Cracking my knuckles in preparation for writing this chapter, I made my way one Saturday morning to that agora of the twenty-first century, Twitter, where an awful lot of writers who should be writing and editors who should be editing hang out. There I put in a request for what I gingerly, tactfully referred to as “personal usage flashpoints,” tossing out as examples “literally” (when used to mean “metaphorically”) and “irregardless” (when used at all), which make for highly effective chum when you’re trying to attract language piranhas.
Half a day and a few hundred colorful responses later, I’d amassed a list, which, whittled down somewhat, I offer you here, with the inevitable commentary. Some of these entries, I admit, are peeves and crotchets I share, because I’m no more or less irrational than anyone else, while some, vigorously adhered to by people whose judgment I otherwise respect, make me furrow my brow, hike my eyebrows, and look askance—or, to put it in the current parlance, give side-eye to.
Oh, and this is crucial: The important thing to remember about peeves and crotchets is that your own peeves and crotchets reflect sensible preferences based on a refined appreciation of the music and meaning of the English language, and that everyone else’s are the products of diseased minds.
OK, let’s roll.
AGGRAVATE
If you use “aggravate” to mean not “make a bad thing worse” but “piss the living daylights out of,” though it has for centuries been used thus, you will irritate a goodly number of people, so you might well stick, in such cases, with “irritate.” If “irritate” bores or otherwise aggravates you, can you avail yourself of one of its synonyms—among them “annoy,” “exasperate,” and, my favorite, “vex”—and save yourself, as Jewish mothers have expressed it from time immemorial, the aggravation?
AGREEANCE
This is not, as its deriders may think, a Johnny-come-lately distortion of the English language but an ancient term, long since tossed onto the junk heap, that resurfaces every now and then where most people would say “agreement.” One sees it so rarely that it scarcely qualifies as a worthy target of ire, but it bothers those whom it bothers.
ANXIOUS
The utterly common and exceptionally long-established use of “anxious” to describe anticipation of a happy sort makes some people anxious, and not in a good way. As an anxious type myself, I don’t think it’s worth the kerfuffle and reserve “anxious” for things I’m nervously battening down the hatches over and use “eager” to express, well, eagerness. That said, “anxious” comes in handy for things you’re excited about that are nonetheless spawning stomach butterflies. A first date, say.
ARTISANAL
As can happen with any word that is suddenly, explosively ubiquitous, “artisanal,” when used to refer to things made by hand for which you pay an arm and a leg, has quickly devolved from a selling point to an object of eye-rolling derision. Not being in the pickle, beer, or soap business, I rarely encounter it professionally, but if you’re on the verge of using it, you might want to think twice. Then thrice.*2
ASK
The nouning of the verb “ask”—“That’s a big ask,” “What’s the ask on this?”—makes me chortle appreciatively, though I can’t help but note that “request” is a perfectly charming word as either noun or verb. Verb-to-noun transformations—“nominalization” is the formal term for the process—can grate as well as amuse, as can many of the other attempts, often hailing from the worlds of business and academia, to gussy up shopworn ideas by replacing conventional language with overreaching—and arguably unnecessary—coinages.*3
BASED OFF OF
No. Just no. “An intentional tremor, with prepositions,” as a friend described it. The inarguably—so don’t argue with me—correct phrase is “based on.”
BEGS THE QUESTION
When used to mean “raises the question,” this one’s no mere peeve; it’s a nuclear threat. So duck and cover and listen up.
Begging the question, as the term is traditionally understood, is a kind of logical fallacy—the original Latin is petitio principii, and no, I don’t know these things off the top of my head; I look them up like any normal human being—in which one argues for the legitimacy of a conclusion by citing as evidence the very thing one is trying to prove in the first place. Circular reasoning, that is. To assert, say, that vegetables are good for you because eating them makes you healthy or that I am a first-rate copy editor because clearly my copyediting improves other people’s prose is to beg the question.
Except hardly anyone anymore recognizes, much less uses, “begs the question” for that sort of thing, and the phrase has been overwhelmingly repurposed to mean “leads to an inevitable query,” as in, say, “The abject failure of five successive big-budget special-effects-laden films begs the question, Is the era of the blockbuster over and done with?”*4
People who are in the business of hating the relatively new-fashioned use of “begs the question” hate it vehemently, and they hate it loudly. Unfortunately, subbing in “raises the question” or “inspires the query” or any number of other phrasings, fools no one; one can always detect the deleted “begs the question,” a kind of prose pentimento, for those of you who were paying attention in art history class or have read Lillian Hellman’s thrilling if dubiously accurate memoir.
