The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage phần 5 potx

gender
it’s potentially a comment on their sexual orientation, whether or not so intended.
When gay itself is used as a noun, it regularly means “a homosexual male”, as in:
The gays and lesbians gathered for the mardi gras parade.
The abstract noun gayness also connotes homosexuality, though it was earlier just
a synonym for gaiety.
This new meaning for gay seems in fact to have been around before World
War II in American prison and underworld slang, as a reference in Ersine’s 1935
Underworld and Prison Slang shows us. And British evidence from the nineteenth
century shows that gay (as an adjective) had a slang role meaning “licentious or
living by prostitution”. To say that a woman was “living a gay life” was to imply
that she was “no better than she ought to be”.
Gay is not the only English word to develop alternative meanings in the course
of time. If we intend to target the older sense (“lighthearted”), either that word or
one of its near-synonyms in elated, cheerful, merry, lighthearted or in high spirits
is more reliable, and avoids any possible double entendre.
gelatine or gelatin For general purposes, the first of these is the preferred
spelling in Australia and Britain, the second in the US. Note however that chemists
make a deliberate distinction between -ine and -in in the naming of chemicals. (See
further under -ine/-in.)
gender Style guides are still inclined to insist that gender is a grammatical term,
as if it is not to be used in discussing the sexual/social roles of men and women.
Dictionaries often reinforce this view, by labeling the use of gender to mean “sex”
as colloquial, jocular or “loose”.
Yet much very serious writing about male/female roles makes free use of the term
gender. Some prefer it to using sex, with its inherent double entendre, while others
use both terms, drawing distinctions between them. For some, sex is associated
with individual differences, and gender with group ones; sex with biological
differences and gender with social ones. Yet others use them to distinguish between
physical/sexual identity and socially or culturally constructed identity. Gender
appears both on its own, and built into compounds such as:

gender-bias gender-marked gender-neutral gender-specific
There can be little doubt that the word has established its place in this field of
discourse.
1 Grammatical gender. In codifying languages grammarians have traditionally used
the notion of “gender” in classifying nouns into groups. Where there are two types,
the categories are labeled“masculine”and“feminine”;and “masculine”, “feminine”
and “neuter” (= neither masculine nor feminine) where there are three. But the
classification has little to do with male or female. Words for inanimate things may
be classed as “masculine” or “feminine”, and what is masculine in one language
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generalisations
may be feminine in the next: a cloud is masculine in French (le nuage) and feminine
in German (die Wolke). “Masculine”, “feminine” and “neuter” are just convenient
labels for classes of nouns which take different forms of the definite article and of
adjectives. In modern English there are no such classes of nouns. All nouns take
the same definite article the, and the same forms of adjectives.
2 Natural gender. In English grammar we become conscious of gender in the third
person singular pronouns, with he, she, him, her, his and hers. But here it’s a matter
of natural (not grammatical) gender, since the pronouns are applied according to
the sex of the person being referred to. So she is used after a reference to “mother”,
and he after one to “father”. In a language with fullblown grammatical gender, the
pronoun for “she” would also be used after any “feminine” noun, and the one for
“he” after “masculine” nouns.
Because the English pronouns are so firmly associated with natural gender,
the traditional use of masculine forms to express generic human identity is now
felt to be unfortunate and ambiguous, if not sexist. (See further under he and/or
she.) Ideally English would have a common gender singular pronoun, one which
could refer to either a male or female without identifying their sex. The pronoun
it has only limited uses in references to animals and perhaps babies in scientific or
impersonal contexts. This explains why they, the common gender plural pronoun,

is increasingly being used in singular references (see they).
The quest for expressions which are common in gender or gender-free has also
put the spotlight on the so-called epicene words of English, e.g. athlete, patient,
writer. See further under epicene.
generalisations See under induction.
genitive This is the grammarians’ name for what in English is often called
the “possessive”. It refers to the form of nouns which indicates a possessive or
associative relationship with the following word. In modern English the genitive is
shown by the presence of an apostrophe and a following s, if the noun is an ordinary
singular one:
the child’s bike a lawyer’s answer the horse’s mouth
Thursday’s program Japan’s building industry
As those examples show, the English genitive covers a wide range of relationships,
including possession, attribution and association, as well as location in time and
space. The genitive often provides a neat expression for a more wordy paraphrase.
Compare the following with the genitive phrases above:
the bike belonging to the child
the answer of a lawyer
the program for Thursday
the building industry in Japan
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genteelism
Note however that a genitive phrase with a verbal noun, such as John’s appointment
is potentially ambiguous; it could refer to the person whom John appointed, or to
the fact that John himself was appointed. The first meaning with active use of
the verb is sometimes called the subjective genitive, and the second where the
verb is passive, the objective genitive. The same expression could also mean “an
appointment made for John (at the dentist etc.)”. The context should clarify which
of the three meanings is meant.
With plural nouns, the genitive is usually shown by the apostrophe alone, as in

the grammarians’ term. For more about the use of apostrophes with plural nouns,
proper names, and words ending in s, see under apostrophes.
Note that although the English pronouns have special genitive forms, none of
them take apostrophes:
my your his her its our their
Of those, its is the one to note particularly. See its or it’s.
genius Like many words ending in -us, this is a Latin loanword which raises
questions about its plural forms in English (see -us section 1). The English plural
geniuses is used with the more common meaning of the word: “an unusually gifted
and brilliant person”. The plural genii is only used in reference to mythical spirits,
as in the genii of the forest.
genre As its French pronunciation suggests, this is a relative newcomer to
English. It is in fact a latter-day borrowing of the word which once gave us gender,
and as gender once did, genre essentially means “type”. In English it has almost
always been associated with types of artistic creation—with works of literature and
art in the late eighteenth century, and music as well as film and photography in
the twentieth century. In the visual arts, genre painting has acquired the specific
meaning of “art which depicts scenes of everyday life”.
In reference to writing, the term genre is variously used. At the highest level, it
identifies the archetypal forms of composition, such as poetry, drama and novel. But
it’s also used to broadly identify the purpose of a work, i.e. as comedy or tragedy,
and its substance: fiction or nonfiction. Within any of those categories, genre
can identify subgroups, such as biography, essays, letters and journalism within
nonfiction; and within, say, journalism the subgroups of news articles, editorials
and reviews. At these lower levels, individual genres still differ in form, purpose
and style.
genteelism The term genteelism is applied by Fowler (1926) and others to
expressions which are careful substitutes for common everyday words. So obtain is
a genteelism for get, and purchase for buy. Genteelisms are typically longer words of
French or Latin origin, and associated with more formal styles of communication.

