This is exciting

I recently saw someone inveighing online against what they described as an "ugly, ugly" usage which they felt should be "stamped out".

Another website called this usage "an abomination". I'll let you contemplate the Oxford English Dictionary definition for "abomination" -- "a loathsome or wicked act or practice; a detestable vice" -- and let you decide whether this word should be bandied about quite as much as it is for language usages people don't like because they're different than (or is it "from"? or "to"?) theirs.

What was this hideous abomination?  

People saying they are "excited for", rather than "excited about" some upcoming event. 

(I am not talking about the usage "excited for someone" meaning "excited on someone's behalf".)

First off, if any of you can tell me objectively why the preposition "for" is "ugly" (let alone "ugly, ugly") as compared to the (presumably "beautiful"?) preposition "about", I will give you some sort of prize.

The prepositions that collocate with adjectives and verbs are fairly arbitrary, as anyone learning a second language quickly discovers. 

We are bored "with" but tired "of" things (although "bored of" is gaining, much to the dismay of many). We are interested "in" but fascinated "with/by" things. We hope "for" but look forward "to" future events. Now we are happy "about" things, but we used to be happy "at" things.

Second, I have to tell you, by the time you notice a new usage, it has already reached a critical mass where you can't do anything about it, even if it were desirable to do so.

I can't tell you exactly where "excited for" arose, but it is very common amongst people under 35, and appears to have been in use by them for at least the last 10 years. 

Date	2007
Publication information	Psychology Today: May/Jun 2007: . Vol. 40, Iss. 3; pg. 39, 2 pgs
Title	Folk Futurist
Author	Matthew Hutson (born ca. 1978)

Whether they're about being excited for an upcoming pizza party or the despair of a madman who's fallen for a woman, Coulton's songs hit home with musical sophistication and heartfelt sincerity

Date	2003
Publication information	Cambridge, MA : Candlewick Press,
Title	Feed
Author	Anderson, M. T.(born 1968)

Violet looked great in her low shirt, and besides that she was smiling, and really excited for her idea

.

Date	2009
Publication information	New York : Simon & Schuster
Title	This is how it starts
Author	Ginder, Grant. (b. ca. 1982)

 "Yes, sir," I say and take a sip of the champagne. "I'm very excited for the opportunity"

Date	2006
Publication information	Washington Post: 061115: SPORTS
Title	Campbell Gets Shot to Go From Idle to Idol
Author	Jason La Canfora, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Redskins are hoping that durability and elusiveness will aid their offensive line ..." I'm very excited for this, " guard Randy Thomas [born 1976] said. 

Date	2008
Title	CBCnews.ca 2008

Rachel Decoste [born ca. 1980], who organized the party as a fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters Ottawa, said she was beside herself. " I'm just excited for the future, the future of America, the future of the world, and the future of people of colour, who now feel that they have a leader of the most powerful country in the world, " she said.

It may have arisen because of a perceived need to distinguish between excitement about something that one already has -- "I'm so excited about my new smartphone" -- and excitement about something that one is anticipating -- "I'm so excited for the ballet season", with the latter choice of preposition being influenced perhaps by the established phrasal verbs "hope/wish/long/yearn for". Once established, the distinction obviously proved useful, since it has spread. Perhaps some of the "excited for" users make negative comments about those who DON'T make the distinction!

Whatever the reason, the usage is here to stay, and people should save their opprobrium for real abominations.

In short, don't get excited about it.

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How we use to use use

The verb "use" used to be, well, used (maybe I should start this post over...).

Nowadays I can't say "I use to go to ballet classes 4 times a week", meaning "I do this habitually", although I could have said that from about 1400-1700 (not that I was dancing back then, though some mornings it feels like it). (The title of this post is not a mistake, but me being intentionally -- all right, you can say pretentiously -- archaic.)
This sense of "use" now occurs only in the past tense: "I used to go to ballet classes". In speech, this sounds exactly like the noun "use" plus "to" (YOOSS too). From this arise two problems:
1) Do not write "I use to", even though it sounds like that. Remember, "used" is in the past tense.
2) When you put this in the negative, you DON'T write "used". "I didn't use to go to ballet classes" is correct. It looks weird, but that's the correct version. Just as you wouldn't say "I didn't wanted to go", you can't say "I didn't used to go". "Didn't used to" is an extraordinarily common mistake, but it is a mistake nonetheless.

