Jeremy Butterfield's Blog, page 11
August 27, 2020
Abide by or abide to?
The other day I came across a phrase which used abide to something in the sense of ‘sticking to’ and it made me wonder how common that structure is.
The answer is, not very. To put that in perspective, in a 2018 corpus of many different varieties of English there are 369 examples of this kind:
Media play a huge role in enlightening the public as to how to respect the law and abide to it.
In contrast, there are … wait for it … 27,438 examples of the abide by structure:
In an interview with Italian TV, Syrian President Bashar Assad said he will abide by a U.N. resolution to dismantle his country’s chemical weapons.
A tiny proportion, just over one per cent, then, of abide to. So why write about it?
For two reasons. First because of that structure and second because abide is an intriguing verb (for a lexicographer, at any rate) in its own right, which I’ll come on to in another blog.
It’s wrong, but…
Any editor would no doubt replace abide to with abide by. It simply has to be considered ‘wrong’ or anomalous. The phrasal verb is abide by, and that is all there is to it. But abide to makes a lot of sense.
First, the preposition to is a basic way of expressing a relationship between two actors, entities or states: I gave it to Tom; he was moved to tears; they fixed it to the wall. Moreover, abide to makes a lot of sense if you group it with its synonyms: adhere to, conform to, keep to, stick to, consent to, pay attention to, pay heed to, agree to.
In contrast, the only (phrasal) verb of similar meaning that uses by is go by, meaning ‘use as a basis for judgement or action’, as in If they prove that I was wrong, then I’ll go by what they say.
If you were learning English, abide to could easily seem to fit into a pattern and abide by would be an eccentric prepositional idiom that has to be learnt by heart.
The Oxford corpus I use contains many varieties of English. Abide to occurs with greater than expected frequency in South African English, Middle Eastern English and East Asian English. This makes me wonder if the authors of the pieces in question are speakers of English as a second (third, etc.) language. The pattern occurs with much less than expected frequency in the UK, U.S, Australia, etc., in other words, where English is the main language.
One motor of language change is, arguably, the trend towards regularisation and the imposition of a more extensive pattern on a less extensive one. That explains, for example, the use of ?by foot on the model of by with other modes of transport. Or the change of holpen as the strong past participle of help to helped (see below, under the exquisite illumination). Who knows but that in a hundred years’ time we will all be saying abide to?
As a footnote, it’s worth pointing out how arbitrary the choice of preposition can be. Abide historically has taken at and upon:
And telleth him, in such degre Upon my word ye wole abide To lif or deth.
Gower Confessio Amantis, a1393
Thai sal stand and abide at the ordinance.
in J. B. Paul Registrum Magni Sigilli Scotorum (1882) II. 68/2, 1447
[image error] The Visitation. Mary and Elizabeth in the garden of a country house. Office of Lauds, from the Huth Hours, by the Master of the Houghton Hours, 1485–1490. Illumination on parchment. British Library.
Luke 1, 46–55, ‘The Song of Mary’ and the wonderful line ‘He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.’
See verse 54 for holpen.
46 And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,
47 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
48 For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
49 For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.
50 And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
51 He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
52 He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.
53 He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
54 He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;
55 As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.
August 19, 2020
Can you say “reach a crescendo”? Yes, you can. It’s general language, not the preserve of musicians.
5-second read
Some people, especially musicians, hate the use of crescendo to mean an event, as in “to reach a crescendo”, rather than a process. Use it that way if you want to. Be aware, though, that it’s a bit of a journalistic cliché and that it will irritate a few people.
Now for the 7.5 minute read.
Can something reach a crescendo?
Not for language “purists. This usage gets right up their nose. Normal folk will probably just get on with life and use the phrase as and when required – which, if you are not a journalist, newscaster, reporter or wannabe writer, is unlikely to be very often.
Grrrr!
On Twitter recently a tweep was incensed enough by the journalistic (mis)use of the idiom to tweet this collective rebuke to Beeb hacks: “Yet again, BBC reporters, you don’t reach a crescendo. The crescendo is a process leading to a climax, or peak or whatever.”
That tweet concisely puts the argument deployed by purists. Repeat after me (they say): ‘“crescendo” does not mean “climax, culmination” and the like.’
A definition or two
Oh, but I’m sorry to have to break the news that it does. Where do we look if we want to know what a word “means”. Why, “the” dictionary, of course. Well, on this point dictionaries are in harmony, not to say unison (Geddit?!?!). Here’s the Collins dictionary’s first definition:
music a gradual increase in loudness or the musical direction or symbol indicating this. Abbreviation: cresc. Symbol: (written over the music affected) ≺
(I added the above illustration, btw; it is not in the dictionary. Note the length of the ‘hairpin’.)
But that is followed by a further two:
a gradual increase in loudness or intensity
the rising crescendo of a song
a peak of noise or intensity
the cheers reached a crescendo
That last meaning shows the word association – reach – that is the major bête noire in this piece. “If a crescendo is a process”, say the naysayers, “how can it be reached?” It is true that you can reach a final state – maturity, for example, but not a process, such as “growing up”.
Crescendo goes with a few other verbs (e.g. become/hit/build to/rise to) but reach is by far the most frequent to imply an end state or an event. It is also worth noting that build to and rise to suggest process rather than state.
Just to be clear what we’re talking about, here are three examples from the Corpus of Contemporary American, from the academic, magazine, and fiction components:
Bob Geldof’s campaign to “Make Poverty History” reached a crescendo in July 2005, when Live8, the biggest rock concert in history, was held with the aim of influencing the G8 meeting in nearby Gleneagles.
The strife between the Dutch and ascendant English interests reached a crescendo in New Netherland in 1664, when the English took possession of New Amsterdam (population ten thousand) and the city and colony were renamed New York.
And then, slowly, APPLAUSE builds in the chamber, reaching a crescendo as Pete reaches the door and exits.
Crescendos be like…
Adjectives that modify crescendo include, according to the Oxford English Corpus, operatic, Rossini, orchestral, slow-building, gradual, deafening, crashing, thundering, almighty, swelling, EUPHORIC, FRENZIED, ROUSING, THRILLING.
Now, you might think that the adjectives/participles to do with hearing/sounds or emotion (underlined and capitalized respectively) point to the word being used in its strictly musical sense. However, many do not.
For example, of the 14 examples of deafening crescendo, only two are strictly musical, and even one of those is from a football report:
…the orchestra reaching its deafening crescendo before the long silence known as off-season begins.
The other examples include e.g. Her entire being ached with unimaginable pain. She could barely move, the pain rising in a deafening crescendo as she struggled to sit up.
And, similarly, when it comes to crescendos of something, while many are musical or aural, there are also several non-musical ones (in descending order of statistical significance): a crescendo of boos, guitars, noise, applause, drums, strings, sound, voices, EXCITEMENT, EMOTION, CRITICISM, violence, PROTEST, music, color, activity, attack: e.g.:
Instead, there is a rising crescendo of voices wondering what C4 [British TV Channel Four] is for, and why, precisely, it deserves any kind of public subsidy.
