Category Archives: Words, phrases & expressions

To take or not to take an object: verbs that used to just do are starting to do something too

It’s a strange verb, to grow. Usually we talk about things or people growing intransitively — ie. without an object. “The size of the crowd grew.” “She has grown so tall.” “The government’s power is growing.” There’s really no limit to what can grow, on its own, in an intransitive sense. However, when it comes to using the verb transitively — ie. when we’re talking about “growing something“, rather than seeing it grow under its own steam, then most bets are suddenly off: we only grow transitively when we’re referring to natural, living things. We grow plants, flowers and our own food; we grow beards, and our hair; we even grow pot-bellies — whether we like it or not. But it’s only recently that the transitive use of the verb itself has begun to grow: now embracing inanimate objects and abstract items, grow is beginning to mean “expand” — and you can grow anything from your circle of friends to an economy or an international corporation’s revenue (whereas before they grew only intransitively). The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage advises against this growing trend of growing anything unnatural transitively: “The newer usage of grow to mean expand (grow the business; grow revenue) is business jargon, best resisted.”

Disappear is another dodgy suspect when it comes to its transitive use. Continue reading →

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Sep 12)

TGIF. In grammar, language and usage news this fortnight: the uber-ubiquity of uber; what little words reveal about us; how economic development is driving the extinction of languages; and who was it that made up the word supercalafragilisticexpialidocious?

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In what some might call an ironic twist of fate, the ride-sharing company Uber faces a ban on one of its services in the country from which the company gets its name: Germany. Linguist Ben Zimmer talks in the Wall Street Journal about the growing ubiquity of uber: it’s uber all of us — and not just in the word’s native land.

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Our use of little words can reveal hidden interests. James Pennebaker, a psychologist interested in the secret life of pronouns, has recorded, transcribed and analyzed conversations that took place between people on speed dates. “We can predict by analyzing their language, who will go on a date — who will match — at rates better than the people themselves,” he says. And he found that “when the language style of two people matched, when they used pronouns, prepositions, articles and so forth in similar ways at similar rates, they were much more likely to end up on a date.” NPR reports how our use of little words can, uh, reveal hidden interests.

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Economic development is driving the extinction of some languages, scientists believe. A study has found that minority languages in the most developed parts of the world, including North America, Europe and Australia, are most at threat. The researchers found that the more successful a country was economically, the more rapidly its languages were being lost. The BBC reports.

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Was the word supercalafragilisticexpialidocious really made up by the Mary Poppins writers? According to mental_floss, there were others who claimed ownership. “Though the Sherman Brothers claimed they made the word up themselves, a 1949 song called “Supercalafajaistickespeealadojus” would seem to say otherwise. The writers of the song, Barney Young and Gloria Parker, sued for $12 million. They lost because lawyers were able to present evidence showing that the nonsense word had been around, in some form or another, for decades. Indeed, the Sherman Brothers later claimed that their made-up word was a variation on a similar word they had heard at summer camp back in the 1930s: ‘super-cadja-flawjalistic-espealedojus.'”

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Another word, knish, was explored on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show a few weeks ago.

Schmo, Blow, Doe & Bloggs: not just any old Joe, John or Fred

Joe on his own can mean any bloke, chap or fellow.* Especially if he has average in front of his name. (It can also mean coffee, but let’s not get off topic.) To the Brits, Joe is sometimes the embodiment of an American — as in GI Joe. But when we’re talking about a hypothetical average normal ordinary guy, Joe tends to get his own surname: Bloggs if he’s British; Schmo or Blow if he’s American.

In its recent review of the coffee-making alarm clock the Barisieur, Coolest-Gadgets.com commented that “this $200-330 purchase is certainly not for the average Joe Schmoe.” [Isn’t that tautologous, “average Joe Schmoe”? Isn’t he average by definition?] And on the other side of the Atlantic, “the general Joe Bloggs you meet in the street or at Sainsbury’s may have watched women’s rugby a bit on TV,” English rugby player Maggie Alphonsi was quoted as saying in The Independent. Continue reading →

Bulls and boners, bloopers and bloomers, barrys and boobs: the world of blunders

We all know what a blunder is; we all make mistakes. Google the word and you’ll read about some seriously red-faced people whose boobs were blabbed to the world: just yesterday, ITV News reported that “Fifty Shades director left red-faced over gun blunder”; “CDC Scientist Kept Quiet About Flu Blunder” and “Eardrop blunder could have left Valerie deaf” were recent headlines screaming people’s boo-boos. Dating back to the mid-14th century, when it meant “to stumble about blindly,” from a Scandinavian source akin to the Old Norse blundra, meaning to “shut one’s eyes,” blunder means not just any old mistake — but a stupid or embarrassing mistake. Isn’t it good to know that we were making and talking about stupid mistakes seven centuries ago?

