cover next page > Page iii The Columbia Guide to Standard American English Kenneth G Wilson Columbia University Press NEW YORK title: author: publisher: isbn10 | asin: print isbn13: ebook isbn13: language: subject publication date: lcc: ddc: subject: The Columbia Guide to Standard American English Wilson, Kenneth G Columbia University Press 0231069898 9780231069892 9780585041483 English English language United States Usage Dictionaries, English language Usage Dictionaries, Americanisms-Dictionaries 1993 PE2835.W55 1993eb 428/.00973 English language United States Usage Dictionaries, English language Usage Dictionaries, Americanisms-Dictionaries cover If you like this book, buy it! next page > page_iv < previous page next page > Page iv Columbia University Press New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 1993 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wilson, Kenneth G (Kenneth George) The Columbia guide to standard American English / by Kenneth G Wilson p cm ISBN 0-231-06988-X PA ISBN 0-231-06989-8 English languageUnited StatesUsageDictionaries English languageUsageDictionaries AmericanismsDictionaries Title PE2835.W55 1993 428'.00973dc20 92-37887 CIP Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are Smyth-sewn and printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper Printed in the United States of America c 10 p 10 < previous page page_iv If you like this book, buy it! visit http://obama-omama.blogspot.com/ for more eBooks and downloads next page > < previous page page_v next page > Page v To Marilyn < previous page page_v If you like this book, buy it! next page > < previous page page_vii next page > Page vii Acknowledgments For their helpwhether in useful lore, fruitful suggestions, generous service, steady encouragement, wise counsel, great patience, or in all of theseI'm grateful to family, friends, colleagues, former students, readers, lexicographical acquaintances, libraries and their staff members, and my publishers I'm especially grateful to my editors, Anne McCoy, James Raimes, and Sarah St Onge, and I also want to express my gratitude to the Homer Babbidge Library of The University of Connecticut, the Mansfield (Connecticut) Town Library, Irving Allen, Raymond Anselment, Robert Baker, Eve Bayrock, Frederick Biggs, Bill Bramlette, Lois Brandt, Joseph Cary, Irving Cummings, Jack Davis, Yakira Frank, Brinley Franklin, John Gatta, Stephanie Haas, Joan Hall, David Hankins, Robert Hasenfratz, Thomas Jambeck, David Kapp, Frances Kim, Nancy Kline, Julia Kocich, John Manning, John McDonald, Casey Miller, William Moynihan, Donald O'Hara, Arnold Orza, Robert Pearson, Sam Pickering, Richard Reynolds, Thomas Roberts, Barbara Rosen, William Rosen, Kim Schleicher, Helen Smith, Suzanne Staubach, Milton Stern, Norman Stevens, Kate Swift, Katherine Tardif, Dennis Thornton, Marilyn Waniek, Thomas Wilcox, Roger Wilkenfeld, Rebecca Wilson, and Marilyn Wilson Many, many thanks to all < previous page page_vii If you like this book, buy it! next page > < previous page page_ix next page > Page ix Introduction Standard American Usage Standard American English usage is linguistic good manners, sensitively and accurately matched to contextto listeners or readers, to situation, and to purpose But because our language is constantly changing, mastering its appropriate usage is not a one-time task like learning the multiplication tables Instead, we are constantly obliged to adjust, adapt, and revise what we have learned Our language can always serve us effectively if we use its resources wisely; to keep itself ready to serve us it continually changes and varies to meet our needs If we are a practical and hard-headed people, it will come to reflect that fact; if we become technologically and scientifically venturesome, our language will change to meet that need; if we become poets, it will change to accommodate the demands of our poetry; and if we are filled with prejudice or hatred, our language will reflect that too Failing to keep our usageour words, meanings, pronunciations, spellings, grammatical structures, and idiomatic expressionsabreast of changing and varying standards may earn us moderate disapproval if a usage is doubtful, vigorous disapproval or outright rejection if it is wholly inappropriate, substandard, or taboo Nor is there just one immutable standard, one unvarying code of manners Influential people fully in command of the standard language speak and write it at different levels to meet the demands of different contexts A great many of us use American English, and we differ a good deal in what we wish to communicate to one another Furthermore, we use this language in a wide range of situations and for many different purposes Pillow talk between couples differs from the ways each talks to children, neighbors, colleagues, friends, acquaintances, complete