Due to the short growing season, spring and summer flowers bloom together in a crescendo of color in July and August.
The title track of the new album is a highlight as ‘Shake/ Shiver Moan’ slowly builds itself up into an epic crescendo of flailing guitars and pounding drums and is an impressive indicator of where they now find themselves.
[image error] This very short, one-bar crescendo only reaches mezzo forte.
Who talks about crescendos?
The Oxford English Corpus shows you the domain of discourse of a word or phrase. Of the 2,857 examples of crescendo as a noun (singular, or plural crescendos), 1,040 are in the “arts” domain, 657 in “news”, “unclassified” accounts for 257, blogs for 233, “life and leisure” 164, sport 92, “society” 80, fiction 60.
So, what does that tell us? Well, it’s not much used in fiction. But hey presto! 1,040 examples, or 36 per cent-ish, are in the arts domain, so it must be musical.
Well, not really. If you look more closely, a little over 600 are in the subdomains of “popular” and “classical music”. But that’s still fewer citations than for “news.” In addition, domains such as “life and leisure”, sport, and “society” are almost entirely journalistic writing, e.g.
…Barrett brilliantly builds a nerve-stretching crescendo of suspense and dread that culminates in the 1998 car bombing… NZ Listener, referring to a film.
In short, though the first person cited by the OED as using crescendo in its “climax” meaning is Scott Fitzgerald (The caterwauling horns had reached a crescendo and I turned away and cut across the lawn toward home. Great Gatsby, iii 68), its forte is in journalism.
A musicianly rant
A Google search for “reach a crescendo” will quickly lead you to blogs and pronouncements, including one from the New York Times – which has been doing the rounds since 2013 — titled “A crescendo of errors”. The author is a violist (no, not a typo for “violinist”, but someone who plays the viola), and so knows a thing or three about music. He expostulates “But here’s the thing: as God — along with Bach, Beethoven and Mozart — is my witness, you cannot “reach” a crescendo.
A crescendo is the process, in music, of getting louder.”
He also notes that “crescendos don’t have to end loudly: you can make a crescendo from extremely soft to moderately soft, or from moderately soft to moderately loud.”
[image error] The Macdonald Stradivarius viola. At auction, offers of over $45 million were invited, but not achieved. It once belonged to the Amadeus Quartet’s violist.
He also says “And you will never convince any of those musicians that a word that for centuries has had one and only one precise meaning will, through repeated flagrant misuse, come to mean something else.”
He’s a musician, so, surely, his opinion must count for something. Or must it? Just as you wouldn’t ask a tone-deaf linguist to play Hindemith’s Viola Concerto, so a musician’s judgement on linguistic matters might be fatally flawed. I respectfully submit that it is, on several different counts.
In no particular order…
Just how “precise” is “the one and only one precise meaning”? If a crescendo can go from any volume to any other volume, in other words, if its end points are fluid, isn’t it a somewhat hazy concept? The only constant is that musicians play louder. In addition, it can be very short, as in the example higher up.
To say that crescendo can only mean what it means to musicians is an example of the “etymological fallacy”, which, in a nutshell, is the idea that a word’s origin conveys its true meaning.
Here, though, we have the etymological fallacy with knobs on or a dose of musical snobbery thrown in. Or, to put it yet another way, the fallacy of the appeal to authority.
I’ll give you one word: polysemy. A word or phrase can allowably have more than one meaning. In fact, most of the words we use most often have several. Thinking musically, we can talk about the different movements of a concerto or symphony. Does that mean we can’t apply movement elsewhere? Of course it doesn’t. (Note that my reasoning here is potentially Jesuitical: the word movement already existed in English before it acquired its musical meaning. But, no matter.)
Neither the gender-fluid non-binary person (formerly known as “man”) on the Clapham omnibus, nor John nor Mary Doe, nor everyday usage cares what the technical meaning of a word is in its original field of discourse. Think “acid test” (originally a test using nitric acid as a test for gold). Think of the ubiquitous “DNA” in business speak. Think of “quantum leap” for “major [allegedly] advance”. Think of your own examples, as I’m sure you will.
The phrase is useful.
Actually, perhaps fatally so for journalists, as we have already seen. On the one hand, it can be seen as one of those journalistic clichéd tropes which/that attempt to be dynamic and attention-getting. On the other, in certain cases, it is hard to think of a phrase that could replace it.
Taking the examples cited earlier on…
Bob Geldof’s campaign to “Make Poverty History” reached a crescendo in July 2005…
“Culminated in”? “reached” Had its crowning moment in”? “came to a climax in”?
The strife between the Dutch and ascendant English interests reached a crescendo in New Netherland in 1664,…
“Came to a head”?
And then, slowly, APPLAUSE builds in the chamber, reaching a crescendo as Pete reaches the door and exits.
Here, I find it hard to see what could replace it: “achieving maximum volume”? “climaxing”?
It has also been suggested that the popularity of “reach a crescendo” might owe something to euphemism: “to reach a climax” almost inevitably invokes the sexual meaning of climax (first brought into current usage by women’s rights campaigner Marie Stopes starting in 1918).
Words change meaning over time. The sense development of crescendo is explained in detail by Arnold Zwicky here. In brief, the word both moved from meaning “an increase in musical loudness” to “an increase in loudness generally” and from meaning a process to meaning the end result of that process, namely an event or state.
As it happens, climax has followed an analogous progression from process to end state, while another term, gamut, has gone from being the single lowest note in a musical scale to meaning a series of notes, and then a range of anything you care to mention (including, of course, Katharine Hepburn’s acting in the sublimely catty remark ascribed to Dorothy Parker: “She runs the whole gamut of emotions from A to B.”) Both words also emigrated from technical domains.
[image error] An exquisite book cover — shades of Picasso, de Chirico, Dufy, and not sure who else.
Conclusion
Crescendo is indeed originally a musical term – like so many, from Italian (piano, adagio, allegro, etc.). It is the participle of the Italian verb crescere, to grow, itself a direct descendant of Latin crēscĕre to grow, which is the ultimate ancestor of the English word crescent.
Musically speaking, or when musicians speak about it, it is a process rather than an end state, as the following example clearly, if lengthily, illustrates (my emboldening):
“…during more than four minutes of music in which no performers are in view, the setting becomes the focus of the stage, as the moon rises over the forest. From a pianissimo beginning, more and more instruments enter in a gradual crescendo, the orchestral texture and colour becoming richer and more vibrant until the full orchestra plays,…”
From Beyond Falstaff in ‘Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor’: Otto Nicolai’s Revolutionary ‘Wives’, John R Severn, 2015.
That musicians mean one thing and Joe Public another does not invalidate the “climax” meaning. Whether it is a cliché is a matter of opinion. That it is widely used by journalists is an evidence-based fact, as discussed earlier. (The excellent Collins Cobuild dictionary for learners specifically applies the label “journalism” to its definition 2: “People sometimes describe an increase in the intensity of something, or its most intense point, as a crescendo.”)
