Tag: Usage

Q: When did the phrase “a piece of work” begin to have negative connotations? The original meaning seems to have been entirely positive, but now dictionaries say it can refer to somebody or something outstanding as well as unpleasant. I would very much welcome your insights about this, as would the other poor souls who were discussing it at a recent get-together.

A: When your question popped into my in-box, I happened to be reading a book by the British novelist Angela Thirkell, written in the early 1950s. One of the characters, an admirer of powerful cars, is looking under the hood (or rather the “bonnet”) of a big gorgeous automobile, and when he emerges he says: “By Jove! it is a piece of work.”

Obviously, a rave review!

The Oxford English Dictionary‘s first citation for the noun phrase “piece of work” dates back to 1473, when it simply meant a product or something manufactured.

But it was often used in a positive way, as in this well-known excerpt from Hamlet (1604): “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable!”

By 1533, it was also being used to mean a difficult undertaking or task, a usage that in the 19th century was sometimes used metaphorically in a negative way (to mean a commotion or a disorderly fuss).

The expression was first used in a derogatory way to refer to an unpleasant person in 1713, according to the OED. Here’s the first published reference, from the manuscripts of the Duke of Portland:

“I believe your Lordship will have nothing to do with him he being a whidling, dangerous, piece of work and not to be trusted.” Often the phrase used in this sense appeared as “a nasty piece of work.”

So your answer is about 300 years ago.

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Q: I was watching ESPN and a sportscaster referred to “a night of amazing game threes.” I hear that usage a lot, but this time my ears pricked up. Shouldn’t it be “games three,” like “attorneys general” or “brothers-in-law”?

A: This practice of pluralizing the adjective instead of the noun in a phrase like “game threes” seems to be a common idiom in sports writing and broadcasting. I see it quite often. Here are a few examples from the Internet (and I won’t try to make the capitalization consistent):

? The Wizards and Celtics posted wins in their Game Fives [meaning each team won its respective game five in the NBA playoffs].

? Most of the teams that win game ones are home teams.

? How many first-round game sevens will there be?

? Two of the best Series-ending Game Sixes happened within a few years of each other.

This usage makes sense to me. The phrase “games three” would not only look odd but might also be misleading, especially in a phrase like “games three and four,” which might refer to two specific playoff games.

I think a term like “game fours” (or “game twos,” and so on) in various playoff series should be considered a grammatical unit, like “plus fours” for the knickers golfers used to wear, or the “terrible twos” that parents of tots endure, or the “all-fours” that even younger kids walk on.

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Q: I’ve been wondering lately about what I call, for lack of a better term, “food words.” Why is someone’s behavior “cheesy?’ Or jokes “corny?” Or language “salty”?

A: The adjective “cheesy” has been used in a pejorative way (for something that’s shoddy, tasteless, cheap, and so forth) since the mid-19th century, according to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

The dictionary’s first citation, from 1863, describes a shoddy orchestra “consisting of the fiddle – a very cheezy flageolet, played by a gentleman with one eye – a big drum, and a triangle.”

Oddly, the word has been used in the opposite sense as well (though not much lately). The Oxford English Dictionary has an 1858 citation for “cheesy” meaning showy or stylish. This comes from a sense of the noun “cheese” meaning first rate, as in our modern expression “big cheese.”

We have several other “cheese” words, and their meanings are all over the place. For instance, “cheesed” and “cheesed off” have been used as adjectives for angry since the 1940s.

But today “cheesy” is a negative. This is unfair to cheese, if you ask me. It’s one of my favorite foods!

On to “salty.” Since the 1840s, we’ve called experienced sailors “salts” or “old salts,” according to the OED. This, as you may have guessed, is a probable reference to the salt water of the sea.

Earthy or racy language has been called “salty” since the 1860s. But I haven’t been able to find out whether “salty” language was called that simply because it was spicy and tart or because it was like sailor talk. The references I’ve been able to check don’t say.

The adjective “corny” has a shorter history. It’s been a term of derision only since the 1930s, when something that was “corny” or “cornfed” or “on the cob” was rustic, countrified, old-fashioned, or behind the times – and hence trite or hackneyed.

It first was used by jazz musicians, who called a style of playing “corny” if it was outmoded or worn out. Here’s the OED‘s first citation, from 1932: “The ‘bounce’ of the brass section … has degenerated into a definitely ‘corny’ and staccato style of playing.” (Imagine a rube fresh from the cornfields trying to make a splash in the big city and you’ll get the idea.)

There’s a larger question behind all this: Why do we use so many food words metaphorically? Well, why not? After all, we say that a person who’s elegant and discerning has “good taste.”

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Q: I hear BBC correspondents pronounce “says” with a long “a” to rhyme with “prays.” Why do Americans pronounce it like “sez” instead of like “pays,” “lays,” and other “ays” word that come to mind. Is it just a quirk of English?

A: The third-person singular of the verb “say” should be pronounced “sez” on both sides of the Atlantic, according to American and British dictionaries. But pompous broadcasting twits, especially across the pond, have never let standard pronunciations get in the way of on-air affectations.

A lot of people, especially foreigners, have wondered why we pronounce “says” to rhyme with the candy Pez rather than with “lays” or “prays” or “stays.” In fact, I recently came across an exchange of letters on the subject in the New York Times from 1906.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a definitive explanation of the phenomenon. I think this may be one more example of, as you put it, “a quirk of English.”

The Oxford English Dictionary has published references for the word dating back to around 971. The spellings have been all over the place since then: “seit,” “seithe,” “seythe,” “seis,” “sais,” “saise,” “sayes,” “sayis,” and “says,” among many others. I suspect that the pronunciations were all over the place too.