strangers, or to groups of all kinds and sizes Our vocabulary, our syntax, and every other aspect of our usage vary with the person or persons we are addressing, with the purpose of our utterance, with the situation, and indeed with the entire context: an address from the podium of a convention hall filled with political partisans demands language very different from that required for a relaxed discussion among a few close friends Our < previous page page_ix If you like this book, buy it! next page > < previous page page_x next page > Page x speech can vary considerably between the social chatter before the meeting and the business discussion in the meeting itself What is true of contextual variation in our speech is just as true of contextual variation in our writing: to whom, when, where, under what circumstances, and for what purpose we write can make many differences in what we write and how the reader understands it The note to the package delivery driver, the love letter or the letter of condolence, the letter to the editor, and the committee report require different language Writing for publication has its variations too: because we rarely ever meet our readers, we must try to imagine accurately what they are like and try to anticipate and meet their expectations Most of the words, meanings, and grammatical structures we use belong to everybody's English usage All EnglishBritish, Canadian, or American; Standard, Common, or Vulgarhas dogs and cats, verbs and direct objects But the differences, although relatively few when measured against the size of the whole language, stand out clearly and sometimes even leap out at us Most of us know a few of the "funny" expressions the British and the Australians use; many of us are aware of the "funny" way many Canadians say schedule But perhaps because relative to the whole they are so few, these differences can be fiercely significant It is not just dialectal variations such as those between American trucks and molasses and British lorries and treacle; even more important to us are the everyday variations within American English itself: What makes southerners sound so different from the rest of us? (The Southern and South Midland regional dialects differ importantly from each other as well as from other American dialects.) How should we view ain't? (Standard English can use it, but only in strictly limited contexts.) And is irregardless a word or not? (It is, but its inadvertent use in Standard English can mean real trouble for the user.) Hence our need to know which locutions must be limited to casual contexts in the spoken language only, which ones should be limited mainly to pulpit or platform, which ones are appropriate in all spoken and written contexts, and which ones should be restricted to use at, say, formal written levels only: Mr and Mrs John Robert Smith request the pleasure of your company at a reception in honor of their daughter, Mary Jane Smith is no more the appropriate way to write an informal invitation than is the party of the first part suitable for reaching oral agreement on the stakes in a friendly card game We must match the level of our language to the context in which we use it When we blunder in our choices or misread the tastes and expectations of those we are addressing, we can raise eyebrows, cause misunderstandings, or even shock our listeners or readers to a point where they truly cannot hear whatever it is we intend to convey Any small inappropriateness in usage may hamper effectiveness, and a single big blunder can destroy it And remember: when we assess the experience, temper, tastes, and expectations of our listeners or readers, their receptivity will vary just as our own can; some of them will be linguistically conservative, some linguistically liberal, and some in between Best advice on this score is still Alexander Pope's, expressed in his famous comparison of fashions in dress and other manners with fashions in language: < previous page page_x If you like this book, buy it! next page > < previous page page_xi next page > Page xi In words as fashions the same rule will hold, Alike fantastic if too new or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside An Essay on Criticism, II 133-136 The Columbia Guide This guide to Standard American usage tries to help you keep up with the new and keep track of the old, so that you can make your language fit all the contexts you encounter whenever you speak or write It seeks to help you make some of the choices Standard users must make if their usage is to be what they want it to be and what their listeners and readers expect it to be There are many variables at work, and answers can only infrequently be both simple and accurate Much more often, the accurate answer to a usage question begins, "It depends." And what it depends on most often is