Moreover, the sense of a progression, as in its strictly musical application, has not been ousted by the “climax” meaning. As Oxford Online defines it:
A progressive increase in intensity.
‘a crescendo of misery’
More example sentences:
‘Although many speakers struck bland notes individually, together these became a crescendo of shared concern.’
‘They believe that if you try hard enough there’s a steady crescendo of improvement and your fate is in your own hands.’
Yes, but what’s the plural?
Crescendos is rather more frequent than crescendoes. That second form, in fact, is used for the verb. Crescendi confines itself to music criticism.
[image error] Valery Gergiev. Yippee! I’m looking forward to experiencing him conducting Shosta 4 at the Embra Festival.
An eggcorn too far?
As long ago as 2006 the Eggcorn Database noted crashendo as an eggcorn for crescendo, e.g. It is obvious that a lot of folks are going to join the crashendo of shouting about this fiasco – – soon. It is actually a good thing for small business.
The creation of an eggcorn based on the “event” rather than the “process” meaning surely settles the debate, ;-), doesn’t it?
July 14, 2020
Whereas or where as? One word or two? Commonly confused words (27-28)
[image error]
(27 & 28 of 30 commonly confused words)
Where as???
A while ago, when reading The Times, I was struck by this sentence: “He was apolitical. He [sc. Haider al-Abadi, Iraqi PM] never mentioned Iraq where as some students were vociferous.”
Is it correct to write whereas as two words nowadays?
Short (and long) answer: no.
It had never occurred to me that whereas might be written as two words.
Of course, it could easily be since it is a simple combination of where and as.
Several ‘words’ are sometimes written as one unit and sometimes as two, for example under way and underway, any more and anymore, and so forth. Sometimes whether you write them one way or the other is simply a matter of house style or regional or personal preference. At other times, the difference can be grammatical, e.g. anymore.
But whereas is not one of those: no current dictionary that I know of accepts the two-word spelling.
A quick check in the Oxford English Corpus (OEC) shows that whereas whereas as a single word appears over 100,000 times, as two words it’s in the hundreds.
It is impossible to give an exact figure for it as two words, because searching for the string where as also finds sentences such as “Wolfowitz joined the bank in 2005 after working at the Pentagon, where as deputy defense secretary he was…”
What is clear, however, is that where as is highly unusual, i.e. less than one per cent of cases. The OEC data also suggests that it occurs often in news and blog sources (come back subs, all is forgiven!). Just what do they teach those journalists these days?
Was it ever two words?
Historically, it was originally two words. The earliest OED example is from The Paston Letters (1426-7), in the meaning, now largely confined to legal writing, “taking into consideration the fact that”:
Where as þe seyd William Paston, by assignement and commaundement of þe seyd Duk of Norffolk…was þe styward of þe seyd Duc of Norffolk.
(As you will no doubt have worked out, the þ symbol stands for the ‘th’ sound. It was used in Old English, is still used in Icelandic, and is called a thorn since it begins that word.)
In its principal modern meaning (“in contrast”), it first appears in Coverdale’s Bible (1535), also as two words:
There are layed vp for vs dwellynges of health & fredome, where as we haue lyued euell.
(From Book 2 of Esdras, not included in the AV.)
The first OED citation for it as one word is in Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1 (written before 1616).
I deriued am From Lionel Duke of Clarence…; whereas hee, From Iohn of Gaunt doth bring his Pedigree.
So, while there are historical precedents for the two-word spelling, whereas is one of those words that current spelling convention decrees should not be sundered.
We’ve seen whereas above used to contrast clauses …
And — as in the Paston Letter quotation earlier — it is often used, especially in US laws, to introduce a clause, or usually several clauses, setting out the reasons for something.
[image error] The town of Merrill, Oregon, institutes a Carl Barks day, to honour a Donald Duck cartoonist.
Does it have other meanings?
Yes.
1. Historically, it was used to mean simply “where”, but that use died out long ago, except as a poetic archaism, as illustrated in the second quotation below from the Arts & Crafts designer and writer William Morris:
That…oure heartes maye surely there bee fixed, where as true ioyes are to be founde.
Bk. Common Prayer (STC 16267) Celebr. Holye Communion f. lxiiiiv, 1549.
And quickly too he gat | Unto the place whereas the Lady sat.
W. Morris, Earthly Paradise ii. 655, 1868.
[image error] J. W. Waterhouse’s 1888 “The Lady of Shalott”, Tate Britain.
2. Whereas is also a noun.
It can mean “A statement introduced by ‘whereas’; the preamble of a formal document.”
While the contrary remains unproved, such a Whereas must be a most inadequate ground for the present Bill.
S. T. Coleridge, Plot Discovered 23, 1795.
The rule seems to be that if a candidate can recite half a dozen policy positions by rote and name some foreign nations and leaders, one shouldn’t point out that he sure seems a few whereases shy of an executive order.
Slate.com, 2000.
As a further historical footnote, it is interesting that the legalistic, ritual use of whereas as a preamble to legal documents led to its being used as a noun, defined as follows in the Urban Dictionary of its day, Grose’s 1796 Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:
To follow a whereas; to become a bankrupt…: the notice given in the Gazette that a commission of bankruptcy is issued out against any trader, always beginning with the word whereas.
[image error]Tom Rakewell, from Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress, narrowly escapes arrest for debt while on his way to Queen Caroline’s birthday party.
Whereas or where as? One word or two?
[image error]
(27 & 28 of 30 commonly confused words)
Where as???
A while ago, when reading The Times, I was struck by this sentence: “He was apolitical. He [sc. Haider al-Abadi, Iraqi PM] never mentioned Iraq where as some students were vociferous.”
Is it correct to write whereas as two words nowadays?
Short (and long) answer: no.
It had never occurred to me that whereas might be written as two words.
Of course, it could easily be since it is a simple combination of where and as.
Several ‘words’ are sometimes written as one unit and sometimes as two, for example under way and underway, any more and anymore, and so forth. Sometimes whether you write them one way or the other is simply a matter of house style or regional or personal preference. At other times, the difference can be grammatical, e.g. anymore.
But whereas is not one of those: no current dictionary that I know of accepts the two-word spelling.
A quick check in the Oxford English Corpus (OEC) shows that whereas whereas as a single word appears over 100,000 times, as two words it’s in the hundreds.
It is impossible to give an exact figure for it as two words, because searching for the string where as also finds sentences such as “Wolfowitz joined the bank in 2005 after working at the Pentagon, where as deputy defense secretary he was…”
What is clear, however, is that where as is highly unusual, i.e. less than one per cent of cases. The OEC data also suggests that it occurs often in news and blog sources (come back subs, all is forgiven!). Just what do they teach those journalists these days?
Was it ever two words?
Historically, it was originally two words. The earliest OED example is from The Paston Letters (1426-7), in the meaning, now largely confined to legal writing, “taking into consideration the fact that”:
Where as þe seyd William Paston, by assignement and commaundement of þe seyd Duk of Norffolk…was þe styward of þe seyd Duc of Norffolk.