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Q: Why do so many people say “in regards to” when they mean “with regard to?” Isn’t that incorrect?

A: There’s no reason to use the plural “regards” in this case.

The expression is either “in regard to” or “with regard to.” And better yet might be just “regarding.”

A usage note in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) says “regard” is traditionally singular in the phrase “in regard to.”

But the dictionary adds that it’s acceptable to use the plural in the phrase “as regards” when the meaning is “with reference to.”

We borrowed the noun “regard,” meaning a look or gaze or manner, from the Old French in the 14th century.

The word was soon being used in prepositional phrases.” Chaucer, for instance, used one of the early versions, “at regard of,” in 1381.

The OED’s first published reference for “in regard to” is in a 1677 sermon: “What hath occurred … to my meditation, I must at present, in regard to your patience, omit.”

The first citation for “with regard to” comes from a 1713 book by the Irish philosopher George Berkeley: “I speak with regard to sensible things only.”

Now that makes sense. Regards (couldn’t resist).

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Q: Please comment on “shake a stick at.” I’ve heard that the expression comes from using a stick to count a passing flock of sheep.

A: The Oxford English Dictionary defines the expression as meaning “more than one can count, a considerable amount or number.” The saying originated in – and is chiefly heard in – the US, according to the dictionary.

The OED’s first published reference, from the Lancaster (Pa.) Journal in 1818, is in a slightly different form: “We have in Lancaster as many Taverns as you can shake a stick at.”

Nobody knows for sure the origin of “shake a stick” in this context, though it could be, as you say, that pointing with a stick was a means of counting. And too many things to count could be more than you can shake a stick at.

It could also be that shaking a stick was a hostile gesture. If there was a vast amount of something and it was more than someone could cope with, he might “shake his stick at” it.

I did come across a something else on the Web. The frontiersman Davy Crockett, in his Tour to North and Down East (1835), wrote about an inn: “This was a temperance house, and there was nothing to treat a friend to that was worth shaking a stick at.” This is quoted in Charles Earle Funk’s book Heavens to Betsy.

In short, we may never know for sure where this shaking-a-stick business comes from. But your explanation is as good as any.

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Q: How is the word “forte,” meaning an area of expertise, properly pronounced. My mom says it should be like the “fort” that’s a military compound.

A: Mother is always right! The derivation of “forte” is French, and traditionally it should be pronounced like “Fort” Knox.

The other pronunciation, FOR-tay, is an Italian musical term meaning “loud” or “strong.” (Perhaps we have musicians to blame for the Italian pronunciation of the nonmusical term?)

At any rate, the two-syllable mispronunciation has become so entrenched, doubtless because of the Italian influence, that it’s no longer condemned by usage experts.

Although both the FORT and FOR-tay pronunciations are now considered acceptable in American English, I still observe the traditional distinction and use the FORT version when I mean someone’s strong point.

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Q: In a recent appearance on WNYC, you said the expression “drill down” meant something like “getting at an idea.” In our firm, it means going beyond general concepts or elements into a more detailed analysis, which I guess leads to getting at an idea.

A: The meaning at your firm is similar to this definition on Webopedia, an online dictionary of computer-technology terms: “to move from summary information to detailed data by focusing in on something.”

I couldn’t find the verb phrase “drill down” in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), or any of the other references that I regularly consult.

I also checked out the Oxford English Dictionary to see if the verb “drill” has ever been used this way before. The closest example I could find was a 19th-century meaning: “to order or regulate exactly.” The OED gives an 1877 citation about the necessity to “regulate and drill all the doings of nature.”

Close, perhaps, but no cigar!

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Q: You were discussing the expression “over a barrel” on WNYC the other day, and it got me thinking about the county fairs where a visitor can exercise his ball-throwing skills by trying to dunk someone standing on a plank over a barrel filled with water. Is this a possible explanation for the origin of the phrase?

A: Well, the person on the plank is indeed over a barrel – that is, in a precarious position. But I don’t think that’s the origin of the expression.

Since the last Leonard Lopate Show, I’ve had a chance to check out the expression in the Oxford English Dictionary, which describes it as primarily American slang meaning helpless or in someone’s power.

The phrase, according to the OED’s lexicographers, is “apparently in allusion to the state of a person placed over a barrel to clear his lungs of water after being rescued from drowning.”

The expression is relatively recent. The first published reference is from Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel, The Big Sleep: “We keep a file on unidentified bullets nowadays. Some day you might use that gun again. Then you’d be over a barrel.”

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Q: Please comment on two egregious mistakes perpetrated by our less-than-literate media people: (1) Misusing “eye of the storm” to mean the thick of a chaotic situation instead of the calm in the middle. (2) The abuse of “begging the question,” a mistake in logic, to mean raising or avoiding a question. Oh, well, I guess that’s how language changes. Arggggggh!

A: We agree with you about “eye of the storm.” But a case can be made—a weak case, in our opinion—for using the expression to refer to the thick of it.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language gives this as one of the meanings of the noun “eye”: “The center or focal point of attention or action: right in the eye of the controversy.”

So one could use “eye of the storm” loosely to describe the focal point of a storm of controversy. But we’d rather save the expression for its meteorological meaning (the relative calm at the center of a storm) or a corresponding figurative use.

As you say, however, language does change, and “begging the question” is a perfect example of it. Pat has spoken about this on WNYC, and we’ve discussed “to beg the question”—its origins and its subsequent development—on our blog.

Our conclusion? The expression has been ruined by too many years of misuse. It now doesn’t mean much of anything.