They are gentle euphemisms—not intended to disguise, but to lend a touch of class
to a plain reference.
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genuflexion or genuflection
No-one would challenge a genteelism which is used in deference to the feelings
of others. But when they become the staple of bureaucratic and institutional prose,
it’s time to rise in ungenteel revolution and campaign against them. See further
under gobbledygook and Plain English.
genuflexion or genuflection See under -ction/-xion.
genus The plural of this may be genuses or genera. See under -us section 3.
geographic or geographical As with other –ic/-ical pairs, the longer form
geographical enjoys more widespread use than the alternative geographic. The
latter is only familiar because of its use in magazine titles, such as National
Geographic and Australian Geographic. See further under -ic/-ical.
geographical names Writing geographical names raises four kinds of issues:
r
how to capitalise them
r
how to abbreviate them
r
whether to use anglicised or local forms of foreign placenames
r
how to check placenames with variable elements
For the use of apostrophes in placenames, see under apostrophes.
1 Capitalising geographical names. Capital letters are used on all the nouns and
adjectives that make up a proper geographical name:
Darling River Gulf of Carpentaria Mount Bogong Simpson Desert
Cradle Mountain Torres Strait Lake Eyre the Great Dividing Range
Whitsunday Island Cape York Peninsula
Geographical names like these usually consist of a specific word or words, and a

generic word. So Darling is specific and River generic. The order of the components
is mostlyfixed by convention.In North AmericaRiver is usuallythe second element
(Colorado River, Hudson River) whereas in Britain and Europe it’s often the first
(River Thames, River Rhine). With this dual tradition, we find that rivers in other
parts of the world may be named either way in English writing: either the Ganges
River or the River Ganges. So whether River comes first or second, it can be part
of the official name, and therefore needs a capital letter.
But when the geographical reference is clearly a descriptive phrase, not an official
name, the generic element is left without a capital:
the Canberra lake the South Australian desert
Note also that the generic component has no capital letter when it appears as an
abbreviated, second reference, or when it is pluralised in a phrase which puts two or
more geographical names together: Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers. (See further
under capital letters sections 1c and 3.)
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geographical names
2 Abbreviating geographical names. There are standard abbreviations for the
generic parts of geographical names, to be used when space is at a premium (for
instance on maps), but not normally in running text:
C for cape Pen for peninsula
G gulf Pt point
I or Is island R river
L lake Ra range
Mt mount(ain) Str strait
Note that none of these abbreviations need take a full stop, since all involve capital
letters (see abbreviations section 1).
There are also standard abbreviations for particular countries, such as:
HK NZ UK USA or US
Within particular continents, abbreviations are available for individual states or
countries—for use in lists and tabular material, or for car registration plates and

distribution of mail. Those approved by Australia Post are:
ACT NSW NT QLD SA TAS VIC WA
The US Postal Service likewise endorses two-letter abbreviations for all 51 states,
listed in the Chicago Manual of Style (2003). Once again, full stops are not used
in them. Two-digit codes for some of the major European countries are as follows:
BE (Belgium), DK (Denmark), FI (Finland), FR (France), DE (Germany), GK
(Greece), IT (Italy), NL (Netherlands), NO (Norway), PT (Portugal), ES (Spain),
CH (Switzerland), SE (Sweden), UK (Great Britain).
For the abbreviation of compass points, see capital letters section Ic.
3 Foreign placenames—in anglicised or local forms? This is a vexed question in a
postcolonial world, when foreign names are no longer preserved in their imperial
form. Even in Europe, English-speakers are sometimes surprised to find that
“Munich” is M
¨
unchen, and that “Athens” is Athinai to those who live there—and
beyond Europe the discrepancies are even more marked, with “Cairo” expressed
as Al Qahirah and “Canton” as Guangzhou. It is a reminder that geographical
names are a product of our culture, and not always in touch with developments in
other parts of the world.
Political developments sometimes force us to accept changes in placenames, as
when “St Petersburg” became Leningrad under the Russian communist regime,
and when “Northern and Southern Rhodesia” marked their independence with
the names Zambia and Zimbabwe. In other cases there’s a diplomatic imperative
to accept a different form of an old name. Beijing and Sri Lanka are simply local
forms of the names we had as “Peking” and “Ceylon”, but we need to update with
them, to avoid seeming to be still in the colonial era.
The updating of our geographical nomenclature is helped by the ABC’s Standing
Committee on Spoken English (SCOSE). It not only checks the pronunciations of
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geological eras

foreign names that occur in the news, but also the forms of those names. The lead
it provides in this area helps to alert us to changes, and to familiarise us with them.
When using the new names in writing, we may need to remind our readers of
the older form in parentheses, alongside the new one, at least on first mention.
The change of the “Gilbert Islands” into the Kiribati is not self-explanatory. But
recognising such changes in foreign placenames should seem no stranger than
accepting the fact that Tasmania is no longer “Van Diemen’s Land”.
4 Placenames with variable elements. The variable spellings of personal names e.g.
Phillip/Philip, Macleod/McLeod are another detail to reckon with in placenames.
The question of whether it should be Stuart or Stewart can only be resolved by
referring to the Master Names File, prepared by the Commonwealth Department
of Administrative Services and updated every January. The divergent spellings of
Australian towns and suburbs are listed under town names.
geological eras The origins of our planet go back well over 4000 million years,
with the evolution of plant and animal life from about 2500 million years ago. The
history of human evolution occupies only a tiny fraction of the last one million
years.
For the standard names used in geology and paleontology for the major phases
of earth’s evolution, see Appendix III.
geometric or geometrical The shorter form geometric has fewer uses
nowadays, though it is enshrined in some fixed collocations such as geometric spider
and the Geometric Age (of Greek culture). But English “Geometric” architecture
has become geometrical, and in maths and science, as well as in ordinary usage,
geometrical prevails.
german or germane These words refer to relationships, german to those of
kin, as in cousin german, and germane to more abstract logical relationships, as in:
His answer was not germane to the question.
In older usage germane could be used in cousin germane as well, but this is now
archaic. For more about cousin german, see under cousins.
Note that a link between german(e) and German(y) is unlikely. Most scholars

believe that the name Germany is Celtic in origin, whereas german(e) derives from
a Latin adjective meaning “having common roots”.
Germany After World War II Germany was divided into two:
Federal Republic of Germany (BRD) = West Germany
(Bundesrepublik Deutschland)
German Democratic Republic (DDR) = East Germany
(Deutsche Demokratische Republik)
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gerunds and gerundives
The first was a member of NATO and the EEC, while the second was a member
of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon. This division of Germany put Berlin into East
Germany. It too was divided into a Western and an Eastern sector, and to mark
the boundary between them, the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. The breaching of
the Berlin Wall in November 1989 marked the beginning of a new era, and strong
pressures for reunification. The two halves were officially reunited in 1990, as the
FRG (Federal Republic of Germany).
gerunds and gerundives Both these are terms borrowed from Latin
grammar. In Latin the gerund was a verbal noun, and the gerundive an adjectival
future passive participle which carried a sense of obligation or necessity. Our word
agenda was a Latin gerundive, meaning literally “(things which) should be done”.
English grammar has nothing quite like the Latin gerundive. Words formed with
-able from verbs (such as likable) are as near as we come: they are passive, but do
not carry the sense of obligation. We do however have equivalents to gerunds in
the verbal nouns which end in -ing,asin:
Singing is my recreation.
Gerunds in English lead double lives, in that they can behave like nouns or verbs (or
both). As nouns, they can be qualified by adjectives, articles etc., and/or followed
by dependent phrases.
My singing alarmed the dogs next door.
The singing of grand opera caused the trouble.