Now try Googling boner — supposedly a synonym of blunder in North American slang — and you might be the red-faced one. Nowadays it is slang for an erection (probably derived from bone-on in the 1940s) — but it wasn’t always that way. Continue reading →

TGIF : That Gerund Is Funky (Aug 29)

TGIF. In language and usage news this fortnight: grammar rules that can sometimes be broken; a socialite’s guide to elegant expletives; a mispronunciation leads to the renaming of a TV show (if only briefly); the fading art of diagramming sentences; and a childhood spelling error of adult proportions.

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“You shudder at a split infinitive, know when to use ‘that’ or ‘which’ and would never confuse ‘less’ with ‘fewer’ – but are these rules always right, elegant or sensible?” In The Guardian, linguist Steven Pinker identifies 10 ‘grammar rules’ it’s OK to break (sometimes). Continue reading →

Round the bend: nutty, knotty — or coming soon?

At least three times in the last few weeks I’ve heard friends and colleagues talk about an event or occasion “coming round the bend” — meaning, I assumed in each case, that it’s just around the corner: it will be happening before we know it. It’s coming down the pike.

Elvis did sing about a train coming ’round the bend, and Will Rogers captained the madcap “Steamboat Round the Bend” …

… but these were clearly references to vehicles traveling round a geographical bend.

Continue reading →

“Mourning sickness” and “grief porn”

We all love word-watching: we’re howling with delight that binge-watch, amazeballs and YOLO have recently been added to the dictionary (see Glosso’s earlier post on YOLO), and a universal groan went up when literally officially took on its new (and historically opposite) meaning, “figuratively”. Cementing and legitimizing the words and phrases that pepper our language — if not by making dictionary entries out of them but just by observing and recognizing their widespread usage — is a powerful form of social commentary. The language we speak reflects the thoughts we share: what better insight into the 21st-century mind than by noting the words and expressions we use to articulate them?

So what a sad and unsettling fact that the phrase “mourning sickness” has taken root in our vocabulary to describe a growing phenomenon: “a collective condition characterised by ostentatious, recreational grieving for dead celebrities and murder victims” (as reported in the UK’s Telegraph more than a decade ago.)

The world wept when it learned of the tragic death of Robin Williams last week. He was a comedian, actor and entertainer who made millions of people laugh and cry: a public figure who graced TV and movie screens over several decades and a man whose private, inner life was known by very few. Social media channels lit up as the news of his death broke: for the first hour or so there was an understandable communal expression of shock and disbelief that this extraordinary man should have made the unfathomable decision to take his own life. But within about an hour of the news settling in, the tone of the discussion began to change: people started to relate their own associations with or memories of Williams, anxious to lay their own claim to a portion of the big grieving pie and to feel part of the public event. (And I’m no exception: I posted something in his memory here on this blog, with only a tenuous connection to the subject of language.) Mourning sickness had started to kick in …

“Mourning sickness,” as Wikipedia defines it, “is a collective emotional condition of “recreational grieving” by individuals in the wake of celebrity deaths and other public traumas. Continue reading →

In the news … (Aug 13)

TGIF. Language and usage in the news this fortnight: this year’s new legit words — both in life and in Scrabble; the controversy over Sanskrit; baby talk — in humans and turtles; John Oliver’s new phrase goes urban; and what’s in a name – your name? It might be more important than you think …

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Oxford Dictionaries have added some new words to the dictionary, including YOLO, amazeballs, and binge-watch. Time has the adorbs story. And while we’re on the subject: Merriam-Webster has released a new version of the Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary with 5,000 new words, added to reflect new trends, styles and facts of the 21st century. … Words like Continue reading →

Eponymous: a loyal adjective

It’s a curious word, eponymous, with its usage and meaning often slightly misunderstood. Roseanne, Yes, Asperger, and Christian Dior: these are all eponymous names — of a TV show, a record album, an autism spectrum disorder, and a fashion label. What makes them eponymous? They’re all named after the person who founded, created, inspired or discovered them. (And just to confuse matters, those four people are also — by its stricter definition — eponymous.)

So it’s correct to call it “Roseanne’s eponymous show”, or “Yes’s eponymous album”.

But here’s the rub: the show and album are eponymous only in the context of their namesakes. Continue reading →

Glossophilia

1. n. The love of language

Category Archives: Words, phrases & expressions

To take or not to take an object: verbs that used to just do are starting to do something too

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Sep 12)

Schmo, Blow, Doe & Bloggs: not just any old Joe, John or Fred

Bulls and boners, bloopers and bloomers, barrys and boobs: the world of blunders

TGIF : That Gerund Is Funky (Aug 29)

Round the bend: nutty, knotty — or coming soon?

“Mourning sickness” and “grief porn”

In the news … (Aug 13)

Eponymous: a loyal adjective