(As you will no doubt have worked out, the þ symbol stands for the ‘th’ sound. It was used in Old English, is still used in Icelandic, and is called a thorn since it begins that word.)
In its principal modern meaning (“in contrast”), it first appears in Coverdale’s Bible (1535), also as two words:
There are layed vp for vs dwellynges of health & fredome, where as we haue lyued euell.
(From Book 2 of Esdras, not included in the AV.)
The first OED citation for it as one word is in Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1 (written before 1616).
I deriued am From Lionel Duke of Clarence…; whereas hee, From Iohn of Gaunt doth bring his Pedigree.
So, while there are historical precedents for the two-word spelling, whereas is one of those words that current spelling convention decrees should not be sundered.
We’ve seen whereas above used to contrast clauses …
And — as in the Paston Letter quotation earlier — it is often used, especially in US laws, to introduce a clause, or usually several clauses, setting out the reasons for something.
[image error] The town of Merrill, Oregon, institutes a Carl Barks day, to honour a Donald Duck cartoonist.
Does it have other meanings?
Yes.
1. Historically, it was used to mean simply “where”, but that use died out long ago, except as a poetic archaism, as illustrated in the second quotation below from the Arts & Crafts designer and writer William Morris:
That…oure heartes maye surely there bee fixed, where as true ioyes are to be founde.
Bk. Common Prayer (STC 16267) Celebr. Holye Communion f. lxiiiiv, 1549.
And quickly too he gat | Unto the place whereas the Lady sat.
W. Morris, Earthly Paradise ii. 655, 1868.
[image error] J. W. Waterhouse’s 1888 “The Lady of Shalott”, Tate Britain.
2. Whereas is also a noun.
It can mean “A statement introduced by ‘whereas’; the preamble of a formal document.”
While the contrary remains unproved, such a Whereas must be a most inadequate ground for the present Bill.
S. T. Coleridge, Plot Discovered 23, 1795.
The rule seems to be that if a candidate can recite half a dozen policy positions by rote and name some foreign nations and leaders, one shouldn’t point out that he sure seems a few whereases shy of an executive order.
Slate.com, 2000.
As a further historical footnote, it is interesting that the legalistic, ritual use of whereas as a preamble to legal documents led to its being used as a noun, defined as follows in the Urban Dictionary of its day, Grose’s 1796 Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:
To follow a whereas; to become a bankrupt…: the notice given in the Gazette that a commission of bankruptcy is issued out against any trader, always beginning with the word whereas.
[image error]Tom Rakewell, from Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress, narrowly escapes arrest for debt while on his way to Queen Caroline’s birthday party.
July 7, 2020
Anymore or any more? Does anybody write anymore any more any more?
While Annie Lennox was keening ‘Don’t ask me why’ and lamenting lost or unachievable love, the question in my mind (and perhaps in a few others’) was: is that ‘anymore’ or ‘any more’?
I don’t love you any|more
I don’t think I ever did.
And if you ever had
Any kind of love for me
You kept it all so well hid
One of my most often consulted blogs is about whereas as one word or two, so I thought it would be interesting to look at another case of split personality: any more and anymore.
What’s the problem?
When you want to convey the meaning ‘not … any longer’, e.g. ‘I don’t love you any more’, should you write any more or anymore?
In which uses of any more is it better to write the two words separately?
Quick answers
Whether you write ‘I don’t love you anymore’ or ‘ any more ’ largely depends on geography. The dataset (details later on) from the Oxford English Corpus that I used suggests that in British English there is a 2:1 preference for ‘any more’. In North American (i.e. US and Canadian) English, the one-word form ‘anymore’ is used in over 80 per cent of cases.
TIP: if you can replace ‘any|more’ with ‘any longer’, ‘again’ or some other paraphrase with a similar meaning, then it is safe to write it as one word if that is your preference. Also, look for the preceding verb, generally negated or in a question, that any|more relates to.
Any more should be written as separate words when you are using the phrase in one of six possible ways in comparative clauses – explained in detail below – where its grammatical function and meaning are different from those in ‘I don’t love you anymore’.
TIP: if the word than follows shortly after any more, it’s a fair bet that you should write the words separately, e.g.
…the book is very well written and does not assume any more than a basic knowledge of biology
The data suggests that, instinctively, most people separate the two words in such contexts, but occasionally they put them together.
There’s a separate, exclusively American meaning of anymore = ‘nowadays’ that will have to be the topic for another blog, sometime.
Menu
1 When two become one
2 Any|more as time adverbial
2.1 Examples
2.2 Regional preferences (Table)
2.3 Online dictionaries say…
2.4 Usage guides say…
3 Any + more: examples and explanation
3.1 Non-standard as single word
4 Dataset details
1 When two become one, or the urge to merge
While recently reading Fanny Burney’s Evelina (1778), for example, I couldn’t help noticing how often ‘any body’ and ‘every body’ appeared as two words. [image error] Here is Evelina (Letter XXIII, complete text & images here) describing her visit to a concert at the Pantheon, a concert hall:
There was an exceeding good concert, but too much talking to hear it well. Indeed I am quite astonished to find how little music is attended to in silence; for, though every body seems to admire, hardly any body listens.
To state the obvious, spelling is not fixed forever (or is that for ever?)
Some of the words we routinely write as one word nowadays, e.g. everybody, anybody as just mentioned, were regularly written as two at one time. The OED comments on anybody ‘formerly written as two words’ and has this quote from Disraeli that couples those two words: ‘Every body was there—who is any body.’ Vivian Grey, 1826.
To take a more current example, quite a few people write alot. Dictionaries do not yet accept this, but perhaps one day – presumably far in the future – they would, if it were to become the dominant spelling.
2 any|more as time adverbial [image error]
The OED (3rd edn) entry dates this use back to before 1300:
Wiþouten bileueing ani more Þai went to him.
Arthour & Merlin (Auch.) (1973) l.8601
The word(s), whether written as one or two, are a time adverbial meaning ‘to no further extent; not any longer’. You have to use them in (implicitly or explicitly) negative, or (negative) interrogative, clauses, and they are the equivalent of a clause containing ‘no…longer’.
The OED does give anymore as an alternative spelling, but the earliest citation of it in writing is in the ‘American’ meaning of ‘from now on, currently’: We’ll squeeze Michael a bit. He’ll chip in anymore. (1971)
2.1 Modern examples of the alternative spellings
I think these are good people trapped in a very difficult if not terrible situation with a process that they’re not even using anymore. CNN, (US)
It’s such a shame that people don’t seem to have any common sense anymore. Daily Telegraph, (BrE)
The principle being that the Tories scuppered our reform of the Lords, and so waaaah, boo hoo, you horrid rotters, we’re not playing with you any more, we’re going home and we’re taking our ball with us. Daily Telegraph, (BrE)
Using the slogan, “We’re mad as cows and we’re not going to take it any more,” the group has collected more than 2,000 signatures of the 4,500 needed by July 7…’ The New Farm, (US)
2.2 Regional preferences
This table shows the percentages for the varieties of English available in the Oxford English Corpus (2014). As you can see, the highest preference for ‘anymore’ is in American-continent varieties (US, Can., Carib.), followed by Asian & S. Afr. Englishes. Irish is more or less evenly balanced, and the variety which least favours ‘anymore’ is New Zealand.