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Q: Much of my light reading is detective stories, and the sleuths are often driving from place to place. It has always bothered me that when describing car seats, the front is always “front seat,” which makes sense to me, but the back is always one word: “backseat.” Why?

A: I also enjoy a detective story once in a while, and your question gives me a chance to do some detecting of my own

First, why do some noun phrases (like “front seat”) remain separate words while others (like “back seat”) eventually get mushed together?

There’s no hard-and-fast rule here, but what usually happens is that the most common of these phrases are first hyphenated (“back-seat”) and then joined into one word (“backseat”). This process is gradual and may take dozens of years or more.

In fact, the process is still going on with “backseat,” according to the two US dictionaries I consult the most.

Although Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) lists it as one word, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) has it as two words.

Neither dictionary has a separate entry for “front seat,” suggesting that this term is much less common than “backseat,” whether one word or two.

The Oxford English Dictionary has published references for both “front seat” and “back seat” going back to the early 19th century, when the seats were usually in vehicles powered by real horses. All of its citations are either two words or hyphenated.

The earliest reference for “back seat” is this 1834 quotation from the writings of the American humorist Robert C. Sands: “He had … ample room wherein to adjust himself and his properties, on the back-seat [of the coach].”

The earliest for “front seat” is an 1825 reference to the front seat of a gallery in a church. The next citation in the OED is from Lord Ronald Sutherland-Gower’s 1883 memoir: “Le gros papa took up all the front seat of the carriage.”

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Q: Frank Sinatra created the Reprise record label in the early ‘60s and pronounced it ri-PREEZ. I’ve always heard “reprise” pronounced that way until recently, when an NPR promo for a theater company said the actors would ri-PRIZE their roles. When did this second usage begin and is it correct?

A: Modern dictionaries are all over the place on the pronunciation of “reprise.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) lists only one acceptable pronunciation for the noun and the verb: ri-PREEZ.

But Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) lists both ri-PREEZ and ri-PRIZE as standard pronunciations of the noun, though M-W says the second one is less common.

Merriam-Webster’s gives ri-PREEZ as the correct pronunciation of the verb when it’s used in the modern sense of repeating or recapitulating something.

But M-W says the verb is pronounced ri-PRIZE when used in two archaic senses: to take back or to compensate. This suggests that ri-PRIZE may be the older pronunciation.

In fact, my 50-year-old, unabridged Webster’s New International Dictionary (2d ed.) lists only ri-PRIZE as the pronunciation of both the noun and the verb, with one exception. The noun is pronounced ri-PREEZ, according to the dictionary, only when used in fencing to refer to a redoubling of an attack.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists both pronunciations for the noun, but says ri-PREEZ is now used principally in a musical sense. The OED doesn’t give a pronunciation for the verb, but the earliest spelling of the verb (from 1481) is “repryse,” suggesting that it may have originally been pronounced ri-PRIZE.

So, in answer to your questions, the ri-PRIZE pronunciation appears to be the older one, perhaps going back 500 years or more. Although it’s still acceptable, the ri-PREEZ pronunciation is more common today.

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Q: You mentioned on the radio the other day that some dictionaries will list just about any possible pronunciation of a word. Thanks for sharing that. I was going to call and ask about the pronunciation of “transient,” but I didn’t want my co-workers to recognize me! I can be a stickler for pronunciation.

A: In case you’re interested, “transient” has THREE pronunciations in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), FIVE in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), and SIX in the Oxford English Dictionary, all of them considered standard English.

The sibilant can be pronounced as “ss” or “sh” or “zh” or “zz” or “j,” and the vowels can vary too. As for the “i,” it’s sometimes silent, sometimes not. That is, “transient” is sometimes three syllables and sometimes two. It would be hard to mispronounce it!

The adjective (meaning temporary, fleeting, or passing by) is quite old, dating from 1607, according to the OED. The noun (something passing or transitory) is old, too, going back to 1652.

The use of the noun to refer to a migrant worker, a brief guest, or another passer-by is relatively recent. The first published reference for this usage in the OED dates from 1880: “My grandmother held these transients in low esteem.”

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Q: I am REALLY tired of hearing the phrase “perfect storm.” I enjoyed the 1997 book that popularized it as a dangerous combination of weather conditions. But “perfect storm” is now used for every combination of unpleasant circumstances. It makes talking heads and politicians seem foolish (for a change).

A: I’ve noticed this too, and it never fails to make me wonder if the perpetrators know which way the wind is blowing. You may be surprised to learn, though, that the expression isn’t a new phenomenon.

In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary has published references going back to 1718 for “perfect storm,” though the earliest citations use the phrase positively, as in a “perfect storm” of applause.

The first use of the expression in the meteorological sense comes from the March 20, 1936, issue of the Port Arthur (Texas) News: “The weather bureau describes the disturbance as ‘the perfect storm’ of its type. Seven factors were involved in the chain of circumstances that led to the flood.”

The OED defines the term as a “particularly fierce storm arising from a rare combination of adverse meteorological factors.” Sebastian Junger, in the foreword of The Perfect Storm, defines it as “a storm that could not possibly have been worse.”

No matter how you define it, the widespread metaphorical use of the phrase has gotten out of hand. Last year, the public relations department at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, MI, said “perfect storm” led its list of words and phrases that should be banned because of their numbing overuse.

A few examples: Energy Daily, a “perfect storm” of electric competition (1997); the Economist, a “perfect storm” in the markets (1998); the New York Times, a “perfect storm” of events (2002).

I wouldn’t suggest banning “perfect storm,” but let’s give it a much-needed rest.

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Q: In the past few years, I’ve encountered a curious pronunciation I hadn’t noticed before: when some people say words containing “str,” such as “street,” it sounds as if they’re saying “shtr,” as in “shtreet.” This sound bugs me, but no one else seems to notice. Am I hearing things? Is this a regional or cultural dialect?

