From: misrael@scripps.edu (Mark Israel)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.answers,news.answers
Subject: alt.usage.english FAQ
Date: 23 Dec 1994 04:39:09 GMT
Organization: The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA
Message-ID: <3ddk9d$lbk@riscsm.scripps.edu>

Archive-name: alt-usage-english-faq
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: 22 Dec 1994


                    THE ALT.USAGE.ENGLISH FAQ FILE
                    ------------------------------

                             by Mark Israel
                         misrael@scripps.edu
                       Last updated:  22 Dec 1994

New entries this month:
	How do Americans pronounce "dog"?
	"alot"
	split infinitive
	"copacetic"
	"flammable"
	"portmanteau word"
	"Wicca"
	"the bee's knees"
	"hell for leather"
	"by hook or by crook"
	"put in one's two cents' worth"
	sentences grammatical in both Old English and Modern English
	phonetic alphabets
	"-er" vs "-re" 

1. Please send suggestions/flames/praise to me by e-mail rather than
   post them to the newsgroup.  The purpose of an FAQ file is to
   reduce traffic, not increase it.

2. This is in no sense an "official" FAQ file.  Feel free to start
   your own.  I certainly can't stop you.

3. Don't expect me to add a topic unless you're willing to 
   contribute the entry for that topic.  Thanks to all who *have* 
   contributed!

Table of Contents
-----------------

Welcome to alt.usage.english!
        guidelines for posting
        other related newsgroups

recommended books
        dictionaries
        online dictionaries
        general reference
        grammars
        books on linguistics
        books on usage
        books that discriminate synonyms
        style manuals
        books on mathematical exposition
        books on phrasal verbs
        books on phrase origins
        books on Britishisms, Canadianisms, etc.
        books on "bias-free"/"politically correct" language
        books on group names

artificial dialects
        Basic English
        E-prime

pronunciation
        how to represent pronunciation in ASCII
        rhotic vs non-rhotic, intrusive "r"
	How do Americans pronounce "dog"?
        words pronounced differently according to context
        words whose spelling has influenced their pronunciation

usage disputes
	"acronym"
	"alot"
        "alright"
        "between you and I"
        "could care less"
        "different to", "different than"
	double "is"
	"due to"
        gender-neutral pronouns
        "hopefully", "thankfully"
        "It's me" vs "it is I"
        "less" vs "fewer"
        "more/most/very unique"
        "none is" vs "none are"
        plurals
                plurals of Latin and Greek words
                plurals => English singulars
        preposition at end
        repeated words after abbreviations
        "shall" vs "will", "would" vs "should"
	split infinitive
        "that" vs "which"
        the the hoi polloi debate
        "you saying" vs "your saying"

punctuation
        "." after abbreviations
        ," vs ",
        "A, B and C" vs "A, B, and C"

foreigners' FAQs
        "a"/"an" before abbreviations
	"A number of..."
        when to use "the"
        subjunctive

word origins
        "bug"="defect"
        "Caesarean section"
        "canola"
	"copacetic"
        "crap"
	"flammable"
        "fuck"
        "hooker"
        "kangaroo"
        "loo"
        "O.K."
	"portmanteau word"
        "posh"
        "quiz"
        "scot-free"
        "sirloin"/"baron of beef"
        "SOS"
	"spoonerism"
        "tip"
        "titsling"/"brassiere"
	"Wicca"
        "wog"
        "ye" = "the"

phrase origins
	"the bee's knees"
        "blue moon"
        "Bob's your uncle"
        "to call a spade a spade"
        "The die is cast"
        "dressed to the nines"
        "Elementary, my dear Watson!"
        "The exception proves the rule"
        "face the music"
        "Go figure"
        "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste" (Desiderata)
	"hell for leather"
	"by hook or by crook"
        "Let them eat cake"
        "mind your p's and q's"
        "more honoured in the breach than in the observance"
	"put in one's two cents' worth"
        "rule of thumb"
        "son of a gun"
        "spitting image"/"spit and image"
        "Wherefore art thou Romeo?"
        "the whole nine yards"

miscellany
        deliberate mistakes in dictionaries
        list of language terms
        commonest words
        What words are their own antonym?
	sentences grammatical in both Old English and Modern English
	phonetic alphabets
        Biblical sense of "to know"
        postfix "not"
        origin of the dollar sign

spelling
        diacritics
	"-er" vs "-re"
        "-ize" vs "-ise"
        possessive apostrophes

====================================================================

                WELCOME TO ALT.USAGE.ENGLISH!
                -----------------------------

   alt.usage.english is a newsgroup where we discuss the English
language (and also occasionally other languages).  We discuss
how particular words, phrases, and syntactic forms are used; how
they originated; and where in the English-speaking world they're
prevalent.  (All this is called "description".)  We also discuss
how we think they *should* be used ("prescription").

   alt.usage.english is for everyone, *not* only for linguists,
native speakers, or descriptivists.

Guidelines for posting
----------------------

   Things you may want to consider avoiding when posting here:

(1) re-opening topics (such as "hopefully") that experience has
shown lead to circular debate.  (One function of the FAQ file
is to point out topics that have already been discussed ad
nauseam.)

(2) questions that can be answered by simple reference to a
dictionary.

(3) generalities.  If you make a statement like: "Here in the U.S.
we NEVER say 'different to'", "Retroflex 'r' is ONLY used in North
America", or "'Eh' ALWAYS rhymes with 'pay'", chances are that
someone will pounce on you with a counterexample.

(4) assertions that one variety of English is "true English".

(5) sloppy writing (as distinct from simple slips like typing
errors, or errors from someone whose native language is not
English).  Keep in mind that the regulars on alt.usage.english are 
probably less willing than the general population to suffer sloppy 
writers gladly; and that each article is written by one person, but 
read perhaps by thousands, so the convenience of the readers really
ought to have priority over the convenience of the writer.  Again, 
this is *not* to discourage non-native speakers from posting; 
readers will be able to detect that you're writing in a foreign 
language, and will make allowances for this.

(6) expressions of exasperation.  In the course of debate, you
may encounter positions based on premises radically different
from yours and perhaps surprisingly novel to you.  Saying things
like "Oh, please", "That's absurd", "Give me a break", or "Go
teach your grandmother to suck eggs, my man" is unlikely to win
your opponent over.

   You really *are* welcome to post here!  Don't let the impatient
tone of this FAQ frighten you off.

Other related newsgroups
------------------------

   There are other newsgroups which also discuss the English
language.  bit.listserv.words-l (which is a redistribution of a
BITNET mailing list -- not all machines on Usenet carry these) is
also billed to be for "English language discussion", but its
participants engage in a lot more socializing and general chitchat
than we do.

   sci.lang is where most of the professional linguists hang out.
Discussions tend to be about linguistic methodology (rather than
*particular* words and phrases), and prescription is severely 
frowned upon there.  Newbies post many things there that would 
better be posted here.

   alt.flame.spelling (which fewer sites carry than carry
alt.usage.english) is the place to criticize other people's
spelling.  We try to avoid doing that here (although some of us do
get provoked if you spell language terms wrong.  It's "consensus",
not "concensus"; "diphthong", not "dipthong"; "grammar", not
"grammer"; "guttural", not "gutteral"; and "pronunciation", not
"pronounciation").

   rec.puzzles is a better place than here to ask questions like
"What English words end in '-gry' or '-endous'?", "What words
contain 'vv'?", "What words have 'e' pronounced as /I/?", "What Pig 
Latin words are also words?", or "How do you punctuate 'John where 
Bill had had had had had had had had had had the approval of the 
teacher' or 'That that is is that that is not is not that that is 
not is not that that is is that it it is' to get comprehensible 
text?"  But, before you post such a question there, make sure it's 
not answered in the rec.puzzles archive, available by anonymous ftp 
from rtfm.mit.edu; the relevant section is in the directory
pub/usenet/news.answers/puzzles/archive/language .

   Language features peculiar to the U.K. get discussed in
soc.culture.british as well as here.  Before posting to either
newsgroup on this subject, you should check out Jeremy Smith's
British-American dictionary, available by anonymous ftp from
ftp.csos.orst.edu as pub/networking/bigfun/usuk_dictionary.txt .

   If you have a (language-related or other) peeve that you want
to mention but don't particularly want to justify, you can try
alt.peeves.  ("What is your pet peeve?" is *not* a frequently asked
question in alt.usage.english, although we frequently get
unsolicited answers to it.  If you're new to this group, chances are
excellent that your particular pet peeve is something that has
already been discussed to death by the regulars.)

   If you're interested in the peculiarities of language as used by
computer users, get the Jargon File by anonymous ftp from
prep.ai.mit.edu (18.71.0.38) under pub/gnu (also available in
paperback form as _The New Hacker's Dictionary_, ed. Eric S.
Raymond, 2nd edition, MIT Press, 1993, ISBN 0-262-68079-3).  This is 
also the place to find answers to questions like "How do you 
pronounce '#'?"  You can discuss hacker language further in the 
newsgroup alt.folklore.computers.

====================================================================

                RECOMMENDED BOOKS
                -----------------                       
Dictionaries
------------

   The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), 2nd ed. (OED2) (Oxford
University Press, 1989, 20 vols.; compact edition, 1991 ISBN 
0-19-861258-3; additions series, 2 vols., 1993, ISBN 0-19-861292-3
and 0-19-861299-0), has no rivals as a historical dictionary of the 
English language.  It is too large for the editors to keep all of 
it up-to-date, and hence should not be relied on for precise 
definitions of technical terms, or for consistent usage labels.

   Webster's Third New International Dictionary (Merriam-Webster,
1961, ISBN 0-87779-206-1) (W3) is the unabridged dictionary to check
for 20th-century U.S. citations of word use, and for precise
definitions of technical terms too rare to appear in collegiate
dictionaries.  People sometimes cite W3 with a later date.  These
later dates refer to the addenda section at the front, *not* to the
body of the dictionary, which is unchanged since 1961.  W3 was
widely criticized by schoolteachers and others for its lack of usage
labels; e.g., it gives "imply" as one of the meanings of "infer" and
"flout" as one of the meanings of "flaunt", without indicating that
these are disputed usage.  Others have defended the lack of usage
labels.  An anthology devoted to the controversy is _Dictionaries
and THAT Dictionary: A Case Book of the Aims of Lexicographers and
the Targets of Reviewers_, ed. James Sledd and Wilma R. Ebbitt
(Scott Foresman, 1962).

   Please don't refer to any dictionary simply as "Webster's".
_Books in Print_ has 5 columns of book titles beginning with
"Webster's"!

   Among collegiate dictionaries, the ones most frequently mentioned
here are Collins English Dictionary (3rd edition, HarperCollins, 1991, 
ISBN 0-00-433287-3) and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth
Edition (Merriam-Webster, 1993, ISBN 0-919028-25-X) (MWCD10).  
Merriam-Webster publishes sub-editions of its collegiate dictionaries, 
so look at the copyright date to see exactly what you have.  _The 
Chambers Dictionary_ (Larousse, 1993, ISBN 0-550-10255-8) is a 
respected British dictionary now also available on CD-ROM.

   If you're interested in etymology, get The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language (3rd edition, Houghton Mifflin,
1992, ISBN 0-395-44895-6) (AHD3) or Henry Cecil Wyld's _Universal
English Dictionary_ (Wordsworth, reprinted from 1932, ISBN
1-85326-940-9).  These are two of the few dictionaries that trace
words back to their reconstructed Indo-European (Aryan) roots.

   Although AHD3 looks larger than a collegiate dictionary, its
word count puts it in the collegiate range.  If you want an
up-to-date dictionary that is larger than a collegiate, get the 
Random House Unabridged Dictionary (2nd edition, Random House, 
revised 1993, ISBN 0-679-42917-4) (RHUD2).

Online dictionaries
-------------------

   The OED is available on CD ROM for PCs, and server-style for Unix
systems.  For info on obtaining the Unix version in North America, 
phone the Open Text Corporation in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada:  
e-mail "info@opentext.com".  If you want to submit citations for the
next edition of the OED, you can contact the OED staff directly at
"oed3@oup.co.uk".  Info from Alex Lange:  The online OED is encoded 
with the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which is ISO 
8879:1986 and is discussed in obscure detail on the comp.text.sgml 
newsgroup.  The funny-looking escape codes beginning with "&" are 
known as "text entity references".  The ISO has defined a slew of 
such for use with SGML:  publishing symbols, math and scientific 
symbols, and so on.  A good place to start for information about 
SGML and its uses is an article "SGML Frees Information", Byte, June 
1992.

   Info from Graham Toal:  The Webster Server is best accessed via
the "webster" program (use the archie service to find it).  An old
Webster's dictionary (not the one used by the NeXT or the Webster
Server, though it looks as if it might have been that version's
grandfather) is available by anonymous ftp from src.doc.ic.ac.uk
in the directory media/literary/dictionaries .  Roget's Thesaurus
(1911 version, out of copyright) is available from
mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu as pub/etext/etext91/roget13.txt .
black.ox.ac.uk has Collins English Dictionary (1st edition)
converted to a Prolog fact base; the Oxford Advanced Learner's
Dictionary; and the MRC Psycholinguistic Database (150,837 word
forms, expanded from the headwords in the Shorter Oxford, with info
about 26 different linguistic properties).  Read the conditions of
use for the Oxford Text Archive materials before using;  most texts
are available for scholarly use and research only.

General reference
-----------------

   _The Oxford Companion to the English Language_ (ed. Tom McArthur,
Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-214183-X) is an
encyclopedia with a wealth of information on various dialects, on
lexicography, and almost everything else except individual words
and expressions.  _Success With Words_ (Reader's Digest, 1983, ISBN
0-88850-117-X) is especially suitable for beginners.

Books on linguistics
--------------------

David Crystal  _The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language_  Cambridge
University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-521-26438-3

David Crystal  _A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics_
Blackwell, 1985, ISBN 0-631-14081-6

William Bright, ed.  _International Encyclopedia of Linguistics_
4 vols., Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-505196-3

R. E. Asher, ed.  _The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics_
10 vols., Pergamon, 1994, ISBN 0-08-035943-4

Grammars
--------

Randolph Quirk et al.  _A Comprehensive Grammar of the English
Language_  Longman, 1985, ISBN 0-582-51734-6

Otto Jespersen  _A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles_
7 volumes, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1909-1949.

Books on usage
--------------

   The best survey of the history of usage disputes and how
they correlate with actual usage is Webster's Dictionary of English
Usage, Merriam-Webster, 1989, ISBN 0-87779-032-9 (WDEU).

   Among conservative prescriptivists, the most highly respected
usage book is the Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H. W.
Fowler -- 1st edition, 1926 (MEU); 2nd edition, revised by Sir
Ernest Gowers, Oxford University Press, 1965, ISBN 0-19-281389-7
(MEU2).  Robert Burchfield (who edited the OED supplement) was
supposedly working on a 3rd edition, although nothing seems to
have come of this.

   _The Elements of Style_ by William Strunk and E. B. White
(Macmillan, 3rd ed. 1979) and Wilson Follett's _Modern American
Usage_ (Hill and Wang, 1966) have their partisans here, although
they aren't as *widely* respected as Fowler.

   Liberals most often refer to the Dictionary of Contemporary
American Usage, by Bergen Evans and Cornelia Evans (Random House,
1957, ISBN 0-8022-0973-4  -- out of print).

Books that discriminate synonyms
--------------------------------

_Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms_, Merriam-Webster, 1984,
ISBN 0-87779-241-0

Style manuals
-------------

    _The Chicago Manual of Style_ (University of Chicago Press,
1982, ISBN 0-226-10390-0) covers manuscript preparation; copy-
editing; proofs; rights and permissions; typography; and format
of tables, captions, bibliographies, and indexes.

Book on mathematical exposition
-------------------------------

Norman E. Steenrod, Paul R. Halmos, Menahem M. Schiffer, Jean A.
Dieudonne  _How to Write Mathematics_  American Mathematical
Society, 1973, ISBN 0-8218-0055-8.