English gerunds also have the capacity of verbs to take subjects or objects, adverbs
and adverbial phrases:
Singing grand opera was the problem, or rather, the dogs reacting to it.
Does the gerund require a possessive? The last example: the dogs reacting to it
exemplifies a construction which has long been a bone of contention in English.
Some insist that it should be made possessive: the dogs’ reacting to it, and Fowler
(1926) argued long and hard that without the possessive marker the construction
(which he called the “fused participle”) was “grammatically indefensible”. As with
many such issues, it goes back to the eighteenth century, when the form with
the possessive was attacked and defended, most notably by Webster (of Webster’s
Dictionary), who claimed that it alone was “the genuine English idiom”. Others
then and now would argue that both constructions(with andwithout the possessive
marker) have their place, because their meaning or emphasis is slightly different.
Compare:
The dogs reacted to me singing.
The dogs reacted to my singing.
The first sentence focuses on the fact that I sang, whereas the second seems to imply
that it was the way I sang which caused a reaction. Yet that difference intersects with
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get, got and gotten
matters of style. The choice of my makes the sentence rather formal, while the use of
me is acceptable in all kinds of writing these days. Still there’s a grammatical point
to note: that my or other possessive pronouns are necessary when the gerund is the
subject of the sentence, as in My singing alarmed the dogs. The use of accusative
me there sounds ungrammatical. But when the gerund follows the verb, either
construction can be used. A majority of Australians (over 70%) endorsed the
accusative pronoun in such constructions, in an Australian Style survey conducted
in 2003.
The Comprehensive Grammar of English (1985) and others provide us with very
satisfactory grammatical analysis of the two constructions; and Webster’s English

Usage (1989) shows the accusative construction has been used by speakers and
writers for centuries. The issue turns out to be another of those linguistic fetishes
which has generated more heat than light.
get, got and gotten Get is a common and useful verb, especially in informal
spoken English. It is an easy synonym for many others, such as obtain, receive,
fetch, buy, take, arrive, become. Apart from these meanings, it has a number of
roles as an auxiliary, both in its present form get, and its past got. Let’s deal with
each in turn.
1 Get often works as a substitute for the verb be in passive constructions:
I’m getting married in the morning.
Compare I shall be married in the morning, which is much more formal in style.
Get is also used as a causative verb in:
You’re getting your car cleaned for the occasion.
I’m getting him to do it.
Once again, the alternatives are somewhat formal:
You will have your car cleaned for the occasion.
I have prevailed on him to do it.
As the examples show, get is often used in interactive situations, and is suitable
for interactive prose as well as written dialogue. The alternatives are less flexible in
style and meaning, and best suited to impersonal and documentary writing.
2 Got also has auxiliary roles, both as the past of get in its passive and causative
roles, and in its own right in structures like has/have got to, where it serves as an
informal substitute for must or ought to (see further under auxiliaries). The got
to construction is so familiar in speech that the words seem to coalesce, and are
sometimes written as gotta. But that blended form is used only in casual dialogue:
in other genres of writing the construction is always expressed in its full form.
3 Got serves as the past tense of get in all parts of the English-speaking world. It is
also the one and only past participle for many in Australia, as well as for the British
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gh

at large. But for Americans and some Australians, there are two past participles:
got and gotten, with separate roles. The dividing lines between them seem to be
a bit different. According to the Comprehensive Grammar (1985) got is used in
American English when obligation or possession are being expressed, as in
You’ve got to come.
I’ve got a weekender in the mountains.
He hasn’t got a chance.
But when it’s a matter of achieving or acquiring, gotten is the form commonly
used:
They had gotten good results by combining the data.
She had gotten a new car since we last saw her.
Webster’s English Usage (1989) notes also its use to mean “become”, as in gotten
angry. This last usage is the one which stood out in an Australian Style survey
of 2002. Those Australians who use gotten are especially likely to use it to mean
“become”, and very likely to be under the age of 45.
By all the evidence above, get/got is a versatile verb, and with its numerous
roles it is the staple of daily communication. English databases of printed material
show that it occurs much more often in fiction than in nonfiction, though there
are ample examples in all 17 genres of the Australian ACE corpus. It is scarcest
in the categories of religious, bureaucratic and academic writing, the genres which
can least tolerate informality of style. This stylistic point is the one to make to
novice writers about get/got: that it is a verb to avoid in writing which aims to be
formal—not that it should be rooted out everywhere like a noxious weed.
gh This notorious pair of letters represents a bizarre range of sounds in English.
At the start of a word, they simply stand for “g”, as in ghost and ghastly. At the
end of a word they never represent “g”, and often no consonant at all. The gh has
no sound in any of the following:
inveigh neigh sleigh weigh
high sigh thigh
bough plough sough

dough furlough though
through borough thorough
In three other groups of words, gh represents “f”:
laugh
enough rough tough
cough trough
Given such bewildering possibilities, it’s surprising how few words ending with gh
have alternative spellings. Plow has indeed replaced plough in American English,
though not in British or Australian English; and though draft has taken over from
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ghetto
draught in the US, it has some distance to go elsewhere (see further under draft).
Thru is still considered rather informal (see through); and donut is only just
recognised as a variant of doughnut. Only lite (“having an undersupply of the
standard ingredient”) seems to have developed a life of its own, apart from light,as
in lite beer, lite yoghurt.
ghetto The plural of this Italian loanword was once ghetti, but now the choice
is between ghettos and ghettoes. Ghettos is the spelling given priority in Australian
dictionaries, and is all that’s needed. Yet ghettoes persists to show that the word has
been in English a long time (since the seventeenth century). See further under -o.
gibber This string of letters gives Australians two words for the price of one.
The first is the noun (or verb) meaning “rapid, unintelligible talk” and pronounced
with a “j” sound, which it shares with the rest of the English-speaking world. It is
believed to be an “echoic” word, i.e. one which originated as onomatopoeia. (See
further under onomatopoeia; and compare barbaric.)
The second word, a noun meaning “stone” and pronounced with a “g” sound, is
an Aboriginal loanword from the Dharug language once used around Port Jackson.
It can refer either to individual stones and boulders, or to a substantial outcrop of
rock, as the familiar compounds show:
gibber plain “arid, flat land littered with large weathered stones”

