Gosh, I miss working with you! I really needed your insight, wisdom, and bit of levity today! I especially enjoyed your historical background on career and careen. However, I was delighted to see you address prostrate as it is often misused in medical context. LOL And yes, my great-grandfather and great-uncle put up miles of "bobwahr" over the decades on the family farm in Pearl River County, Mississippi. IYKYK
Thanks so much, Kim! One of my favorite errors ever, which I ran across in my first teaching job after grad school, was from a student who must have heard "bobwahr" in his head but, knowing that surely that wasn't right, instead wrote, "Bob's wire." (An invention of some innovative fencer named Bob?) I made the correction without a corresponding deduction—because there was no doubt that thinking was going on.
So sad about all the prostrate issues out there. It's awful when it's next to "exam" and worse when next to "is acting up."
What a fun and fabulous post! I am now mulling over my double “l”s in expat English and wondering why my British husband tends to reverse emphasise syllables in words without them, like IN-surance or THANKS-giving.
On the less/ fewer point, I notice that many of your exceptions here involve numeric values. I wonder if we mentally put things like minutes and years together as “a group” rather than individually counted items? Do I think of five minutes in the same way as five salt shakers? I don’t think I do. I just think of it as one block of time.
Thank you! I think you're spot on about numeric values and units of measurement. Thirty miles and thirty minutes aren't processed as discrete units in the same way that thirty saltshakers and thirty raccoons are.
Units of weight seem especially prone to this, especially in certain word-order situations. If I said, "I weigh twenty pounds fewer than I did last January," the "fewer" would make people look at me funny. They might also suggest that I'm misreading my scale.
Haha! This made me laugh. It’s certainly true about weight! Maybe that’s why the Brits tend to weigh themselves in “stone” (singular and plural)- it’s hard to measure but one stone is a significant portion of body weight.
Thanks always for such an entertaining and enlightening post. I'm resolved to never again use the eyesore "and/or", "trilemma" and "quadrilemma" are too good to render useless by using "dilemma" incorrectly, and I had never questioned the incorrect usage of enervate. So many interesting and helpful things here!
I'm tempted to print out all of "The Wrong Word for the Job" sections for reference as my kids become more sophisticated writers (we're still in the thick of incorrect subject-verb pair discussions) or if I ever return to the formal classroom.
Thank you so much! Quite a few of these entries overlap with my usage lecture for composition students, which grew and shrunk and regrew and reshaped itself over the years.
My usage thinking certainly owes something to my students. I used to ask them about contemporary slang (and contemporary euphemism, though this was sometimes uncomfortable). Also, some of the, umm, *unexpected* word-choice decisions I saw in student papers taught me things I never knew I needed to know.
Thanks so much, Dominic! I had fun writing this one. It was also nice to be able to say something about the slash that kept appearing in my mind (like the dagger in *Macbeth*) every time I thought about *Andor*.
Re: fewer/less: Are we dealing with plural (countable) v. singular (uncountable) nouns here? I am continually correcting my children in their use of many/much and have explained that many is for plural words while much is for singular—are there any exceptions to this?
That's a great question. In the varieties of Standard English I know about (that is, excluding nonstandard dialects), I can't think of many exceptions.
There are nouns that can appear to be countable but aren't quite, and with those the distinction that you're teaching your children (singular with "much" and plural with "many") might be a clearer guide than countability. These kinda-sorta exceptions are things like "furniture" in sentences like "You much furniture do you have?" even though someone might be referring to something numerical (three chairs). You can count *pieces* of furniture, but it's not standard to say, "I bought three furnitures from IKEA." Other words like this are "luggage" and "equipment."
This applies similarly to "less" and "fewer," with "less furniture" (like "less milk") but "fewer pieces of furniture" (like "fewer cows").
"Many" is used idiomatically with the singular "a time" in constructions like "many a time." This also works with "many an occasion," "many a day," "many a woman," "many a slow-footed first baseman," and so on. I suspect this is a holdover from earlier varieties of English. It's something that Colin Gorrie would likely know off the top of his head, but I'd have to do some digging to explain it well.
That's all that's springing to mind, though it's quite possible that there are things I'm forgetting or don't know about. English is big and weird and lovable.