A couple (of) issues with "couple"

When you read the title of this post, did you think I was going to talk about exactly two issues, no more or less? Or did you think I would be talking about an unspecified, but relatively small, number of issues, just a few?

This is one of the questions surrounding the word "couple", which derives from the Latin word copula (a bond or tie). (Yes, it is also the origin of the word "copulation"; please get your mind out of the gutter.) The word was first used in English (which borrowed it from French) in the 1300s, to designate a husband and wife, but it very quickly came to apply to two of anything.

You may be surprised to learn that some doughty "usage commentators" in the late 19th and early 20th century, undaunted by 5 centuries of usage, objected to "couple" being used to mean "two", saying that it originally meant the link between two things, not the things themselves. Not getting far with that objection and thus threatened with job loss, the commentators realized they had to think of other complaints, and latched onto the then new usage of "couple" to mean "a few" (although, usage commentators being what they are, some kept up the rearguard action against the "two" meaning" and thundered that "couple" should ONLY be used to mean "a few")! I personally use "couple" only to mean "exactly two" and am always a little perplexed by the "few" usage, but that doesn't mean that I think everyone should be like me. No doubt other people are equally perplexed when they tell me they'd like a couple of jellybeans and I dole out a measly two to them!

But is it "a couple of jellybeans" or "a couple jellybeans"?

In North America, "couple" underwent a development parallel to what happened with other words designating "more than one": "hundred" and "dozen". Way back in Anglo-Saxon times, we couldn't say, "He had a hundred sheep", because "hundred" is a noun. So the Anglo-Saxons had to say "He had a hundred of sheep" (or they had the option, which English no longer has, of using the genitive form of the noun "sheep", which amounts to the same thing). This carried on well into the 1600s. "Hundred"'s origin as a noun is still evident in the fact that we have to say "a hundred things" or "one hundred things" rather than just "hundred things" as we would with other cardinal numbers.

The same thing happened with "dozen" (which we borrowed from Old French dozeine, from the Latin for "twelve", duodecim). As in French today, where, if you want a dozen eggs, you have to say "une douzaine d'oeufs", not "une douzaine oeufs", originally we said "a dozen of eggs" (and indeed we still have to say "dozens of eggs"). This carried on well into the 1700s, but by the mid-19th century, the adjectival use of "dozen" took over from the noun usage, as this Google Books ngram comparing "a dozen eggs" and "a dozen of eggs" shows.

Not surprisingly, then, "couple" started along the same path, but a little later, apparently around the late 19th century. Being more recent, and, to make matters worse in the eyes of some people, originally North American to boot, this development is still raising hackles. "A couple things" is already very common in speech and quite common in informal prose. In view of this frequency (and the history of "hundred" and "dozen"), this usage will probably eventually take over. There are really no grounds for complaining about it, other than that it is relatively new, and different from what one might oneself say. But those are not objective grounds for complaint. For now, you probably want to include the "of" if you are writing formal prose, but bear in mind that a hundred years from now someone may look at your deathless prose and find it as quaint as we do now looking at 19th-century recipes that call for "a dozen of eggs".

PS: See an update to this post here.

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Breakfast of ... chompions?

A Wordlady reader left a comment upbraiding me for saying "chomping at the bit" , which he felt was incorrect and should be "champing at the bit". Chomp and champ are simply variants of the same word, the former North American and the latter British. "Chomp" is no more "incorrect" than calling the strip of concrete on which you walk a "sidewalk" rather than a "pavement".

