can’t come up with a word for the cheating man. Perhaps “sugar daddy”? Of course that word is slanted, since it defines him in terms of the mistress but not the wife (he’s not a sugar daddy to the Mrs.).

“Gigolo” can describe a kept man, the masculine equivalent of the mistress. And “cuckold” is the masculine version of the wife who’s being cheated upon.

But as for the man who keeps a mistress, that’s perhaps a gap in the language that needs to be filled.

By the way, Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang says the expression “sugar daddy” (also know as “sugar,” “sugar papa,” “sugar pops,” and “sweet sugar”) originated in the US in the 1920s.

The earliest citation in the New York Times archive (from a 1926 drama review) refers to the vagaries of life in a traveling theater troupe, including the search for lodgings, the scarcity of hot water, and “the ‘sugar daddy’ of the show.”

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In October and November, she’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show on the fourth Wednesday of the month instead of her usual appearance on the third Wednesday. If you miss a program, you can listen to it on Pat’s WNYC page.

Q: I’m a new reader of your blog. I enjoy it very much, but I’m a little confused by your blog entry on “aunt.” You give two pronunciations: ANT and AHNT. Although I most often hear ANT, I never hear AHNT. I do, however, occasionally hear AWNT. (I’m from Wisconsin.)

A: All of my standard American English dictionaries (and I have lots of them) list only two pronunciations in their “aunt” entries: ANT (rhyming with “can’t”) and AHNT (rhyming with “font”).

However, The Dictionary of American Regional English gives several variations that are heard in some parts of the United States. One is indeed AWNT (rhyming with “haunt”)..

DARE says the ANT pronunciation is the one usually heard throughout the country. The AHNT version is most often heard in New England and eastern Virginia, but speakers there sometimes turn it into AWNT.

(The dictionary cites an 1847 usage manual that complains about the AWNT pronunciation, so it’s been around for quite some time.)

The regional dictionary doesn’t mention anything about the presence of the AWNT pronunciation in the Midwest. It’s interesting that you’ve heard it in Wisconsin. I’m from Iowa and don’t recall hearing it there.

DARE lists several other less common pronunciations, including AINT, which it says is sometimes heard in the lower Midwest and parts of the South.

I hope this helps, and I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog.

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Q: In teaching religion a few years ago, I encountered confusion on the part of my students when explaining the Trinity by using the term “persons.” How did the singular word “people” become the default plural for the singular word “person”?

A: “People” and “person” are entirely different, etymologically unrelated words.

The source of “people” is the Latin populus (the masses, the populace).

The source of “person” is the Latin persona, which originally meant a mask worn by a character in a play and later came to mean a human being or an individual. The Latin word may have been derived from the Etruscan phersu (mask).

My sources here are the Oxford English Dictionary and the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology.

“People” entered English around the late 1200s. In modern usage, it’s usually a plural noun for “humans” and has no corresponding singular that would mean “one human.”

“People” is singular only when it refers to a body or group of humans who share the same culture. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) gives this example: “As a people the Pueblo were noteworthy for their peacefulness.”

The collective sense of “people” has a corresponding plural, “peoples,” which is now used to mean groups of humans that share a common religion, culture, language, etc.

A different animal entirely is “person,” which entered English in the early 1200s as a singular noun (plural: “persons”). It originally meant either a human being or a role or function assumed by a human.

“Person” has had many meanings over the centuries, and in 1325 it took on a special meaning in Christian theology, one familiar to every English major who has studied John Donne’s sonnet “Batter my heart, three-person’d God.”

The OED defines this sense of “person” as meaning “each of the three modes of being of God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) which together constitute the Trinity.”

Here’s a citation from John Henry Newman’s The Arians of the Fourth Century (1833): “The word Person which we venture to use in speaking of those three distinct and real modes in which it has pleased Almighty God to reveal to us His being.”

Theologians today still use this sense of the word. But unless you’re talking about theology, there’s nothing wrong with using “people” to mean “persons.” In fact, that’s the people’s choice. I wrote a blog item about the subject last year.

“Persons” often sounds stuffy or has the air of a police blotter (“three persons were taken into custody”). “People” seems more natural to most of us, and that probably accounts for the reason it has largely supplanted “persons.”

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Q: In Origin of the Specious, you quote Henry Fielding’s comment about “learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among books.” The idea of a life consumed is new to me. I have always thought of a life as being spent or, sadly, wasted, like when Prufrock measured his life out in coffee spoons. Well, I won’t consume yours by nattering on.

A: Thanks for the playful nattering.

As for Fielding, he was using a well-established meaning of “consume” in that quotation from Tom Jones, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Since early in its history (the 14th and 15th centuries), the verb “consume” has been used in three primary senses: (1) to destroy, (2) to use up, and (3) to fully engage.

In the first sense, to “consume” a thing or a resource is to destroy it by causing it to disappear, disperse, burn up, wear away, corrode, waste away, decompose, and so on.

In the second sense, “consume” is to use up by ingesting, exhausting, purchasing, spending, wasting, squandering, etc.

In the third sense, to “consume” is to entirely engage a person’s attention or energy, to overwhelm (as when someone is “consumed” by guilt or passion), or to absorb voraciously (as when we avidly “consume” a book).

Fielding was using the word in the second sense.

Perhaps T. S. Eliot imagined Prufrock consuming as well as measuring his life in coffee spoons.

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Q: I’m overdue replacing my dictionary (American Heritage, 3d edition), but I’m puzzled about which new one to get. I don’t want another American Heritage because I find it sometimes errs on the side of being descriptive rather than prescriptive. What would you recommend? It can be big and somewhat costly.

A: The three dictionaries I use the most are The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), and the Oxford English Dictionary.

Of the two American dictionaries, I find that Merriam-Webster’s is clearly more descriptive and accepts as standard English many usages frowned on by the more prescriptive American Heritage.

(A descriptive reference tends to describe the language as it is; a prescriptive one tends to prescribe what it should be.)

Since you want a somewhat prescriptive dictionary, I’d recommend going with the latest American Heritage. And dare I suggest the OED too?

The OED is a feast for language lovers. It includes just about everything – the good, the bad, and the ugly – but it’s careful to let readers know when a word is considered dialect, colloquial, slang, rare, obsolete, archaic, etc.

Although you say your next dictionary can be big and somewhat costly, I assume the 20-volume second edition of the OED would be too big and too costly.

However, the second edition is also available online and on CD-ROM. I’ve used both, but I prefer the online version because it’s updated regularly with draft revisions.

If you’re interested, check out the online OED’s subscription page. (And, yes, I pay for my OED subscription.)

PS: A reader of the blog reminds me that many public libraries offer free access to the online OED. Unfortunately, the library in the small rural town where I live doesn’t.

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