Books on phrasal verbs
----------------------

A. P. Cowie and Ronald Mackin  _Oxford Dictionary of Current
Idiomatic English: Verbs with Prepositions and Particles, Vol. I_
OUP, 1975, ISBN 0-19-431145-7

Rosemary Courtney  _Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs_  Longman,
1983, ISBN 0-582-55530-2

F. T. Wood  _English Verbal Idioms_  London: Macmillan, 1966,
ISBN 0-333-09673-8

F. T. Wood  _English Prepositional Idioms_  London: Macmillan, 1969,
ISBN 0-333-10391-2

Books on Britishisms, Canadianisms, etc.
----------------------------------------

   There are many *hundreds* of differences between British and
American English.  From time to time, we get threads in which
each post mentions *one* of these differences.  Because such a
thread can go on for ever, it's helpful to delimit the topic
more narrowly.

   The books to get are _The Hutchinson British/American Dictionary_
by Norman Moss (Arrow, 1990, ISBN 0-09-978230-8); _British English,
A to Zed_ by Norman W. Schur (Facts on File, 1987, ISBN
0-8160-1635-6); and _Modern American Usage_ by H. W. Horwill
(OUP, 2nd ed., 1935).

   Jeremy Smith (jeremy@csos.orst.edu) has compiled his own
British-American dictionary, available by anonymous ftp from
ftp.csos.orst.edu as pub/networking/bigfun/usuk_dictionary.txt .
He plans to publish it as a paperback.

   For Australian English, see _The Macquarie Dictionary of
Australian Colloquial Language_ (Macquarie, 1988,
ISBN 0-949757-41-1); _The Macquarie Dictionary_ (Macquarie, 1981,
ISBN 0-949757-00-4); _The Australian National Dictionary_ (Oxford
University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-19-55736-5); or _The Dinkum
Dictionary_ (Viking O'Nell, 1988, ISBN 0-670-90419-8).

   For New Zealand English, there's the _Heinemann New Zealand
Dictionary_, ed. H. W. Orseman (Heinemann, 1979, ISBN
0-86863-373-9); and _A Personal Kiwi-Yankee Slanguage Dictionary_,
by Louis S. Leland Jr. (McIndoe, 1987, ISBN 0-86868-001-X).

   For South African English, see _A Dictionary of South African
English_, ed. Jean Branford (OUP, 3rd ed., 1987, ISBN
0-19-570427-4).

   For Canadian English, see _A Dictionary of Canadianisms on
Historical Principles_ (Gage, 1967, ISBN 0-7715-1976-1); the
_Penguin Canadian Dictionary_ (Copp, 1990, ISBN 0-670-81970-0); or
the _Gage Canadian Dictionary_ (Gage, 1982, ISBN 0-7715-9660-X).

Books on phrase origins
-----------------------

Robert Hendrickson  _The Henry Holt Encyclopedia of Word and
Phrase Origins_  Henry Holt, 1987, ISBN 0-8050-1251-6

Nigel Rees   _Bloomsbury Dictionary of Phrase and Allusion_
Bloomsbury, 1991, ISBN 0-7475-1217-5

Christine Anmer  _Have a Nice Day -- No Problem! : A
Dictionary of Cliches_  Plume Penguin, 1992, ISBN
0-452-27004-9

Ivor H. Evans, ed.  _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_
Harper & Row, 1981, ISBN 0-02-418230-3

Books on "bias-free"/"politically correct" language
---------------------------------------------------

Rosalie Maggio  _The Bias-Free Word Finder: A Dictionary of
Nondiscriminatory Language_  Beacon, 1992, ISBN 0-8070-6003-8

Nigel Rees  _The Politically Correct Phrasebook: What They
Say You Can and Cannot Say in the 1990s_  Bloomsbury, 1993,
ISBN 0-7475-1426-7

Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf  _The Official Politically
Correct Dictionary and Handbook_, Villard, 1993, ISBN
0-679-74944-6

Books on group names
--------------------

James Lipton  _An Exaltation of Larks_  Viking Penguin, 1991,
ISBN 0-670-3044-6

====================================================================

                ARTIFICIAL DIALECTS
                -------------------

Basic English
-------------

   Basic English (where "Basic" stands for "British American
Scientific International Commercial") is a subset of English with
a base vocabulary of 850 words, propounded by C. K. Ogden in 1929.
Look under "Ogden" in your library's author index if you're
interested.  (We're not.)

E-prime
-------

   E-prime is a subset of standard idiomatic English that eschews
all forms of the verb "to be" (e.g., you can't say "You are an ass"
or "You an ass", but you can say "You act like an ass").  The
original reference is D. David Bourland, Jr., "A linguistic note:
write in E-prime" _General Semantics Bulletin_, 1965/1966, 32 and
33, 60-61.  Albert Ellis wrote a book in E-prime (_Sex and the
Liberated Man_).  You can also look at the April 1992 issue of the
_Atlantic_ if you're interested.  (We're not.)  The following book
contains articles both pro and con on E-Prime:  _To Be or Not: An
E-Prime Anthology_, ed. D. David Bourland and Paul D. Johnston,
International Society for General Semantics, 1991, ISBN
0-918970-38-5.

====================================================================

                PRONUNCIATION
                -------------

How to represent pronunciation in ASCII
---------------------------------------

   Beware of using ad hoc methods to indicate pronunciation.  The
problem with ad hoc methods is that they often wrongly assume your
dialect to have certain features in common with the readers'
dialect.  You may pronounce "bother" to rhyme with "father"; some of
the readers here don't.  You may pronounce "cot" and "caught" alike;
some of the readers here don't.  You may pronounce "caught" and
"court" alike; some of the readers here don't.

   The standard way to represent pronunciation (used in the latest
British Dictionaries and by linguists worldwide) is the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).  For a complete guide to
the IPA, see _Phonetic Symbol Guide_ by Geoffrey K. Pullum and
William A. Ladusaw (University of Chicago Press, 1986, ISBN
0-226-68532-2).  IPA uses many special symbols; on the Net, where
we're restricted to ASCII symbols, we must find a way to make do.

   The following scheme is due to Evan Kirshenbaum.  I show here
only examples for the sounds most often referred to in this
newsgroup.  The examples transcribe British Received Pronunciation
(RP) except as noted.  For Evan's complete scheme, illustrated
with examples from U.S. English, see Evan's own regular posts here 
and to sci.lang, or send e-mail to Evan (kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com).

The consonant symbols [b], [d], [f], [h], [k], [l], [m], [n], [p],
[r], [s], [t], [v], [w], [z] have their usual English values.

[A] = [<script a>] as in "calm" /kA:m/, French "bas" /bA/
[A.] = [<turned script a>] as in "odd" /A.d/  (Not much used to
      transcribe U.S. pronunciation; the tendency is to use [A]
      or [O] instead.)
[a] as in French "ami" /ami/, German "Mann" /man/, Italian "pasta"
      /'pasta/, Chicago "pop" /pap/, Boston "park" /pa:k/.
      Also in diphthongs: "dive" /daIv/, "out" /aUt/
[C] = [<c cedilla>] as in German "ich" /IC/
[D] = [<edh>] as in "this" /DIs/
[E] = [<epsilon>] as in "end" /End/
[e] as in "eight" /eIt/, "chaos" /'keA.s/
[g] as in "get" /gEt/
[I] = [<iota>] as in "it" /It/
[I.] = [<small capital y>] as in German "Gl"uck" /glI.k/
[i] as in "eat" /i:t/
[j] as in "yes" /jEs/
[N] = [<eng>] as in "hang" /h&N/
[O] = [<open o>] as in "all" /O:l/, "oil" /OIl/
[o] as in U.S. "old" /oUld/, French "beau" /bo/
[R] = [<right-hook schwa>], equivalent to /@r/, /r-/, or even /V"r/
[S] = [<esh>] as in "ship" /SIp/
[T] = [<theta>] as in "thin" /TIn/
[t!] = [<turned t>] as in "tsk-tsk" or "tut-tut" /t! t!/
[U] = [<upsilon>] as in "pull" /pUl/
[u] as in "ooze" /u:z/
[V] = [<turned v>] as in "up" /Vp/
[V"] = [<reversed epsilon>] as in "fern" /fV":n/ (rhotic /fV"rn/)
[W] = [<o-e ligature>] as in French "heure" /Wr/,
      German "K"opfe" /'kWpf@/
[x] as in Scots "loch" /lA.x/, German "Bach" /bax/
[Y] = [<slashed o>] as in French "peu" /pY/, German "sch"on" /SYn/,
      Scots "guidwillie" /gYd'wIli/
[y] as in French "lune" /lyn/, German "m"ude" /'myd@/
[Z] = [<yogh>] as in "beige" /beIZ/
[&] = [<ash>] as in "ash" /&S/
[@] = [<schwa>] as in "lemon" /'lEm@n/
[?] = [<glottal>] as in "uh-oh" /V?ou/
[*] = [<fish-hook r>], a short tap of the tongue use by some U.S.
      speakers in "pedal", "petal", and by Scots speakers in
      "pearl":  all /pE*@l/
- previous consonant syllabic as in "bundle" /'bVnd@l/ or /'bVndl-/,
      "button" /bVt@n/ or /bVtn-/
~~ previous sound nasalized
: previous sound lengthened
; previous sound palatalized
' following syllable has primary stress
, following syllable has secondary stress

Here is the scheme compared with the transcriptions in 4 U.S.
dictionaries.  (Most British dictionaries now use IPA for their
transcriptions.)

       Merriam-Webster    American Heritage Random House     Webster's New World

[A]    a umlaut           a umlaut          a umlaut          a umlaut
[A.]   (merged with [A])  o breve           o                 (merged with [A])
[a]    a overdot          (merged with [A]) A                 a overdot
/AI/   i macron           i macron          i macron          i macron
/AU/   a u overdot        ou                ou                ou
[C]    (merged with [x])  (merged with [x]) (merged with [x]) H
[D]    th underlined      th in italics     th slashed        th in italics
/dZ/   j                  j                 j                 j
[E]    e                  e breve           e                 e
/E@/   a schwa            a circumflex      a circumflex      (merged with [e])
/eI/   a macron           a macron          a macron          a macron
[g]    g                  g                 g                 g
[I]    i                  i breve           i                 i
[I.]   ue ligature        (merged with [y]) (merged with [y]) (merged with [y])
[i]    e macron           e macron          e macron          e macron
[j]    y                  y                 y                 y
[N]    <eng>              ng                ng                <eng>
[O]    o overdot          o circumflex      o circumflex      o circumflex
/OI/   o overdot i        oi                oi                oi ligature
/oU/   o macron           o macron          o macron          o macron
[S]    sh                 sh                sh                sh ligature
[T]    th                 th                th                th ligature
/tS/   ch                 ch                ch                ch ligature
[U]    u overdot          oo breve          oo breve          oo
[u]    u umlaut           oo macron         oo macron         oo macron
[V]    (merged with [@])  u breve           u                 u
[V"]   (merged with [@])  u circumflex      u circumflex      u circumflex
[W]    oe ligature        oe ligature       OE ligature       o umlaut
[x]    k underlined       KH                KH                kh ligature
[Y]    oe ligature macron (merged with [W]) (merged with [W]) (merged with [W])
[y]    ue ligature macron u umlaut          Y                 u umlaut
[Z]    zh                 zh                zh                zh ligature
[&]    a                  a breve           a                 a
[@]    schwa              schwa             schwa             schwa
-      superscript schwa  syllabicity mark  unmarked          '

rhotic vs non-rhotic, intrusive "r"
-----------------------------------

   A rhotic speaker is one who pronounces as a consonant postvocalic
"r", i.e. the "r" after a vowel in words like "world" /wV"rld/.  A
nonrhotic speaker either does not pronounce the "r" at all /wV"ld/
or pronounces it as a schwa /wV"@ld/.  British Received
Pronunciation (RP) and many other dialects of English are nonrhotic.

   Many nonrhotic speakers (including RP speakers, but excluding
most nonrhotic speakers in the southern U.S.) use a "linking r" --
they don't pronounce "r" in "for" by itself /fO/, but they do
pronounce the first "r" in "for ever" /fO 'rEv@/.  Linking "r"
differs from French liaison in that the former happens in any
phonetically appropriate context, whereas the latter also needs
the right syntactic context.

   A further development of "linking r" is "intrusive r".
Intrusive-r speakers, because the vowels in "law" (which they
pronounce the same as "lore") and "idea" (which they pronounce
to rhyme with "fear") are identical for them to vowels spelled
with "r", intrude an r in such phrases as "law [r]and order" and
"The idea [r]of it!"  They do NOT intrude an [r] after vowels that
are never spelled with an "r".  Some people blanch at intrusive r,
but most RP speakers now use it.

How do Americans pronounce "dog"?
---------------------------------

   Very few people in North America distinguish all three vowels
[A], [A.], and [O].  Speakers in Eastern and Southern U.S. merge
[A.] and [A], so that "bother" and "father" rhyme.  Speakers in
Western U.S. and in Canada merge [A.] and [O], so that "cot" and
"caught", "Don" and "Dawn" are pronounced alike.  Some speakers
merge all three vowels.  The Oxford Companion to the English 
Language says:  "The merger of vowels in _tot_ and _taught_ begins 
in a narrow band in central Pennsylvania and spreads north and
south to influence the West, where the merger is universal. [...]
In New England, where the merger is beginning to occur, speakers
select the first vowel; in the Midland and West, the second vowel
is used for both."  Although [A.] is seldom used to transcribe
American pronunciation, the vowel transcribed [O] may sound like
[A.] to non-American speakers, or it may sound like [O].

   The word "dog" is a special case.  U.S. dictionaries give the
pronunciations /dOg/, /dAg/ in that order.  "Dawg", the name of
the family dog in the comic strip "Hi and Lois", is presumably
intended to convey the pronunciation /dOg/ to (or from) people
who usually pronounce the word /dAg/.

Words pronounced differently according to context
-------------------------------------------------

   There is a general tendency in English whereby when a word with a
stressed final syllable is followed by another word without a pause,
the stress moves forward: "kangaROO", but "KANGaroo court";
"afterNOON", but "AFTernoon nap"; "above BOARD", but "an aBOVEboard
deal".  This happens chiefly in noun phrases, but not exclusively so
("acquiESCE" versus "ACquiesce readily").  Consider also "Chinese"
and all numbers ending in "-teen".

   When "have to" means "must", the [v] in "have" becomes an [f].
Similarly, in "has to", [z] becomes [s].  When "used to" and
"supposed to" are used in their senses of "formerly" and "ought",
the "-sed" is pronounced /st/; when they're used in other senses,
it's /zd/.

   In many dialects, "the" is pronounced /D@/ before a consonant,
and /DI/ before a vowel.  Many foreigners learning English are
taught this rule explicitly.  Native English speakers are also
taught this rule when we sing in choirs.  (We do it instinctively in
rapid speech; but in the slower pace of singing, it has to be
brought to our conscious attention.)

Words whose spelling has influenced their pronunciation
-------------------------------------------------------

   "Cocaine" used to be pronounced /'cocain/ (3 syllables).
"Waistcoat" used to be pronounced /'wEskIt/.  "Humble" and "human"
were borrowed from French with no [h] in their pronunciation.
"Forte" in the sense of "strong point" comes from French, where
the "e" is not pronounced.

   "Zoo" is an abbreviation of "zoological garden".  The (popular
but stigmatized) pronunciation of "zoological" as /zu@'lA.dZik@l/
(as opposed to /zo@'lA.dZik@l/) is due to the influence of "zoo".

   "Elephant" was "olifaunt" in Middle English, but its spelling was
restored to reflect the Latin "elephantus".  Similarly, "crocodile"
was "cokedrill".

   "Golf" is Scots.  The traditional Scots pronunciation is /gof/.
"Ralph" was traditionally pronounced /ref/ in Britain -- Gilbert and 
Sullivan rhymed it with "waif" in _H.M.S. Pinafore_; that's how the 
composer Ralph Vaughan Williams pronounced his name; and even today
actor Ralph Fiennes (of _Schindler's List_ fame) is said to 
pronounce his name /ref faInz/.