gibber gunyah “a rock shelter or shallow cave”
gibe, gybe or jibe These spellings are shared by three different words:
1 taunt (noun or verb)
2 sudden shift in the setting of a fore-and-aft sail from one side to the other (verb
or noun)
3 accord (verb), as in:
It didn’t jibe with what I knew of him.
The different spellings were used interchangeably in earlier centuries, but in a
division of labor established by the Oxford Dictionary, gibe is associated with
the meaning “taunt” and gybe with the nautical term—at least in Britain. This
distinction is maintained by some Australians. The spelling jibe is applied to
the third word “accord”, only recently recognised in dictionaries outside North
America, though Oxford Dictionary (1989) offers citations for it going back into
the nineteenth century.
In Australia, Britain and North America, jibe also serves as an alternative for
the word “taunt”, and is preferred by Americans and others for the nautical term.
This makes it the most freely used of the three spellings, and if it does service for
all three words, the contexts will always clarify the meaning. The nautical term has
its own context of use, and the other two words (as verbs) are differentiated by the
fact that in the sense “accord” jibe is normally followed by “with”.
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go
Note that jive with is also used with this sense, as in It doesn’t jive with my
intuitions.
gilgai This Aboriginal word, borrowed from the Kamilaroi and Wiradhuri
people, refers to the uneven surface of clay pan country, with alternating hollows,
rims and mounds, caused by expansion and contraction of clay soil. Occasionally
it’s spelled as gilgie, but it then overlaps with the Aboriginal word for a yabby. See
further under jilgie or gilgie.
gin Alternatives to this word for an Aboriginal woman are discussed under lubra.

gipsy or gypsy See gypsy.
girl See under nonsexist language.
gladiolus This word has too many syllables for a household word, as Fowler
(1926) noted, and one thing in favor of its Latin plural gladioli is that it makes the
word no longer. The English plural gladioluses obviously does, and it’s still the
less common of the two plural forms, according to Webster’s English Usage (1989).
Other words with both Latin and English plurals are discussed at -us.
The need to anglicise this classical word has been felt all along. In earlier centuries
it was sometimes gladiole; and in our own time it sometimes appears as gladiola.
The latter is an artificial creation, based on interpreting gladiolus as a plural
“gladiolas”. (For other words formed this way, see under false plurals.) Gladiola
is now recognised in all the major dictionaries round the world, though Webster’s
English Usage notes that it appears only in mass circulation magazines.
Australians long ago found a serviceable form for the word and its plural in
gladdies. The first recorded instance is in Morris’s The Township (1947)—though
Barry Humphries no doubt deserves the credit for making it known overseas. Yet
neither it, nor the clipped form glads would pass in formal contexts.
glamor or glamour See under -or/-our.
glycerine or glycerin Forgeneralpurposes, glycerine is the standard spelling
in Britain and Australia, and glycerin in the US. Neither spelling is however used
by professional chemists, who prefer glycerol.
For a discussion of other pairs like this, see under -ine/-in.
go This very common verb in English has as its prime function to express motion
away from the speaker (cf. come), or to express continuous activity. Examples of
each are:
Go away. They’ve gone to the races.
and
The clock is still going. If all goes well
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gobbledygook or gobbledegook

One part of the verb go (going) also serves with to as an informal auxiliary to express
future intention:
We’re going to paint the town red.
So well established is this use of going to for the future, it can combine with go
itself as the main verb:
They’re going to go to the races.
Another sign that going to has made it as an auxiliary is the fact that the larger
dictionaries list it as a single word: gonna/gunna. These assimilated forms are
however rarely seen outside scripted dialogue.
The past formsof go arecurious, and often atrap for the unwarylearner. Children
have first to learn that they must say I went, not “I goed”, and then I have gone,
not “I have went”. The use of went as the past tense for go seems to have become
standard in the fifteenth century. Went was annexed from the verb wend, which
then had to revive an earlier regular past wended for its own purposes.
gobbledygook or gobbledegook
Both are established spellings, though
dictionaries differ over which to put first. The Oxford and Webster’s dictionaries
give preference to gobbledygook, while Collins and Random House dictionaries
go for the second. Each allows the other as alternative however, and the Macquarie
Dictionary (2005) presents them as equals.
By either spelling it’s a nonsense word for wordy nonsense. It associates with
pompous officials and professionals who seem less interested in communicating
than in overwhelming their readers with long words. Whether they aim to impress
or to cover their tracks, what they offer the reader is verbal fog:
The departmental reaction to the municipal government submission on
recreational facilities was instrumental in discouraging philanthropic
contributions towards them.
Decoded, this means (more or less):
The department was unhelpful about the council’s proposal for a park, and
people who might have given money have been put off by it.

You can just see it happening!
Choice magazine instituted a “gobbledegook award” in 1986, to highlight the
problem in Australia, as well as the importance of the Plain English campaign. See
further under Plain English.
goiter or goitre See under -re/-er.
Gondwanaland This is the name of the hypothetical supercontinent to which
the continents of the southern hemisphere once belonged (Australia, Antarctica
and parts of South America and Africa) as well as Arabia and peninsular India.
According to the Wegener theory of continental drift, Gondwanaland was a single
332
goodbye or goodby
unit from Cambrian times (more than 500 million years ago) until its breakup
somewhere between the start of the Permian period and the end of the Cretaceous,
probably between 200 and 100 million years ago. (See Appendix III.) The breakup
resulted in the formation of three new oceans: the Indian, South Atlantic and
Antarctic oceans, and a substantially reduced Pacific Ocean. The evidence for this
theory comes from parallel forms of animal and plant life in those now separate
continents.
Gondwanaland owes its name to the Gondwana district in southern India, and
was coined in the 1880s.
good and well Good is strictly speaking an adjective, and well an adverb. Yet
there are idioms in which good seems to serve as an adverb too, such as:
It sounds good. It looks good. It seems good. You’re looking good.
It also occurs in the colloquial Australian response I’m good, used in reply to
the question “How are you?”. To use I’m well in that context would seem rather
formal, and would also emphasise one’s state of health—rather than general state
of well-being which is usually taken to be the point of the question.
Grammarians might indeed debate how to analyse any of the above clauses: are
they instances of subject/verb/adverb or subject/verb/complement, in which an
adjective could well appear? (See further under predicate.) The question turns on