A: No, you’re not hearing things. Or rather you are, but the things are real.

You’ve observed something that language experts say is a fairly common variation in the way some Americans speak: the letters “str” are pronounced as “shtr.”

So the speakers seem to be saying things like “shtreet,” “shtrong,” “shtring, “shtrategy,” and even “Aushtralia” and “indushtry.”

Many linguists and phonologists have done scholarly papers on the subject, most of which are understandable only by other linguists and phonologists.

You ask whether this is an example of “a regional or cultural dialect.” Professor Michael Shapiro of Brown University, in an article in the journal American Speech in the spring of 1995, said the phenomenon “seems to be neither dialectal nor regional,” since he’s noticed it in people from all parts of the country.

He sees a parallel in the way some (perhaps older) Americans pronounce the “s” in “Israel” not as “z” but as “zh” (like the “s” in “vision”).

The phenomenon is called “assimilation,” because it has to do with the way different sounds (in this case “s” and “tr”) affect one another when they’re combined.

Another, more familiar case of assimilation happens with the letter “n,” which often sounds like “m” when it’s found in the combinations “nb,” “np,” and “nm.”

This kind of assimilation results in pronunciations like “cramberry” (cranberry), “grampa” (granpa), and “gramma” (granma).

I hope this is helpful and leaves you more “shtreetwise.”

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Q: In my reading for an English literature course, I’ve been noticing nicknames like “Ned” (for “Edward”), “Dick” (for “Richard”), “Hal” (for “Harry”), etc. In The School for Scandal, the Sheridan play, I came across “Noll” – apparently a diminutive of “Oliver.” What is the story behind these nicknames?

A: “Noll” used to be a common nickname for “Oliver.” (One of Oliver Cromwell’s nicknames among the English people, when they weren’t calling him something worse, was “Old Noll.”)

In a custom dating from medieval times, people used to add an affectionate “mine” before first names starting with a vowel, and they often dropped syllables as well. Thus “mine Oliver” led to “Noll”; “mine Abel” led to “Nab”; “mine Ann” led to “Nan”; “mine Edward” led to “Ned”; and “mine Ellen” led to “Nell.”

English nicknames are a fascinating subject. The word “nickname” itself is derived from an extremely old word, “ekename” (an “eke” is an addition or a piece added on).

The first published reference to “ekename,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, appeared in 1303. The pronunciation of the expression “an ekename” was misunderstood as “a nekename,” which in turn led to the modern word “nickname,” first recorded in the 17th century.

One common way nicknames were formed was by dropping syllables from the front: “Drew” (for “Andrew”); “Beth” (“Elizabeth”); “Fred” (“Alfred”); “Tony” (“Anthony”); and “Derick” (“Theoderick” or “Roderick”).

Nicknames that use only the first syllables include “Eliza” (“Elizabeth”); “Alex” (“Alexander”); “Fred” (“Frederick”); “Sam” (“Samuel”), and dozens of others, including my own nickname, “Pat” for “Patricia.”

There are even nicknames taken from the middle: “Liz” and “Lisa” (“Elizabeth,” “Elisabeth”); “Della” (“Adelaide”), “Trish” (“Patricia”), and others.

Sometimes nicknames were formed by adding “in” to a first syllable. This is how we got “Robin” as a nickname for “Robert.” And sometimes an “r” in the middle of a name would somehow become an “l,” as in “Hal” (“Harry”), “Mol” (“Mary” or “Martha”); “Dolly” (“Dorothy”); or “Sally” (“Sarah”).

“Margaret” has given us “Marge,” “Madge,” and “Maggie,” plus “Meg” and “Meggie” and their their rhyming forms “Peg” and “Peggy.”

But in our time most nicknames are mere shortenings or are formed by adding “ie” or “ey” or “y” to the first syllable of a longer name. This is how we get “Chris/Christie,” “Dave/Davie,” “Jamie,” “Charlie,” “Johnny,” “Pat/Patty,” “Rosie,” “Gracie,” “Marty,” and a slew of others.

Nobody’s sure how “William” gave us “Bill,” “John” gave us “Jack,” “Robert” led to “Bob,” “Richard” ended up as “Dick,” or “Edward” led to “Ted.” (My grandfather was a “Ted” but his real name was “Theodore.”)

Thanks for a great question!

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Q: When a toast is made and people wish to show their agreement, they say, “Here, here!” Or is it, “Hear, hear?” PS: I sampled an appearance of yours on WNYC for a mix of mine (check out the last track).

A: The correct exclamation is “hear! hear!” punctuated and capitalized in various ways: “Hear! Hear!” or “Hear, Hear!” or “Hear, hear!” and so on.

The earliest published references in the Oxford English Dictionary, dating from 1689, use somewhat different versions, either “hear him! hear him!” or the singular “hear!”

The first published citation for the double “hear” comes from a 1769 report from the House of Commons: “Mr. Grenville called out hear! hear!”

The OED also has several references for the expression used as a noun phrase, including an 1868 comment by Disraeli about “hear-hearers” and an 1879 remark by Sir George Campbell, a Scottish MP, about “Hear, hearing!”

There are even a few citations for the expression used as a verb phrase, including an 1883 report of an MP who “hear, hears” another member.

And thanks for letting me hear the mix. Hear, hear!

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Q: What’s to be done about the poor state of English? It seems most people just don’t care if they appear uneducated. No, I don’t envision myself as a defender of English who goes about righting the wrongs perpetrated by illiterates. I merely find the butchered writing I run into annoying and frequently difficult to decipher.