   "Medicine" and "regiment" were two-syllable words in the 19th
century:  /'mEdsIn/ and /'rEdZm@nt/.  /'mEdsIn/ can still be heard
in RP.

   King Arthur would have pronounced his name /'artur/.

   The new pronunciations in such cases are called "spelling
pronunciations".  The "speak-as-you-spell movement" is described in
the MEU2 article on "pronunciation".
        
====================================================================

                USAGE DISPUTES
                --------------

"acronym"
---------

   Strictly, an acronym is a string of initial letters pronounceable 
as a word, such as "NATO".  Abbreviations like "NBC" have been 
variously designated "alphabetisms" and "initialisms", although some
people do call them acronyms.  WDEU says, "Dictionaries, however,
do not make this distinction [between acronyms and initialisms] 
because writers in general do not"; but two or the best known books 
on acronyms are titled _Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations 
Dictionary_ (19th ed., Gale 1993) and _Concise Dictionary of 
Acronyms and Initialisms_ (Facts on File, 1988).

  The Network Dictionary of Acronyms is available through World Wide
Web ("http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/acronyms/acro.html") or by e-mail
(send the word "help" to freetext@iruccvax.ucc.ie).

"alot"
------

   This spelling of "a lot" is frequently mentioned as a pet peeve.
It rarely appears in print, but is often found in the U.S. in
informal writing and on Usenet.  There does not seem to be a 
corresponding "alittle".

"alright"
---------

   The spelling "alright" is recorded from 1887.  It was defended
by Fowler (in one of the Society for Pure English tracts, not in
MEU), on the analogy of "almighty" and "altogether", and on the
grounds that "The answers are alright" (= "The answers are O.K.") is
less ambiguous than "The answers are all right" (which could mean
"All the answers are right".)  But it is still widely condemned.

"between you and I"
-------------------

   The prescriptive rule is to use "you and I" in the same contexts
as "I", and "you and me" in the same contexts as "me".  But English
speakers have a tendency to regard such compounds as units, so that
some speakers use "you and me" exclusively, and others use "you and
I" exclusively, although such practices "have no place in modern
edited prose" (WDEU).  "Between you and I" was used by Shakespeare 
in _The Merchant of Venice_.  Since this antedates the teaching of 
English grammar, it is probably NOT "hypercorrection".  (This is 
mentioned merely to caution against the hypercorrection theory, not 
to defend the phrase.)  Shakespeare also used "between you and me".

"could care less"
-----------------

   The idiom "couldn't care less", meaning "doesn't care at all"
(the meaning in full is "cares so little that he couldn't possibly 
care less"), originated in Britain around 1940.  "Could care less", 
which is used with the same meaning, developed in the U.S. around 
1960.  We get disputes about whether the latter was originally a 
mis-hearing of the former; whether it was originally ironic; or 
whether it arose from uses where the negative element was separated 
from "could" ("None of these writers could care less...")   Meaning-
saving elaborations have also been suggested, e.g., "If I cared even 
one iota -- which I don't --, then I could care less"; "I could care
less, but I'd have to try."  

   An earlier transition in which "not" was dropped was the one that 
gave us "but" in the sense of "only".  ("I will not say but one 
word", where "but" meant "(anything) except", became "I will say but 
one word.")

   Other idioms that say the opposite of what they mean include:  
"head over heels" (which could mean turning cartwheels, i.e. "head 
over heels over head over heels", but is also used to mean "upside-
down", i.e. "heels over head"); "Don't sneeze more than you can 
help", (meaning "more than you cannot help"; "help" here means 
"prevent"); "It's hard to open, much less acknowledge, the letters" 
(where "less" means "harder", i.e. "more"); "I shouldn't wonder if 
it didn't rain"; "I miss not seeing you"; and "I turned my life 
around 360 degrees" -- not to mention undisputedly ironic phrases 
like "fat chance", "Thanks a *lot*", and "I should worry".

"different to", "different than"
--------------------------------

   "Different from" is the construction that no one will object to.
"Different to" is fairly common informally in Britain, but rare in
the U.S.  "Different than" is sometimes used to avoid the cumbersome
"different from that which", etc. (e.g. "a very different Pamela
than I used to leave all company and pleasure for" -- Samuel
Richardson).  Some U.S. speakers use "different than" exclusively.
Some people have insisted on "different from" on the grounds that
"from" is required after "to differ".  But Fowler points out that
there are many other adjectives that do not conform to the
construction of their parent verbs (e.g., "accords with", but 
"according to"; "derogates from", but "derogatory to").

double "is"
-----------

   Double "is", as in "The reason is, is that..." is a recent U.S.
development, much decried.  Of course, "What this is is..." is
undisputedly correct.

"due to"
--------

   "Due to" meaning "caused by" is undisputedly correct in contexts
where "due" can be construed as an adjective (e.g., "failure due to
carelessness").  Its use in contexts where "due" is an adverb 
("He failed due to carelessness") has been disputed.  Fowler says
that "_due to_ is often used by the illiterate as though it had
passed, like _owing to_, into a mere compound preposition".  But
Fowler was writing in 1926; what hadn't happened then may well
have happened by now.

Gender-neutral pronouns
-----------------------

   Singular "they" (as in "Everyone was blowing their nose"), which
has been used in English since the time of Chaucer, has gained
popularity recently as a result of the move towards gender-neutral
language.  Prescriptive grammarians have traditionally (since 1795,
although the actual practice goes right back to 1200) prescribed
"Everyone was blowing his nose."

   Proposals for other gender-neutral pronouns get made from time to
time, and some can be found in actual use ("sie" and "hir" are
the ones most frequently found on Usenet).   Cecil Adams, in _Return
of the Straight Dope_ (Ballantine, 1994, ISBN 0-345-38111-4) says
that some eighty such terms have been proposed, the first of them in
the 1850s. 

   Discussions about gender-neutral pronouns tend to go round and
round and never reach a conclusion.  Please refrain.

   (We also get disputes about the use of the word "gender" in the
sense of "sex", i.e. whether a human being is male or female.
This also dates from the 14th century.  By 1900 it was restricted
to jocular use, but has now been revived because of the "sexual
relations" sense of "sex".)

"hopefully", "thankfully"
-------------------------

   The OED's first citation for "hopefully" in the passive sense
(= "It is to be hoped that") is from 1932, but no unmistakable
citation has been found between then and 1954.  (WDEU has three
ambiguous citations dated 1941, 1951, and 1954.)  WDEU's first
citation for the passive sense of "thankfully" (= "We can be
thankful that") is from 1963.  These uses became popular in the
early '60s, and have been widely criticized on the grounds that
they should have been "hopably" and "thankably" (on the analogy of
"predictably", "regrettably", "inexplicably", etc.).  You'll find
"hopefully" defended in "Mathematical Writing", a set of lecture
notes from one of Knuth's courses.

   The disputed, passive use of "hopefully" is often referred to as
"sentence-modifying"; but it can also modify a single word, as is
hopefully clear from this example. :-)

   Discussions about these words go round and round for ever without
reaching a conclusion.  We advise you to refrain.

"It's me" vs "It is I"
----------------------
(freely adapted from an article by Roger Lustig)

   Fowler says:  "_me_ is technically wrong in _It wasn't me_ etc.;
but the phrase being of its very nature colloquial, such a lapse is 
of no importance".  

   The rule for what he and others consider technically right is
*not* (as is commonly misstated) that the nominative should *always*
be used after "to be".  Rather, it is that "to be" should link two
noun phrases of the same case, whether this be nominative or 
accusative:

	I believe that he is I.  Who do you believe that he is?
	I believe him to be me.  Whom do you believe him to be?
	
According to the traditional grammar being used here, "to be" is not
a transitive verb, but a *copulative* verb.  When you say that A is 
B, you don't imply that A, by being B, is doing something to B.  
(After all, B is also doing it to A.)  Other verbs considered
copulative are "to become", "to remain", "to seem", and "to look".

   Sometimes in English, though, "to be" does seem to have the
force of a transitive verb; e.g., in Gelett Burgess's:

	I never saw a Purple Cow,
	  I never hope to see one;
	But I can tell you, anyhow,
	  I'd rather see than be one.

The occurrence of "It's me", etc., is no doubt partly due to this
perceived transitive force.  In the French _C'est moi_, often cited
as analogous, _moi_ is not in the accusative, but a special form 
known as the "disjunctive", used for emphasis.  If _etre_ were a
transitive verb in French, _C'est moi_ would be _Ce m'est_.

   In languages like German and Latin that inflect between the
nominative and the accusative, B in "A is B" is nominative just like
A.  In English, no nouns and only a few personal pronouns ("I",
"we", "thou", "he", "she", "they" and "who") inflect between the
nominative and the accusative.  In other words, we've gotten out of
the habit, for the most part.

   Also, in English we derive meaning from word position, far more
than one would in Latin, somewhat more than in German, even.  In
those languages, one can rearrange sentences drastically for
rhetorical or other purposes without confusion (heh) because
inflections (endings, etc.) tell you how the words relate to one
another.  In English, "The dog ate the cat" and "The cat ate the
dog" are utterly different in meaning, and if we wish to have the
former meaning with "cat" prior to "dog" in the sentence, we have to
say "The cat was eaten by the dog" (change of voice) or "It is the
cat that the dog ate."  In German, one can reverse the meaning by
inflecting the word (or its article):  _Der Hund ass die Katze_ and
_Den Hund ass die Katze_ reverse the meaning of who ate whom.
In Latin, things are even more flexible: almost any word order will
do:
        Feles edit canem
        Feles canem edit
        Canem edit feles
        Canem feles edit
        Edit canem feles
        Edit feles canem
all mean the same, the choice of word order being made perhaps for
rhetorical or poetic purpose.

   English is pretty much the opposite of that:  hardly any
inflection, great emphasis on order.  As a result, things have
gotten a little irregular with the personal pronouns.  And there's
uncertainty as to how to use them; the usual rules aren't there,
because the usual word needs no rules, being the same for nominative
and accusative.

   The final factor is the traditional use of Latin grammatical
concepts to teach English grammar.   This historical quirk dates to
the 17th century, and has never quite left us.  From this we get the
Latin-derived rule, which Fowler still acknowledges.  And we *do* 
follow that rule to some extent: "Who are they?" (not "Who are 
them?" or "Whom are they?")  "We are they!" (in response to the 
preceding)  "It is I who am at fault."  "That's the man who 
he is."

   But not always.  "It is me" is attested since the 16th Century.
(Speakers who would substitute "me" for "I" in the "It is I who am
at fault" example would also sacrifice the agreement of person, and
substitute "is" for "am".)

"less" vs "fewer"
----------------

   The rule usually encountered is:  use "fewer" for things you
count (individually), and "less" for things you measure:  "fewer
apples", "less water".  Since "less" is also used as an adverb
("less successful"), "fewer" helps to distinguish "fewer successful 
professionals" (fewer professionals who are successful) from "less 
successful professionals" (professionals who are less successful).  
(No such distinction is possible with "more", which serves as the
antonym of both "less" and "fewer".)  "Less" has been used in the 
sense of "fewer" since the time of King Alfred the Great (ninth
century), and is still common in that sense, especially informally 
in the U.S., but in Fowler's day it was so rare in British English 
that he didn't even mention it.

"more/most/very unique"
-----------------------

   Fowler and other conservatives urge restricting the meaning
of "unique" to "having no like or equal".  (OED says "in this sense,
readopted from French at the end of the 18th Century and regarded as
a foreign word down to the middle of the 19th.")  Used in this 
sense, it is an incomparable:  either something is "unique" or it 
isn't, and there can be no degrees of uniqueness.  Those who use
phrases like "more unique", "most unique", and "very unique"
are using "unique" in the weaker sense of "unusual, distinctive".

"none is" vs "none are"
-----------------------

   With mass nouns, you have to use the singular.  ("None of the
wheat is...")  With count nouns, you can use either the singular or
the plural.  ("None of the books is..." or "None of the books
are...")  Usually, the plural sounds more natural, unless you're
trying to emphasize the idea of "not one", or if the words that
follow work better in the singular.

   The fullest (prescriptive) treatment is in Eric Partridge's book
_Usage and Abusage_ (Penguin, 1970, 0-14-051024-9).  In the original
edition Partridge had prescribed the singular in certain cases, but
a rather long-winded letter from a correspondent persuaded him to
retract.

Plurals of Latin/Greek words
----------------------------

   Not all Latin words ending in "-us" had plurals in "-i".
"Apparatus", "hiatus", "impetus", "nexus", "plexus", "prospectus",
and "status" were 4th declension in Latin, and had plurals in "-us"
with a long "u".  "Corpus", "genus", and "opus" were 3rd declension,
with plurals "corpora", "genera", and "opera".  "Omnibus" and
"rebus" were not nominative nouns in Latin.  "Ignoramus" was not a
noun in Latin.  "Caucus" and "syllabus" were not Latin words.

   Not all classical words ending in "-a" had plurals in "-ae".
"Anathema", "aroma", "bema", "carcinoma", "charisma", "diploma",
"dogma", "drama", "edema", "enema", "enigma", "lemma", "lymphoma", 
"magma", "melisma", "miasma", "sarcoma", "schema", "soma", "stigma", 
"stoma", and "trauma" are from Greek, where they had plurals in 
"-ata".  "Quota" was not a noun in Latin.  (It comes from the 
Latin expression _quota pars_, where _quota_ is the feminine 
form of an interrogative pronoun meaning "what number".  In *that*
use, it did have plural _quotae_, but in English the only plural
is "quotas".)

   Not all classical-sounding words ending in "-um" have plurals in
"-a".  "Factotum", "nostrum", "quantum", and "quorum" were not nouns
in Latin.  "Conundrum", "panjandrum", "tantrum", and "vellum" are 
not Latin words.

   If in doubt, consult a dictionary (or use the English plural in
"-s" or "-es").  One plural that you *will* find in U.S. 
dictionaries, "octopi", raises the ire of purists (the Greek plural 
is "octopodes").

   The classical-style plurals of "penis" and "clitoris" are "penes"
/'piniz/ and "clitorides" /klI'tOrIdiz/.

Foreign plurals => English singulars
------------------------------------

   Some uses of classical plurals as singulars in English are
undisputed:  "opera", "stamina".  ("Opera", still used as the
plural of "opus", became plural in Italian in the sense "musical
drama".)  "Agenda" once excited controversy but is now accepted.  
Others are the subject of current controversy:  "data" (used by 
Winston Churchill!), "erotica", "insignia", "media", "regalia", 
"trivia".  Yet others are still widely stigmatized: "bacteria", 
"candelabra", "criteria", "curricula", "phenomena", "strata".

   "Bona fides", "kudos", and "minutia" are singulars in Latin or
Greek.

   "Graffiti" (plural in Italian) is disputed in English.  But
"zucchini" (also plural in Italian) is the invariable singular form 
in English (the English plural is "zucchini" or "zucchinis").  The 
names of types of pasta (cannelloni, cappelletti, ditali, fusilli, 
gnocchi, macaroni, manicotti, ravioli, rigatoni, spaghetti, 
spaghettini, tagliarini, tortellini, vermicelli, ziti, which are 
masculine plural in Italian; and conchiglie, farfalle, fettucine, 
linguine, rotelle, which are feminine plural) are treated as mass 
nouns in English:  they take singular verbs, but plurals are not 
made from them.  (Many of the words listed as disputed above are 
also treated as mass nouns when they are used as singulars.)

Preposition at end
------------------

   Yes, yes, we've all heard the following anecdotes:

(1) Winston Churchill was editing a proof of one of his books, when
he noticed that an editor had clumsily rearranged one of Churchill's
sentences so that it wouldn't end with a preposition.  Churchill
scribbled in the margin, "This is the sort of English up with which
I will not put."  (This is often quoted with "arrant nonsense"
substituted for "English", or with other variations.  The Oxford
English Dictionary cites Sir Ernest Gowers' _Plain Words_ (1948),
where the anecdote begins, "It is said that Churchill..."; so we
don't know exactly what Churchill wrote.)