the nature of the verb in those utterances, and the role of copulars, now recognised
in the major grammars. See under copular verbs.
good day or g’day Good day is the opposite of g’day on almost any scale you
can think of. There is formality in good day where g’day is casual and familiar;
and while good day is strictly for daytime use, g’day can be used at any time, day
or night. Good day can be uttered either to begin or end a conversation, but these
days it’s mostly used as the final word and to show one’s determination to close
the conversation. G’day serves as a greeting and to open a conversation, but not to
close it.
The standard polite greetings used currently are good morning, good afternoon
and good evening, selected according to the time of day. The boundary between
good morning and good afternoon is set at noon for those who work close to the
clock (suchas radio announcers),but is otherwisemore loosely relatedto the before-
lunch and after-lunch segments of the day. The boundary between afternoon and
evening is even more fluid, and is set either by the end of the working day, or the
evening meal. Note that all three may serve to open or close a conversation, but
when used at the end, their overtones are rather detached and businesslike, and this
makes them unsuitable for most social situations. Good night is only used to take
one’s leave at the end of the evening.
goodbye or goodby In Australia, Britain and the US, goodbye is the standard
spelling for the word by which we take our leave. Only in the US is goodby a
333
goodwill or good will
possible alternative. Both spellings can be hyphenated but there’s no need for it.
For more about the formulas we use on leaving, see under adieu.
goodwill or good will All writersuse goodwill when the word is an adjective,
as in goodwill mission, and modern dictionaries all propose this form for the noun
too, as in the goodwill between author and publisher. In older British usage good
will (spaced) was used for some or all meanings of the noun. In one tradition,
good will was for “benevolence” and goodwill for “the body of customer support

built up by a business”. But the meaning is usually clear in context, and if not, it’s
unfortunate to assume that the word’s setting will differentiate it for the reader,
when the settings of compound nouns are so variable. See hyphens section 2d.
gossiped or gossipped See under -p/-pp
got, got to and gotten See under get.
gourmet or gourmand The distinction between these is less sharply drawn
in Australian usage than in Britain, where gourmet is a term of approval applied to
the connoisseur of fine food, and gourmand carries a negative judgement against
someone who seems to overindulge in food. In Australia the voluminous eating
habits of the gourmand are not necessarily viewed with disfavor, even if they’re
seen as contrasting with the discriminating palate of the gourmet. A contrast in
terms of quantity and quality rather than good and bad styles of eating is sometimes
seen, though the two senses can be difficult to disentangle, as in the following
newspaper article:
It takes a dedicated gourmand to keep up with the latest northside
restaurants . . .
The accompanying headline “Great Nosh on the Northside” kept the point
ambiguous. The example shows a further new development, that the two words
may be acquiring different grammatical roles. Gourmand is there used as a noun,
whereas all examples of gourmet in the Australian ACE corpus were as adjectives:
gourmet foods, gourmet restaurants among others. This new line of demarcation
has also been observed in Canada (Canadian English Usage (1997)). So writers who
wish to target the older distinction will need to use alternatives such as “epicure”
and “glutton” for the noun.
government In Australian English this word may take either a singular or
plural verb in agreement, depending on whether the writer is concerned with it as
a single institution or with the individuals it comprises:
The government is on the point of issuing an ultimatum.
The government are unable to agree on industrial policy.
The different patterns of agreement suggest two different ways in which a

government may operate—the autocratic and the democratic mode—though we
334
graffiti
should not make too much political capital out of a point on which writers are
forced by English grammar to make a choice. In American English the singular
option is the one most often used.
Note that pronouns following government would also vary (either it/its or
they/them/their) according to whether singular or plural verbs were being used.
(See further under agreement.)
For the question of when to capitalise government, see under capital letters.
governor-general The plural of this has traditionally been governors-general,
because the second part ofthe word is strictly speaking an adjective. However many
people would interpret it as a noun, hence the naturalness of governor-generals,
which enjoys widespread use in Australia, and is recognised in major Australian
and American dictionaries.
In the similar cases of
r
major general, the plural is always major generals whereas for
r
attorney-general, the dictionaries recognise both attorneys-general and
attorney-generals, in that order.
See further under plurals section 2.
goyim This Hebrew word refers collectively to those who are not Jews. It is a
plural: its singular counterpart is goy “a gentile”. For others like it, see -im.
graceful or gracious A different kind of grace is acknowledged in these
two words. In graceful there is an aesthetic grace of form, movement or verbal
expression, as in graceful proportions, a graceful leap and a graceful compliment.In
gracious it’s the grace of sympathetic and respectful human interaction, as in:
The offer was graciously declined.
A graceful compliment could therefore be graciously received, without any sense of

tautology.
Note that gracious is also combined in a handful of fixed collocations, notably
your gracious majesty, but also as a traditional courtesy for those at lower levels
in society, your gracious self. These conventionalised uses seem to hang around the
phrase gracious living (recorded first in the 1930s), and the use of gracious rather
than graceful gives it a certain irony. It has social pretensions, though it can only
connote a lifestyle which has a certain aesthetic charm.
graffiti This indispensable loanword from Italian is strictly speaking a plural,
though it couples with either singular or plural verbs in English:
All this graffiti is a measure of protest.
There were graffiti scrawled from floor to ceiling.
When linked with a singular verb as in the first example, graffiti takes on a collective
sense and works like a mass noun. With a plural verb it remains a count noun, as it
335
grammar
is in Italian (see further under count nouns). The Italian singular form graffito is
sometimes used in English, to refer to an individual scribble or message in a mass
of graffiti.
grammar The deeper secrets of any language lie in its grammar, in the
underlying rules and conventions by which words combine with each other. This is
especially true of English, where word relationships are only occasionally marked
in the forms of the words themselves. Many words can work as nouns, verbs or
adjectives without showing it in their outward form:
in the clear (noun)
clear the table (verb)
on a clear day (adjective)
The grammar of the word, as well as its particular meaning, only emerges in the
phrase or clause in which it is used.
In some other languages, such as German, French, Italian and Latin, the grammar
is much more on the surface of words, hence all the different forms we have to learn

