Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style_10 ppt

slangy phrases like “reading-type mate-
rial” in lieu of type of reading material.
2. TYPE and KIND; other meanings
Used strictly, type fits a clearly defined
group (“Citrine is a type of quartz”)
while kind or sort has more general ap-
plication. (“That is the kind of weather I
like.” / “She is the sort of person who
gets along with everyone.”) Strict users
appear to be in the minority.
The noun type can also denote printed
characters (“The manuscript has been
set up in type”) or the metallic blocks
producing them in traditional printing.
Type can serve as an adjective when it
pertains to printing, as in type style and
type faces, or when it is united with a
technical term, as in Type AB blood. As
a verb, type (present participle typing)
can mean to operate a typewriter or
computer keyboard (“She types eighty
words a minute”) or to classify (“They
typed him as a vagrant”).
See also KIND OF.
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ULTIMATUM. An ultimatum is not
just any demand. This noun, along with
the adjective ultimate, stems from the
Medieval Latin ultimatus, meaning final.
An ultimatum is the ultimate demand or

proposition or statement of terms pre-
sented by the government of one coun-
try to the government of another
country before launching war or using
force. The threat of hostilities is ex-
pressed or implied in the statement. Ulti-
matum is too important a word to be
treated in the casual way it often is.
“Iran issued an ultimatum to
Britain,” a newscaster announced on
television. Iran’s demand, that Britain
ban a book, was backed by the threat of
severed relations but not hostilities.
Therefore calling it an “ultimatum” is
not a precise use of the word. At least
the demand had an element of finality.
Not so in the next instance, reported in a
newspaper article:
When city officials discovered that
[an unauthorized street clock] last
month, they issued an ultimatum to
the restaurant’s owners. If you want
permission to erect the clock . . . you
must first remove it.
There “ultimatum” is evidently sup-
posed to be humorous, so its irrelevance
to international relations does not alone
preclude its use. However, the officials’
proposition carried no threat of forceful
action and was not final. The next sen-

tence says, “But discussions that began
last week produced a less severe solution
yesterday.” So no “ultimatum” was is-
sued, even stretching the word to the
bursting point.
The South Korean government issued
a statement asking the United States to
clarify news reports of official spying on
the Korean president. A story about the
statement starts out with a contradic-
tion: “The State Department yesterday
rejected another South Korean ultima-
tum, the second in two days.” Aside
from the Koreans’ obvious reluctance to
wage war on the United States, the fact
is that they made two successive de-
mands, so the first cannot be truly
recorded as an “ultimatum.”
A front-page headline: “Vatican Is-
sues an Ultimatum. . . . ” According to
the story, the Vatican’s envoy to Panama
“delivered an ultimatum” to General
Manual Noriega, the Panamanian
leader, during the U.S. invasion: His
sanctuary at the embassy would expire.
What the envoy delivered was more like
an eviction notice. The idea of the small-
est state in the world threatening mili-
tary violence is ludicrous.
UNDESCRIBABLE. See INDE-

SCRIBABLE, UNDESCRIBABLE.
undescribable 447
U
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UNEMPLOYED, UNEMPLOY-
MENT. See JOBLESS.
UNEXPRESSIBLE. See Verbal un-
mentionables.
UNINTERESTED. See DISINTER-
ESTED and UNINTERESTED.
UNIQUE. “It is absolutely the most
unique place in the world,” a secretary
of the interior said about the Grand
Canyon. A scientist said about mam-
moths, “They were very unique ani-
mals.” An orchestral manager was
quoted as saying, “Ojai is something so
unique among festivals.”
Unique (adjective), from the Latin
unicus, only or single, means being the
only one of its kind or without an equal.
The Sun, as a star, is unique in the solar
system but not in the universe.
To call something or someone “the
most unique” is as meaningless as calling
it “the most only one.” Uniqueness can-
not vary in degree. So adverbial quali-
fiers like “most” / “very” / “so” /
“rather” / “more” / “somewhat” cannot
apply to unique. Some of them may ap-

ply to weaker adjectives such as excep-
tional, extraordinary, outstanding, rare,
remarkable, or unusual. A very rare bird
has a few specimens; only the final speci-
men will be unique. It is possible to qual-
ify unique with adverbs like truly, really,
nearly, most nearly, or more nearly,
which do not purport to change the de-
gree of unique.
But the speakers quoted above are not
in the word business. Those in the mass
media should know better, should they
not?
On television a newscaster said, “The
budget bill was rather unique,” and an
announcer described “America’s most
unique travel adventures.” A magazine
said that “the most unique mail order
items” were not the most expensive. And
the word appeared twice in a news story
about a tribute to a baseball player:
[Jackie Robinson] lived a career so
compelling and unique its retelling
once again riveted. . . . The obvious
presence of such people of color un-
derscored the unique relationship
baseball has had with minorities since
1947. . . .
Robinson’s career was unique—not “so”
unique, though so unusual, so extraordi-