where you are, who you are, who your listeners or readers are, and what your purpose in speaking or writing is Most usage guides address themselves primarily or even exclusively to writers and problems of writing and thus may inadvertently lead us to infer that we should try to speak the language exactly as our best writers write it But neither our best writers nor most of the rest of us really talk like books; some of our language must of course be suitable for use in books, but usage problems are by no means limited to those we encounter in writing for publication Most of us most of our communicating orallyface to face or over the telephoneand much of the rest of it in informally written notes, letters, and memos Being able to match our spoken levels of usage to these differing contexts is every bit as important as is being able to match our formal written English to the demands of its contexts Commentators have long argued the virtues and defects of prescriptive and descriptive methods of treating Standard usage This guide prescribes whenever real rules make prescription a sensible way of proceeding But for most grammatical and usage questions description-based generalizations, not rules, provide better answers (see the entry RULES AND GENERALIZATIONS), because they take into account both the changes and the variations that are always in progress in a living language For further discussion of how best to interpret the advice this guide offers, see the entry PRESCRIPTIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR AND USAGE and the entries CONSERVATIVE USAGE and LIBERAL USAGE The Columbia Guide to Standard American English is unique in showing systematically how today's language is appropriately used in five levels of Standard American speech, ranging from the most relaxed conversation to the most elevated public address, and in three levels of Standard American writing, ranging from the most informal of personal notes to the most formal of printed publications The figure schematically displays these levels of speech and writing and indicates the relative relationships among them and the cluster labels under which some of them fall It is based on the work of two linguists Martin Joos, in a very influential little book, The Five Clocks (1962, 1967), described < previous page page_xi If you like this book, buy it! next page > < previous page page_xii next page > Page xii The Levels of Standard American English five distinctive context-related "styles" that we employ when we use our language H A Gleason, Jr., in his Linguistics and English Grammar (1965), expanded and revised Joos's scheme, describing these contexts as five "keys" (rather than "styles") particularly applicable to the usage variations in our spoken language He also described three somewhat broader categories against which to measure variations in the standard written language My system owes much to Joos's scheme and even more to Gleason's elaboration and refinement of it I have substituted the term levels for Gleason's "keys," because levels seems to have embedded itself in the national consciousness when we talk of usage, and I have applied it to both spoken and written usage in order to suggest some of the connections between them I have used the labels Impromptu and Planned for Gleason's "consultative" and "deliberative," seeking to make them readily accessible to general reader and language professional alike I have also added the cluster labels Conversational and Edited English Many words, idiomatic expressions, meanings, pronunciations, spellings, and grammatical and rhetorical structures are found at every level of speech and writing and are appropriate in every context The verb goes in The family goes to Maine in August is one such Other uses of that word, however, may be appropriate only in limited Standard contexts, as is the noun go in We'll have a go at it, which is Standard only at Conversational levels or in the Informal or Semiformal writing that imitates them And still other uses of go are inappropriate anywhere in Standard spoken or written English: for example, the uninflected dialectal third person singular verb go in She go to school at Central High is Substandard In this guide, any entry containing no explicit label describes a Standard usage Some entries, on the other hand, may cover sets of words or phrases, variously labeled Standard, Nonstandard (marked by usages found in and characteristic of Common English and some regional dialects), and Substandard < previous page page_xii If you like this book, buy it! next page > < previous page page_xiii next page > Page xiii English (marked by and characteristic primarily of Vulgar English) Some items may be described as being in divided usage Words and meanings may be further identified with labels such as slang (normally restricted to Impromptu