Gosh, I miss working with you! I really needed your insight, wisdom, and bit of levity today! I especially enjoyed your historical background on career and careen. However, I was delighted to see you address prostrate as it is often misused in medical context. LOL And yes, my great-grandfather and great-uncle put up miles of "bobwahr" over the decades on the family farm in Pearl River County, Mississippi. IYKYK
Thanks so much, Kim! One of my favorite errors ever, which I ran across in my first teaching job after grad school, was from a student who must have heard "bobwahr" in his head but, knowing that surely that wasn't right, instead wrote, "Bob's wire." (An invention of some innovative fencer named Bob?) I made the correction without a corresponding deduction—because there was no doubt that thinking was going on.
So sad about all the prostrate issues out there. It's awful when it's next to "exam" and worse when next to "is acting up."
Returning to your post, I was thinking about "anxious" and "eager."
Which is more appropriate in the context?
In January of 2024, we were anxious to hear if the college would be closing.
OR
In January of 2024, we were eager to hear if the college would be closing.
I think we know which word is appropriate.
What a fun and fabulous post! I am now mulling over my double “l”s in expat English and wondering why my British husband tends to reverse emphasise syllables in words without them, like IN-surance or THANKS-giving.
On the less/ fewer point, I notice that many of your exceptions here involve numeric values. I wonder if we mentally put things like minutes and years together as “a group” rather than individually counted items? Do I think of five minutes in the same way as five salt shakers? I don’t think I do. I just think of it as one block of time.
Thank you! I think you're spot on about numeric values and units of measurement. Thirty miles and thirty minutes aren't processed as discrete units in the same way that thirty saltshakers and thirty raccoons are.
Units of weight seem especially prone to this, especially in certain word-order situations. If I said, "I weigh twenty pounds fewer than I did last January," the "fewer" would make people look at me funny. They might also suggest that I'm misreading my scale.
Haha! This made me laugh. It’s certainly true about weight! Maybe that’s why the Brits tend to weigh themselves in “stone” (singular and plural)- it’s hard to measure but one stone is a significant portion of body weight.
Thanks always for such an entertaining and enlightening post. I'm resolved to never again use the eyesore "and/or", "trilemma" and "quadrilemma" are too good to render useless by using "dilemma" incorrectly, and I had never questioned the incorrect usage of enervate. So many interesting and helpful things here!
I'm tempted to print out all of "The Wrong Word for the Job" sections for reference as my kids become more sophisticated writers (we're still in the thick of incorrect subject-verb pair discussions) or if I ever return to the formal classroom.
Thank you so much! Quite a few of these entries overlap with my usage lecture for composition students, which grew and shrunk and regrew and reshaped itself over the years.
My usage thinking certainly owes something to my students. I used to ask them about contemporary slang (and contemporary euphemism, though this was sometimes uncomfortable). Also, some of the, umm, *unexpected* word-choice decisions I saw in student papers taught me things I never knew I needed to know.
Wise and highly entertaining words, as always. Thank you for keeping the beacon of good practice alight.
The Star Wars reference made me laugh out loud. I like what you did there!
Thanks so much, Dominic! I had fun writing this one. It was also nice to be able to say something about the slash that kept appearing in my mind (like the dagger in *Macbeth*) every time I thought about *Andor*.
I hope Mr. Novak's English teachers were watching and that they approved. I noticed.
I rewound it a couple of times so I could listen to it again. His delivery was beautiful.
Re: fewer/less: Are we dealing with plural (countable) v. singular (uncountable) nouns here? I am continually correcting my children in their use of many/much and have explained that many is for plural words while much is for singular—are there any exceptions to this?
That's a great question. In the varieties of Standard English I know about (that is, excluding nonstandard dialects), I can't think of many exceptions.
There are nouns that can appear to be countable but aren't quite, and with those the distinction that you're teaching your children (singular with "much" and plural with "many") might be a clearer guide than countability. These kinda-sorta exceptions are things like "furniture" in sentences like "You much furniture do you have?" even though someone might be referring to something numerical (three chairs). You can count *pieces* of furniture, but it's not standard to say, "I bought three furnitures from IKEA." Other words like this are "luggage" and "equipment."
This applies similarly to "less" and "fewer," with "less furniture" (like "less milk") but "fewer pieces of furniture" (like "fewer cows").
"Many" is used idiomatically with the singular "a time" in constructions like "many a time." This also works with "many an occasion," "many a day," "many a woman," "many a slow-footed first baseman," and so on. I suspect this is a holdover from earlier varieties of English. It's something that Colin Gorrie would likely know off the top of his head, but I'd have to do some digging to explain it well.
That's all that's springing to mind, though it's quite possible that there are things I'm forgetting or don't know about. English is big and weird and lovable.