Variety of English
ANY MORE
ANYMORE
ANY MORE (%)
ANYMORE (%)
RANKING BY ‘ANYMORE/ANY MORE’ PREFERENCE
British
1,600
892
64.2%
35.8%
10
unknown
890
1,198
42.6%
57.4%
7
American
794
4,065
16.3%
83.7%
2
Australian
339
273
55.3%
44.7%
9
New Zealand
229
71
76.8%
23.2%
11
Irish
132
147
47.3%
52.7%
8
Indian
113
214
34.6%
65.4%
5
East Asian
73
237
23.5%
76.5%
4
Canadian
51
312
14%
86%
1
South African
48
72
40%
60%
6
Caribbean
14
55
20.3%
79.7%
3
2.3 Online dictionaries say…
The Oxford Online Dictionary, British & World English version, gives the two-word form under any, with the alternative ‘anymore’. But if you look up anymore as a solid, it is labelled ‘Chiefly N Amer variant of any more’.
If you use the US version of that dictionary, and enter ‘any more’ the entry you will find is anymore with the variant (also any more).
The UK-based Collins, in its British English version, gives you ‘any more or (especially US) anymore’, but if you look up ‘any more’ in the US version, the same thing happens as with Oxford: you are directed to the entry anymore, with ‘any more’ as a variant.
With Merriam-Webster online, if you enter the two-word form, you are immediately taken to the single-word one. In addition, there is a note stating: “Although both anymore and any more are found in written use, in the 20th century anymore is the more common styling. Anymore is regularly used in negative anymore — May Sarton>, interrogative anymore?>, and conditional anymore, I’ll leave> contexts and in certain positive constructions anymore in solutions — Russell Baker>.
2.4 Style & usage guides say…
Telegraph style book: any more/anymore: we do not want any more errors in the newspaper; we will not put up with this anymore
Guardian Style Guide: Please do not say “anymore” any more
The Economist does not cover it, nor does the Chicago Manual of Style (though its page on Good usage versus common usage has single-word anymore in an unrelated entry, thereby, presumably, endorsing it).
The Merriam-Webster Concise Guide to English Usage does not mention it, but Pam Peters does, in her Cambridge Guide to English Usage. She comments on the US/British difference and says ‘But anymore (as adverb) tends to be replaced by the spaced any more in formal British style.’
3 Any + more as two words
Any + more as two words is appropriate in a range of comparative clauses, either followed explicitly by than, or with an implied comparison.
TIP: It’s a fair bet that if you’re writing something and follow any more with than in the next few words, writing it as two words is correct.
Similarly, if you follow any more with of as in 2) below, or an adjective, an adjective plus noun, or an adverb + adjective + noun as in 4-5) below, it should be two words.
The cases in which any + more is two separate words are:
1 more as a determiner (i.e. followed by an uncount or plural count noun, according to the usual rules for more):
My place is wherever America’s enemies are, to kill them before they kill any more Americans on our own soil. Empire of the Ants, (US)
…nothing that points directly at Chris Christie as having any more involvement than he said he did. The Situation Room, CNN Transcripts (US)
…vertical integration takes place only for reasons of technological efficiency because it does not involve any more or less monopolization than what existed in the preintegration period. Jrnl of Agricultural and Applied Economics, (US)
This Cambridge Dictionary link explains this basic point.
2 more as pronoun – often followed by of:
Overall, the book is very well written and does not assume any more than a basic knowledge of biology. NACTA Jrnl, (US)
He took it upon himself to say ‘I am not going to stand any more of this messing about’. Irish Examiner, 2002
The changes do not make this opera any more of a masterpiece; Bizet ‘s music is still linked to a profoundly unsatisfactory libretto. MV Daily, (US)
3 any more as adjunct:
Mass production and high levels of craft detail do not usually go together, any more than low-budget buildings are tolerant of too many non-standard details. The Architectural Review, (AmE)
It still seems necessary to tell the country ‘s history, but the politics will not adhere to the art any more than it did for Wolfflin. Art Bulletin, (US)
4 any more modifying adjective:
a) as subject/object complement
This activity did not make me feel any more despondent than usual, nor did I experience a loss of appetite or a tingling sensation in my lower extremities. Weekly Eye, (Canada)
Good designers may not be any more talented than you, they are just more aware of their surroundings. Art Business News, (US)
4 b) premodifying noun group
There can’t be any more horrifying images than the aftermath of Hiroshima or the mass slaughter of Chilean civilians under Pinochet. Senses of Cinema, (Austr.)
I really have not given it any more detailed consideration than that because I did not see it as relevant to the point. High Court of Australia transcripts
This work, informal and more up to date in concept than anything conceived by such established sculptors as Rysbrack or Scheemakers, was not immediately followed by any more large works. Oxford Companion to Western Art, (BrE)
5 any more modifying adverb
…the subjugation [ ] of music’s powers of expression results in a poignant intensity not to be realised by any more overtly pathetic means.’ Musical Times, (US)
3.1 Non-standard uses of anymore
Yow! I will not be giving them anymore business. Blog, (Carib.) [see Examples 1 above]
I forgot in my thanks that I had decided not to use anymore bottles of bought water. Blog, (Austr.) [See Examples 1]
But the scandals and controversy do not overwhelm this Carroll saga anymore than it did the Carrolls themselves. Economic History Services, (US) [See Examples 3]
But this did not seem to help anymore than a cigarette or a glass of wine would have. Namibia Economist, (SAfr.) [see Examples 3]
4 Dataset details
The dataset I used for the figures given earlier does not cover all possible cases of any|more as a time adverbial – life’s too short – but it does cover a very frequent use of it, amounting to almost 12,000 examples. Using the Oxford English Corpus of 2.5 billion words (i.e. tokens), I carried out a fairly crude search for the word NOT + 1-4 words + ANY MORE and separately ANYMORE.
I then filtered out certain some obvious elements, such as than, or any more + adjective. The remaining examples were not 100% time adverbials, but nearly all of them were, and I’m happy that, since I applied the same filters to both searches, the proportion of irrelevant sentences for each search should in principle be the same.
Obviously, choosing not rather than the contracted forms is likely to extract more formal language. However, a quick check using -n’t suggests very similar figures.
June 30, 2020
Fizzogs and visages. Folk etymology (2)
Fizzog and its other spellings (phisog, physog, phyzog in the OED, phizzog, not), as you probably already know, mean “face” or “facial expression.”
The question is, how did that happen?
Well, thereby hangs the tale below, supplied by a reader in response to an older version of this post.
“Fizzog, n. I am from a part of Ireland which was heavily influenced by the Norman, as well as the Viking, invasions. A lot of words and family names in my part of Ireland are therefore taken from French, and fizzog (along with its related term vizzard, see below) is one of those. Clearly a derivative of the French visage, fizzog basically means ‘face’, but used mainly in a pejorative sense. So, if you were in a bad mood, someone might say to you ‘What’s the fizzog on you for?’, which means ‘Why the long face?’ or ‘You’ve some fizzog on you,’ which means, in a roundabout backhanded way, ‘cheer up.’”