for them. Grammarians would note that for those languages, the morphology of
words (i.e. their form and their inflections) is vital to understanding the grammar;
whereas in English it’s the syntax (i.e. the order in which words are combined)
which is more important.
In one sense, every native speaker of a language knows its grammar, learning
it intuitively as part of the language acquisition process. Still accusations of “bad
grammar” may be flung at native speakers who use nonstandard morphology, as
in:
I kep it in the house.
Youse had better all be quiet.
Variant forms like kep and youse often have a long history of spoken use, but are not
accepted as part of the standard written language. “Bad grammar” is also sometimes
invoked to censure alternative collocations, such as different than (by those who
were brought up on different from). An unwillingness to recognise variation in the
grammar of English has resulted in a number of fetishes and shibboleths which
are still used to identify “correct” and “incorrect” grammar. English grammar
is nevertheless somewhat flexible from one context to another, and has certainly
changed in its details over the course of time. In principle it embraces more than
the current conventions of written language.
See further under clause, phrase, sentence, parts of speech and syntax.
gramophone or phonograph See phonograph.
grand prix How do you make its plural?
When the original Grand Prix de Paris was set up for three-year-olds at
Longchamps racecourse in 1863, it was the one and only. But by 1908 there was a
336
Greek or Grecian
“grand prix” for motor racing, and after that, for the best product at an exhibition
etc., etc. To refer to more than one grand prix, the French use grands prix, and this
is also used in English writing. However other English-style plurals are also seen,
such as grand prixs and grand prixes, neither of which is very satisfactory since prixs

is unpronounceable, and prixes adds a foreign syllable to what is still very much a
French word. Those reluctant to use the French plural grands prix could resort to
“big prizes”, which is an exact calque of the French.
granter or grantor See under -er/-or.
grapheme A grapheme is a unit of a writing system. In English it can be a
single letter, like any of those in c-a-t in “cat”; but we also recognise graphemes
consisting of more than one letter, such as the th in “catharsis”, and the tch in
“catch”. In languages such as French, the repertoire of graphemes is extended by
means of accents. Thus e,
´
e,
`
e and
ˆ
e are different graphemes. Note that graphemes
are identified in linguistics by means of a pair of chevrons, e.g. <t>, <th>, <tch>.
grave accent
This accent has a number of roles depending on the language
which uses it. In Italian it marks a stressed final vowel, while in Vietnamese it
shows a falling tone. In French it has several functions:
r
to mark an open variety of e,asinp
`
ere
r
to show when a final syllable is stressed as in d
´
ej
`
a

r
to distinguish between homonyms, such as a and
`
aorla and l
`
a
The grave accent tends to disappear quickly from French loanwords in
English, because it’s less important than the acute accent in identifying a word’s
pronunciation. (See further under acute accent.)
The grave accent is occasionally used in printing English poetry, to show when
a syllable is to be pronounced separately, e.g. time’s wing
`
ed chariot. It helps readers
to recognise metres which depend on a strict pattern of syllables.
graveled or gravelled See under -l/-ll
gray or grey The use of these spellings is quite strongly regionalised, with gray
as the standard form in the US, and grey used in Australia and Britain. The choice
of spelling for the Oxford Dictionary was apparently in the balance in the 1890s,
and the chief editor Dr Murray conducted an inquiry to decide the issue. Though
The Times was for gray, other printers and a majority of those he asked voted for
grey. They settled the issue for him, in spite of the preference given to gray by
previous lexicographers, including Dr Johnson. This older preference underlies the
American use of gray.
Great Britain See under Britain and the British.
Greek or Grecian Both as adjectives and as nouns, these have different
meanings. Grecian, dating from the English Renaissance, relates to the ancient
337
Greek plurals
culture of Greece, its art and literature. A Grecian is a scholar of Grecian antiquities.
Greek is actually the older word, dating from the fourteenth century and capable

of referring to any aspect of Greece, ancient or modern. A Greek is any person of
Greek nationality, from Aristotle to Onassis.
Whether ancient or modern, the language of Greece is always called Greek.
Classical Greek was thelanguage of Athens: “Attic Greek”. Inthe twentieth century
two varieties of the language jostled for recognition as the standard: katharevusa
(the “high” variety, with spellings that link it with the classical language); and
demotike (the popular variety, written much more as it is spoken). Katharevusa
was promoted for a while after the Colonels’ coup in 1967, but its role has since
diminished with the use of demotike in education, and for most communicative
purposes.
Greek plurals Some Greek loanwords into English have brought with them
their Greek plurals, e.g. criterion whose regular plural is criteria, and schema, which
has both a Greek plural schemata and an English one schemas. A third group of
Greek loanwords with Greek plurals is little known except to scholars: topos plural
topoi, though this pattern of plurals is fossilised in hoi polloi “the many”, where
both article and adjective show the Greek plural ending.
For words like criterion, see further under -on; for those like schema, see under
-a section 1.
grey or gray See gray.
griffin, griffon or gryphon The first of these spellings (griffin) is standard
for both a mythical and a real animal:
1 the mythical beast with the head and wings of an eagle, and the body of a
lion—which was believed by the ancient Greeks to keep guard over the gold of
the Scythians
2 a type of vulture, at home in southern Europe.
The first item became a feature ofthe family crests of many noble families in Europe,
and a symbol of valor and magnanimity. This dignified role probably helped to
generate the alternative spelling gryphon (reflecting its Latin antecedent “gryps”),
which was used in heraldry and other contexts where the link with tradition was
important.

The spelling griffon is used in modern English to refer to a breed of wire-haired
terrier developed in Belgium in the 1880s. The word is ultimately the French word
for “griffin”, though its use may well be ironic. The dog is rather small and its head
is more like that of a monkey than an eagle. Another sign of irony is the fact that
the French also call it the chien anglais “English dog”.
grill or grille The grille is one of a number of French loanwords which lost
its e as it was assimilated in the seventeenth century, and reappeared with it in the
338
ground or grounds
nineteenth century. By then it was felt necessary to differentiate the use of the word
as “a decorative grating or set of bars over a window or opening” from its use in
referring to a style of cooking over a set of metal bars, first recorded in 1766. The
two meanings were distinguished this way in French (by means of grille and gril),
and their differentiation in English is another sign of frenchification (see further
under that heading). The distinction is maintained in both American and British
English, with grill used for the kitchen or barbecue, and grille in discussions of
architecture and automobiles.
grisly or grizzly The first of these is used of anything which arouses horror
in the beholder, as in the grisly relics of the concentration camp. Grizzly means
“greyish or grey-haired”, so that an elderly person or animal may merit the
adjective.
The grizzly bear may owe its name to both words. In a real sense it is a grisly
bear, formidable in size (sometimes 2.5 m), as is implied in its Latin name Ursus
horribilis. However we could explain the name simply by reference to the bear’s
color—its fur being anywhere from creamy brown to near-black, but often tipped
with white.
In Australian and British English, the word grizzly (or grizzling) is sometimes
applied to a whining child, as Murray-Smith (1989) noted. Its derivation is quite
different, from the colloquial verb grizzle “whine”.
groin or groyne These spellings are usually applied to two different words.