(2) The Guinness Book of (World) Records used to have a category
for "most prepositions at end".  The incumbent record was a sentence
put into the mouth of a boy who didn't want to be read excerpts from
a book about Australia as a bedtime story:  "What did you bring that
book that I don't want to be read to from out of about 'Down Under'
up for?"  Mark Brader (msb@sq.com -- all this is to the best of his
recollection; he didn't save the letter, and doesn't have access to
the British editions) wrote to Guinness, asking:  "What did you say 
that the sentence with the most prepositions at the end was 'What 
did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of 
about "Down Under" up for?' for?  The preceding sentence has one 
more."  Norris McWhirter replied, promising to include this 
improvement in the next British edition, but actually it seems that 
Guinness, no doubt eventually realising that this could be done 
recursively, dropped the category.

(3) "Excuse me, where is the library at?"
    "Here at Hahvahd, we never end a sentence with a preposition."
    "O.K.  Excuse me, where is the library at, *asshole*?"

Fowler and nearly every other respected prescriptivist see
NOTHING wrong with ending a clause with a preposition; Fowler 
calls it a "superstition".  ("Never end a sentence with a 
preposition" is how the superstition is usually stated, although it 
would "naturally" extend to any placement of a preposition later 
than the noun or pronoun it governs.)  Indeed, Fowler considers "a 
good land to live in" grammatically superior to "a good land in 
which to live", since one cannot say *"a good land which to 
inhabit".

Repeated words after abbreviations
----------------------------------

   Disputes occur about the legitimacy of placing after an acronym/
initialism the last word that is abbreviated in it, e.g., "AC 
current", "the HIV virus".  "AC" and "HIV" by themselves will
certainly suffice in most contexts.  But such collocations tend to
become regarded as irreducible and uninterpretable words.  "The
SNOBOL language" and "BASIC code" are as good as "the BASIC
language" and "SNOBOL code"; and why should "an LED display" (Light
Emitting Diode display) be reasonable, but not "an LCD display"
(Liquid Crystal Display display)?

"shall" vs "will", "should" vs "would"
--------------------------------------

   The traditional rules for using these (based on the usage of
educated Southern Englishmen in the 18th and 19th centuries) are
quite intricate, and require some choices ("Should you like to see
London?";  "The doctor thought I should die") that are no longer
idiomatically reasonable.  But if you're dead set on learning them,
they're set out in _The King's English_, by Fowler and Fowler
(OUP, 1931, ISBN 0-19-881330-9).  Usage outside England has always
been different:  the old joke, where the Irishman cries for help:
"I will drown and no one shall save me" and the Englishman mistakes
this for a suicide resolution, is contrived, in that an Irishman
would far more likely say "no one will save me."

split infinitive
----------------

   Sir Ernest Gowers wrote in _The Complete Plain Words_ (HMSO, 
1954):  "The well-known [...] rule against splitting an infinitive 
means that nothing must come between 'to' and the infinitive.  It is 
a bad name, as was pointed out by Jespersen [...] 'because we have 
many infinitives without _to_, as "I made him go".  _To_ therefore
is no more an essential part of the infinitive than the definite
article is an essential part of a nominative, and no one would think
of calling _the good man_ a split nominative.'  It is a bad rule 
too; it increases the difficulty of writing clearly [...]."  The 
split infinitive construction goes back to the 14th century, but was 
relatively rare until the 19th.

   Fowler wrote (in the article POSITION OF ADVERBS, in MEU) that 
"to" + infinitive is "a definitely enough recognized verb-form to 
make the clinging together of its parts the natural and normal 
thing"; "there is, however, no sacrosanctity about that 
arrangement".  There are many considerations that should govern 
placement of adverbs:  there are other sentence elements, he said, 
such as the verb and its object, that have a *stronger* affinity for 
each other; but only avoidance of the split infinitive "has become 
a fetish".  

   Thus, although in "I quickly hid it", the most natural place for 
"quickly" is before "hid", "I am going to hide it quickly" is 
slightly more natural than "I am going to quickly hide it".  But "I 
am going to quickly hide it" is itself preferable to "I am going 
quickly to hide it" (splitting "going to" changes the meaning from 
indicating futurity to meaning physically moving somewhere), or to 
"I am going to hide quickly it" (separation of the verb from its
object).  And even separating the verb from its object may become
the preferred place for the adverb if "it" is replaced by a long 
noun phrase ("I am going to hide quickly any evidence of our ever
having been here").

   Phrases consisting of "to be" or "to have" followed by an adverb
and a participle are *not* split infinitives, and constitute the 
natural word order.  "To generally be accepted" and "to always have
thought" are split infinitives; "to be generally accepted", "to have 
always thought" are not.

   Negative and restrictive adverbs ("not", "never", "hardly",
"scarcely") are characteristically placed before "to" ("To be, or
not to be"); but placing adverbs of manner in this position is 
considered good style only in legal English ("It is his duty
faithfully to execute the provisions...").

   Clumsy avoidance of split infinitives often leads to ambiguity:
does "You fail completely to recognise" mean "You completely fail
to recognise", or "You fail to completely recognise"?  Ambiguous
split infinitives are much rarer, but do exist:  does "to further
cement trade relations" mean "to cement trade relations further",
or "to promote relations with the cement trade"?

   The most frequently cited split infinitive is from the opening
voice-over of _Star Trek_:  "to boldly go where no man has gone
before".  (_Star Trek: The Next Generation_ had "one" in place of
"man".)  Here, "boldly" modifies the entire verb phrase:  the
meaning is "to have the boldness that the unprecedentedness of the
destinations requires".  If "boldly" were placed after "go", it 
would modify only "go", changing the meaning to "to go where no
man has gone before, and by the way, to go there boldly".

   Hardly any serious commentator believes that infinitives should 
never be split.  The dispute is between those who believe that split
infinitives should be avoided when this can be done with no 
sacrifice of clarity or naturalness, and those who believe that no 
effort whatever should be made to avoid them.

"that" vs "which"
-----------------

   In "The family that prays together stays together", the clause
"that prays together" is called a RESTRICTIVE CLAUSE because it
restricts the main statement to a limited class of family.  In
"The family, which is the basic unit of human society, is
weakening", "which ... society" is called a NONRESTRICTIVE CLAUSE
because it makes an additional assertion about the family without
restricting the main statement.

   It is generally agreed that nonrestrictive clauses should be
set off by commas; restrictive clauses, not.  Nonrestrictive
clauses are now nearly always introduced by "which" or "who"
(although "that" was common in earlier centuries).  Fowler 
encourages us to begin restrictive clauses with "that"; but this 
is not a binding rule (although some copy-editors do go on "which 
hunts"), and indeed is not possible if a preposition is to precede 
the relative pronoun.

   Object relative pronouns can be omitted altogether ("the book
that I read" or "the book I read"); in standard English, subject
relative pronouns cannot be omitted, although in some varieties
of informal spoken English, they are ("There's a man came into
the office the other day".)

the the "hoi polloi" debate
---------------------------

   Yes, "hoi" means "the" in Greek, but the first 5 citations in the
OED, and the most famous use of this phrase in English (in Gilbert
and Sullivan's operetta _Iolanthe_), put "the" in front of "hoi".
This is not a unique case:  words like "alchemy", "alcohol",
"algebra", "alligator", and "lacrosse" incorporate articles from
other languages, but can still be prefixed in English with "the".
"The El Alamein battle" (which occurred in Egypt during World War 
II) contains THREE articles.

you saying
----------

   In "You saying you're sorry alters the case", the subject of
"alters" is not "you", since the verb is singular.  Fowler called
this construction the "fused participle", and recommended "Your
saying..." instead.  The fused participle *can* lead to ambiguity:
does "Citizens participating helped the project" mean "Those 
citizens who participated helped the project", or "The fact that 
citizens participated helped the project"?  (Placing commas 
around "participating" would yield a third meaning.)  Appending an 
apostrophe to "citizens" would make the second meaning clear.

   Other commentators have been less critical of the fused 
participle than Fowler.  Jespersen traces the construction as the 
last in a series of developments where gerunds, which originally 
functioned strictly as nouns, have taken on more and more verb-like 
properties ("the showing of mercy" => "showing of mercy" => "showing 
mercy").  Partridge defends the construction by citing lexical
noun-plus-gerund compounds.  In most of these (e.g., 
"time-sharing"), the noun functions as the object of the gerund, but 
in some recent compounds (e.g., "machine learning"), it functions as 
the subject.

====================================================================

                PUNCTUATION
                -----------

"." after abbreviations
-----------------------

   Fowler recommends putting a "." only after abbreviations that do
not include the last letter of the word they're abbreviating, e.g.,
"Capt." for captain but "Cpl" for corporal.  In some English-
speaking countries, many people follow this rule, but not in the
U.S., where "Mr." and "Dr." prevail.

", vs ,"
--------

   According to William F. Phillips (wfp@world.std.com), in the days 
when printing used raised bits of metal, "." and "," were the most 
delicate, and tended to lose their moorings if they had a '"' on one 
side and a blank space on the other.  Hence the convention arose of 
always using '."' and ',"' rather than '".' and '",', regardless of 
logic.

   Fowler was a strong advocate of logical placement of punctuation
marks, i.e. only placing them inside the quotation marks if they
were part of the quoted matter.  This scheme has gained ground,
and is especially popular among computer users, and others who
wish to make clear exactly what is and what is not being quoted.

   Some people insist that '."' and ',"' LOOK better, but Fowler 
calls them "really mere conservatives, masquerading only as
aesthetes".

"A, B and C" vs "A, B, and C"
-----------------------------

   This is known as the "serial comma" dispute.  Both styles are
common.  The latter form (recommended by Fowler, and more common in
the U.S. than elsewhere) may assist clarity in passages like "I
ordered sandwiches today.  I ordered turkey, salami, peanut butter
and jelly, and roast beef."  Without that last comma, one would have
a MIGHTY weird sandwich! -- Gabe Wiener.  James Pierce says that an 
author whose custom it was *not* to use the comma dedicated a novel:  
"To my parents, Ayn Rand and God."

====================================================================

                FOREIGNERS' FAQS
                ----------------

   Non-native speakers are often unnecessarily cautious in their use 
of English.  Someone once posted to alt.usage.english from Japan,
asking, "What is the correct thing to say if one is being assaulted:
'Help!' or 'Help me!'?"  Not only are they both correct; there was
a whole slew of responses asking, "Why the heck would you worry
about correctness at a time like that?"

   It may happen that your post's greatest departure from English
idiom is something unrelated to what you are asking about.  If you
like, say "Please correct any errors in this post"; otherwise, those
who answer you may out of politeness refrain from offering a
correction.

   Although not so stratified as some languages, English does have
different stylistic levels.  In a popular song, you may hear:  "It
don't make much difference."  When speaking to a friend, you will
probably want to say:  "It doesn't make much difference."  If you
are writing a formal report, you may want to render it as:  "It 
makes little difference."  So it's helpful if when posting, you
specify the stylistic level that you're enquiring about.

   If you prefer to make a query by e-mail, rather than posting to
the whole Net, you can send it to the Purdue University Online 
Writing Lab.  Send e-mail to "owl@sage.cc.purdue.edu".  They also
have an ftp/gopher site, "owl.trc.purdue.edu".

"a"/"an" before abbreviations
-----------------------------

   "A" is used before words beginning with consonants; "an", before
words beginning with vowels.  This is determined by sound, not
spelling ("a history", "an hour", "a unit", "a European", "a one").
Formerly, "an" was usual before unaccented syllables beginning with
"h" ("an historian", "an hotel"); these are "now obsolescent" in
British English (Collins English Dictionary), although "an
historian" is retained in more dialects than "an hotel".

   Before abbreviations, the choice of "a"/"an" depends on how
the abbreviation is pronounced:  "a NATO spokesman" (because "NATO"
is pronounced /'neItoU/); "an NBC spokesman" (because "NBC" is
pronounced /Enbi'si/) "a NY spokesman" (because "NY" is read as
"New York (state)").

   A problem:  how can a foreigner *tell* whether a particular
abbreviation is pronounced as a word or not?  Two non-foolproof
guidelines:

(1) It's more likely to be an acronym if it *looks* as if it could
    be an English word.  "NATO" and "scuba" do; "UCLA" and "NAACP"
    don't.

(2) It's more likely to be an acronym if it's a *long* sequence of
    letters.  "US" is short; "EBCDIC" is too bloody long to say as
    "E-B-C-D-I-C".  (But of course, abbreviations that can be broken
    down into groups, like "TCP/IP" and "AFL-CIO", are spelled out
    because the groups are short enough.)

   Is it "a FAQ" or "an FAQ"?  Either is acceptable.  "FAQ" is more
likely to be mentally expanded to "frequently asked question" if
you're talking about a *particular* (frequently asked) question
than if you're talking about "an FAQ file".

"A number of..."
----------------

   "A number of ..."  always takes the plural.  In "A number 
of employees were present", it's the employees who were present, not 
the number.  "A number of" is just a fuzzy quantifier.
 
   On the other hand, "the number of..." always takes the singular:
"The number of employees who were present was small."  Here, it's 
the number that was small, not the employees.

When to use "the"
-----------------

   This is often quite tricky for those learning English.  Somebody
recommended a book, but I didn't save the posting. :-(

   The article "the" before a noun generally indicates one specific
instance of the object named.  For example, "I went to the school"
refers to one school.  (The context should establish which school
is meant.)  Such examples have the same meaning across most (all?)
dialects of English.

   The construct <preposition><noun>, with no intervening article,
often refers to a state of being rather than to an instance
of the object named by the noun.  The set of commonly used
preposition-noun combinations varies from one dialect to another.
Some examples are:
   I went to bed = I retired for the night.  Even if I had the
      habit of sleeping on the floor, I would still say "I went
      to bed" and not "I went to floor".
   She is at university (Brit.) = She is in college (U.S.) = She
      is a student, enrolled in a particular type of tertiary
      institution.  This sentence does not imply that she is now
      physically present on the campus.
   He was taken to hospital (Brit.) = He was hospitalized.  (A
      U.S. speaker might say "to the hospital" even if there
      were several hospitals in the area.)

Subjunctive
-----------

Present Subjunctive

   The present subjunctive is the same in form as the infinitive
without "to".  This is also the same form as the present indicative,
except in the third person singular and in forms of the verb "to 
be".

The present subjunctive is used:

(1) in third-person commands:  "Help, somebody save me!"  Most third-
    person commands (although not those addressed to "somebody") are 
    now prefixed with "let" instead.  The following (current but 
    set) formulas would probably use "let" if they were being 
    coined today:  "So be it"; "Manners be hanged!"; "... be 
    damned"; "Be it known that..."; "Far be it from me to...";
    "Suffice it to say that..."

(2) in third person wishes.  Most third-person wishes are now
    prefixed with "may" instead, as would the following formulas be:
    "God save the Queen!"; "God bless you"; "God help you"; "Lord 
    love a duck"; "Hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come.  Thy 
    will be done."; "Heaven forbid!"; "The Devil take him!"; "Long 
    live the king!"; "Perish the thought!"

(3) in formulas where it means "No matter how..." or "Even if...":
    "Come what may, ..."; "Be that as it may, ..."; "Though all
    care be exercised..."; "Be he ever so..."

(4) after "that" clauses to introduce a situation that the actor
    wants to bring about.  Used to introduce a formal motion ("I move 
    that Mr. Smith be appointed chairman"); after verbs like
    "demand", "insist", "propose", "prefer", "recommend", "resolve", 
    "suggest"; and after phrases like "it is advisable/desirable/
    essential/fitting/imperative/important/necessary/urgent/vital 
    that".  "Should" can also be used in such clauses.  This use of
    the subjunctive had become archaic in Britain in the first half
    of the 20th century, but has been revived under U.S. influence.
    Note the difference between "It is important that America has
    an adequate supply of hydrogen bombs" (America has an adequate
    supply of H-bombs, and this is important) and "It is important 
    that America have an adequate supply of hydrogen bombs" (America
    probably *lacks* an adequate supply, and must acquire one).