We all love a good yarn.
And who isn’t fascinated by where words come from?
And who doesn’t like a bit of history, especially if it’s glamorous or romantic in some way?
The explanation of the origins of fizzog above is very satisfying in all those ways. It evokes a mythicised, romantic history of Normans and Vikings, thus coming close to historical fiction. It then adds the cachet and romance (both French words) of French. Finally, the author refers to their part of Ireland, thereby appealing to a cultural and linguistic tradition that several readers will share, or, conversely, providing a folkloric perspective for outsiders.
In particular, scientific certainty is bestowed by the wording: “Clearly a derivative of the French visage, fizzog…” Both words have two syllables, true. And the f of fizzog is the voiceless counterpart of the v of visage. And the s of visage sounds like a z, so all in all, it is demonstrably clear that fizzog comes from visage.
Except it doesn’t.
The fizzog story satisfies all our story-telling and story-listening cravings, but “story” it certainly is: it’s a folk etymology in the sense of “a popular but erroneous conception of the origin of a word.” (Collins)
For a start, it’s a nineteenth-century word, so it dates from several centuries after any possible Norman influence in Ireland. It derives not from the French visage but from the word physiognomy, which, admittedly, does have a part-French pedigree.
I can’t comment on how current the phrases quoted are, but fizzog itself is a word I’ve known most of my life. My mother – Welsh, not Irish – used it to refer humorously to her own face, e.g. “I’m just putting some make-up on my fizzog.” So, no colourful phrases like the Irish ones, just an informal synonym for face.
Localism is another feature of stories about language. People often take great pride in a word or phrase they believe peculiar to their part of the world when, on proper inspection, it turns out not to be. Fizzog appears in various nineteenth-century dialect dictionaries (“North Country”, Nottinghamshire, South Cheshire) before turning up in Wright’s 1905 dictionary.
Where does fizzog come from?
In fact, fizzog is only the most recent descendant of physiognomy. Which raises the question, how do you get from the five syllables of physiognomy to the two of fizzog?
The OED provides the clue by suggesting you compare fizzog with physiog. Physiog first appears in 1791 in a letter by Coleridge:
Middleton has not the least acquaintance with any of Jesus [sc. College], except a very blackguardly fellow, whose phisiog: I did not like.
[image error] In Xanadu did Kubla Khan…
At the same time, the OED references an earlier (1687) more brutal shortening of physiognomy to a single syllable in the shape of phiz and several variant spellings. In the late seventeenth century, clipping words was fashionable. Phiz has not survived, but mob (1688, short for mobile vulgus, “the fickle crowd”) and wig (short for periwig) have.
Oh had you then his Figure seen, With what a rueful Phis and meine.*
* = mien, i.e. here probably “facial expression”; or “general appearance and manner”.
1687 H. Higden Mod. Ess. 10th Satyr Juvenal 27
Phiz went on being used even into the twentieth century
The OED currently (“currently” because the entry is still to be updated) records fizzog’s first appearance in the 1811 Lexicon balatronicum: a dictionary of buckish slang, university wit, and pick pocket eloquence, 1st edition, 1811, London:
Physog, the face. A vulgar abbreviation of physiognomy.
It and its variants subsequently appear inter alia in Kingsley’s Alton Locke, a Wilfred Owen letter, the Opies’ classic The lore and language of schoolchildren, and in this extraordinary quotation:
There was something fanatical and weightless about his long leg inside the expensive trousers and his ineffably Gallic phizog and the lank quiff à l’anglaise.
Mirror for Larks, V. Sage, 1993.
Some “popular but erroneous conceptions of the origin of a word” are so popular that they are part of “common knowledge.” For example, many (older) British readers are probably familiar with the notion that posh is an acronym for “port out, starboard home”, that is, the preferred – because shadier and cooler – side of a P&O liner to have your cabin on when travelling to India. My mother travelled to India by ship, just after the war, to join my father, who was stationed there, and I suspect that I first heard this folk etymology from her or him.
Another example is the pleasingly Magrittean suggestion that “to be raining cats and dogs” comes from said animals being flushed out of thatched roofs, where they were huddling during violent rainstorms. If you’ve ever given a thatched roof a more than cursory glance, you will immediately see that such felines and canines would have to be paper-thin so to huddle.
[image error] “Golconda” by René Magritte, 1953. The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas.
It’s easy to see the charm and the interest of such stories—for that is what they are. For a comprehensive debunking of some of them, it’s worth looking at Michael Quinion’s Port Out Starboard Home, or David Wilton’s Word Myths.
The post from which the folk mythology of fizzog is taken has other interesting language.
Fizzog etc has had peaks and troughs in popularity, as shown by Google Ngrams. The spelling fizzog seems to be winning.
Note: This is an updated version of a post originally posted in 2017.
June 29, 2020
As fit as a butcher’s dog. What does it mean? Where is it from?
5-minute read
Where does it come from?
As part of a campaign to improve the nation’s health and beat the obesity epidemic, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, had himself photographed doing press-ups and proclaimed himself “as fit as a butcher’s dog.”
He’s drawing on a powerful image which immediately conjures up a lean, muscled dog in tip-top condition jumping up to take the offcuts his butcher owner is dangling over him.
It is not known how old this simile is. It doesn’t appear in the Oxford English Dictionary. A search on Google Ngrams for “as a butcher’s dog” finds the rather different simile “as surly as a butcher’s dog” This goes back at least as far as John Ray’s 1670 collection of English proverbs and is repeated in several collections of proverbs that Ngrams retrieves.
The online Phrase Finder provides another butcher’s dog simile with a rather different meaning:
To be like a butcher’s dog, that is, lie by the beef without touching it; a simile often applicable to married men.
John Camden Hotten, A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words, 1859.
This is noted in Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English and Jonathon Green’s Slang Dictionary and dates back to Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 2nd edition, 1788.
Why do we use it?
As mentioned, it’s a compelling visual image. But it’s far from unique: it fits into a pattern of similes that draw on animals as symbols of desirable qualities such as strength, speed, agility and so forth.
I investigated to see how large the menagerie is and came across a few surprises.
What animals can we be as fit as?
In the two data sets I dug into (2014 and 2018), there were the usual suspects.
(Use of as is optional; some similes appear without almost as often as with it.)
(as) fit as a fiddle is the most popular by a long chalk. The original meaning of fit in this simile is “appropriate, apt.” It was only in the nineteenth century that it acquired its current meaning.
From the animal kingdom, in order of popularity, and jostling to be first into the Ark, we have (as) fit as a flea, and (as) fit as a butcher’s dog. So far, so obvious.
Trailing behind them sprints, charges, crawls, springs or swims – yes, swims – a mottled menagerie of buck rats, greyhounds, whippets, bull moose, horses, trout, ferrets, fleas, Mallee bulls, mountain goats and pandas.
