The Curmudgeonly Grammarian

It is a curse to be so attuned to how others speak and write, and to care about it.

After all, who really should give a hoot? The purpose of language is to communicate and if the message is communicated, no matter how mangled, hasn’t that end been reached?

Yes, but…

It tugs at a grammarian’s heart, who wants nothing but to be helpful. And the curmudgeon part (which is only a kind way of saying super-grumpy), simply transforms this into a rather grouchy urge to assist. But is this truly helpful? In fact, family and friends and colleagues of the curmudgeonly grammarian have often been overheard planning a lynching.

In spite of this danger, let’s explore a few examples of common word or phrase choices which may not be, harrumph, optimum.  Several of these are cherry picked from other publications, or from the web, but some are from these very pages. (To my blog readers – this refers to the Attleboro Sun Chronicle which runs my column every other Thursday).

First let us recognize that language changes, constantly evolving. New words and phrases join the vocabulary regularly, such as “card reader,” acknowledged by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2016 as “an electronic sensor that reads a magnetic strip or bar code on a credit card, membership card, etc.” (This does not apparently recognize that the phrase pre-existed; card readers were actual machines in the mid-twentieth century used to read and process punched paper cards. Your curmudgeonly grammarian operated an IBM 2540RP card reader in the 1970s with little lasting damage).

Other words are used with meaning that has changed over time. In the good old days, we said “fewer” when the object was countable, and “less” when it was not. Fewer people, less water. Fewer logs, less lumber. But today everything is “less.” While generally understandable, this new usage loses some information. Less people, less water. Which is countable, which is not?

Here is a good one, an example of misremembering a word. In a letter to the editor in the Providence Journal, a gentleman self-identified as a “retired educator and former executive director of the RI Association of School Principals” wrote a plaint that concluded with the phrase “exasperate the problem.”  A quick Google search finds 77,000 hits on the same phrase, so he was far from alone. But it is a meaningless statement. To exasperate means to irritate or infuriate. How can a problem be irritated? He meant to say exacerbate, which means to worsen. A problem can be made worse, but it cannot feel the emotion of exasperation. (You were warned at the outset… this is grumpy).

Here are a few more – most taken from these very pages.

“Low and behold…” – no, loe and behold.

“We got passed this fairly quickly...” – try past instead of passed.

“Establish report with him…” – hmmm, rapport?

“Waive a red flag…” – wave, wave!

“The DNC didn’t fair much better...” – ummm, perhaps they meant fare?

There are many more. Brake/break, affect/effect, lose/loose, to/too/two, there/their. This is why English is such a bear of a language to learn for non-native speakers.

Let’s close with an example of  a common phrase which is illogical.

In a recent headline, we were told that “Flynn Resigning Begs the Question of Trump's Involvement.” The editor meant to say that Flynn’s resignation raises the question of Trump’s involvement. But that’s not what “beg the question” means.

To beg the question is a technical term of logic. It means that an argued conclusion is not supported by its premises. For instance, if we posit that “thoughts are not part of the physical world, since thoughts are in their nature non-physical,” the conclusion is simply a restatement of the premise. It doesn’t prove anything, hence is fallacious and begs the question.

The headline writer would have been better off simply stating that “Flynn’s Resignation Raises the Question of Trump Involvement.” Sometimes the simpler the words, the clearer the meaning.

Time for this curmudgeonly grammarian to sign off, while friends and family and colleagues are still on speaking terms.

After all, as long as we understand each other, that’s all that matters. Right?