(5) after "lest".  "Should" can also be used after "lest".  After 
    the synonymous "in case", the plain indicative is usual.

(6) "Come...", meaning "When ... comes"

Past Subjunctive

   The past subjunctive is the same in form as the past indicative,
except in the past subjunctive singular of "to be", which is "were" 
instead of "was".

The past subjunctive is used:

(1) for counterfactual conditionals:  "If I were..." or 
    (literary) "Were I..."  In informal English, substitution of
    the past indicative form ("If I was...") is common.  But note 
    that speakers who make this substitution are *still* 
    distinguishing possible conditions from counterfactual ones, 
    by a change of tense:

                                Present         Past    

    Possible condition:         "If I am"       "If I was"

    Counterfactual condition:   "If I were/was" "If I had been"

    "As if" and "as though" were originally always used to introduce
    counterfactuals, but are now often used in "looks as if", 
    "sounds as though", etc., to introduce things that the speaker 
    actually believes ("It looks as if" = "It appears that").  In 
    such cases the present indicative is often used.

    Fowler says that there is no "sequence of moods" requirement in
    English:  it's "if I were to say that I was wrong", not "if I 
    were to say that I were wrong".

(2) for counterfactual wishes:  "I wish I were...";  "If only I 
    were..."; (archaic) "Would that I were...".  Again, substitution 
    of the past indicative is common informally.  Achievable wishes 
    are usually expressed with various verbs plus the infinitive:  
    "I wish to...", "I'd like you to..."

(3) in literary English, sometimes to introduce the apodosis 
    ("then" part) of a conditional:  "then I were" = "then I would 
    be".

(4) in "as it were" (a formula indicating that the previous 
    expression was coined for the occasion or was not quite 
    precise -- literally, "as if it were so").

====================================================================

                WORD ORIGINS
                ------------

"bug"="defect"
--------------

   The 1947 incident often related by Grace Hopper, in which a
technician solved a glitch in the Harvard Mark II computer by 
pulling a moth out from between the contacts of one of its relays, 
*did* happen.  However, the log entry ("first actual case of bug 
being found") indicates that this is *not* the *origin* of this 
sense of "bug".  It was used in 1899 in a reference to Thomas 
Edison.  It may come from "bug" in the sense of "frightful object", 
which seems to be related to "bugbear" and "bogey", and goes back to 
1588.  See the Jargon File.

"Caesarean section"
-------------------

   The OED erroneously states that Julius Caesar was born by
Caesarean section.  But Caesarean section was always fatal in
antiquity, and Julius' mother is known to have survived.  "Caesarian
section" may have been coined by someone who THOUGHT that Caesar was
born this way; it may come from an order (Lex Caesarea) of the
Caesars of Imperial Rome that any pregnant woman dying at or near
term was to be delivered by C-section; or it may simply come from 
Latin _caedo_ "I cut".

"canola"
--------

   "Canola" is defined as "any of several varieties of the rape
plant having seeds that contain no more than 5% erucic acid and no
more than 3 mg per gram of glucosinolate".  If you ever come across
rapeseed oil that is *not* canola, I would avoid it, because erucic
acid causes heart lesions, and glucosinolates cause thyroid
enlargement and poor feed conversion!
   Rape plants have been an important source of edible oil for 
almost 4000 years.  Canola was developed after World War II by two 
Canadian scientists, Baldur Stefansson and Richard Downey.
   "Canola" is variously explained as standing for "Canada oil, low
acid", and as a blend of "Canada" and "colza".  I imagine that
"Mazola" (a brand name for corn [= "maize"] oil) had an influence.
   "Canola" was originally a trademark in Canada, but is now a
generic term.  It's the only term now in use here; some sources do
say that canola was "formerly called rape".
   "Designer eggs", low-cholesterol eggs developed at the University
of Alberta, are produced by adding canola and flax to the hens' 
diet.

"copacetic"
-----------

   This word, meaning "extremely satisfactory", was first recorded 
in 1919, and was originally heard chiefly among U.S. black jazz 
musicians.  The tap dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (1878-1949) 
popularized the word, and claimed to have coined it when he was a 
shoeshine boy in Richmond; but a number of Southerners testified 
that they had heard the word used by parents or grandparents in the 
late 19th century.  Suggested origins include:  a supposed Italian 
word _copacetti_; a Creole French word _coupersetique_ meaning "that 
can be coped with"; and the Hebrew phrase _kol besedeq_ "all with 
justice".   RHUD2 says that all these theories "lack supporting 
evidence".

"crap"
------

   "Crap" does not derive from Thomas Crapper.  Thomas Crapper
(1837-1910) did exist and did make toilets.  (At least 3 authors
have gone into print asserting he was a hoax, but you can see some
of his toilets at the Gladstone Pottery Museum, Uttoxeter Road,
Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire ST3 1TQ, U.K.; phone
+44 782 3113 78.)  The word "crap" was imported into English from
Dutch in the 15th century, with the meaning "chaff".  It is
recorded in the sense of "to defecate" from 1846; Thomas Crapper
did not set up his business until 1861.  Also, Thomas Crapper did
not "invent" the flush toilet (the ancient Minoans had them); he
merely improved the design.

"flammable"
-----------

   People often ask why "flammable" and "inflammable" mean the
same thing.  The English words come from separate Latin words:
_inflammare_ and the rarer _flammare_, which both meant "to
set on fire".  Latin had two prefixes _in-_, one of which 
meant "not"; the other, meaning "in, upon" was the one used
in _inflammare_.   "Inflammable" dates in English from 1605; 
"flammable" dates from 1813, but was rare until, because of 
concern that the "in-" in "inflammable" might be mistaken as a
negative prefix, "flammable" was adopted by the U.S. National
Fire Protection Association in the 1920s; underwriters and others
interested in fire safety followed suit.

   "Flammable" is still commoner in the U.S. than in Britain;
in figurative uses, "inflammable" prevails (e.g., "inflammable 
temper").

"fuck"
------

   "Fuck" does NOT stand for "for unlawful carnal knowledge" or
"fornication under consent of the king".  It is not an acronym for
anything at all.  It is a very old word, recorded in England since
the 15th century (few acronyms pre-date the 20th century), with
cognates in other Germanic languages (MWCD10 and RHUD2 cite Middle 
Dutch _fokken_ = "to breed (cattle)", and  Swedish dialect _fokka_ 
= "to copulate").  Eric Partridge, in the 7th edition of _Dictionary
of Slang and Unconventional English_ (Macmillan, 1970), said that it 
"almost certainly" comes from the Indo-European root _peuk-_ (which 
is the source of the English words "compunction", "expunge", "
impugn", "poignant", "point", "pounce", "pugilist", "punctuate", 
"puncture", "pungent", and "pygmy"), but AHD3 does not cite an 
Indo-European root.

"hooker"
--------

   Contrary to what you may have read in Xaviera Hollander's book
_The Happy Hooker_, the "prostitute" sense of "hooker" does NOT
derive from Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker (1814-1879), a major
general on the Union side of the U.S. civil war, whose men were
alleged to frequent brothels.  "Hooker" in this sense goes back to
1845 (see AHD3); the U.S. Civil War did not begin until 1861.  It
may come from the earlier sense of "thief" (which goes back to 1567,
"to hook" meaning to steal), or it may refer to prostitutes' linking
arms with their clients.  A geographical Hook (Corlear's Hook in New
York City, or the Hook of Holland) is also possible.

"kangaroo"
----------

   "Kangaroo" does NOT derive from the aboriginal for "I don't
understand".  Captain James Cook's expedition learned the word
from an aboriginal tribe that subsequently couldn't be identified.
Since there were a *large* number of Australian aboriginal
languages, and it has taken some time to record and catalogue the
surviving ones, for many years the story that it meant "I don't
understand" was plausible.  The search was further complicated
by the fact that many aboriginal languages imported the word
*from* English.  But if you consult an up-to-date English
dictionary, such as RHUD2, you will see that "kangaroo" is derived
from the Guugu-Yimidhirr (a language spoken near Cooktown, North
Queensland) word _ga<eng>-urru_ "a large black or grey species
of kangaroo".

   Similar stories are told about "llama" (a Quechua word, not
from the Spanish _Como se llama?_ "What's it called?"); "indri"
(this one DOES derive from the Malagasy word for "Look!"); and
several place names, among them Canada (_kanata_ was the Huron-
Iroquois word for "village, settlement"; Jacques Cartier is
supposed to have mistaken this for the names of the country);
Istanbul (said to come from a Turkish mishearing of Greek _eis ten 
poli_ "to the city"); Luzon (supposedly Tagalog for "What did you 
say?"); Nome (supposedly a printer's misreading of a cartographer's 
query, "Name?"); Senegal (supposedly from Wolof _senyu gal_ "our 
boats"); and Yucatan (supposedly = "I don't understand you").

"loo"
-----

   This British colloquial word for "toilet" was established by the
1920s.  Suggested origins include:  French _lieu d'aisance_ "place
of easement"; French _Gardez l'eau!_ "Mind the water!" (supposedly
said in the days before modern plumbing, when emptying chamber pots 
from upper-storey windows); "louvre", from the use of slatted
screens for a makeshift lavatory; a misreading of the number "100"; 
and a "water closet"/"Waterloo" joke.  (James Joyce's _Ulysses_ 
(1922) contains the following text:  "O yes, mon loup.  How much 
cost?  Waterloo, water closet.")

"O.K."
------

   This one has generated LOTS of folklore.  The following list of
suggested origins and info comes from MEU2, from Eric Partridge's
_Dictionary of Historical Slang_ (1972 edition, Penguin,
0-14-081046-X), and from Cecil Adams' _More of the Straight Dope_
(Ballantine, 1988, ISBN 0-345-34145-2).  Thanks to Jeremy Smith for
his help.  The abbreviations on cracker boxes, shipping crates,
cargoes of rum, et al., became synonymous with quality.

   "Oll korrekt, popularized by Old Kinderhook" is what's given in
most up-to-date dictionaries.

American "O.K.", abbreviation of Obadiah Kelly, a shipping agent
American "O.K.", abbreviation of Old Keokuk, a Sac Indian chief
American "O.K.", contraction of "oll korrect".  This was the choice
   of a British judiciary committee that investigated the matter for
   a 1935 court case (MEU2), and was further documented by Columbia
   University professor Allen Walker Read in "The Evidence on
   'O.K.', _Saturday Review of Literature_, 19 July 1941.  A vogue
   for comically misspelled abbreviations began in Boston in the
   summer of 1838, and spread to New York and New Orleans in 1839.
   They used "K.G." for "know go", "K.Y." for "know yuse", "N.S."
   for "nuff said", and "O.K." for "oll korrect".
American "O.K.", abbreviation of Orrins-Kendall crackers
American "O.K.", abbreviation of Otto Kaiser, American industrialist
American "O.K. Club".  "O.K." gained national currency in 1840 as
   the slogan of the "O.K. club", a club of supporters of then
   President Martin Van Buren, in allusion to his nickname, "Old
   Kinderhook" -- Van Buren was born in the village of Kinderhook,
   N.Y.
Choctaw _(h)oke_ "it is so"
English opposite of "K.O." ("knock out")
English "of Katmandu"
English "optical kleptomaniac"
Ewe (West African)
Finnish _oikea_
French dialect _oc_ = _oui_ "yes"
French _Aux Cayes_, a place in Haiti noted for excellence of its rum
French _aux quais_, stencilled on Puerto Rican rum specially
   selected for export
German letters of rank appended to signature of Oberkommandant
Latin _omnia correcta_ "all correct"
Mandingo (West African) _o ke_ "that's it", "all right"
Scots  _och aye!_ "oh yes"
Tewa _oh-ka(n)_ = "come here", "all right"
Wolof (West African) "waw kay" = "yes indeed".  Supported by Prof.
   J. Weisenfeld, professor of African and African-American religion
   at Columbia University.  It was shown by Dr Davis Dalby ("The
   Etymology of O.K.", The Times, 14 January 1971) that similar
   expressions were used very early in the 19th century by Negroes 
   of Jamaica, Surinam, and South Carolina:  a Jamaican planter's 
   diary of 1816 records a Negro as saying "Oh ki, massa, doctor no 
   need be fright, we no want to hurt him."  The use of "kay" alone 
   is recorded in the speech of black Americans as far back as 1776;
   significantly, the emergence of O.K. among white Americans dates
   from a period when refugees from southern slavery were arriving
   in the north.

"portmanteau word"
------------------

   This term for "blend word" comes from "portmanteau", "a
leather travelling case that opens into two hinged compartments" 
(from the French for "carry cloak") by way of Humpty Dumpty in
Lewis Carroll's _Through the Looking-Glass_:  "You see it's like a
portmanteau -- there are two meanings packed up into one word."
Although most modern blends are simply the first half of one word
plus the second half of another ("brunch" = "breakfast" + "lunch";
"smog" = "smoke" + "fog"; "Chunnel" = "Channel" + "tunnel"), Carroll
himself formed his portmanteau words in a more subtle manner:
"slithy" = "lithe" + "slimy"; "mimsy" = "miserable" + "flimsy";
"frumious" = "fuming" + "furious".  Carroll's coinages "chortle"
(which is now in most dictionaries) and "gallumph" (which is in the
OED) are generally understood as "chuckle" + "snort" and "gallop"
+ "triumph" respectively, although Carroll himself never explained
them.

"posh"
------

   "Posh" (probably) does NOT stand for "port out, starboard home".
MWCD10, p. 27a, says, "our editors frequently have to explain to 
correspondents that the dictionary fails to state that the origin of 
_posh_ is in the initial letters of the phrase 'port out, starboard 
home' -- supposedly a shipping term for the cooler accommodations on
steamships plying between Britain and India from the mid-nineteenth
century on -- not because the story is unknown to us but because no
evidence to support it has yet been produced.  Some evidence exists
that casts strong doubt on it; the word is not known earlier than
1918 (in a source unrelated to shipping), and the acronymic
explanation does not appear until 1935."

   A tenable theory is that "posh" meant "halfpenny" (from Romany
_posh_ "half") and then "money" before acquiring its present
meaning.  Or it may come from the slang "pot" (= "big", "a person
of importance").  Or it may be a contraction of "polished".

   I got e-mail from someone whose grandmother claimed to have seen
steamship tickets with "P.O.S.H." overprinted; but to convince us,
you'll have to *find* one of these tickets and send a copy to 
Merriam-Webster.

"quiz"
------

   This is first recorded in 1775 in the sense "an odd person".  It
is *doubtful* that "quiz" came from an alleged incident in which
James Daly, a late-18th-century Dublin theatre manager, made a wager
that he could introduce a new word into the English language
overnight, and hired urchins to chalk the word "quiz" on every wall
and billboard in Dublin.  "Quiz" may come from the Latin "Qui es?"
(= "Who are you?", the first question asked in Latin oral exams in
grammar schools), or it may be a shortening of "inquisitive".

"scot-free"
-----------

   Like "hopscotch", this word for "without incurring any penalty"
has no connection with frugal Scotsmen.  In 12th-century England, a
"scot" or "sceot" was a municipal tax paid to the local bailiff or
sheriff (the word came from an Old Norse cognate of "shoot"/"shot",
and meant "money thrown down").  The word "scot-free", which is
recorded from the 13th century, referred to someone who succeeded in
dodging these taxes.  Later, the term was given wider currency when
"scot" was used to mean the amount owed by a customer in a tavern:
anyone who had a drink on the house went "scot-free".  This "scot"
was reinforced by the fact that the drinks ordered were "scotched",
or marked on a slate, so that the landlord could keep track of how
much the customer owed.

"sirloin"/"baron of beef"
-------------------------

   "Sirloin" comes from Old French _surlonge_, from _sur_ "above"
and _loigne_ "loin".  Its current spelling may have been influenced
by a story that a King of England (variously said to be Henry VIII,
James I, and Charles II) "knighted" this cut of beef because of
its superiority.

   A "baron of beef" is a joint consisting of two sirloins left
uncut at the backbone.  This "baron" may have originated as a joke
on "sirloin", or it may be an independent word.