Pandas? Read on.
[image error] Here’s a ferret. Oh, dear. When I saw this image, I didn’t see the lead. Were I to anthropomorphise, I’d say those eyes are imploring “set me free”.
How “set in stone” is the idiom?
It’s one of those that allow a certain amount of wiggle room in the noun group.
It’s stating the obvious to say that the animals invoked have to display certain characteristics attributed to them, in reality or by convention. And what are they?
brute strength in horses, bull moose, and Mallee bulls;
litheness, agility, gracefulness (and speed) in greyhounds, whippets, ferrets, trout (?) and mountain goats;
simple speed in buck rats, I presume (try shooing rats away, as I have, and you’ll see what I mean)
As for fleas, well, they do jump around a lot on, from and onto their hosts – so I’m told.
[image error]
Historically, by the way, a butcher’s dog is a large mastiff or possible even a Rottweiler:
Gret bucher dogges, þe whiche bochers holdeth forto helpe hem to brynge her beestes þat þei bieth in þe contre. (Great butcher dogs which butchers keep to help them lead their animals that they buy in the country.)
a1425 Edward, Duke of York Master of Game (Digby) xv. 72
Jingle bells…
At the level of sound, it also seems clear why some are used more than others. After fit as a fiddle, fit as a flea is the commonest. Alliteration rules, OK! in both, as it does in fit as a ferret, which also has the repetition of the short /ɪ/ sound.
That double /ɪ/ jingle might partially account for fit as a fiddle’s pre-eminence, that and its antiquity (before 1605 in the OED). Fit as a whippet trumps them both by having the sound thrice. Compare it for pzazz with fit as a greyhound and the winner seems clear. Ramped-up alliteration combined with emphasis accounts for fit as a f****** fiddle. (As fit as a thistle, which also turns up once, can be explained by the almost-alliteration + vowel matching).
Another sound feature perhaps worth mentioning is number of syllables. No animal cited has more than two, and many have only one.
[image error] Whippets galore and not a cloth cap in sight.
How much variation?
Is it an “open set” as linguists would call it: can you just add to it ad infinitum, provided the animal invoked fulfils the criteria? The safest approach seems to be that there is a small established set of animal similes generally recognized by English speakers (‘institutionalized’, to use the jargon) and beyond them a rather larger, fuzzy set where wordplay sometimes has a role.
With the caveat that corpora cannot provide the full picture, on the basis of what I looked at and some further searches, the core, institutionalized group would be, in alpha order:
fit as a butcher’s dog
fit as a ferret
fit as a flea
fit as a greyhound
fit as a horse
fit as a mountain goat
fit as a trout
My late aunt once described my athletic cousin as “like a gazelle” (she runs up mountains!) and, sure enough, as fit as a gazelle shows up more than 5,000 times on Google, but I’m not sure it would be in most people’s mental lexicons.
Are there regional variations?
Fit as a Mallee bull is definitely Australian in origin. The mallee is scrub vegetation ‘consisting of dense scrub dominated by low-growing bushy eucalypts, characteristic of semi-desert areas of Victoria and some other parts of southern Australia’ (OED). For a bull to survive there, it would need to be fighting fit.
Fit as a buck rat seems to be a New Zealand speciality. (Are their rats different?)
Some examples
First, about that panda … it’s an ironically humorous way of saying how unfit the speaker was: Gilbert has just completed a trek up the 19,340ft Mount Kilimanjaro with Wales rugby legend Martyn Williams in aid of Velindre Cancer Centre. He raised more than £ 4,000 in the six-day trek, despite saying he was about as fit as a panda.
chortle.co.uk, 2013
The possibly surprising fit as a trout is, according to the Macquarie Dictionary, a creation of Conan Doyle’s. In my corpus we had, The All Blacks had a light training in sunny Swansea on Monday morning and the big news is captain Richie McCaw is as fit as a trout. The sore hip that ruled him out…
stuff.co.nz, 2015
While not confined to NZ, other searches suggest it is more popular there than elsewhere.
The use of ‘proverbial’ indicates clearly that a simile is standard, as in I think it’s genetic. I don’t drink, I exercise three or four times a week (in the gym – hard training) take vitamins, manuka honey (how expensive is that stuff!), drink green tea endlessly, eat fruit, veg, chicken, brown rice. etc. and I’m still always flaming poorly. Other people abuse themselves constantly and are fit as the proverbial butcher’s dog.
Daily Mail, 2013 (Brit.)
Apart from the previous metalinguistic example, there are minor variations that intensify the image, such as fit as a racing greyhound and‘Chico will take me out and do a bit of jogging along the waterfront,’ says Bobby, who adds worriedly: ‘Have you seen him? He’s fit as a butcher’s whippet’.
thisisplymouth.co.uk, 2014 (Brit.)
And the OED cites Ian McEwan’s variation:
As for Lola—my high-living, chain-smoking cousin—here she was, still as lean and fit as a racing dog.
2001 Atonement 358
First occurrence according to the OED.
This is excellent ynfayth, as fit as a Fiddle.
a1605 W. Haughton English-men for my Money (1616) sig. Gv
1889 As fit as a flea, as ready and eager as a flea for blood.
J. Nicholson Folk Speech E. Yorkshire iii. 19
1960 ‘All right. How’s Bubby?’ ‘Fit as a Mallee bull! Got another tooth.’
Overland (Melbourne) Apr. 7
Note: this is a simplified version of a post from 2019.
June 23, 2020
There are road maps and there are roadmaps. One word or two?
3-minute read
[image error]
“We’re on a road to nowhere…”
On 11 May 2020 the UK government put before parliament its plan for the way out of Covid-19 restrictions. The day before that the prime minister made an address to the nation which was widely criticised for its lack of clarity.
In the 50-page document, roadmap (spelled thus, as one word) appears no less/fewer than seven times.
The Scottish government, however, spells it as two words. Perhaps it followed the dictionaries. So which is correct?
Well, obviously, both are. If you look in the dictionaries – Oxford Online, Collins, Cobuild, Merriam–Webster, Webster’s New World College, Oxford Advanced Learner’s, Cambridge – you will find it as two words. But here’s the thing. Words like this with a space between their two elements are what is known as “open compounds”. Over time, almost like old couples, they merge into one. It’s a historical process that has happened repeatedly. When Jane Austen wrote any body she did not mean “any old cadaver’”; body in her sense meant “person”.
“It is very pretty,” said Mr. Woodhouse [sc. to Emma]. “So prettily done! Just as your drawings always are, my dear. I do not know any body who draws so well as you do.
When the great humanist Roger Ascham expressed his views on education, he wrote in deed, as was common, says the OED, until 1600 or thereabouts.
The Scholehouse should be in deede, as it is called by name, the house of playe and pleasure.
a1568 Scholemaster (1570) Pref.
[image error]
Other examples going further back in time are alone (all adverb+one), although (all adverb+though) and albeit (all conjunction+be+it.) An analogous process produces the frowned-on *alot for a lot. The people who write it as a single word clearly perceive it as a unit of meaning in its own right and not dependent on the meaning of lot.