The first is anatomical, used to refer to the groove where thighs join the abdomen,
a usage which goes back to about 1400. The architectural use of groin to mean
“a curve or edge where two vaults intersect”, dating from the eighteenth century,
seems to be a figurative extension of the use in anatomy.
A groyne is a breakwater designed to reduce the sideways movement of sand on
a beach, first mentioned in the sixteenth century. It seems to be quite independent
of the first word, though it too is occasionally spelled groin.
grotto For the plural of this word, see under -o.
ground or grounds The word ground has numerous physical and figurative
meanings: “earth”, “soil”, “foundation”, “position”, “area of discussion” etc. It
becomes grounds in three particular kinds of reference:
1 to the land surrounding a building: the school grounds
2 to the sediment or ground-up material associated with a beverage: coffee
grounds
3 to the basis of an argument, or the reason or motive for an action: grounds for
divorce.
In all three cases grounds regularly takes a plural verb, although singular agreement
is just possible for the third meaning.
339
groveled or grovelled
Note that somewould argue that it’s bettertospeak of the ground ofan argument
or decision when there is clearly only one. According to this principle, one should
say:
The ground of my decision is this: I need the money.
rather than:
The grounds of my decision are this: I need the money.
But since grounds can just as easily be used to mean “basis” as “particular reason”,
its use in the second sentence seems quite idiomatic. The plural form grounds is
now as well established as the singular, according to the Right Word at the Right
Time (1985), and this usage is registered in all the major dictionaries.

groveled or grovelled See under -l/-ll
groyne or groin See groin.
grueling or gruelling See under -l/-ll
gryphon, griffon or griffin See under griffin.
Guangzhou See under China.
guarantee or guaranty The older word guaranty, dating from the end of
the sixteenth century, seems to have been steadily overtaken by guarantee which
came onto the scene about a century later. Fowler (1926) noted that guarantee
could be used for all senses of guaranty except the rather abstract verbal noun
meaning “the act of giving security”, and even that is now possible, according to
the Oxford Dictionary (1989). Some dictionaries have suggested a legal distinction
between the guarantee who receives an assurance, and the guaranty (= guarantor)
who provides it. But the distinction is confounded by the difficulty of deciding
which party merits the label “guarantee” (see further under -ee)—and the fact that
guarantee is much more common generally, with its everyday and figurative uses
as well as legal ones. With its strength it lays claim to all the meanings which were
ever those of guaranty.
Compare warranty.
gubba, gubber or gub In its various longer and shorter forms, this is the
Aborigines’ general and none-too-complimentary name for a white person. It was
first recorded after World War II according to the Australian National Dictionary
(1988), though its use may go back much further. Its origins are unclear: once
regarded as an Aboriginal word, it’s now thought to be a pidginised form of
government man. See Australian Aboriginal Words (1990).
-gue/-g Among the various words we owe to the Greeks is the following set:
analog(ue) catalog(ue) demagog(ue) dialog(ue) epilog(ue)
monolog(ue) pedagog(ue) prolog(ue) synagog(ue)
340
guesstimate or guestimate
In Australian and British English, spellings with -gue are the standard, with the

exception of analog/analogue for which both spellings are current, though for
different meanings. (See analog.)
The shorter spellings dialog, prolog etc. are sometimes said to be the American
spellings. Yet according to Webster’s (1986) and Random House (1987) they are
usually alternatives rather than the primary spelling for Americans. The one word
in which the -g is actually preferred is catalog. It is sufficiently established for its
verb forms to be spelled cataloged and cataloging, in spite of the general rule about
-ge (see further under -ce/-ge). Both Random House and Webster’s dictionaries give
catalogued and cataloguing as their second preferences. The strength of catalog may
owe something to the mail order system—or else to librarians.
The spellings with -gue are in fact French forms of the Greek words, mostly
borrowed into English during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. This helps
to explain why the -gue spellings are still established in American English,
whereas the frenchified spellings of the nineteenth century have not taken root
(see frenchification). And though -g spellings are accepted alternatives there, the
shift from -gue to -g has been less rapid than Noah Webster might have wished,
when he tried to usher in “tung” for tongue in his dictionary of 1806.
Note that alternative spellings with -g are only found for words which:
r
end in -ogue (not fatigue, intrigue or harangue, meringue)
r
have at least two syllables (not brogue, rogue or vogue)
guerilla or guerrilla Though American and British dictionaries give
preference to the second spelling, the first is slightly more common in Australia.
Both are well represented in Australian documents on the internet (Google 2006),
and they are made equals in the Macquarie Dictionary (2005). Among the citations
in the Oxford Dictionary, guerilla outnumbers guerrilla by 5:1, suggesting that
ordinary users of the word do not connect it with the Spanish guerra “war” from
which itwas derivedas a diminutive.But etymologynodoubt influencedthe Oxford
editors in theirpreference for guerrilla; andcloser acquaintance with Spanishwould

strengthen its use in the US. Meanwhile the alternative spelling guerilla may reflect
the fact that it’s the normal French way of writing the word. It also presents a case
where a single consonant tends to replace a double one in an isolated loanword. See
single for double.
guesstimate or guestimate This colloquial blend of guess and estimate
reminds us that many an “estimate” may be a figure plucked out of the air,
rather than a carefully calculated forecast. Dictionaries all give preference to
guesstimate, for which the Oxford Dictionary (1989) has twice as many citations
as for guestimate (4:2). The double s no doubt helps to prevent misreading of the
first syllable.
341
gunyah
gunyah This Aboriginal word for a shelter was among the first to be registered
by English settlers in New South Wales in the 1790s. The word came from the
Dharug language spoken around Port Jackson, and referred to the temporary
shelter made by Aborigines from sheets of bark and/or branches. Its meaning was
extended in the middle of the nineteenth century to refer to the goldminer’s shack
or stockman’s hut, but it seems nowadays to have contracted to the Aboriginal
sense.
During the nineteenth century its spelling varied greatly, with forms such as
guneah, gunneah, gunnie, gunyer and gunya. By the end of World War I it had
settled down as gunyah.
gybe, gibe or jibe See gibe.
gymnasium The plural of this word is discussed under -um.
gynecology or gynaecology See under ae/e.
gypsy or gipsy The first spelling seems to have taken over in the course of
the twentieth century, helped by folk etymology. The idea that gypsies came from
Egypt is a popular myth, although their name is indeed a clipped form of Egyptian.
In fact they emigrated into Europe from northern India.
In the nineteenth century the Oxford Dictionary gave gipsy priority, and