"SOS"
-----

   SOS does NOT stand for "Save Our Ship/Souls", for "Stop Other
Signals", for "Send Our Saviour/Succour", or for the Russian
_Spasiti Ot Smerti_ ("save from death").  The letters, recommended
at the international Radio Telegraph Conference of 1906 and
officially adopted in 1908, were chosen because they were easy to
remember, transmit, and understand in Morse code (...---...).
They have no other significance.

"spoonerism"
------------

   This term for exchanging parts of two different words in a phrase
is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930),
Dean and Warden of New College, Oxford.  The Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations, 2nd edition (1953), attributed two famous spoonerisms
to Dr. Spooner:  "Kinquering congs their titles take", and "You have
deliberately tasted two worms and you can leave Oxford by the town
drain."  (A "down train" was a train going away from an important 
city, such as a capital city or one with a university.  Other popular 
attributions to Dr. Spooner are:  "a well boiled icicle", "a 
blushing crow", "a half-warmed fish", "our shoving leopard", "our 
queer old Dean", "My boy, it's kisstomary to cuss the bride", "When 
the boys come home from France, we'll have hags flung out", and 
"Pardon me, madam, you are occupewing my pie.  May I sew you to 
another sheet?")  

   But after the publication of _Spooner: A Biography_ by Sir 
William Hayter (W. H. Allen, 1976), the Oxford Dictionary of 
Quotations, 3rd edition (1979), gives only one spoonerism ("weight 
of rages"), and says:  "Many other Spoonerisms, such as those given 
in the previous editions of O.D.Q., are now known to be apocryphal."

"tip"
-----

   "Tip", in the sense of "gratuity", does NOT stand for "to insure
[i.e., ensure] politeness/promptness".  It may derive from "tip" in
the sense of "to tap, to strike lightly" or the sense of 
"extremity", both of which have cognates in other Germanic
languages.  Or it may be a shortening of "stipend".

"titsling"/"brassiere"
----------------------

   "Brassiere" is first recorded in a Canadian advertisement of
1911.  Dictionaries derive it from obsolete (17th century) French
_brassiere_ "bodice", from Old French _braciere_ "arm protector",
from _bras_ "arm".  (The French word for bra is _soutien-gorge_, 
literally "support-throat".)

   In the southern U.S., a bra is sometimes called a "tit-sling".
This has an obvious derivation.

   Wallace Reyburn, to whom Thomas Crapper owes his current fame,
wrote a later book describing a lawsuit over rights to the bra,
fought from 1934 to 1938 in New York, between a German-born 
designer, Otto Titzling (1884-1942), and a French-born designer,
Philippe de Brassiere.  Martin Gardner, in _Time Travel and Other
Mathematical Bewilderments_ (Freeman, 1988, ISBN 0-7107-1925-8),
p. 137, says: "The book by Wallace Reyburn _Flushed with Pride: The
Story of Thomas Crapper_ does exist.  For many years I assumed that
Reyburn's book was the funniest plumbing hoax since H. L. Mencken
wrote his fake history of the bathtub. [...]  Reyburn wrote a later
book titled _Bust-up: The Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling and the
Development of the Bra_.  It turns out, though, that both Thomas
Crapper and Otto Titzling were real people, and neither of
Reyburn's books is entirely a hoax."  

Wicca
-----

   Wicca is "a pagan nature religion having is roots in pre-
Christian Europe and undergoing a 20th-century revival" (AHD3).  
Only the most recently published dictionaries contain an entry for 
it; RHUD2 dates it 1975.  "Wicca" is a revival of an Old English 
word which you can find in older dictionaries by looking in the 
etymology of either "witch" or "wicked."  In Old English, _wicca_ 
was the masculine form of a word meaning "wizard" or "sorcerer."  
(The feminine form was _wicce_.  "Witch" comes from _wicce_.)   
_Wicca_ and _wicce_ came from from a proto-Germanic (not Celtic) 
_wikkjak_, "one who wakes the dead", the first element of which 
comes from the same Indo-European root as "wake".

   Yes, we've heard the joke about the Beatles song "Wiccan, Work It 
Out".  

"wog"
-----

   "Wog", a chiefly British, derogatory word for someone from the
Middle or Far East, does NOT stand for "Wealthy/Western/Wily/
Wonderful/Worthy Oriental Gentleman", or for "Worker On Government
service".  It may be a shortening of "golliwog".

"ye" = "the"
------------

   The "y" here is a representation of the obsolete letter thorn,
which looked like "b" and "p" superimposed, and was pronounced
[T] or [D] (the same as modern "th").  The pronunciation of "ye" in
"Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe" as /ji/, which you sometimes hear, is a
spelling pronunciation.

====================================================================

                PHRASE ORIGINS
                --------------

"the bee's knees"
-----------------

   A bee's "corbiculae", or pollen-baskets, are located on its 
tibiae (midsegments of its legs).  The phrase "the bee's knees",
meaning "the height of excellence", became popular in the U.S. in 
the 1920s, along with "the cat's whiskers" (possibly from the use
of these in radio crystal sets), "the cat's pajamas" (still new
enough to be daring), and similar phrases which made less sense
and didn't last:  "the eel's ankle", "the elephant's instep", "the
snake's hip".

"blue moon"  (notes by Philip Hiscock)
-----------

   The phrase "blue moon" has been around a long time, well over 400
years, but during that time its meaning has shifted around a lot.  I
have counted six different meanings which have been carried by the
term, and at least four of them are still current today.
   The earliest uses of the term are in a phrase remarkably like 
early references to "green cheese".  Both were used as examples
of obvious absurdities about which there could be no argument.  Four
hundred years go, if someone said, "He would argue the moon was
blue", the average 16th-centuryman would take it the way we take
"He'd argue that black is white."  The earliest citation is a 1528
poem "Rede Me and Be Not Wroth":  "Yf they say the mone is blewe/We
must believe that it is true."
   This understanding of a blue moon's being absurd (the first
meaning) led eventually to a second meaning, that of "never".  To
say that something would happen when the moon turned blue was like
saying that it would happen on Tib's Eve (at least before Tib got a
day near Christmas assigned to her).
    But of course, there are examples of the moon's actually turning
blue; that's the third meaning:  the moon's visually appearing blue.
When the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa exploded in 1883, its dust
turned sunsets green and the moon blue all around the world for the
best part of two years.  In 1927, a late monsoon in India set up
conditions for a blue moon.  And the moon here in Newfoundland was
turned blue in 1951 when huge forest fires in Alberta threw smoke
particles up into the sky.  Even by the 19th century, it was clear
that although visually blue moons were rare, they did happen from
time to time.  So the phrase "once in a blue moon" came about.  It
meant then exactly what it means today:  that an event was fairly
infrequent, but not quite regular enough to pinpoint.  That's
meaning number four, and today it is still the main one.
   I know of six songs which use "blue moon" as a symbol of sadness
and loneliness.  In half of them, the poor crooner's moon turns to
gold when he gets his love at the end of the song.  That's meaning
number five:  check your old Elvis Presley or Bill Monroe records
for more information.
   Finally, in the 1980s, a sixth meaning was popularized (chiefly
by the game Trivial Pursuit):  the second full moon in a month.  The
earliest reference cited for this is The Maine Farmers' Almanac for
1937.  Rumour has it that when there were two full moons in a
calendar month, calendars would put the first in red, the second in
blue.

"Bob's your uncle"
------------------

   This British phrase means "all will be well" or "simple as that":
"You go and ask for the job -- and he remembers your name -- and
Bob's your uncle."  It dates from circa 1890.
   P. Brendon, in _Eminent Edwardians_, 1979, suggests an origin:  
"When, in 1887, Balfour was unexpectedly promoted to the vital front 
line post of Chief Secretary for Ireland by his uncle Robert, Lord 
Salisbury (a stroke of nepotism that inspired the catch-phrase 
'Bob's your uncle'), ..."
   Or it may have been prompted by the cant phrase "All is bob" = 
"all is safe."
   (Info from Eric Partridge's _Dictionary of Catch Phrases_, 2nd
edition, revised by Paul Beale, Routledge, 1985, ISBN
0-415-05916-X.)

"to call a spade a spade"
-------------------------

is NOT an ethnic slur.
   The ancient Greeks said "to call a kneading-trough a kneading-
trough".  This is first recorded in Aristophanes' play _The Clouds_,
and also shows up in Plutarch's _Apophthegms_.
   In the Renaissance, Erasmus confused Plutarch's "kneading-trough"
(sigma kappa alpha phi eta) with the Greek word for "digging tool"
(sigma kappa alpha phi epsilon iota omicron nu), and rendered it in
Latin as "ligo".  Thence it was translated into English in 1542 by
Nicholas Udall in his translation of Erasmus's version as "to call a
spade [...] a spade".
   "To call a spade a bloody shovel" is not recorded until 1919.
"Spade" in the sense of "Negro" is not recorded until 1928.

   This, of course, does *not* necessarily render the modern use of
"to call a spade a spade" "politically correct".  Rosalie Maggio, in
_The Bias-Free Word-Finder_, writes:  "The expression is associated 
with a racial slur and is to be avoided", and recommends using "to 
speak plainly" or other alternatives instead.  In another entry, she
writes:  "Although by definition and derivation 'niggardly' and
'nigger' are completely unrelated, 'niggardly' is too close for
comfort to a word with profoundly negative associations.  Use
instead one of the many available alternatives:  stingy, miserly,
parsimonious..."  Beard and Cerf, in _The Official Politically
Correct Handbook_, p. 123, report that an administrator at the
University of California at Santa Cruz campaigned for the banning
of such phrases like "a chink in his armor" and "a nip in the air",
because "chink" and "nip" are also derogatory terms for "Chinese
person" and "Japanese person" respectively.  In the late 1970s in
the U.S., a boycott of the (now defunct) Sambo's Restaurant Chain 
was organized, even though the name "Sambo's" was a combination of 
the names of its two founders and did not come from the offensive 
word for dark-skinned person.

"The die is cast."
------------------

does NOT mean "The metal template has been molded."   It's what
Julius Caesar said on crossing the Rubicon.  The "die" is a gambling
die, and "cast" means thrown.  (In the original Latin "Jacta alea 
est", "alea" denotes the *game* of dice, rather than the physical 
die:  the dice game is in its thrown state.  "The die is cast" and 
"the dice are cast" would be equally good translations.  Compare
"Les jeux sont faits", heard at Monte Carlo.)

"dressed to the nines"
----------------------

   This expression, meaning "very fashionably and elaborately
dressed", is recorded from the 18th century.  "The nine" or "the
nines" were used to signify "superlative" in numerous other
contexts.  Theories include:  9, being the highest single-digit
number, symbolized the best; a metanalysis of Old English _to 
then eyne_ "to the eyes"; a reference to the 9 muses; and from the
expression "nine nines fine", denoting gold of 99.9999999 percent
purity. 

"Elementary, my dear Watson!"
-----------------------------

does not occur as such in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock
Holmes stories, although Holmes does exclaim "Elementary" in
"The Crooked Man", and writes "My dear Watson" in "The Final
Problem".  The first recorded juxtaposition is in the 1929 film 
_The Return of Sherlock Holmes_ (the first of the series with 
sound).
   The original stories never mention an Inverness cape, a
deerstalker hat, or a meerschaum pipe, either.  Those props
are due to illustrators and to actors.

"The exception proves the rule."
--------------------------------

   The common misconception about "The exception proves the rule"
(which you will find in several books, including the _Dictionary
of Misinformation_) is that "proves" means "tests".  That is *not*
the case, although "proof" *does* mean "test" in such phrases as
"proving ground" and "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."
   As MEU says, "the original legal sense" of the "the exception
proves the rule" is as follows: "'Special leave is given for men to
be out of barracks tonight till 11.0 p.m.'; 'The exception proves
the rule' means that this special leave implies a rule requiring
men, except when an exception is made, to be in earlier.  The value
of this in interpreting statutes is plain."
   MEU2 adds: "'A rule is not proved by exceptions unless the
exceptions themselves lead one to infer a rule' (Lord Atkin).  The
formula in full is _exceptio probat regulam in casibus non
exceptis_."  [That's Latin for "The exception proves the rule in
cases not excepted."]
   The phrase seems to date from the 17th century.  (Anthony Cree,
in _Cree's Dictionary of Latin Quotations_ (Newbury, 1978) says
that the phrase comes from classical Latin, which it defines as
Latin spoken before A.D. 400; but no classical citations have 
come to our attention.)  Below are the five seventeenth-century 
citations we could find.  1, 3, and 4 are in the OED; 2 is in
_Latin for Lawyers_ by E. Hilton Jackson and Herbert Broom; 5 is 
in _A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and 
Seventeenth Centuries_, by Morris Palmer Tilley.
1. 1617 Samuel Collins, _Epphata to F.T.; or, the Defence of the
   Bishop of Elie concerning his answer to Cardinall Ballarmine's
   Apologie_ 100:  "Indefinites are equivalent to universalls
   especially where one exception being made, it is plaine that all
   others are thereby cut off, according to the rule Exceptio
   figit regulam in non exceptis."  [Note that "figit" rather than
   "probat" is here used.  "Probo" can mean any of "give official
   approval to", "put to the test", or "demonstrate the verity of";
   but "figo" can only mean "fix", "fasten", or "establish".]
2. _Les reports de Sir Edward Coke, jades chiefe justice de Bank le 
   roy_ (published in 1672, but Sir Edward Coke died in 1634):  
   "Know reader, that where it is said in this case, that a writ of 
   error lies not upon an award, till the principal judgment is 
   given; and where it is also said, that no writ of error lies till 
   the whole matter in the original is determined; both these rules 
   are regularly true; but yet each of them has exceptions; for as 
   to the first, in Trin. 18 H. 7.  in the King's Bench, Rot. 3. the 
   case was that one Eaton was indicted of the death of John M. 
   before Justices of Peace in the county of Lincoln; upon which a 
   _Capias_ was awarded, and upon that an exigent; after which, 
   Eaton died before any attainder, upon which award of the exigent, 
   his administrators brought a writ of error; and it was adjudged, 
   that the writ of error did lie; and the reason was, because by 
   the award of the exigent, his goods and chattels were forfeited; 
   and of such awards which tend _ad tale grave damnum_ of the 
   party, a writ of error lies, although the principal judgment was 
   never given; and in this case, _exceptio probat regulam_, & _sic 
   de similibus_."  ["A writ of error lies" = "an appeal is 
   admissible"; "capias" = writ commanding arrest; "exigent" = writ 
   of suspension of civil rights pending an attainder; "attainder" = 
   loss of all civil rights as a result of a judgement; _ad tale 
   grave damnum_ = "to such great loss"; _sic de similibus_ = "thus 
   about similar things".]
3. 1640 Gilbert Watts, _Bacon's Advancement and proficience of
   learning_ VIII. iii. Aph. 17:  "As exception strengthens the 
   force of a Law in Cases not excepted, so enumeration weakens it 
   in Cases not enumerated."  [So when Lewis Carroll wrote "I am 
   fond of children (except boys)", he affirmed his fondness for 
   girls more strongly than he would have had he written merely "I 
   am fond of children."]
4. 1664 John Wilson, _The Cheats_, To Reader:  "For if I have shown
   the odd practices of two vain persons pretending to be what they
   are not, I think I have sufficiently justified the brave man
   even by this reason, that the exception proves the rule."  [The
   OED (but not the other books I checked) gives the date as 1662.
   As far as I can tell from this scant context, Wilson seems to be
   saying, "My description of two cowardly cheats should serve to
   show you the bad consequences of not being brave, and hence
   convince you of the need for a rule: 'Be brave!'."]
5. 1666 Giovanni Torriano, _Piazza universale di proverbi italiani,
   or A Common Place of Italian Proverbs_ I, p. 80 "The exception
   gives Authority to the Rule." note 28, p. 242 "And the Latin
   says again, Exceptio probat Regulam."
To convince us that *in this particular phrase* "proves" originally
meant "tests", you will have to cite any quotations as old as or
older than these to support your view.

"face the music"
----------------

   This expression for "accept the unpleasant consequences" was
first recorded in the U.S. around 1850.  It may derive from musical
theatre:  a nervous actor would have to summon all his courage to
face the audience across the orchestra pit.  Or it may be one of
three military references: an infantryman taking his place in the
line of assembly; a cavalier keeping his restive horse still while
the band starts to play; or a soldier being drummed out of his
regiment.

"Go figure"
-----------

   This expands to "Go and figure it out", and means: "The reasons
for the fact just stated are unknown and possibly unknowable.  You
can waste your time thinking about what they might be, if you
choose, but you're not likely to accomplish anything." (Kivi
Shapiro)

   "Go figure" comes from Yiddish _Gey vays_ "Go know".  Leo Rosten,
in _The Joys of Yinglish_ (Penguin, 1989 ISBN 0-452=2653406), says:
"In English, one says, 'Go _and_ see [look, ask, tell]...'  Using an
imperative without any link to a conjunction is pure Yiddish, no
doubt derived from the biblical phrase, translated literally:
'Go tell...'  'Go praise the Lord...'  (In English this becomes
'Come, let us praise the Lord.')"

   Other English expressions said to derive from Yiddish include:
"Big deal!" (_A Groyser kunst!_); "Bite your tongue" (_Bays dir di
tsung_"); "bottom line" (_untershte shure_); "Eat your heart out"
(_Es dir oys s'harts_); "Enough already!" (_Genug shoyn_); "for
real" (_far emmes_); "If the shoe fits, wear it" (_Oyb der shukh
past, kenstu im trogn_); "Look who's talking!" (_Kuk nor ver
s'ret!_); "make like a" (_makh vi_); "shm-" as in "Fair, shmair";
"Sez you" (_Azoy zugst du_); "Thanks a *lot*" (ironic) (_A shenem
dank aykh_); and "That's for sure" (_Dos iz oyf zikher_).

"Go placidly amid the noise and the haste" (Desiderata)
-------------------------------------------------------

   "Desiderata" was written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann (1872-1945).  In
1956, the rector of St. Paul's Church in Baltimore, Maryland, used
the poem in a collection of mimeographed inspirational material for
his congregation.  Someone printing it later said it was found in
Old St. Paul's Church, dated 1692.  The year 1692 was the founding
date of the church and has nothing to do with the poem.  See Fred
D. Cavinder, "Desiderata", _TWA Ambassador_, Aug. 1973, pp. 14-15.

"hell for leather"
------------------

   Robert L. Chapman's _New Dictionary of American Slang_ (Harper & 
Row, 1987, ISBN 0061811572) says:  "hell-for-leather or hell-bent-
for-leather adv _fr late 1800s British_  Rapidly and energetically; 
=all out, flat out.  _You're heading hell-for-leather to a crack-up_ 
[origin unknown; perhaps related to British dialect phrases _go hell 
for ladder, hell falladerly, hell faleero_, and remaining mysterious 
even if so, although the _leather_ would then be a very probable 
case of folk etymology with a vague sense of the _leather_ involved 
in horse trappings.]"

"by hook or by crook"
---------------------
   
   This phrase used to mean "by fair means or foul", although now
it often means simply "by whatever necessary means", especially in 
the U.K.  The first recorded use is by John Wycliffe in 
_Controversial Tracts_ (circa 1380).  Theories include:  a law or
custom in mediaeval England that allowed peasants to take as 
firewood from the King's forests any deadwood that they could reach 
with a shepherd's crook and cut off with a reaper's billhook; 
rhyming words for "direct" (reachable with a long hook) and 
"indirect" (roundabout); beginners' writing exercises, where letters
have hooks and brackets are "crooks"; and from "Hook" and "Crook", 
the name of headlands on either side of a bay north of Waterford, 
Ireland, referring to a captain's determination to make the haven of 
the bay in bad weather using one headland or the other as a guide.

"Let them eat cake!"
--------------------

   The French is "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" (*not* "gateau" as
you might expect).  And Queen Marie-Antoinette did *not* say this.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau attributed it to "a great princess" in book 6
of his _Confessions_.  _Confessions_ was published posthumously, but
book 6 was written 2 or 3 years before Marie-Antoinette arrived in
France in 1770.

"mind your p's and q's"
-----------------------

   This expression, meaning "be very careful to behave correctly",
has been in use from the 17th century on.  Theories include:  an
admonishment to children learning to write; an admonishment to
typesetters (who had to look at the letters backwards); an
admonishment to seamen not to soil their navy pea-jackets with
their tarred "queues" (pigtails); "mind your pints and quarts";
"mind your prices and quality"; "mind your pieds and queues"
(either feet and pigtails, or two dancing figures that had to be
accurately performed); and the substitution of /p/ for "qu" /kw/
in the speech of uneducated ancient Romans.  And yes, we've heard 
the joke about the instruction to new sextons:  "Mind your keys 
and pews."

   The most plausible explanation is the one given in the latest
edition of Collins English Dictionary:  an alteration of "Mind
your 'please's and 'thank you's.

"more honoured in the breach than in the observance"
----------------------------------------------------

   Shakespeare meant "BETTER broken than observed", not "more often
broken than observed".

"put in one's two cents' worth"
-------------------------------

   This expression meaning "to contribute one's opinion" dates from
the late nineteenth century.  Bo Brodham suggests that it comes from
"the days of $.02 postage. To 'put one's two cents' worth in' 
referred to the cost of a letter to the editor, the president, or 
whomever was deserving."  Someone should check when postage actually
did cost two cents.

"rule of thumb"
---------------

   This term for "a simple principle having wide application but not
intended to be strictly accurate" dates from 1692.  Helen Johnston
cites Roderick Phillips _Untying the Knot: A Short History of
Divorce_ (Cambridge UP, 1991), which claims that "rule of thumb"
comes from an old law regulating wife-beating:  "if a stick were
used, it should not be thicker than a man's thumb."  (This theory is
attacked in _Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women_, by 
Christina Hoff Sommers, Simon & Schuster, 1994, ISBN 0671794248.)  
But wife-beating has always been illegal in England, and thumbs were 
used to measure *lots* of things (the last joint is roughly one inch).
The phrase may also come from ancient brewmasters' dipping their 
thumb in the brew to test the temperature of a batch; or from a 
guideline for tailors:  "Twice around the thumb is once around the 
wrist..."

"son of a gun"
--------------

dates from 1708; therefore, NOT son of a "shotgun marriage", which
is only recorded from 1922.  Possibly "cradled in the gun-carriage
of a ship"; allegedly, the place traditionally given to women on
board who went into labour -- the only space affording her any
privacy and without blocking a gangway -- was between two guns.  Or
it may mean more simply "son of a soldier".

"spit and image"/"spitting image"
---------------------------------

   These phrases mean "exact likeness".  "Spitting image" is first
recorded in 1901; "spit and image" is a bit older (from the late 
19th century), which seems to refute the explanation "splitting 
image" (two split halves of the same tree).  An older British 
expression is "He's the very spit of his father", which Eric 
Partridge, in his _Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English_ 
(Routledge, 1950) traces back to 1400:  "He's ... as like these as 
th'hads't spit him."  Other languages have similar expressions;
e.g., the French say _C'est son pere tout crache_, "He is his father 
completely spat."  Alternative explanations are "so alike that 
even the spit out of their mouths is the same"; "speaking likeness"; 
and a corruption of "spirit".

"to all intents and purposes"
-----------------------------

   This cliche meaning "practically" is a shortening of the legal
phrase "to all intents, constructions, and purposes".  The corruption
"for all intensive purposes" is frequently reported.

"Wherefore art thou Romeo?"
---------------------------

  "Wherefore" means "why", not "where".

"the whole nine yards"
----------------------

   This phrase, meaning "all of it, everything" dates from at least
the 1950s.  The origin is a matter for speculation.  9 yards is not
a particularly significant distance either in football or in the
garment business (a man's three-piece suit requires about 7 square
yards of cloth, and cloth is sold in bolts of 20 to 25 yards).  The
phrase may refer to the capacity of ready-mix concrete trucks, which
averages about 9 cubic yards.  See Cecil Adams, _More of the
Straight Dope_, pp. 252-257.

====================================================================

                MISCELLANY
                ----------      

Do publishers put false info in dictionaries to catch plagiarists?
------------------------------------------------------------------

From: david@frnk303.franklin.com (David Justice)

> For what it's worth, I worked a few years at Merriam-Webster (late
> 1980s) and can attest that we never deliberately inserted false
> stuff for purposes of catching plagiarists.  For one thing, every
> dictionary I've ever examined has been all too full of
> *un*intentional errors, and they could serve the same purpose.

   On the other hand, books such as _Who's Who_ do have fictitious
entries.

What is the language term for...?
---------------------------------

   It may be one of:  "ablaut", "accidence", "acrolect",
"adianoeta", "adnominal", "adnominatio", "adynaton", "agnosia",
"agrammatism", "alexia", "alliteration", "alphabetism", "amblysia",
"amphibol(og)y", "anacolouthon", "anacrusis", "anadiplosis",
"anaphora", "anaptyxis", "anastrophe", "antiphrasis", "antisthecon",
"antithimeria", "antonomasia", "aphaeresis", "aphasia", "aphesis",
"apocope", "apocrisis", "aporia", "apophasis", "aposiopesis",
"apostrophe", "aptronym", "asyndeton", "Aufhebung", "banausic",
"bisociation", "brachylogy", "cacoetheses scribendi", "cacophemism",
"calque", "catachresis", "cataphora", "catenative", "cheville",
"chiasmus", "chronogram", "cledonism", "commoratio", "consonance",
"constative", "coprolalia", "copulative", "crasis",
"cruciverbalist", "cryptophasia", "deictic", "dilogy",
"disjunctive", "dissimilation", "dittograph", "dontopedalogy",
"dysgraphia", "dyslalia", "dyslexia", "dysphemism", "dysprosody",
"dysrhythmia", "echolalia", "embo(lo)lalia", "enallage", "enclitic",
"endophoric", "epanalepsis", "epanorthosis", "epexegetic",
"epenthesis", "epitrope", "epizeuxis", "eponym", "equivoque",
"etymon", "eusystolism", "exergasia", "exonym", "exophoric",
"extraposition", "eye-word", "factitive", "festination", "fis
phenomenon", "Fog Index", "frequentative", "glossogenetics",
"glossolalia", "glottochronology", "glyph", "graphospasm", "hapax
legomenon", "haplograph", "haplology", "hendiadys", "heteric",
"heterogenium", "heterography", "heteronym", "heterophemy",
"heterotopy", "hobson-jobson", "holophrasis", "honorific",
"hypallage", "hyperbaton", "hyperbole", "hypocoristic", "hypophora",
"hyponymy", "hypostatize", "hypotaxis", "idioglossa", "idiolect",
"illeism", "ingressive", "isocolon", "isogloss", "klang
association", "koine", "langue", "Lautgesetz", "ligature",
"lipogram", "litotes", "logogram", "logogriph", "logomisia",
"lucus a non lucendo", "macaronic", "macrology", "meiosis",
"(a)melioration", "mendaciloquence", "merism", "metalepsis",
"metallage", "metanalysis", "metaplasm", "metathesis", "metonymy",
"Mischsprache", "mogigraphia", "mondegreen", "monepic",
"monologophobia", "Mummerset", "mumpsimus", "mussitation",
"mytheme", "noa word", "nomic", "nosism", "nothosonomia", "objective
correlative", "obviative", "omphalopsychites", "onomasiology",
"onomastic", "onomatopoeia", "oratio obliqua", "oxytone",
"palindrome", "palinode", "paradiastole", "paragoge", "paragram",
"paralinguistic", "paraph", "paraphasia", "paraplasm",
"parasynesis", "parataxis", "parechesis", "parelcon", "pangram",
"parimion", "parole", "paronomasia", "paronym", "paroxytone",
"parrhesia", "pasigraphy", "patavinity", "patronymic", "pejoration",
"periphrasis", "perpilocutionist", "phatic", "philophronesis",
"phonaesthesia", "phonocentrism", "pleonasm", "ploce", "polyptoton",
"polysemy", "polysyndeton", "privative", "proclitic", "prolepsis",
"proparalepsis", "prosonomasia", "prosopopoeia", "prosthesis",
"provection", "psittacism", "purr-word", "quadriliteralism",
"quaesitio", "quote fact", "rebus", "reification", "rheme",
"rhopalic", "sandhi", "scesis onomaton", "Schlimmbesserung",
"semiotics", "sigmatism", "simile", "Sprachgef"uhl",
"Stammbaumtheorie", "stichomythia", "subreption", "sumpsimus",
"superordinate", "suprasegmental", "syllepsis", "symploce",
"synaeresis", "synaesthesia", "synaloepha", "synchisis", "syncope",
"synecdoche", "synesis", "systole", "tachygraphy", "tautology",
"theophoric", "tmesis", "traduttori traditori", "trope",
"univocalic", "Ursprache", "Wanderwort", "Wellentheorie",
"Witzelsucht", "wordfact", "xenoepist", or "zeugma".  Look 'em
up. :-)   (A good book to look them up in is _The Random House
Dictionary for Writers and Readers_, by David Grambs (Random
House, 1990, ISBN 0-679-72860-0.)

Commonest words
---------------

   According to the _Guinness Book of World Records_, the commonest 
word in written English is "the," followed by: of, and, to, a, in, 
that, is, I, it, for, as. The commonest word in spoken English is 
"I."  The commonest word in the King James Version of the Bible is
"and".

   _Frequency Analysis of English Vocabulary and Grammar: Based on 
the LOB Corpus_  by Stig Johansson and Knut Hofland (OUP, 1989, ISBN
0-19-8242212-2) gives the top eighteen words and their frequencies 
as:

          1.  the       68315
          2.  of        35716
          3.  and       27856
          4.  to        26760
          5.  a         22744
          6.  in        21108
          7.  that      11188
          8.  is        10978
          9.  was       10499
         10.  it        10010
         11.  for        9299
         12.  he         8776
         13.  as         7337
         14.  with       7197
         15.  be         7186
         16.  on         7027
         17.  I          6696
         18.  his        6266

   _The American Heritage Word Frequency Book_ by John B. Carroll, 
Peter Davies, and Barry Richman (Houghton Mifflin, 1971, ISBN 
0-395-13570-2) gives the top 300 words in order of frequency and in 
groups of 100 as:

the of and a to in is you that it he for was on are as with his they 
at be this from I have or by one had not but what all were when we 
there can an your which their said if do will each about how up out 
them then she many some so these would other into has more her two 
like him see time could no make than first been its who now people 
my made over did down only way find use may water long little very 
after words called just where most know

get through back much before go good new write out used me man too 
any day same right look think also around another came come work 
three word must because does part even place well such here take why 
things help put years different away again off went old number great 
tell men say small every found still between name should Mr home big 
give air line set own under read last never us left end along while 
might next sound below saw something thought both few those always 
looked show large often together asked house don't world going want

school important until 1 form food keep children feet land side 
without boy once animals life enough took sometimes four head above 
kind began almost live page got earth need far hand high year mother 
light parts country father let night following 2 picture being study 
second eyes soon times story boys since white days ever paper hard 
near sentence better best across during today others however sure 
means knew it's try told young miles sun ways thing whole hear 
example heard several change answer room sea against top turned 3 
learn point city play toward five using himself usually

What words are their own antonym?
---------------------------------

   Richard Lederer, in _Crazy English_ (Pocket Books, 1989, ISBN
0-671-68907-X), calls these "contranyms".  They can be divided into
homographs (same spelling) and homophones (same pronunciation).

