Wishing well

Several people have asked me in the last few months about the term "well wishes", as in "Thanks for your well wishes." Shouldn't it be "good wishes", they want to know. What is it with these newfangled changes to the language?!

Usually, when there is a flurry of questions about a usage, it means that particular usage has reached a tipping point in people's consciousness because it has become frequent. It also usually means it's too late to change it, should you be so foolish as to want to attempt to do so.

Indeed, "well wishes" has been on a startling upward trajectory in the last 30 years:



But to stop this nefarious new development in its tracks, you would have had to step in ... in Tudor times. The OED's first evidence of the phrase is this:

1595   A. Copley tr. R. de Cota Loves Owle sig. B2^v, in Wits Fittes & Fancies   Thou art that spirit that S. Powle..pray'd our Lord to set him free From such a peeuish enemie of his wel-wishes.

"Best wishes" dates from about the same time, and it and "good wishes" have been very much more common over the years than "well wishes" (I have no explanation for the apparent peak of benevolence in the 1830s followed by a downward slide since then!):




People no doubt feel (and indeed have argued to me) that the adjectives "best" and "good" are what is required by the noun "wishes", whereas "well" must be wrong because it's an adverb. But "well" is also an adjective, and even a noun. In fact, in the phrase "I wish you well", "well" isn't functioning in a very adverby way. "I wish you well" is more like "I wish you joy/success/the best etc." or the archaic "I wish you happy" than it is like "I sincerely wish you would go away".


However you parse it, although "well wishes" is still dwarfed by its rivals, it does seem to be staging a comeback, no doubt helped along by the related "well-wisher" and "well-wishing".  

Since I was so embroiled in keys, quays, and cays last week, I haven't had a chance to wish all Wordlady readers well for 2015 (now, why don't we say "fiveteen"?), so let me do that now.

For another post about "well", click here.

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All well and good

Well! 

I was just rather flabbergasted to read this advice in a Forbes magazine piece about appropriate language for customer service: 

Subtly insulting: In an informal business, if a customer asks, ‘‘How are you?’’ the response ‘‘I’m well’’ may make you feel like you’re using proper-sounding grammar—but may not be the best choice. Hearing this Victorian-sounding response may make your customers momentarily self-conscious about whether their own grammar is less than perfect. It may be better to have your employees choose from more familiar alternatives like, ‘‘I’m doing great!’’ or "Super!’’

Victorian???  Hey, buddy, I learned to reply "well (thank you!)" to this question, and that was in the 1960s. A lot of people are still outraged by the new, and previously highly censured, custom of replying "good", which seems to have started its remarkable upward trajectory in the mid-1990s, though it has been around longer than that. 

"Well", meanwhile, has been used to mean "in good health" since the 1300s. Before that we were "isound" or "hale" or even "whole". I wonder if any customer service gurus in Shakespeare's time were warning businesses to have their staff avoid saying, "I'm hale, thank you!" as being "so Plantagenet!"

The "good" option has probably become the more common one, and I do use it myself, since there is no reason not to. "Good" is an adjective (as is "well" in this usage), and has multitudinous meanings, so there's no reason why "in acceptable health" shouldn't be one of them. But that doesn't mean that we should start condemning "well" as Victorian (not to mention "subtly insulting").

However, this comment is quite amazing as an indicator of the rapidity of language change: a usage which was drummed into children a mere 30 or so years ago as being the only correct one is now itself being criticized. 

How do you react to "well" and "good" as answers to the question "How are you?"? Do you think "well" is stuffy? If someone in a customer service position said, "I'm well, thanks, and you?", would it make you "momentarily self-conscious about whether [your] own grammar is less than perfect"?

Or do you feel that "good" is a solecism and "ungrammatical"? It isn't ungrammatical, by the way; it's perfectly grammatical. But it still may irritate you if it's not the convention you grew up with -- and this type of linguistic interaction is all about convention. 

What advice would YOU give to someone in the service industry? "I'm doing great!"?

Let me know in the comments!

 

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