Source: Time
Attention language lubbers: the fourth edition of Garner’s Modern English Usage is out this month, and while it’s as full of pedantry as any guide on how to properly wield the English language, the new version is also funnier and more data-driven than any reference you’ve likely come across in school.
By using searchable databases like Google Ngrams, lexicographer Bryan Garner has developed ratios for how often words or phrases, one standard and one upstart, are used in published writing. And he has developed his own five-stage system for how widespread a “mistake” has become, from being something sloppy and offensive-to-the-educated to perfectly
unobjectionable.
Garner describes himself as something of a linguistic “epidemiologist,” tracking mistakes that spread within a population, sometimes escalating to pandemic levels and then, perhaps, reaching a point at which human bodies have all adapted to the virus and it becomes the new normal.
Garner provides several charming analogies in his preface for how readers of the book should understand his five-stage system of acceptability, one of which is this:
Stage 1: Audible flatulence
Stage 2: Audible belching
Stage 3: Overloud talking
Stage 4: Elbows on the table
Stage 5: Refined
Take buck naked and butt naked.
While professional editors still tend to stick to the more traditionalbuck naked—which may have been inspired by “the skin of bare buttocks” being reminiscent of a male deer’s soft hide—butt nakedis by far the favorite in popular usage these days, according to Garner’s analysis. He categorizes the use of butt naked as “Stage 4,” meaning everybody’s using it “except a few stalwart holdouts” who might be principled but should also be preparing for defeat.
As Garner says, “There’s almost a universal rule that any two words that resemble each other in some way will be confounded.” Here follow five examples of confounded words that have shifted from being abhorred to standard.
Categories: Languages, The Muslim Times