More Words I'm Looking Up

beloved

I just came across in a document I'm editing: "... those noise-cancelling headphones beloved of frequent flyers."

I don't remember ever hearing "beloved of" before. I thought it was always "beloved by." I tried some wondering and Googling, but the hits I got didn't help: 1.5 million for "beloved by," but most of them followed by the name Toni Morrison. 1.1 million hits for "beloved of," including lots of constructions like, "His beloved of twenty years."

Still, at the top of the hit list was a link to a freedictionary.com page that included under "Examples from Classic Literature": There were Emperors beloved of literary men, Emperors beloved of the people ...


Still learning something new every day ...

'Populated With' or 'Populated By'?

A colleague just asked me this and, after giving my standard long-winded speech about how such things are usually a matter of idiom (meaning: your best guess is as valid as anybody's), I looked it up.

Webster's New World online gives usage examples containing both.

"(populated) with: Producing the sort of analyzes we have discussed needs a well-designed database populated with the right data."

"(populated) by: It is certainly a beautiful place, populated by friendly folks."

There's a subtle difference there that I can't quite articulate. Too bad Webster's didn't bother trying to articulate it either.

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional, cleverly named series on words I'm looking up)

(I love it when this happens.)

like

adv. as for example: 'great dramatists like Sophocles and Shakespeare' — Webster's New World College Dictionary's (sixth definition)

prep. such as; for example: 'saved things like old newspapers and pieces of string' — American Heritage Dictionary (fifth definition)

There's a cold war going on between me and another copy editor at my freelance job, although she doesn't realize it. Every time I copy edit a document that contains the this usage of "like," I leave it as is. But if she's the final proofreader, she changes each of these "likes" to "such as."

The reason? Traditionalists say that "like" means "similar to" — not "for example." So if you say that dramatists are like Sophocles, you're not saying he is one. You're saying that, though dramatists and Sophocles are similar, they are not the same animal. And indeed, if you're only reading the first four or five dictionary definitions of "like," you would reasonably conclude as much.

But if you read all the definitions of "like," you'll see that it's also a synonym for "such as." You could make a good case for preferring "such as." But you can't say that one is right and the other wrong.

Period. Done. End of discussion.

But for me, the fun part comes before we even read the definitions. That little "adv." before the Webster's definition and the "prep." before American Heritage delight me to no end. I just love it when dictionaries can't decide what part of speech a word is. It's all the more reason why Joe and Jane Doe should not feel bad about their grammar skills.

"Than Me"-anies

It was weeks ago, but I still can't get over it: A Pasadena Star-News reporter was on the phone, interviewing me about the new book. It was a very casual conversation in which we talked about my hobbies, my TV viewing habits, and my cats. When the subject turned to grammar, she asked: "Are your friends afraid to talk around you?" That is, are they worried I'll notice their every little grammar mistake? My answer: "My friends don't give a damn what I think. They're all smarter than me, anyway."

I didn't really expect that to end up in the paper. But it did. And that's fine. But then came the fallout.

The next day, the reporter forwarded to me four e-mails from readers who were appalled and infuriated that I said "than me" instead of "than I."

From the perspective of strict, traditional grammar, they were right. "Than" is considered mainly a conjunction. Conjunctions like "than" introduce whole clauses, which include a subject and a verb. When one of those elements is missing, it's presumed to be implied: "than I" is, we know by grammatical inference, a clipped way of saying "than I am."

This is different from prepositions, which take objects (which come in object form). The preposition "to" takes an object -- the "him" in "tell it to him."

That's all well and good if the year is 1958 and you happen to be sitting in Mrs. Snipewell's English class. But this is 2008, I just used the word "damn," and the newspaper printed it.

I suspect that people like this don't really care about grammar, they just want to police others' speech. And that gives the whole grammar game a bad name. I like grammar, but I like it because, to me, it's a different animal. It's academic, it's a study in mechanics, it's liberating, and, I believe, it's truly interesting.

I sometimes suspect that the pedants just don't get the science of grammar, much less the art.

They don’t even have much respect for the rules. Many rule-makers now saw say that, while, yes, “than” is traditionally a conjunction that should be followed by a subject pronoun, it is often permissible or even preferable to use object form in casual speech and writing. Among those experts is William Safire. Among the writers cited as supporting the object form is Shakespeare.

So it was that much more amusing to me when, a few days later, I was doing a reading and signing at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena. Afterward, a bookstore employee came up to me. She had a message for me. It was from a woman who had called the store specifically to leave me the message.

“Let me guess,” I told the bookstore employee, “it’s about my saying ‘than me’ in the newspaper.”

“Yes,” the employee said, smiling. “I asked the woman if she wanted to leave her name. But she said, ‘NO!’”