A: What can you do about the poor English that you run into, or that runs into you? I can think of a few things.

(1) When you see an example of bad grammar or usage in an advertising campaign, write a letter to the CEO of the company (don’t bother with the advertising department).

A friend of mine recently wrote to Thomas J. Wilson, president and chief executive officer of Allstate, to complain about a full-page ad in the New York Times that read, “How long of a retirement should you plan for?”

She pointed out the ungrammatical “of.” Not only did she get a letter of thanks, but the FOLLOWING WEEK, the ad was run again reading “How long a retirement should you plan for?” No “of”! The lesson: Complain, and go straight to the top.

(2) Take an interest in what your local school board is doing. Are the schools teaching grammar? Are children’s mistakes being corrected – in speech as well as in written papers? If not, why not?

(3) If you get an incoherent email, send it back with a request for clarification. If you can’t make heads or tails of some garbled sentence, say it doesn’t make sense and ask for a translation!

In short, you do what you can. These may be little things, but if enough people did them, we might see a difference.

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Q: I was amused by your blog item about the New York governor’s misuse of pronouns. He said the former governor had “my wife, Michelle, and I up for lunch.” I’m glad he put an “up” in there. Once you have the grammar sorted, there’s still a problem when people say things like “we’re having the children for dinner.” Well, I love children, but I couldn’t eat a whole one.

A: I agree that “having the children for dinner” sounds comical. It reminds me of Jonathan Swift’s essay “A Modest Proposal.” He suggests solving the dual problems of starvation and overpopulation among the poor Irish by having them eat their children.

Or, as Swift so colorfully puts it, “a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”

One way of treating children that are fed up with you or, perhaps, vice versa!

I often see and hear such delectable constructions as these: “We had the couple next door for lunch,” or “We’ll have the parents for a barbecue.”

In this sense, “have” means something like “invite,” or “have over.” I agree, though, that it leaves one open to laughter, so it’s much better to stick in a preposition.

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Q: Senator McCain was asked on the campaign trail whether there was an “emblematic relationship” between the Constitution and Christianity. What exactly does that mean? And how should the word “symbolic” be used in normal conversation – i.e., “symbolic dance” or “symbolic thinking”?

A: You wonder what an “emblematic relationship” between the Constitution and Christianity means. Not much!

Dictionaries define the adjective “emblematic” as symbolic or representative or typical. So I guess one could say there’s an emblematic relationship between a cross and Christianity, or between the Constitution and democracy.

Similarly, one might say a constitution is emblematic of democracy, or Christianity is emblematic of monotheism. But heaven only knows what “an emblematic relationship” between the Constitution and Christianity could refer to.

We borrowed the word “emblematic” in the 17th century from the French emblématique, which ultimately comes from the Latin emblema, which means emblem.

As for “symbolic,” it means using or characterized by symbols, but it’s probably used more often in a looser way to mean typical of, as in “His tantrum is symbolic of the terrible twos.” We borrowed “symbolic” in the 17th century from symbolicus, late Latin for symbol.

I think both “emblematic” and “symbolic” are overused these days, too often imprecisely. I wouldn’t use “emblematic” at all in normal conversation and I’d use “symbolic” sparingly.

Instead of “It’s a symbolic dance,” I’d say “The dance uses a circle as a symbol of the sun.” Instead of “symbolic thinking,” I’d say what I mean (whatever that is).

These, in my opinion, are words that allow a speaker (or writer) to blur any genuine meaning. But of course that may be the speaker’s intention!

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Q: Whence “the Court of Saint James’s”? Aren’t both “of” and an apostrophe plus “s” redundant?

A: The British royal court is known as the Court of St. James’s because its fuller name is the Court of St. James’s Palace.

St. James’s Palace and its adjacent park, St. James’s Park, are both named for Saint James the Younger. The palace is the monarchy’s administrative headquarters, which is why foreign ambassadors are accredited to the Court of St. James’s.

And lest this answer sound too bureaucratic, here are a few lines from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe:

I heard the minx remark,
She’d meet him after dark,
Inside St James’s Park …

Many people are startled by the use of what’s sometimes called the “double possessive” – that is, using “of” along with an apostrophe and “s.” But there’s nothing grammatically wrong with it. I talked about this once on the blog, and you might want to take a look at the entry.

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Q: You once helped me chose an etymological dictionary. It shows that “extinguish” and “extinct” have the same Latin root, extinguere, or to quench. How interchangeable are their related words “extinction” and “extinguishment”? For example, can one say “the extinction of the spirit” or should one say “the extinguishment of the spirit” to express “the demise of the spirit”?

A: I hope you’re finding the dictionary helpful. You’ll notice in it that many words with different meanings have come down to us from the same etymological roots.

For instance, both “mange” (an eating away of the skin) and “munch” (to eat or chew) may have come to us from the Latin verb manducare (to chew), according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

But let’s get to “extinguish” vs. “extinct,” the subject of your email. “Extinguish” is a verb meaning to put out or put an end to; “extinct” is an adjective meaning inactive or dead.

It turns out that “extinct” was once a verb meaning to extinguish, according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), but that meaning is considered archaic today

Although the verb and adjective have different, though related, meanings, the two nouns you mention (“extinction” and “extinguishment”) do indeed mean pretty much the same thing: the act of extinguishing or the condition of being extinct.

So you could legitimately say either the “extinction” or the “extinguishment” of the spirit, though the word “extinction” sounds better to my ear.

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Q: Why do you refer to “American English” and “British English”? Surely it should be “American English” and “proper English.”

A: We can’t tell whether your question is a serious one or not, but we’ll answer it as simply as we can.