speculated that it had gained currency because it avoided a spelling with two y’s (see
further under dissimilation). However Fowler (1926) voted for gypsy to preserve
the connection with Egypt, and his choice is upheld in database evidence from both
the UK and the US, where gypsy prevails over gipsy (Peters 2004). In Australian
internet data (Google 2006), gypsy has a 4:1 lead over the alternative. This world-
wide trend goes against any preference for i over y spellings, where the two exist as
alternatives. (See further under i>y.)
Note that as an ethnic name the word is written with a capital letter:
Gypsy/Gipsy. See capital letters 1a.
342
H
habeas corpus This somewhat obscure Latin formula, requiringthat “you shall
produce the person (in court)”, is the beginning of several writs in English law.
It represents an important civil liberty, obliging anyone who holds a prisoner in
custody to bring him or her to court, and state the reasons for their detention. The
court then examines the law under which the person is held and decides whether
imprisonment is justified or not. The process is designed to prevent people being
imprisoned by the state without trial. On occasions it is also used to prevent a
citizen holding another person captive, and to ensure that custody arrangements
for the child of divorced parents are properly observed.
Another Latin phrase which obliges people to appear in court is the sub poena
“under penalty”. Once again it’s the opening phrase of a writ, one which summons
the defendant of a case (and those nominated as witnesses) to appear before the
judge. As a noun and verb subpoena is set solid, and can also be spelled subpena
in the US (see further under oe). As a verb, its past form is normally subpoenaed,
though a case could be made for subpoena’d: see further under -ed.
h´aˇcek This accent, like an inverted circumflex, is used in a few east European
languages, including Czech and Croatian. In English it’s sometimes referred to as
the “wedge”. The h
´

a
ˇ
cek is used to extend the number of consonant symbols (or
graphemes), so that
ˇ
c has the sound “tch”, while a plain c sounds as “s”. In Czech
where it’s used most extensively, the h
´
a
ˇ
cek creates alternative forms for c, n, r, s
and z, upper and lower case, and also for the vowel e. The h
´
a
ˇ
cek appears in English
writing only in connection with foreign personal names, such as Bene
ˇ
s, Dub
ˇ
cek
and Dvo
ˇ
r
´
ak.
hachure or hatching Both these refer to lines of shading. Parallel lines of
hachure were used on nineteenth century maps to show the gradient of a slope,
with thick ones for a steep slope and fine ones where it was gentle. Modern maps
use contour lines with the actual heights stated. Hatching refers to the parallel or

crossed lines used to show light and shade on drawings, engravings and diagrams.
A much older word, it was applied to inlay work in the fifteenth century, and to
engraving in the sixteenth century. Yet both hachure and the anglicised hatching
derive from the French verb hacher “chop up”. Other related words are hash and
hatchet.
343
haem-
haem- This prefix is discussed under hem-/haem
hail or hale See hale.
hairbrained or harebrained See harebrained.
haitch How do you pronounce the name of the letter H? Australians divide on
this, between saying “aitch” and “haitch”. The latter is frowned upon by those
who are used to “aitch”, and only aitch gets a place in the headword list of
dictionaries. Haitch nevertheless has a certain logic to it, since the letter names
of most consonants embody their own sound, often beginning with it (“bee”,
“cee”, “dee” etc.); and the “dropping” of h draws criticism in other places. Yet
instead of being seen as a case of hypercarefulness, “haitch” is more often than not
censured. Some people associate it with Irish Catholic schools in Australia, and with
working class education, so that the judgement against “haitch” is social rather than
linguistic.Older Australians object much more strongly to it than younger ones. In
response to an Australian Style survey (2000/1) 43% of younger people (under 25
years) were prepared to say that they used “haitch”, but only 6% of those 65 and
over.
hale or hail Nearly a score of different words have clustered under these two
spellings. Hale and hail have no less than nine separate entries each in the Oxford
Dictionary (1989), as nouns and verbs, not to mention others as adjective/adverb.
Not all the words are current and some have always been dialect words, but there
are enough in general use to give us pause.
Of the two, hail still has more uses, as:
r

“icy precipitation”
r
“come from”, as in:
He hails from Amsterdam.
r
“greeting” as well as “greet or accost verbally”
The familiar megaphone with built-in amplifier is a loudhailer—a device which
accosts people noisily.
The surviving uses of hale include:
r
“haul, pull or drag”, as in: They haled him into court.
r
“healthy” as in the phrase hale and hearty. It too was sometimes spelled hail,
until the seventeenth century. (This older spelling is enshrined in the Christmas
wassail, a drinking toast, literally wes + hail “(may you) be healthy”.)
half- This is the first element in numerous compound nouns and adjectives. In
Australian English they are typically hyphenated, though there are variations to
note in each group.
In adjectives, half- regularly appears with a hyphen, as in:
344
half-title
half-baked half-cocked half-hearted half-size half-timbered
The chief exception is halfway, which commonly works as adverb as well as
adjective, and is therefore set solid. (See further under hyphens 2b.)
In compound nouns, half is usually hyphenated, witness:
half-boot half-day half-deck half-hour half-life half-light half-mast
half-moon half-nelson half-pint half-sister half-time half-title
half-truth half-volley
Just a few words have half set solid, notably halfback, halftone and halfwit. Note
also that in American English some of the half- compounds are spaced, for example:

half boot half deck half pint half sister half title
The disinclination to use hyphens is a feature of American style, although American
dictionaries do not always agree on individual words. It is a particularly fluid area
of spelling. (See hyphens, introduction.)
As in the examples above, half normally combines with Anglo-Saxon words, or
with thoroughly assimilated French ones. Its counterpart in more formal, latinate
words is semi-: see further under that heading.
half-caste One of the most delicate questions of usage is how to refer to people
of mixedrace—a matter ofembarrassment, and worse,ofcondemnation. The formal
word for it miscegenation may have fueled the problem, since its first element is
easily misconstrued as mis- “bad, faulty” (see mis-), instead of misce- “mixed”,
which is neutral in meaning. Less formal words have been coined on all continents
to deal with and skirt around the problem, some of them euphemistic, some
offhanded.
The settlers brought to Australia an array of words used in other parts of the
British Empire: colored (from South Africa); half-caste (from India); and half-blood,
half-breed, half-white and mixed blood (from the US). Other terms such as ladino,
mestizo and mulatto (from Spanish colonial territories) were also known here.
In Australia, there were local variants: bronzewing, halfie and muleteer—none of
them more sympathetic than the imported terms. At least they did not develop the
fractional mathematics of quadroon and octoroon.
Most of the disadvantages of those terms are avoided by the term part-Aboriginal
(and suchlike). It does not pretend to precise mathematics, nor does it invoke
agricultural analogies of breeding, and its tone is neither patronising nor offhanded.
It is suitably neutral for situations when complex ethnic origins and culture need
to be acknowledged. As when avoiding racist language, it’s the straight ethnic or
geographical term (cf. Eurasian) which seems best to preserve the dignity of the
individual. See further under racist language.
half-title The short title of a book when printed on the page before the main
title page is its half-title. An alternative name among the makers of books has been

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