Tag Archives: Archaic

Don’t Have a Heart Attack

April 25, 2018 By in The Weight of Words, Writing Toolbox Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

You know how it is. You’re typing away in Word, and maybe you truly aren’t aware of the difference or maybe you just made a typo, but in either case the blue squiggles have shown up under one or two words. I don’t often experience the blue squiggles. I’m familiar with the red (misspelled word) and the green (fragment). But when I see the blue squiggles, I know something is wrong.

It happened recently when I typed the word anymore. Making anymore into two words solved the problem, but I couldn’t let this correction go without re-familiarizing myself with the why behind it. Never hurts to brush up on my grammar, not to mention it makes a great blog post for The Weight of Words.

Any more and anymore have related meanings, but they are not interchangeable. How you use it will determine whether you type or write it as one word or two. Any more deals with quantities such as:

Would you like any more cookies?

Anymore is an adverb and has to do with time:

I don’t like cookies anymore.

A quick check to see if you need the single-word version is if you can switch it for the word nowadays. One source claimed this usage to be unacceptable in formal writing and quite rare, however, I believe it would add flair to one’s writing whether in the prose or as dialog. I also am a great proponent for keeping alive interesting words deemed archaic.

Another interesting fact regarding anymore vs. any more is that the traditional though less common spelling was as two separate words: any more. Apparently, in the last fifty years, anymore has increased in use giving rise to the one-word and two-word spellings, distinct definitions, and usage.

Using Vulgar Language

August 22, 2017 By in The Weight of Words, Writing Toolbox Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I’m not bragging when I say I read voraciously.  Ever since I discovered reading as a child, it has been one of my absolute favorite pastimes.  My personal library attests to this as does my activity on Goodreads.  Reading has added a few words to my vocabulary that I didn’t think were all that unusual, but apparently they are.  One such word is unbeknownst.  I don’t use it all the time and I’m certainly not trying to sound haughty when I do.  It appears a few commentators do not agree with me.

Today’s The Weight of Words is in honor of unbeknownst, a humble adjective usually used with ‘to’ that simply means happening or existing without the knowledge of a specified person or persons.

Unbeknownst to my mother, my brother and I are planning a surprise birthday party for her seventy-fifth birthday complete with a cruise to Hawaii as a present.

According to one site I checked, the first known use of unbeknownst was in 1626, so yes, it probably does sound a little archaic.  But that doesn’t render the word useless or worthy of exclusion from the English language.  I used it recently in a blog post which prompted this post in turn!

Unbeknownst derives from beknown, an obsolete synonym of known.  Unbeknownst has widespread usage, including appearances in the works of Charles Dickens, A.E. Housman, and E.B. White, yet despite its candid history, unbeknownst has caused a ruckus among usage commentators.  It has been called everything from “obsolete” to “vulgar.”

I’ll continue to use the word, especially since it still crops up in new writing, and unbeknownst to those who have no idea what it means, I shall talk over their lazy, empty heads.  Okay, now that did sound a titch haughty.

 

Be Sure About the Word You Choose, Friend

April 25, 2017 By in The Weight of Words, Writing Toolbox Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Today’s The Weight of Words is one I see botched on social media (between confident and confidant) and in writing (between confidant and confidante).  By now you probably think your eyes are playing tricks on you, so allow me to expound with definitions to assist with choosing the correct word.

Confident:

feeling or showing confidence in oneself; self-assured

                                He was a confident, assertive person.

feeling or showing certainty about something

She was confident she had made the correct decision.

Confidant:

a person with whom one shares a secret or private matter, trusting them not to repeat it to others

George trusted his brother as the perfect confidant since Ralph had never betrayed his secrets before.

Confidante:

a person with whom one shares a secret or private matter, trusting them not to repeat it to others

Did you notice there is no difference between the definitions of confidant without the E and with the E?  Here’s why:  strict grammarians reserve confidant for males and confidante for females.

This may not be a big issue in writing today where so many rules are often thrown to the wind, but for someone writing historical fiction, especially if the passage is a letter wherein the word is used, how much more realistic would it be to use the proper spelling of the word?  Besides, who wouldn’t want to expand their knowledge of words, definitions, and spellings with such useful tips as those provided above?

Now for the monkey wrench that is the English language:  the archaic definition of confident (spelled with an E) is confidant (spelled with an A, see above definition).  You gotta love second, third, and archaic definitions!  My advice is to stick with the first three so as not to confuse yourself.

%d bloggers like this: