usage

Less or fewer

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Earlier this week a Facebook friend alerted me to National Grammar Day (4 March or March fo(u)rth, geddit?) with a cartoon in which a woman says ‘Be super annoying in a convo in 4 words or less …’ and a man replies ‘4 words or fewer!’

Grammar isn’t about being annoying. It’s about being interesting, and about usage informing rules and not rules prescribing usage.

Prescriptivists state that less is used with uncountable nouns and fewer with countable nouns. But less with countable nouns is well and truly used. Google Ngrams shows that words or less has always been more common than words or fewer, peaking between 1920 and 1960, for some reasons to do to with international politics. 

The complete list of results for ‘*_NOUN or less, *_NOUN or fewer’ (the top 10 results) shows: year or less, years or less, percent or less, hours or less, months or less, (per) cent or less, days or fewer, pupils or fewer, words or fewer, hours or fewer, persons or fewer, employees or fewer, years or fewer, dozen or fewer, number or fewer, words or less, pounds or less, percent or fewer, feet or less, days or less. Clearly, less and fewer are used pretty much interchangeably in this context, whatever the prescriptivists say. Maybe there is a slight difference: five years or less means any amount of years, months or days (treating time as continuous) while five years or fewer means four, three, two, one or zero years (treating years as discrete).  

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bridled, unbridled, bristled, unbristled excitement

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I fell into a linguistic rabbit warren about the words bridled, unbridled, bristled and unbristled, by themselves and in conjunction with the word excitement (as an example). This post could get messy.

As sebmb1 pointed out in a comment to my previous post (un)bridled comes from a time when most people rode horses. There’s also saddled, with a different meaning, most often saddled with, and saddled and bridled (or bridled and saddled). Other agricultural words with similar meanings are hamstrung, hobbled, hog-tied, leashed and trammelled, all of which involve restraining animals. Leashed and trammelled have un- equivalents, but the others don’t. Sebmb1 also noted give a free rein (to) (not reign) and there’s also rein in, which no-one renders as reign in (or possibly rain in). There easily are more horsey/agricultural phrases and proverbs than words.

The only thing interesting about unbridled excitement is that its usage has increased greatly since about 1990, for no reason I can think of. The 1990s weren’t noted for unbridled excitement.

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Try and fail

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I have used a computer keyboard pretty much every day for 30 years, when I first bought a home computer, and occasionally for about 4 years before that in a workplace office. I have developed a reasonable, non-specialist proficiency. (I had previously done one semester of typing at high school, but had forgotten most of that.) I rarely type at full speed for any extended time, because most of the typing I do is either editing a few words at a time (the arrow keys get more use than the letter keys – the right arrow key of my previous home laptop fell off), or writing work emails and personal blog posts, stopping to think about content and wording a lot.

I recently had the idea of doing a free online course followed by free online practice/speed tests. I have already discovered that my typing speed sits at about 55-60 words per minute, with bursts up to 75 wpm. I have a small problem with accuracy, which is not helped by autocorrect, which can be a good or bad thing. Pages for Mac also has autocomplete, which I don’t use because it requires stopping typing in the middle of a word and using the tab or return key, which is not a natural movement for me.

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Much ado about adieu

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One item on many lists of English usage mistakes is without/with no further adieu for without/with no further ado. I can’t remember that I’ve ever encountered it in real life, like many (maybe most) items on many (maybe most) lists of English usage mistakes. I don’t use either ado or adieu a lot anyway. I also pronounce them differently, with a /j/ (‘y’ sound) in adieu, which I had assumed was the standard pronunciation, but Dictionary.com lists the pronunciation as ‘ado’ first. 

I recently encountered “without further due” in a Youtube video. I first thought the high-level English-as-a-second-language speaker said “without further adieu” with the schwas elided, but after listening to it many times, I’m sure he says “due”. This appears in the subtitles, which seem to non-automated, because there is sometimes further explanatory material as well the transcription of the voiceover, there are no auto-subtitling mistakes, and several English-as-a-second-language speaker infelicities. He and I pronounce due with a /j/ sound. 

Without further due also appears on some lists of English usage mistakes but I hadn’t seen it before, or encountered it in real life. To me, without further adieu makes sense only in the context of saying goodbye and departing from somewhere, not when introducing  a topic. Without further due only just makes sense, if you use due as a noun, which it is in give them their due.

Google Ngrams and a general Google search both show that without/with no further ado is used many times more often than either adieu or due. Many of the first results are dictionaries, usage guides etc, but there are enough instances of adieu and due to say that they are used, mostly in informal contexts. 

Ngrams shows that without further ado is 96 times more common than without further adieu, and 522 times more common than without further due. Search shows 35 and 187 times, respectively. (There are obviously discrepancies between how Ngrams and Search use their data, but for general purposes the numbers above are sufficiently similar. The ratios are almost exactly the same.)

In lists of usage mistakes or elsewhere, no-one seems to fulminate against without further adieu or without further due in the way that they do against irregardless, so it may be much adieu about nothing. Speaking of which, much ado about nothing (I used that phrase in my post about irregardless) is either about 10,000 (Ngrams) or 1,485 (Search) times more common than much adieu about nothing. A brief skim of the results for much adieu about nothing shows that it is reasonably likely that people are using it deliberately, as a pun. It is also possible to use without further adieu deliberately …

So adieu

adieu

…

Not archaic, just plain wrong

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In 2016 the Australian government, then controlled by the centre-right Liberal Party (~US Republican/UK Conservative) introduced an automated debt assessment and recovery program for welfare recipients. This had a number of official names but was generally referred to as Robodebt. It was a total disaster in multiple ways and was discontinued in 2020. In 2022 the new centre-left Labor government (~US Democratic/UK Labour) announced a royal commission, the highest form of public inquiry in Australia. The commission’s report was released recently.

The government entity I work for is related to this, fortunately contributing to the scheme’s discontinuation. Some of my colleagues were indirectly involved . There is a link to the report on the main page of our intranet, so in an idle moment I clicked on it and browsed through the commissioner’s introduction. The last paragraph is:

Finally on the subject of language, the Commission staff are not to be blamed for the archaic forms of syntax “a number of people was” and use of the subjunctive “if he were” throughout the report. That is my doing; my staff did their best to correct what they were convinced were errors, only to have me stubbornly reinsert them. (I have grudgingly succumbed to the use of “their” in the singular.) (p ix)

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timeous timeliness

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Our manager told us via email while working from home that a job applicant had written something like “I complete all my job tasks timeously”. I think she thought it isn’t a word, but it’s in any number of dictionaries found by a quick online search, some of them marking it as “chiefly Scottish”. (Pages for Mac, on the other hand, is red-underlining it.) I can’t recall if I’ve ever actually encountered it. Certainly not in speech but maybe in writing. If I have, I have understood it to be pronounced tim–e-əs–ly and to mean something like timidly (which is hardly something you’d say about yourself in a job application). 

But it’s time–əs-ly, and it means timely. But timeously is definitely an adverb, made from the adjective timeous and the suffix –ly (Pages for Mac accepts timeous.) Timely is one of a small number of adjectives ending in –ly (compare friendly), so there is no immediately equivalent adverb: I complete all my job tasks timeously v *I complete all my job tasks timely and I complete all my job tasks in a timeous manner v I complete all my job tasks in a timely manner. So maybe timeously means timelily (compare friendlily).

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bad/good boy(s)/girl(s)/guy(s)

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Some time ago I posted about boy band and girl group being more common than boy group and girl band, and pondered whether it was simply added alliterative appeal, with no firm conclusions. Recently, for no apparent reason, I wondered whether bad boy(s) and good girl(s) follow the same pattern. Yes and no. Google Ngrams shows that bad boys and good girls are more common (in terms of usage, at least) than good boys and bad girls. In the singular, though, good wins, with good girl and good boy being more common than bad boy and bad girl. I can’t draw any conclusions from that. The 1995 movie Bad Boys is unlikely to have had a significant overall effect. 

There is also guy, which complicates the picture. Good guy is more common than bad guy, but bad guys are more common than good guys. It would seem that girls are more often good, singularly or plurally, and a boy is more often good but boys bad . 

There is/are also also Guys and Dolls, but good doll(s) and bad doll(s) are very rare.

“to the best of me ability”

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Not Microsoft Word this time, but a similar spelling/grammar checker. I typed “to the best of my ability” and it blue-underlined my, suggesting me: “to the best of me ability”. No, no, no. Certainly not in formal writing (though I note that Pages for Mac and WordPress don’t question me ability (or, less surprisingly, my ability). Just maybe in very informal, non-standard speech, by some people. 

I can find very little information about this usage, probably because it is so informal. This inconclusive ELL Stack Exchange discussion is the only one so far. It’s probably a variant pronunciation of my rather than actually me. People who say to the best of me ability don’t say to the best of you/he/she/it/us/they ability instead of your/his/her/its/our/their ability (the only possible pronunciation is ya ability). Compare I’ll do my best, I’ll do m’best and I’ll do me best with to the best of my ability, *to the best of m’ability and ?to the best of me ability. Note also that me in this usage can’t be stressed: Me car’s been stolen! v Not your car, me car!

All of Google Ngrams’ results for me *_NOUN are from the bigger construction V me N; for example, me something from tell/give/show/teach me something.

I wouldn’t be able to program a spelling/grammar check, so maybe I shouldn’t criticise, but I ever did, I wouldn’t question my N (unless is was part of a V me something construction).

Like a ton of bricks

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I overheard a colleague tell a second colleague that a third colleague had told the first colleague that the third colleague was going to do something otherwise than by standard procedures. The first colleague then said:

If he does that, I’ll jump on him like a ton of bricks.

My first thought was that bricks don’t jump, even a ton of them. 

At home I first searched for jump ton bricks (without quotation marks), which found no exact uses of the expression in any form, but, not surprisingly, dictionary entries and uses of be/come (down) on sb like a ton of bricks, hit sb like a ton of bricks and jump down sb’s throat. Searching again for “jump on him like a ton of bricks” (with quotation marks for an exact match) found a small number of exact uses, as did most combinations with jumped, me, you, her,  it, us, them, someone and somebody. I was surprised to find that some people even jump on it like a ton of bricks. 

So I’ll say that jump on sb like a ton of bricks is used, just not very much. Pre-internet, would there have been any way of finding those? 

(Would anyone say “The wall came down on him like a ton of bricks”, or is that too literal?) 

pro- and anti-

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Everyone agrees that abortion is a Bad Thing, so no-one is “pro-abortion” – at least I’d thought until I researched current usage. There are enough usages to be noticeable. Most of them are part of “pro-abortion rights” or “pro-abortion-rights” (which is awkward however it’s hyphenated) and “I’m not pro-abortion; I’m pro-choice”, but Google’s first page of results includes “pro-abortion Christians” and “pro-abortion protesters”. But those are those writers’ description of other people, not those other people’s self-description. Another result is the Cambridge Dictionary, which defines it as “supporting the belief that women should have the right to have an abortion” (my emphasis).

Equally, everyone agrees that life and choice are Good Things, but equally “anti-life” and “anti-choice” are used. The first seems to be a distraction, because most of Google’s results are references to the Anti-Life Equation in DC comics, which I didn’t know about previously and won’t pretend to understand. But I can easily imagine some people in the current debate referring to other people as “anti-life”. (And no-one is “pro-death”, either. In my state of Australia, the current debate is about voluntary assisted dying.) “Anti-choice” seems to be the most used, but similarly by some people about other people. 

I’m going to stick my neck out and say that no-one self-describes as “pro-abortion”, “anti-life” or “anti-choice”. 

“anti-” relates variably with nouns that follow. Google Ngrams’ top 10 results are Semitism, corruption, slavery, poverty, trust, Christian, climax, Catholic, chamber (a mistake for ante-chamber) and freeze. Notable here are -Semitism, -trust and -climax. Semitism doesn’t seem to be a thing; Google took me straight to anti-Semitism. (Compare, in earlier times, Zionism (rather than pro-Zionism) and anti-Zionism.) Trust is a Good Thing, so being anti-trust is surely a bad thing. But the term refers to the use of corporate trusts in certain bad ways. A climax is a good thing, but an anti-climax isn’t against that; it either doesn’t happen at all or happens to lesser degree than anticipated.

Note that being anti-something doesn’t necessarily mean being pro-the-opposite or even pro-anything-else. Anti-government protesters probably aren’t pro-anarchy (though some may be); they are either pro-some-other-group-being-the-government or pro-a-change-in-the-system-of-government. And anti-freeze does not mean pro-boil. 

On the other hand, Ngrams’ top results for “pro-” are slavery, cess, duction, tection, vide, vision, visions, portion, ceedings and fession, which means that there’s something wrong with either their programming or the way I’m using their search terms. I was surprised at the use of pro-slavery. I hope that no-one is pro-slavery these days.

Note: this post is about language usage. Any comments otherwise will be deleted.