The terms “American English” and “British English” refer to the two major branches of English, and reflect the changes in the language since the Colonies separated themselves linguistically from England.

The differences may be many, but they’re minor. Most have to do with spelling, pronunciation, and usage, but not with grammar. English grammar is English grammar, no matter where you live.

In some respects, American English is “purer” than British English, in the sense that we’ve preserved some usages and spellings and pronunciations that have changed over time in England.

In Britain, for example, the only acceptable past participle of the verb “get” is “got”; in the United States one uses “gotten” in some cases and “got” in others, depending on one’s meaning.

At one time, English routinely had both past participles. But after the two branches of English split and began developing in different directions, American English retained both forms, and British English dropped “gotten.” (The old form survived in the expression “ill-gotten gains.”)

The result is that Americans have a nuance of meaning the British have lost. Here’s a link to an entry on our blog about that subject.

Spelling differences are too numerous to go into fully, but keep in mind that these evolved over time in England, and kept evolving after the American Revolution. Take “grey” (the currently preferred British spelling) as opposed to the American “gray.”

The Oxford English Dictionary notes that when its editor conducted a survey of British preferences in 1893, the inquiry “elicited a large number of replies, from which it appeared that in Great Britain the form grey is the more frequent in use, notwithstanding the authority of Johnson and later English lexicographers, who have all given the preference to gray.”

In the 20th century, the OED notes, “grey has become the established spelling in the U.K., whilst gray is standard in the United States.” So Samuel Johnson would be with the Americans on this one.

Pronunciations and spellings are still evolving in Britain, just as they are in the United States. For example, Americans pronounce “herb” with a silent “h,” which is the way Englishmen used to pronounce it. Pronunciation has changed in England and now the British pronounce the “h” in “herb.”

On the other hand, some British speakers still use “an” before words in which the initial “h” is pronounced (as in “hotel”). In fact, “a hotel” and “a historic site” are right; “an hotel” and “an historic” are not standard English on either side of the Atlantic. Those usages are mere affectations when used by anyone who pronounces “hotel” and “historic” in the standard way with the aitches sounded. Since we’ve discussed this issue blog as well, we’ll provide the link.

Usage too, as you’ve no doubt noticed, can be very different in the US and the UK.

In Britain, many collective nouns are plural, such as the names of companies, sports teams, government bodies (“Mobil invite you to join them”). In the US, the preference is for the singular (“Mobil invites you to join it”).

Similarly, the use of the singular “they” – as in “If anyone objects, they must be batty” – is more acceptable in Britain than in the US, where such a usage is still widely considered a grammatical error. [Note: An updated post on the use of “they” in singular references was published on May 22, 2017.]

Another usage difference: the distinction between “that” and “which” (a relatively recent phenomenon, from the early 20th century) seems to matter more to Americans than to the British.

And in legal terminology, “pled” is a common variant of “pleaded” in the US, though not in Britain. So it’s quite common to say of an American perp that he “pled guilty” or “has pled guilty.” [Note: An updated post on this subject was published on May 7, 2021.]

To cite another example, we treat articles (“a,” “an,” and “the”) differently where some institutions are concerned, notably hospitals and universities. The British say “He’s in hospital” while the Americans would say, “He’s in the hospital.”

Many such usage issues go one way in the US and another in Britain, but correctness is not an issue. These are the idiosyncrasies of idiomatic usage.

This is a very long and windy way of saying that we share a common language, both branches of which are still evolving. They couldn’t possibly have remained identical, since the populations that determine common usage are separated (and have been for quite some time) by a rather wide ocean. Neither variety is more “correct” or “proper” than the other.

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Q: I’m mad as hell at the degradation of spelling these days. Are people learning to “spell” by reading signs and ads? I’ve had it “thru” and “thru” with “lite,” “nite,” and “alrite.” And “doughnut” is almost extinct. On the Internet, anyone with a computer gets to write publicly. I shudder to think what spellings will be acceptable 10 years from now. I grieve for the L8 English language.

A: I know how you feel. A bit of a rant helps now and then, don’t you think?

In defense of the Internet, I have to say this: at least people are writing again – even if the writing is lousy.

True, the Web has shown us just how bad the general public’s grasp of English really is. It has exposed the problem, but that’s much better than sweeping it under the rug.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what our legislators and educators have been doing since the early 1970s, when most public schools stopped teaching grammar.

I once spoke to a group of English teachers and one of them told me that she had to close the blinds on her classroom door if she wanted to teach grammar. Otherwise, she’d get in trouble with the principal. It makes you wanna cry!

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Q: I’m reading Words Fail Me, your book on writing, and notice you use “altogether” a few times. Strunk & White, if I remember, calls it a no-no. The authors suggest “all together” instead. Have the rules changed? Is S&W still the last word on good English?

A: I don’t see anything in my copy of The Elements of Style that’s critical of “altogether,” which is a perfectly acceptable word and means something entirely different from “all together.”

“Altogether” means entirely, completely, all told, or on the whole. Example: “He lost the match altogether.” Or, “Altogether it was a disaster.”

“All together” is used to refer to something done by members of a group collectively. Example: “The family was all together.” You use the expression “all together” when you could just as easily split the words up and get the same meaning, as in “All the family was together.”

The adverb “altogether” has been perfectly good English since around 1200. Here’s an example from the King James Bible (1611): “Thou wast altogether born in sins.”

You may be thinking of something else from Strunk and White. The book notes that the expression “all right” is properly written as two words. The authors don’t say so, but their point is that “alright” is all wrong.