BEMUSED
The increasing use of “bemused” to mean “wryly, winkingly amused, as if while wearing a grosgrain bow tie and sipping a Manhattan” rather than “bothered and bewildered” is going to—sooner rather than later, I fear—render the word meaningless and useless, and that’s too bad; it’s a good word. My own never-say-die attitude toward preserving “bemusement” to mean perplexity, and only that, is beginning to give me that General Custer vibe.
CENTERED AROUND
Even as a spatially challenged person who doodled and dozed his way through geography class, I recognize that “centered around” doesn’t make any sense, so I will always opt for “centered on” or “revolved around.” You should too.
CHOMPING AT THE BIT
Yes, it’s traditionally “champing at the bit.” Yes, many people now write “chomping,” likely because the word “champing” is unfamiliar to them. In that “champing” and “chomping” are as virtually indistinguishable in meaning as they are in spelling, the condemnation of “chomping” strikes me as trifling.
CLICHÉ
It’s a perfectly lovely noun. As an adjective, it rankles. You can afford the extra letter in “clichéd.” Use it.
COMPRISE
I confess: I can barely remember which is the right way to use this word and which the wrong way, so every time I cross paths with it—or am tempted to use it—I stop to look it up.
“The English alphabet comprises twenty-six letters.” This is correct.
“Twenty-six letters compose the English alphabet.” This is also correct, though “make up” would sound a bit less stilted than “composed,” don’t you think?
“The English alphabet is comprised of twenty-six letters.” Cue the sirens, because here come the grammar cops.
Use plain “comprise” to mean “made up of” and you’re on safe ground. But as soon as you’re about to attach the word “of” to the word “comprise,” raise your hands to the sky and edit yourself. Once you’ve lowered your hands.
COULD CARE LESS
Use this phrase at your own peril to express utter indifference, because it inspires, from many, furious condemnation. I appreciate its indirect sarcasm, and the more people hate on it, the more apt I am to use it.
CURATE
This is what “curate” is good for: to serve as a noun identifying a junior clergyperson or (pronounced differently) as a verb describing the work of a museum’s staff organizing and presenting works of art.
This is what “curate” is not so good for: to portray what you’re doing when you’re organizing
a playlist of motivating songs for gym use, selecting smoked fishes for a brunch, or arranging displays of blouses, espadrilles, and picturesque thrift-shop books at Anthropologie.
DATA
It’s a plural, it’s a singular, it’s a breath mint, it’s a dessert topping.
The data supports the consensus that “data” is popularly used as a singular noun, and it’s neither worth fussing over this nor raising the existence of the word “datum.”
Move on already.
DECIMATE
There are those who would use “decimate” only to describe the punishment by death of one in ten—not one in nine, not one in eleven—mutinous soldiers.
There are those who would use it to describe, generally, destruction.
The latter group certainly gets more use out of the word.
DIFFERENT THAN
There’s nothing wrong with “different than,” and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
If you say “different to,” you’re likely a Brit, and that’s OK too.
DISINTERESTED
I’d be happier if you’d restrict your use of “disinterested” to suggest impartiality and, when speaking of lack of interest, make use of the handy “uninterested.” I don’t think that’s asking a lot.
ENORMITY
There are those who insist on using “enormity” only in cases of monstrous evil (“the enormity of her crimes”), which is more or less how the word arrived in the English language, and would have you use “enormousness” (or “largeness” or “immensity” or “abundance” or some such) in descriptions of size.
I’ll meet you in the middle. Feel free to use “enormity” to describe something that is not only big but monstrously, freakishly so or to describe something arduous (“the enormity of my workload”). Avoid it in positive uses (“the enormity of her talent”) because it’s a needless eyebrow raiser.
ENTHUSE
If you don’t like “enthuse,” wait till we get to “liaise.”
EPICENTER
Strictly speaking, an epicenter is the place on the Earth’s surface directly above the place an earthquake is occurring.
Less strictly speaking, an epicenter is a hub of activity, often but not always malignant activity.
You’re on relatively safe metaphorical ground referring to, say, the epicenter of a plague; a reference to Paris as the epicenter of classic cooking may not sit well on some stomachs.
I myself don’t care much for fanciful uses of “epicenter,” mostly because I think that “center” does the job just fine.