Someone on Twitter suggested that the road map spelling refers to the physical object and roadmap to the figurative meaning. It sounds vaguely plausible, but the only similar duo I can think of is black bird/blackbird, a distinction which is rather different.
In any case, the literal meaning is nowadays pretty rare (satnav rules, OK!) and searches in corpora show that both forms are used for both literal and figurative meanings.
In an up-to-date corpus of 20 varieties of English, roadmap is about twice as common as road map. In a corpus built in 2104, the two forms were even-stevens, just about, but by the time of a 2018 corpus the ratio was 3:1 in favour of roadmap.
So, editors might be in a bit of a quandary if they come across road map. Should they change it to roadmap? The safest bet would be to raise it with the author and point out that the dictionaries are behind the curve. (I have it on good authority that the next Macmillan revision will change to roadmap.)
Meanwhile, let’s see how long we wait before most dictionaries mirror this new reality.
June 18, 2020
Freelancers. Where does that word come from?
[image error]
Lances at the ready!
Happy National Freelancers Day!
There is a day celebrating just about everything under the sun, and today is National Freelancers Day. This year the events organised for it are, of course, all virtual.
Freelancers are self-employed and the number of self-employed in the UK approaches five million. The self-employed are often lauded as the growth engine of the economy.
The word freelancer is a derivative of freelance. Nowadays freelance is a humdrum sort of word, but historically it’s a bit more romantic, even swashbuckling.
It is a romantic word
It’s a metaphor, or a figurative extension of its original meaning. The metaphor is completely dead, killed off by the word being used in its modern meaning for well over century.
For the ‘lance’ in freelance is that gruesome weapon wielded by mounted medieval knights and used to spear or unsaddle their enemies.
The famous battle on the ice in Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky captures the awe and terror such knights must have inspired.
And freelance was originally two words. Free lances were mercenary knights who would fight on any side and were mainly interested in plunder. (Nowadays they might be known less charitably as lance tarts).
Some free lances rose to dizzy heights. The most renowned is probably Sir John Hawkwood (c. 1323–1394), a hugely successful mercenary in France and Italy, where he fought for the Pisans, the Visconti duke of Milan (his father-in-law) the Pope, and the Florentines. He is immortalised in the Duomo in Florence by a fresco by no less an artist than Uccello.
Ivanhoe
The first use of the word that we know of is by Sir Walter Scott, in his novel of chivalric derring-do, Ivanhoe. ‘I offered Richard the service of my Free Lances’ (two words, and capitalised).
And the first use of it in something approaching our modern sense, but with the metaphor still being made explicit, as if to explain the word, is from Hansard in 1854:
I think I may call that portion of the Government political ‘free lances.’ In the course of the last four years they have been ready to enlist under any banner—to wear any uniform.
Does it have a hyphen?
In the Oxford English Corpus it is overwhelmingly written as one word, which is modern practice, and how Oxford dictionaries, including the OED, spell it.
The form ‘freelance’ as a noun is rather more often used than ‘freelancer’
A versatile word
Just as the original free lances attached themselves to any cause that would pay their wages, so the word ‘freelance’ attaches itself, as it were, to different parts of speech. Not content with being a noun, it is also:
An adjective – a freelance consultant;
An adverb – to write freelance; and
A verb – she freelances for different publishers.
No pundits that I know of have castigated it for being used as a verb, unlike, say, interface and scores of others that commit the heinous sin of verbing.
Freelancing in other languages
A check in French, Spanish, Italian, German and Russian dictionaries suggests that the image of a gallant knight has not carried over to those languages. The idea is conveyed by phrases meaning ‘to work for yourself’, ‘be independent’ and so on. But in French there’s an adverbial phrase – travailler en free-lance – and in Italian it works as an adjective – un fotografo freelance.
Wishing you a productive day!
June 17, 2020
Cabin fever. What is it? And what kind of cabin?
During lockdown, people chatting on social media about how they were feeling often mentioned cabin fever. Google Trends registers numbers of lookups on Google of a given term. It shows that in the UK lookups for cabin fever shot up from a value of 8 in the week of 1–7 March to a peak of 100 at the end of March. In other words, there was a staggering 1,150% increase near the start of lockdown.
But what exactly is cabin fever, and where does it come from?
And do you have your own story about its origins? I certainly had mine.
Cabin fever is not a recognised psychological illness, so there’s no standard definition of the sort you might find in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short) of the American Psychiatric Association. But generally, people clearly mean a heap of negative feelings such as:
frustration,
boredom,
listlessness,
resentment, and
feeling hemmed in.
Sound familiar?
The OED defines cabin fever as ‘lassitude, restlessness, irritability, or aggressiveness resulting from being confined for too long with few or no companions.’ (Lassitude: such a very OED sort of word.)
A psychologist writing about how to overcome cabin fever stated that it included ‘lethargy, irritability, frustration, impatience, fear, anger and food cravings in an attempt to cure the boredom.’
If you’re anything like me, I’m sure you will have repeatedly experienced one or more of those feelings over the last few weeks. Hopefully for you, unlike me you will not have succumbed to those vexatious ‘food cravings.’
Now, what kind of cabin are we talking about in cabin fever? My rationalisation used to be the following: interpreting it as the longing to escape from confinement or cramped quarters, I related it to ship cabins on long voyages in history, possibly even on sailing ships. One story I told myself was that in the long voyages to India from Britain, such as my mother made, people must have become extremely frustrated at having only their small cabin as a private space and not being able to get off the ship.
Baloney! In fact, the cabins in question are of the log persuasion, the kind in which people might find themselves cooped up over the US or Canadian winter, presumably when snowed in.
The word first appears in a 1918 novel called…Cabin Fever: A novel, penned by one ‘Bertha Muzzy Bower’
The mind fed too long upon monotony succumbs to the insidious mental ailment which the West calls ‘cabin fever’.
‘Insidious mental ailment.’ I like that. It could apply to so many modern ills.
[image error] It seems to be a standing visual pun.
So, my little personal etymology was wrong. I can’t call it a folk etymology because folk etymology is a widespread but mistaken belief about the origins of a word while mine was merely personal. (The mistaken belief that niggardly derives from the N-word is an example which has had serious repercussions in the past.)
An example of folk etymology in this sense is the story about round robin coming from ruban rond that I wrote about last week. Another well-known folk etymology is the idea that brass monkey(s), meaning very cold, comes from cannonballs being stacked pyramidally on a brass rack called a monkey. When it was very cold, so the story goes, the rack contracted causing the cannonballs to roll all over the place.
The OED is very measured in its rejection of the story. Baloney! would be a more forthright rejection which has its own folk etymology, namely that it is a corruption of Bologna (sausage). Taking a food term to mean nonsense reminds me of the Scottish ‘You’re talking mince’.
In a future blog I’ll look at some examples of folk etymology in its other meaning, namely, when people reshape unfamiliar words to make them sound like words they already know, as happened historically with sparrowgrass for asparagus.