Champ first cropped up in English in the 1500s, along with a variant spelling chaump , which suggests that both pronunciations existed even then. The "chomp" pronunciation was the one that migrated to North America. The etymology is obscure, but this word is not related to the "champ" that is short for "champion", which comes from the French word for "field". It has been suggested that the word is onomatopoeic, reflecting the sound of jaws crushing and chewing noisily. This explanation is plausible, and makes it even harder to defend the theory that "champ" is correct and "chomp" incorrect, since it is impossible to say exactly what vowel sound is being used when your jaws are crushing something.

A similar evolution happened with the verb "stamp", which from its beginnings had a variant "staumpe". This survived in British dialect and migrated over to the US where it evolved into "stomp".

Verbs: it's ok to do this. Really!

Consider the following work of fine literature. What do all the verbs (not counting the auxiliary verbs like "be", "have", "do") have in common?

What a morning!

My usual routine: plug in the kettle for tea, microwave the porridge, spoon some sugar onto it, wolf down a buttered, toasted bagel.
Then I showered, soaping myself down, shampooing and conditioning my hair.
I towelled myself off, then brushed and flossed my teeth and combed my hair. Since my skirt needed hemming, I threaded my needle and stitched it up, then ironed it. I zipped up the skirt, buttoned my blouse and pinned on a brooch.
Before biking off to work, I gardened a bit, deadheading the flowers, weeding the beds, and watering the flowerboxes. Typing really fast, I emailed a few friends and phoned some others. After printing out some stuff, I headed off to work, locking the house carefully. As I was pedalling along, someone darted in front of me and I had to brake really hard. Then someone doored me and I somersaulted over the car, landing on the sidewalk. Fine the bastard!!

Did you figure it out? Every single one of those verbs started out life as a noun. And yet people persist in saying "I hate it when people use nouns as verbs". The idea that you shouldn't "use nouns as verbs" is possibly the most ridiculous statement about the English language ever made. It seems to have cropped up in usage commentaries in about the 1980s and then spread virally without anyone ever examining it critically. So if you adhere to this rule, let me assure you: You only THINK you object to verbs that are created from nouns. If you really did, you'd be at a loss for words. Literally.

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Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash

Upward(s) and onward(s)

Recently someone asked me which was correct: "toward" or "towards".

Today the sternly reproving red squiggle of my mailer's spellchecker attempted to persuade me that my favourite, "towards" was "incorrect". But both "toward" and "towards" are correct in English. It seems that the British favour "towards" and the Americans "toward", but both are used on both sides of the Atlantic. When we researched the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, we did a survey of Canadians and found, as is so often the case with Canadian usage, that they were divided about 50/50 between the two, perhaps with a slight edge for "toward".

In Old English, the adjective and preposition ended in -ward, a suffix meaning "in the direction of"; as in German, -s was an adverbial ending, so "towards" was an adverb, but even back then it was being used as a preposition as well, even by such people as King Alfred the Great. Of course, nowadays we no longer have an adverb "towards" at all; it is only a preposition. You cannot say "I didn't know which way to go so I went toward(s)." You have to go toward(s) something.

There are many words in this family: backward(s), forward(s), upward(s), downward(s), onward(s), heavenward(s), etc. Unlike "toward(s)", which is a preposition, these other words are adverbs -- he moved backward(s) -- but also adjectives, in which case only the s-less form is used -- a downward spiral.

This is what the OED has to say about the -ward(s) suffix
"In English the history of -wards as an adverb suffix is identical with that of -ward ; beside every adverb in -ward there has always existed (at least potentially) a parallel formation in -wards, and vice versa. The two forms are so nearly synonymous (the general sense of the adverbs being ‘in the direction indicated by the first element of the compound’) that the choice between them is mostly determined by some notion of euphony in the particular context; some persons, apparently, have a fixed preference for the one or the other form."

The pronunciation of "toward(s)" is also interesting. An older-fashioned pronunciation is "tord(s)"; the much more common current two-syllable pronunciation was apparently looked down upon as recently as the beginning of the 20th century, as the OED, which included it only as the last of four possibilities when the entry was edited in about 1910, has this note: "[this] pronunciation is not recognized in any modern dictionary, British or American, nor apparently by any orthoepist; but it appears to be the prevailing one in London and the south of England."