Unfortunately, we now see the one-word spelling (“alright”) almost every day. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) still calls “alright” nonstandard, though Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) says “it has its defenders and its users.” The jury is out on this one, but I vote guilty. For now, it’s a no-no.

Is Strunk & White still the cat’s meow? I think much of its advice about writing clearly and simply holds true today, though some of the usage recommendations may be outdated.

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Q: I’m reading The Letters of Virginia Woolf and find it fascinating, but this sentence made me raise an eyebrow: “The Years continued to boom, specially in America.” What do you make of this use of “specially”? It was written by an editor, not VW.

A: We’ll start with the adjectives: “special” entered English in the 1200s and “especial” in the late 1300s.

Both are derived from the Latin specialus, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning “belonging to or concerned with a particular species, special as opposed to general.”

That explains how “special” and “species” are related! In our own time, “special” is much more common and “especial” is a distant second.

The corresponding adverbs, “specially” (dating to the late 1200s) and “especially” (around 1400), are not quite interchangeable.

In modern usage, “especially” is the more common word and means something like “particularly.” For example: “He is especially fond of pizza.” Or, “He likes many foods, especially pizza.” Or, “He craves pizza, especially since he went off his diet.”

You wouldn’t use “specially” in any of those sentences, but you might say “He has his pizzas specially made.” (You can see what’s on my mind!)

Back to your question. In the sentence “The Years continued to boom, specially in America,” the word “specially” is not wrong, just an uncommon usage there. Most people would have written “especially.”

Usually you see “specially” before a verb, as in “specially designed,” “specially constructed,” “specially adapted” and so on. After the verb, you’re more likely to see “especially,” as in “This was designed especially for me.”

I hope you find this especially enlightening.

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Q: I was reading about grammar myths in Woe Is I and got to thinking about the SATs. Should a high-school student taking the writing portion play it safe and adhere to the myths that are still being taught?

A: This is a difficult one!

To get some guidance, I googled a few SAT-help websites to see what they were saying about such myths as the no-nos against “splitting” an infinitive, ending a sentence with a preposition, and beginning one with a conjunction.

The good news is that the “help” sites generally agree with me that these are indeed bogus rules. And the grammar and usage issues that they consider errors do seem to be real errors.

The sites suggest boning up on subject-verb agreement, correct pronoun use (particularly the notorious “I” vs. “me” problem), and correct use of adjectives and adverbs.

They also recommend brushing up on usage (for example, word pairs that are commonly confused, like “affect” and “effect”), verb tenses and how to use them logically, punctuation, avoiding run-on sentences, parallel structure, and so on.

All of these are legitimate and useful things to know about English composition, not outdated or imaginary bugaboos.

Nevertheless, one never knows who’s going to be evaluating the essay, and something like an SAT score is too important to risk out of principle.

I’d suggest that a student writing an essay for any kind of college-entrance test should avoid flouting the mythological rules, even if they are stupid and mistaken conventions. It’s usually easy enough to write around these problems without turning a sentence on its head.

Is this a cop-out? Of course! But the idea is to get into college. After graduation, the students can exercise the courage of their convictions.

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Q: Lately, I’ve seen “eponymous” used more and more as a substitute for “ubiquitous” (or so I interpret the intention). These two words are not at all synonymous, correct?

A: Here’s a little poem: “Ubiquitous, eponymous, / The two are not synonymous.”

“Eponymous” comes from Greek roots meaning named after. It’s the adjective form of “eponym” – the person something is named after.

For example, Charles C. Boycott was the eponymous source of the word “boycott.” Or, if you were a pretentious critic, you might refer to “the eponymous heroine of the novel Anna Karenina.”

(“Eponym,” by the way, can also mean a proper name used generically, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.)

“Ubiquitous,” on the other hand, comes from a Latin word meaning everywhere. If something’s ubiquitous, it can be found everywhere, or so it seems. For example, “The misuse of ‘eponymous’ is ubiquitous.”

In fact, the legitimate use of “eponymous” is pretty ubiquitous too. Perhaps it’s time to give this overworked word a rest.

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Q: During a recent radio appearance, you chided a drug company for referring to 19 deaths from a contaminated blood thinner as “adverse events.” You seem to be unaware that “adverse events” is a legitimate scientific term used in clinical trials. There’s nothing wrong with it. Check out the FDA’s website.

A: The fact that “adverse events” is a legitimate technical term in drug trials doesn’t mean that it’s legit for drug companies to use it to communicate with the public.

Scientific Protein Laboratories of Waunakee, Wis., which bought the suspect raw heparin from China and sold it to Baxter International, said publicly it’s “premature to conclude that the heparin active pharmaceutical ingredient sourced from China and provided by S.P.L. to Baxter is responsible for these adverse events.” (New York Times, March 6, 2008.)

It’s one thing to use scientific jargon in a research paper for a medical journal; it’s another to use it in a statement to the press for public dissemination.

I don’t know whether Scientific Protein’s public relations department deliberately used the expression to play down the 19 deaths or whether it was simply incapable of writing plain English. Either way, it screwed up.

By the way, I did check out the FDA website and found the term defined this way:

“A serious adverse event (experience) or reaction is any untoward medical occurrence that at any dose results in death, is life-threatening, requires inpatient hospitalization or prolongation of existing hospitalization, results in persistent or significant disability/incapacity, or is a congenital anomaly/birth defect.”

Knowing that makes me feel a lot better!

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Q: A poster on an Internet message board accused me of being an “armchair business analyst” for questioning the viability of Starbucks. I’m familiar with “armchair quarterback,” but not with the use of “armchair” in other expressions. Have you come across “armchair” used in this general way?

A: The figurative use of “armchair” plus noun (as in “armchair quarterback,” the guy who criticizes the game from the comfort of his La-Z-Boy), is not a new usage.