FACTOID
If you use the word “factoid” to refer to a bite-size nugget of authentic information of the sort you’ll find in a listicle,*5 you’ll sadden those of us who hold to the word’s original meaning: According to Norman Mailer, who should certainly know as he was the one who invented the word in the first place, factoids are “facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority.” That the Great Wall of China is visible from the Moon (or even from your plain-vanilla astronaut orbit) is a factoid, as are the existence of George Washington’s wooden teeth, the nationwide panic caused by Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” broadcast, and the execution by burning at the stake of Salem’s condemned witches.*6
FEWER THAN/LESS THAN
Perhaps you’ve turned this distinction into a fetish. The strict—and, really, not all that hard to remember—differentiation is that “fewer than” is applied to countable objects (fewer bottles of beer on the wall) and “less than” to what we call exclusively singular nouns (less happiness, less quality) and mass nouns (fewer chips, less guacamole).
Except—and there’s always an “except,” isn’t there—one does use “less than” in discussions of distance (less than five hundred miles) and time (completing a test in less than sixty minutes—if you’re not already saying “in under sixty minutes,” which you probably are and go ahead). And one likely uses “less than” in discussions of money and weight; The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage refers, efficiently, to this use of “less than” as appropriate for “a quantity considered as a single bulk amount.” Thus “I have less than two hundred dollars” or “I weigh less than two hundred pounds” or “a country that’s gone to hell in less than five months,” because it’s not really the individual months one’s interested in, merely the relative brevity of the decline.
That said—and there’s always a “that said,” isn’t there—one does not say “one fewer,” both because it’s achingly unidiomatic and because it wrecks the title of the Bacharach-David classic “One Less Bell to Answer.”
As to people who object to supermarket express-lane signs reading “10 ITEMS OR LESS”? On the one hand, I hear you. On the other hand, get a hobby. Maybe flower arranging, or decoupage.
FIRSTLY, SECONDLY, THIRDLY
Like nails on a blackboard.
If you decline to write “firstly,” “secondly,” and “thirdly” in favor of “first,” “second,” and “third,” not only are you saving letters but you can tell all your friends about this amazing thing called a flat adverb—an adverb that matches in form its sibling adjective, notably doesn’t end in -ly, and is 100 percent correct, which is why we’re allowed to say “Sleep tight,” “Drive safe,” and “Take it easy.” Though not in that order.
FOR ALL INTENSIVE PURPOSES
I didn’t intend to include “for all intensive purposes” on this list because I’ve never, so far as I can recall, encountered anyone saying or writing it except as a joke about people saying or writing “for all intensive purposes.” But it’s out there (and has been since the 1950s, another reason to dislike that decade), and it turns up intermittently in print.
It’s “for all intents and purposes.”
FORTUITOUS
As to the use of “fortuitous” to mean fortunate or favorable, it’s universally acceptable so long as the good fortune or favor is accidental, because that’s what “fortuitous” means: by chance (though, in its original sense, with no guarantee of a happy ending). If you achieve something good by the sweat of your brow, find a word that better honors your achievement.
FULSOME
A word that over the centuries has picked up more meanings than are good for it, or for you: among them abundant, generous, overgenerous, excessive, offensive, and stench-ridden. (It can also be applied to the sort of interior decorating taste that leans toward gilt and gold-plated everything, though the best word for that sort of thing remains ungapatchka.) Though you may be tempted to apply “fulsome” unambiguously positively, if you allude to a “fulsome expression of praise,” a hefty chunk of your audience will have visions of oleaginous brown-nosing dancing in their heads. So just skip it.
GIFT (AS A VERB)
If you’re bored with “bestow,” “proffer,” “award,” “hand out,” “hand over,” or any of the other excellent verbs the English language has come up with over the years to describe the act of giving a person a thing, by all means make use of “gift,” which I wouldn’t even consider describing as odious because I’m not that sort of person and because, I assure you, many other people are already lined up eagerly to do so.*7
GROW (TO MEAN “BUILD”)
You can’t argue, as some people attempt to do, that you can’t properly use the phrase “grow a business” (rather, that is, than “build a business”) because “grow” is only an intransitive verb (the sort that doesn’t take an object). Why not? Because it is also, or at least can be, a transitive verb, as you’ll surely note as you grow dahlias or a mustache.
You are free, though, to dislike such bureaucratese phrases as “grow the economy” because they’re, to use the technical term, icky.
HOI POLLOI, THE
“Hoi polloi” is ancien
t Greek for “the many,” and it’s a term some people haul out when they’re looking to insult those they think they’re better than and want something jazzier than “the great unwashed” or “proles.” Since the term, by derivation and definition, already includes the article “hoi” it’s often asserted, and not only by ancient Greeks, that to refer to “the hoi polloi” is barbarously repetitive and offensive. I can’t say that “the hoi polloi” bothers me much (which is to say, it doesn’t bother me at all), though I might well be bothered to hear that something or other is favored by hoi polloi.
Dreyer's English Page 15