The homographs include:
apparent = seeming, clear ("heir apparent")
aught = all, nothing
bill = invoice, money
bolt = to secure, to run away
buckle = to fasten, to fall apart ("buildings buckle at an 
	earthquake")
cannot praise too highly = no praise is too high, cannot praise very
	highly
certain = definite, unspecified
cleave = to separate, to join
clip = to fasten, to detach
commencement = beginning, conclusion ("high school commencement")
comprise = to contain, [disputed] to compose
critical = opposed to ("critical of"), essential to ("critical to")
custom = usual, special
dress = to put items on, to remove items from ("dress the chicken")
dust = to remove fine particles, to add fine particles
factoid = unimportant fact, falsity presented as fact
fast = rapid, unmoving
fix = to restore, to castrate
give out = to produce, to stop being produced
go off = to become active, to become inactive
handicap = advantage (in golf), disadvantage
help = to assist, to prevent ("I cannot help it if...")
hoi polloi = the common people, [disputed] the elite
hold up = to support, to delay
impregnable = invulnerable, [disputed] impregnatable
infer = to take a hint, [disputed] to hint
keep up = to continue to fall (rain),to remain up
left = departed from, remaining
let = to permit, [archaic] to hinder
literally = actually, [disputed] (used before a metaphor)
model = archetype, copy
moot = debatable, [disputed] not worthy of debate
nauseous = nauseating, [disputed] nauseated
note = promise to pay, money
out = visible (stars), invisible (lights)
oversight = care, error
peep = to look quietly, to beep
peer = noble, person of equal rank
put out = to generate ("candle puts out light"), to extinguish
puzzle = to pose a problem, to solve a problem
qualified = competent, limited
quantum = very small ("quantum level vs macroscopic level"), very 
	large ("quantum leap in productivity")
quite = rather, completely
ravel = entangle, disentangle
rent = to buy temporary use of, to sell temporary use of
resign = to quit, [hyphen recommended] to sign up again
sanction = to approve of, [disputed] to punish [The use of 
        "sanction" as a noun meaning "punishment" is undisputed.]
sanguine = hopeful, [obsolete for "sanguinary"] murderous
scan = to examine carefully, [disputed] to glance at quickly
screen = to view, to hide from view
seeded = with seeds, without seeds
skin = to cover with, to remove outer covering
substitute = to put (something) in something else's place,
        [disputed] to replace (something) with something else
strike = to miss (baseball), to hit
table = [British] to propose, [U.S.] to set aside
temper = calmness, passion
think better of = to admire more, to be suspicious of
trim = to put things on ("trim a Christmas tree"), 
        to take things off
trip = to stumble, to move gracefully ("trip the light fantastic")
unbending = rigid, relaxing
undersexed = having a lower-than-normal sex drive, 
        [disputed] sexually deprived
wear = to endure through use, to decay through use
weather = to withstand, to wear away
wind up = to start ("wind up a watch"), to end
with = alongside, against

A couple of homophones:
aural, oral = heard, spoken
raise, raze = erect, tear down

sentences grammatical in both Old English and Modern English
------------------------------------------------------------

   Mitchell and Robinson's _A Guide to Old English_ (OUP, 4th 
edition, 1986, ISBN 063113624X) starts its "Practice Sentences" 
section with a few of these.  A sampling:

  Harold is swift.  His hand is strong and his word grim.  Late in 
  life he went to his wife in Rome.

  Grind his corn for him and sing me his song.

  He swam west in storm and wind and frost.

phonetic alphabets
------------------

   Brian Kelk (bck1@cl.cam.ac.uk) has a collection of phonetic 
alphabets that he posts occasionally.

Biblical sense of "to know"
---------------------------

   Some people say things like:  "It is not correct that it is the
biblical meaning.  The biblical meaning of a man knowing a woman is
such total love as to know all about her, which includes
intercourse.  It is not an evasive term for one-night stands."
  Not so.  The Biblical sense of "to know" is simply "to fuck", as
you can see from Genesis 19:4-8 :  "[...] the men of Sodom
compassed the house round [...] and they called unto Lot, and said
unto him, 'Where are the men which came in to thee this night?
Bring them out unto us, that we may KNOW them.'  And Lot [...] said
[...] 'Behold now, I have two daughters which have not KNOWN man;
let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you [...]'"
   The Hebrew word here is "yada" (yod daleth ayin).  The Greek
word "ginosko" (gamma iota nu omega sigma kappa omega) is used
similarly in the New Testament.

Postfix "not"
-------------

   Is assertion followed by "not" a recent American neologism?
NOT!  "I love thee not" was the regular word order in Shakespeare's
day.  Examples including the pause are harder to find; the earliest
that we've found is in Irish dialect, in Ellis Parker Butler's _Pigs 
is Pigs_ (1905):

   "Proceed to collect," he said softly.  "How them
   cloiks do loike to be talkin'!  _Me_ proceed to
   collect two dollars and twinty-foive cints off
   Misther Morehouse!  I wonder do thim clerks
   _know_ Misther Morehouse?  I'll git it!  Oh, yes!
   'Misther Morehouse, two an' a quarter, plaze.'
   'Cert'nly, me dear frind Flannery.  Delighted!' _Not!_"

e. e. cummings wrote a poem beginning:

   pity this busy monster manunkind
   not.

   Credit to David Murray for bringing the cummings example to our
attention.  And Wanda Keown found the following in Fritz Leiber's
_Conjure Wife_ (1943):  "Norman thought:  Country parsonage?
Healthy mental atmosphere, not!"

   The construction owes its present popularity to the "Wayne's
World" skits in the U.S. TV show _Saturday Night Live_.  The first
use in SNL was in the 1970s in a skit with Jane Curtin and Steve
Martin.  (It is said that the writers of these skits encountered
the practice when it was a fad in their high school in the Toronto
suburb of Scarborough.)  Another phrase that comes from SNL is
"Isn't that special?" (the Church Lady, played by Dana Carvey).

Origin of the dollar sign (notes by Mark Brader)
-------------------------

   It is sometimes said that the dollar sign's origin is a narrow
"U" superimposed over a wide "S", "U.S." being short for "United
States."  This is wrong, and the correct explanation also tells why
the $ sign is used both for dollars and for pesos in various
countries.  The explanation is not widely known, maybe because not
many people would think to look for it in _A History of Mathematical 
Notations, Volume II: Notations Mainly in Higher Mathematics_ by 
Florian Cajori (published in 1929 and reprinted in 1952, by Open 
Court Press).  Cajori acknowledges the "U.S." theory and a number of 
others, but, after examining many 18th-century manuscripts, finds 
that there is simply no evidence to support those theories.
   Spanish pesos were also called piastres, Spanish dollars, and
pieces of eight.  And they were circulated in many parts of the
world, much as U.S. dollars are today.  The coins were so well known
that, when the U.S. got around to issuing its own silver coinage
(U.S. dollar coins first appeared in 1794), it simply replicated the
Spanish unit's weight and hence value, and even one of its names; so
it was natural to use the same symbol.
   Since three of the four names given above for the Spanish dollar
start with p (and pluralize with s), it was natural for
abbreviations like p and ps to be used.  Sometimes ps was written
    s
as P  -- P with a superscript s.  The superscript was a common way
of rendering abbreviated endings of words -- we see vestiges of it
today in the way some people write "10th".  Now, what happens if you
write P with a superscript s *fast*, because it's part of a long
document that you have to hand-write because you can't wait for the
typewriter to be invented, let alone the word-processor?  Naturally,
you join the letters.  Well, now look at the top part of the
resulting symbol.  There's the $ sign!  Reduce the P to a single
stroke and you have the form of the $ with a double vertical; omit
it altogether and you get the single vertical.
   And yes, both these forms are original.  Cajori reproduces 14
$ signs from a diary written in 1776; 11 of them have the single
stroke, which was the more common form to the end of the century,
and 3 have the double stroke.
   Although the $ sign originally referred to a Spanish coin, it was
the revolting British -> American colonists who made the transition
from ps to the new sign.  (This is apparently also why we write $1
instead of 1$; it mimics the British use of the pound sign.)  So,
while it did not originally refer to the U.S. dollar, the symbol
does legitimately claim its origins in that country.

====================================================================

                SPELLING
                --------
        
Diacritics
----------

   You can use diaereses in words like "naive" and "cooperate" if
you want.  The use of diacritics has been declining because of
Linotypes and computers that didn't allow them.

"-er" vs "-re"
--------------

   The following words are spelled with "-re" in Britain but with
"-er" in the U.S.:  accoutre(ment), calibre, centre, fibre, goitre,
litre, louvre, lustre (brilliance, but "luster" one who lusts) , 
man(o)euvre, metre (for the distance, but "meter" for the measuring 
device), meagre, mitre, nitre, ochre, philtre, reconnoitre, sabre, 
scepter, sepulcher, sombre, spectre, (amphi)theatre, titre.

   The following words are spelled "-re" in both Britain and the
U.S.:  acre, cadre, euchre, lucre, massacre, mediocre, ogre,
wiseacre.  (The "-cre" and "-gre" words may have been kept that
way in order to keep the "c" and "g" hard, although there are
counterexamples such as "eager" and "meager".)

   In none of these words is "-er" the agent suffix (as in 
"revolver") or the comparative suffix (as in "longer").  Most of 
these words come from Latin through French, and they took the "-re"
form in French because the "e" was not part of the word root.  (The 
adjectives tend to be in "-ral", "-ric", and "rical", rather than
"-eral", "-eric", or "-erical".)  But many similar words 
(cloister, diameter, neuter, number, sinister) were changed from
"-re" to "-er" in English.  The process has merely happened faster 
in the U.S. than in Britain.  
 
"-ize" vs "-ise"
---------------

   The following words are always spelled with "-ise":  advertise,
advise, arise, chastise, circumcise, comprise, compromise, demise,
despise, devise, disguise, enterprise, excise, exercise,
(dis/en)franchise, improvise, incise, merchandise, premise, revise,
supervise, surmise, surprise, televise.  (At least, they're *almost*
always spelled that way:  "advertize", "merchandize", and "surprize"
ARE listed in some collegiate dictionaries, but are not the usual
forms anywhere.)  A useful mnemonic is that, except "improvise",
none of these make nouns in "-isation" or "-ization".  (Exceptions
in the other direction are "aggrandize", "criticize", and
"recognize".)

   "Apprise" means "to inform"; "apprize" means "to appreciate".
British "prise open" = U.S. "pry open".

   For other verbs, "-ize" is usual in the U.S. and recommended by
Fowler, although "-ise" is also used in Britain.  Fowler recommends
"-yse" in "analyse", "catalyse", and "paralyse", although "-yze" is
usual in the U.S.

Where to put apostrophes in possessive forms
--------------------------------------------

              by Peter Moylan

PRONOUNS

The ONLY personal possessive pronoun with an apostrophe is "one's".

.----------------------------------------------------------------------.
| The words "his", "its", "whose", "their" do NOT contain apostrophes. |
|        Nor do words like "hers", "ours", "yours", "theirs".          |
|                   (Would you say "mi'ne"?)                           |
'----------------------------------------------------------------------'

The forms "it's", "they're", and "who's" are contractions for "it
is", "they are", and "who is" respectively.  (Or sometimes "it has",
etc.)  They have nothing to do with possessive pronouns.

The apostrophe does occur in the possessive case of indefinite
pronouns (anybody's, someone's, and so on).

NOUNS

1. The standard rule:  Use 's for the singular possessive, and a
   bare apostrophe after the plural suffix for the plural
   possessive.  For example:

                            Singular         Plural
      Nominative              dog             dogs
      Possessive              dog's           dogs'

2. Nouns ending with an [s] or [z] sound (this includes words ending 
   in "x", "ce", and similar examples):  The plural suffix is -es
   rather than -s (unless there's already an "e" at the end, as in
   the "-ce" words), but otherwise the rule is the same as above:

                            Singular         Plural
      Nominative             class          classes
      Possessive             class's        classes'

   (The possessive plural is what is wanted in "the Joneses'".
   This is short for "the Joneses' house", which is not "the
   Jones's house".)

   There are, however, examples where the singular possessive suffix
   is a bare apostrophe:

             Singular         Plural
      Nominative            patience        patiences
      Possessive            patience'       patiences'

   (In most such examples, the plural is rarely used.)  For nouns in
   this category, many people would consider the 's suffix and the
   bare apostrophe to be acceptable alternatives.  The rules listed
   below may be taken as "most common practice", but they are
   not absolute.

   A. The 's suffix is preferred for one-syllable words (grass's) or
   where the final syllable has a primary or secondary stress
   (collapse's);

   B. The bare apostrophe is preferred:
      - for words ending in -nce (stance');
      - for many classical names (Aristophanes', Jesus', Moses');
      - where the juxtaposition of two or more [s] sounds would
        cause an awkwardness in pronunciation (thesis').

   C. Usage is divided in the situation where the final [s] or [z]
      sound falls in an unstressed syllable (octopus'/octopus's,
      phoenix's/phoenix', and so on).

   The question of which suffix is correct arises less often than
   one might imagine.  Instead of saying "the crisis' start" or "the
   crisis's start", most native speakers of English would say "the
   start of the crisis", thus avoiding the problem.

3. Plurals not ending in s:  Use 's for the possessive plural
   (men's, people's, sheep's).

HISTORY

   For those who want to know where the apostrophe came from, here
is how it probably happened.  Some of this is well documented, some
is guesswork on my part.

   Back in the days when English had many more inflections than it
now has, the most common suffix for the genitive singular was -es.
(There were several noun declensions, so that not all nouns fitted
this pattern; but this could be considered to be the "most regular"
case.)  For example: mann (=man), mannes (=of the man).  Over time
there developed a tendency to stop pronouncing the unstressed "e",
so that "mannes" became "mann's".  The apostrophe stands for the
omitted letter.

   (Modern German still has -es as the genitive suffix for many
nouns.  The Germans did not stop pronouncing their unstressed "e"s,
so the case suffix is still written as -es.)

   Pronouns were also inflected, but not in the same way.  (They
were all fairly irregular, as they still are today.)  The genitive
form of "hit" (=it) was "his" (=its).  As "his" evolved into "its",
there was no "e" to drop, therefore no logical reason to insert an
apostrophe.

   The "its" and "it's" forms did coexist in the 17th and early 18th
century, but today the "its" form is considered to be the only
correct spelling.

   Plural nouns are harder to explain.  The most common genitive
plural inflection was -a, which is quite unrelated to our modern
-s'.  My best guess is that most of the old plural suffixes were
replaced by -s under the influence of French; and that subsequently
the rules for forming singular possessives were extended to the
plurals.  If this is what happened, then a hypothetical -s's plural
possessive suffix would immediately collapse to -s', in the same way
as for many singular nouns ending in "s".  There was in any case a
long period where spelling was a lot less standardized than it is
today, so one should not think in terms of any sort of "standard
rule" existing during the transitional period.

NOTE FOR NON-ENGLISH SPEAKERS

   The apostrophe in these cases normally has no effect on
pronunciation.  Thus dogs, dog's, and dogs' all sound the same.  The
exception is where the apostrophe separates two "s"s, and then it is
pronounced as an unstressed schwa.  Thus class's, classes, and
classes' are all pronounced as /klas@z/.

   For nouns where there is some difference of opinion over whether
the possessive suffix should be -'s or a bare apostrophe (that is,
those nouns where a final unstressed syllable ends with an [s] or
[z] sound) some native speakers use a lengthened final consonant
intermediate between /z/ and /z@z/.  This is, however, a fine and
almost inaudible distinction.

OTHER COMMENTS

   One occasionally hears that "John's dog" is an abbreviation for
"John his dog".  It is more likely that the derivation went in the
opposite direction, i.e.:
   Johnes hund => John's hound => Johnny's dog => John 'is dog
with the "John his dog" form coming into use only briefly before
disappearing from modern English.

   Using an apostrophe in a plural which is not a possessive form is
almost never recommended by prescriptivists.  The only situation
where is is recommended is where visual confusion would otherwise
result, as for example in the sentence "Mind your p's and q's".  In
forms like "the 1980s" or "two CPUs", apostrophes are not
recommended.

   It is correct to use an apostrophe to indicate missing letters,
in contractions like "aren't", "isn't", "it's" (= it is or it has).
Be careful in these cases to put the apostrophe in the correct
place.  The apostrophe replaces the missing letter(s); it does not
replace the space between words.

--
misrael@scripps.edu			Mark Israel