"Forward(s)" is an interesting case. It is quite unusual for people to use "forwards" in the phrase "look forward to" (although I have a friend who does say "look forwards to", and judging by a Google search, he is not alone, though in a smallish minority).

And speaking of that word, may I vent my spleen against one of my pet peeves (I don't have many, but I do have them): the much overused phrase "going forward". Why can't people just say "In future"? Or, hey, just use the future tense of the verb?

Here's a cute thought: there used to be a word "fromwards" as well. Perhaps the thing to do when you find yourself in the company of someone who overuses "going forward" is to promptly move fromward(s)!

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What century are they living in?

I was reading an online ballet magazine today which had a post, written this week, in which I was astounded to see that the writer wrote about "taking a 'bus" and "talking on the 'phone". Considering that the word "phone" has been used to mean "telephone" since 1880, a mere 4 years after Alexander Graham Bell first wrote about his invention, I think we can happily say that we don't need the apostrophe anymore.
"'Bus" is an even more glaring example of pretentious punctuation. We have evidence of "bus" as a short form for "omnibus" back to 1832, only three years after the first evidence of "omnibus" itself, which is so dead in the English language that surely no one needs to think that they have to memorialize that missing "omni" with an apostrophe. People, buy yourselves a dictionary published in the last decade!

Usage issue: Anniversary

I was reading a grocery flyer this morning (my life is so exciting...) and came across a very common, but redundant, expression: the store was celebrating its "One-year anniversary". Since an anniversary is by definition "the yearly return of a date on which an event took place in a previous year" (Canadian Oxford Dictionary), using the word "year" in connection with "anniversary" is superfluous. "First anniversary" (or "second", "third", etc.) is all that is needed.

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Usage issue: Go Missing

Today a correspondent wrote to me about what she considers "poor usage": the phrase "go missing" (which she felt was Canadian).

"Go missing" is not a uniquely Canadian usage; it is also very common in British English (and indeed I suspect originated there). It seems to have taken a while to catch on in American English, however. For this reason objections to it have cropped up in American and some Canadian sources (people often object to new or unfamiliar usages simply because they are new or unfamiliar). Nonetheless, I think it is catching on in the US, as I have heard it used quite naturally on Law and Order and other American TV shows.

We have evidence of it being used for at least the last 50 years, and it is on the same syntactic pattern as "go astray", which has been in the language since the Middle Ages. The specific use of "missing" to mean "unaccounted for, not yet confirmed as alive, dead, or captured" arose in the 19th century. Its use increased greatly with the two world wars of the 20th century,and I suspect that this is why the phrase "go missing" arose during or shortly after the Second World War.

I suspect that "disappear" may have connotations of finality, and vanishing in a puff of smoke, and that is why "go missing" fills a useful purpose when indeed we do not know where someone is, or whether they are alive or dead. I cannot conceive of announcing to concerned relatives that their loved one had "disappeared" in a battle, for instance, and for the same reason in cases of abduction I don't actually think that "disappear" is better than "go missing". For that reason I cannot concur that "go missing" is "poor usage".

In any case, English is a language that has always loved synonymy, so just because "disappear" exists, that doesn't mean we should use it and only it.

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Eponymous

The Toronto Star website has this puzzling summary of my article (next post) about canapés:
Canapés: a summer treat, a summer scourge

The eponymous finger food snack comes from the greek word for mosquito netting.

I hope the lack of a capital on "Greek" was just an oversight. But what on earth do they think "eponymous" means? "Boycott" is an eponymous word, originating in the name of a Mr. Boycott. If I were to release a CD of me singing (not a hot seller, I'm thinking!) called simply "Katherine", you could call that an eponymous CD. Or if I were to dance the lead role in the ballet Manon (that would be a dream come true for me, if not for the ballet audience, and certainly not for whatever unfortunate guy got to partner me), you could call me the eponymous heroine. But I can't see by any stretch how "eponymous" works in the context above.