speech or Informal writing), jargon (appropriate usually only in special speech communities), profanity (limited to severely restricted contexts), and obscenity (usually taboo), or with labels indicating the current status of the locution (archaic, obsolescent, and obsolete) Words and locutions may also be defined in terms of their acceptability to conservatives or purists, whose attitudes to the language contrast so strongly with those of liberals, for whom permissiveness, with all its implications for good and ill, is often the mode Each of the labels just mentioned, as well as those in the figure, has its own full entry in this guide, as level, context, and nearly all other language-related terms that appear in the advice given in the guide's roughly sixty-five hundred usage entries Whenever you encounter a language-related term of which you are unsure, seek the entry for it The entry words are of two sorts: those in all capital letters define, explain, and illustrate most of the grammatical and other linguistic terminology used throughout this guide The entry words printed in lowercase letters are the usage items themselvesthe words, phrases, spellings, pronunciations, combined forms, meanings, and idioms about which there are questions or division of opinion among Standard users, expressions about which problems of appropriateness frequently arise Cross-referencesof which there are manyappear in all small capital letters, most often at the end of entries Cross-references generally consist of entry words up to the first mark of punctuation, coded with numbers for clarity where necessary Variant pronunciations and variant spellings are presented with the version judged most frequent in Standard American English given first, the least frequent last (See the section on pronunciation at the end of this introduction.) The sample entries on page xv illustrate the way the entries in this guidein a single alphabetical listtypically present their information and advice Guide to Pronunciations Where clear rhyme words will guide, they are provided: snood rhymes with food Pronunciations are printed in italics: ahead is pronounced uh-HED Hyphens separate syllables: implicit (im-PLIS-it) has three syllables, separated by the two hyphens A syllable in all capital letters has a heavy, usually primary, stress: knitted is pronounced NIT-id When a word has both primary and secondary or tertiary stresses, the syllable that receives primary stress is in boldface italic capital letters: boldfaced is pronounced BOLD-FAIST; commander in chief is pronounced kuh-MAND-uhr-in-CHEEF; secondary and tertiary stressed syllables in such words are in italic capital letters So-called weak or unstressed syllables are in italic lowercase letters: sofa is pronounced SO-fuh < previous page page_xiii If you like this book, buy it! next page > page_xiv < previous page next page > Page xiv Transcription of Stressed Vowel Sounds1 KAT = cat FAIT = fate FAH = father FAWN = fawn FRET = fret FEET = feet FEIT = fight FIT= fit FO = foe FOOD = food FOUND = found FOIL = foil FUL = full FUHJ = fudge Transcription of Unstressed Vowel Sounds1 HAP-en = happen LIV-id = livid SO-fuh = sofa Transcription of Certain Vowels plus R l PAHR = par PER = pair2 PIR = peer POR = pour POOR = poor PUHR = purr Transcription of Consonant Sounds1 BED = bed DET = debt FED = fed GET = get HED = head JUHG = jug KAD = cad LAIM = lame MAT = mat NET = net SING-uhr = FING-guhr = finger singer PET = pet RED = red SET = set TEN = ten VET = vet YET = yet WICH = witch3HWICH = which3CHUHRCH = church SHEEP = sheepTHEI = thigh4 = thy4 A-zhuhr = VI-zhuhn = vision mi-RAHZH = azure mirage The sounds under discussion here are in boldface for clarity; in the guide proper, boldface type in pronunciations generally denotes primary stress, except in certain instances where it highlights a particular sound under discussion See the entry for MERRY, MARY, MARRY for comment on certain regional variations Some Standard dialects pronounce which as a homophone of witch Note that the voiced th sound in thy is printed with a ligature, to distinguish it from the voiceless th sound in thigh, which is printed without a ligature < previous page page_xiv If you like this book, buy it! next page > ... today slightly prefer the variant without the medial -e- See SPELLING (1) Compare ACKNOWLEDGMENT; JUDGMENT See also ABSTRACT (1); ABSTRACT (2) abrogate See ABDICATE < previous page page_3 If you... see ACRONYMS; APHERESIS; APHESIS; CLIPPING; INITIALISMS For comment on punctuation, see PERIOD (1) On pronunciation, see SPELLING PRONUNCIATIONS abdicate, abrogate, arrogate (vv.) To abdicate... uniquest and more/most unique are shibboleths best avoided in other than humorous use See ADJECTIVES (1) ABSOLUTE COMPARATIVES We seldom notice these incomplete or "understood" comparisons, and they