Looking back at a recent column on compound words, I can report that examples keep cropping up of the move toward joining words together instead of leaving them separate. On Route 3 in Tilton last week I noticed a sign for CLOUGH AUTOBODY. My immediate reaction was that if autobody could be one word, why not Chineserestaurant? The slippery slopeis now in play, and we will soon have vegeterianfastfoodrestaurant. English is on its way to becoming German.
Less than half a mile on, I pulled into the lot of the 99 Restaurant for lunch with my father-in-law and noticed that one of the 100 reasons for eating there is that “we make everyday feel like a holiday.” The grammarnator was taught long ago that “every day” was two words in such a construction, where it appears as a noun (day) modified by an adjective (every). It was a single compound word only when used as a adjective. In other words, “Being a loner, I attend church every day except Sunday, when it is too crowded” and “There are several pills that I must take every day.” But “Sauté pans are everyday utensils in my house” and “Simvastatin is one of my everyday pills.” (Wow! The computer put the acute accent on sauté. That was unexpected.)
Using “everyday” in both contexts is another example of the increasing simplification of the language. I also heard one watching Mad Men last week. Returning from one of those three-martini lunches, Roger Sterling said to his partners, “I have to go lay down.” And close to a dozen times in the first four seasons, a character has used “lay” when some of us used to say “lie.”
I do not for an instant believe that the characters would have said that in 1960-1964, when the first five seasons take place. Most people, including copywriters in ad agencies who should be attuned to the nuances of words, distinguished between “lie,” meaning recline, and “lay,” meaning “place down,” as in “lay your weapons on the ground and put your hands on top of your heads!” But Mad Men was created in this century, and “lie” has disappeared from use as surely as “there are” has.
One last note: if your interest in Warren G. Harding was awakened by my recent reference, 1,000 handwritten pages of his love letters to Carrie Phillips are now available online from the Library of Congress at loc.gov.
Fred Graf is here to talk about ‘I Wish I Was Here’
Dear Mr. Pingree,
My rule for approving or disapproving of grammar change is to ask whether the new usage decreases information or is otherwise confusing. The use of the plural “their” and “they” in situations where the singular is meant is very confusing. It is a usage unfortunately common for law enforcement. I am aware of several incidents in which communities were riled after an arrest because this language led the community to believe there were unarrested perpetrators after an arrest was made.
I am not much bothered by “there’s” for “there are” on the radio because the information gets communicated. The removal of “that” rarely causes a problem. I do not like the dropping of the past perfect because dropping it slows reading comprehension. We have to figure out the time sequence when the grammar could have told us.
You might want to address the current movie I Wish I Was Here. This is a case where the grammar may have been deliberately ignored in order to force the viewer to choose which of the possible correct sentences expresses what the protagonist has achieved. The “here” refers to connection with family. It might be that the sentence is “I Wish I Were Here,’ with the meaning that he has discovered what he lacks. Or it might be, “I Wish I Had Been Here,” meaning that he is now connected but had not been prior to the events shown in the movie. I hope you will write regularly.
Fred Graf