Believe it or not, “armchair” phrases go back to the 19th century, before TV and beer in cans. And the “quarterback” version arrived late in the game.

The Oxford English Dictionary says “armchair” expressions are “often applied to persons who confine themselves or are addicted to home-made views or criticism of matters in which they take no active part, or of which they have no first-hand knowledge.”

The OED gives these published citations, among others:

1886: “Mr. Chamberlain … met the expostulations … of his moderate allies with sneers at … ‘the arm-chair politicians.’ “

1895: “As an arm-chair professor, I frankly admit my great inferiority as a laboratory-teacher and investigator.”

1896: “The arm-chair critic of politics, war, literature, or finance.”

Football terminology didn’t become part of the expression until the mid-20th century. Here are some early citations from newspaper articles, courtesy again of the OED:

1940: “The folks back home know that pilots know more about flying than the armchair quarterbacks in Washington.”

1952: “Friends said he had done a good deal of armchair quarterbacking as he watched telecasts of last night’s hectic convention session.”

Now, back to my armchair.

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Q: If the “distaff side” represents the female, what’s the word for the male side?

A: Today the default sides are “male” and “female.” Although “distaff” can be found in most dictionaries, it reminds me of smelling salts and whalebone stays.

The word “distaff” dates back to the 11th century, when it meant a staff, about a yard or so long, wound with unspun flax or wool fibers.

The “dis” in “distaff” is believed to come from an old Germanic word (diesse) for a bunch of unspun flax. Wisps of material were teased and pulled from the distaff, twisted, then wound onto a spindle.

The word “distaff” has been used since the 14th century as a symbol of women’s work. The Oxford English Dictionary has citations for this usage going back to Chaucer and Shakespeare.

The term has been used since the late 15th century for female in general, as in “distaff side,” meaning the female line of descent or simply things female. A related term, “spindle-side,” has also been used to refer to the female line.

Now, on to your question: is there a male version of “distaff side”? To my great surprise, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) does indeed have a male version of this expression: “spear side.” Yikes!

My 50-year-old Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language (2d ed) includes “spear side” and “spear kin,” and describes them as opposites of “distaff side” and “spindle side.”

The OED says the expression “spear side” comes from the Old English spere-healfe (in Anglo-Saxon times healfe could mean side). A citation from around 885 in King Alfred’s will refers to leaving land on the sperehealfe or spinhealfe — that is, the “spear side” or “spindle side.”

The dictionary also has more recent citations, dating from 1861, that refer to leaving one’s estate “on the spear-side” or inheriting qualities “from a grandfather on the spear side.”

Now, it’s time for me to lay down my spear and go for a spin.

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Q: I pronounce “poem” with one syllable (like “pome”), but my significant other does it with two (like “POH-um”). She says I pronounce it like a noo-YAWK-ur. Who says it right?

A: Different dictionaries have different opinions about how to pronounce “poem.” Here are the opinions of the two American dictionaries I consult the most:

(1) The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) says it has two syllables. The first is accented and rhymes with Edgar Allan’s last name. The second sounds like the final syllable in “item.” This is more or less how I say it (POH-um). Like “poet,” but with an “m” instead of a “t” at the end.

(2) Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has several acceptable pronunciations, one syllable (rhyming with “home”) and two syllables (with the second pronounced like “um” or “im” or “em”). It would be hard to go wrong, according to M-W.

The earliest published reference for “poem” in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from the 15th century. We got it from the Latin poema via the Middle French poeme. For what it’s worth, the modern French poème has two syllables.

In answer to your question, both pronunciations are acceptable, but the two-syllable version seems to be more common.

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Q: I recently heard someone on WNYC say “I know of no place that doesn’t have music.” Shouldn’t it be “I do not know of any place that does not have music”?

A: The statement “I know of no place that doesn’t have music” is perfectly correct English, though a bit convoluted. “I know of no place” is grammatically equivalent to “I don’t know of any place.” And by the way, the contractions “don’t” and “doesn’t” are respectable English.

So the longer statement simply means “I don’t know of any place that doesn’t have music.” Or (leaving the speaker out of it), “Every place has music.” Or, “No place lacks music.”

They’re all grammatically correct, and they’re all legitimate ways of expressing the same idea.

The statement as given has two negatives, a kind of construction that bothers some people. But “I know of no place that doesn’t have music” isn’t an example of the kind of “double negative” that’s grammatically incorrect (like “I didn’t do nothing”).

If you’d like to read more about the double negative, I  wrote a blog post last year about when it’s a no-no and when it’s not.

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Q: Despite having slept through most of the grammar instruction tossed at me in grade school, I’ve become a writer – a restaurant critic. Notwithstanding my scholarly disregard for the subject, my respect for grammar has grown over the years, though I often break the rules in favor of a conversational style. What do you think of writers who disregard proper grammar to achieve a certain effect?

A: Writers who know the rules of English often bend them (quite effectively) for literary effect, and this is a long-established tradition. I always say, though, that you have to know the rules before you can bend them!

An educated reader can always tell the difference between a writer who’s clueless and one who’s being creative within (or just outside) the limits of acceptability.

But a lot of so-called rules, as you probably know, are only superstitions. It’s perfectly correct, for example, to begin a sentence with a conjunction (like “and” or “but”).

The belief that it’s incorrect to start a sentence with a conjunction is one of the most persistent myths of English grammar. It’s right up there with the misconceptions that it’s wrong to “split” an infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition.

I’ve already discussed these items on my blog. If you’re interested, here are links for the beginning conjunction, the “split” infinitive, and the ending preposition.

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