nary, etc. would be correct. The second
sentence is grammatically sound, though
the aptness of “unique” may be debated.
Minorities are in other sports. Journal-
ism need not ape the advertising indus-
try, which tries to persuade us that every
product is “unique.” (Another error in
the first sentence is the intransitive use of
“riveted.” Rivet is a transitive verb: “its
retelling riveted the audience.” See also
RACE and NATIONALITY, 3.)
Surely an educator should be expected
to know the proper usage of words. A
high school supervisor in the Southeast
told a television interviewer that not ev-
eryone was capable of teaching. “It takes
a very unique individual. . . . ” (One who
speaks properly?)
UNLESS AND UNTIL. The phrase
“unless and until” befits a legal docu-
ment. Separately, unless and until have
different meanings. Together, they are
usually excessive in normal prose.
The conjunction unless means if not,
or except when. The conjunction until
means up to the point that, or up to the
time of. When combined in “unless and
until,” they add up to an overblown
phrase. Usually one word or the other,
depending on the context, can be

scrapped with no loss of meaning. This
sentence, from a book, illustrates the
two words in combination:
Those laws [governing matter un-
der very extreme conditions] are im-
448 unemployed, unemployment
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 448
portant for understanding how the
universe began, but they do not affect
the future evolution of the universe,
unless and until the universe recol-
lapses to a high-density state.
Unless is enough. The universe will con-
tinue to evolve, if it does not recollapse.
To use “until” alone might suggest that
recollapsing is a sure thing. The addition
of “and until” is unnecessary and more
legalistic than scientific.
Sometimes “or” replaces “and,”
yielding the phrase “unless or until.”
The result is the same.
A comparable phrase is “if and
when.” If means in the event that. When
means at the time that. Here too one
word or the other, depending on context,
usually can stand alone. A variation of
the phrase is “when and if.” Such
phrases can be left to lawyers.
See also Twins.
UNLIKE. 1. Clarity. 2. Comparability.

1. Clarity
Unlike can be clearer than
not . . . like: “Campbell is not a college
graduate, like his predecessor, Morgan.”
Was Morgan graduated from college or
not? If he was, a better way to begin is
“Unlike his predecessor. . . . ” But if he
was not, a better way is “Like his prede-
cessor. . . . ” See also LIKE, 1; NOT, 1E.
Users of unlike must make it clear just
what they are contrasting. The con-
trasted elements need to be isolated and
not obscured by modifiers. In this sen-
tence from a newsletter, nine modifying
words precede the noun “lift”:
Unlike other GGT buses, the new Flx-
ible buses features an Americans with
Disabilities ACT (ADA) approved
front door wheelchair lift which al-
lows for a 45-seat bus capacity.
The extent of the difference between the
buses is blurred by the pile-up of modi-
fiers and the ambiguous “which.” See
Modifiers, 4; THAT and WHICH. (An-
other mistake is a noun-verb disagree-
ment in number: It should be “buses
feature.” Flxible is a brand, not a mis-
take.)
2. Comparability
The prepositions unlike and like are

opposite in meaning but alike grammati-
cally. Whereas like likens one thing to
another, unlike contrasts one thing with
another. Either way, the things need to
be comparable to make complete sense.
In the use of unlike, we encounter the
same problem of false comparison that
was shown in the use of like.
This remark was made on a national
telecast: “Unlike thirty years ago, we
now have sunscreens to shield us from
daily exposure.” A time in the past and
what we now have belong to different
categories. “Unlike what we had thirty
years ago . . .” is a correction.
Unlike occasionally serves as an ad-
jective: “the unlike duckling.”
See also LIKE, 2.
UNMENTIONABLE. See Verbal
unmentionables.
UNQUALIFIED. See DISQUALI-
FIED and UNQUALIFIED.
“UNQUOTE.” See QUOTE and
QUOTATION.
UNSPEAKABLE. See Verbal unmen-
tionables.
UNTHINKABLE. Two dictionaries
offer the identical opening definition of
unthinkable: “Not thinkable; inconceiv-
able.” Such a definition is paradoxical.

Anything you can think is thinkable.
Anything you can conceive is conceiv-
able. Just to mention something, albeit
to condemn it as wrong or impossible, is
to think of it.
unthinkable 449
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This discourse is to reject, not the
word, but the definition and inappropri-
ate use of the word. When all four pan-
elists in a television discussion agreed
that U.S. withdrawal from Saudi Arabia
was “unthinkable” (a word suggested by
the moderator), they all thought of it.
The proposition might have been called
unacceptable, undesirable, unfeasible, or
unreasonable (or a good idea, had pan-
elists been selected who did not all think
alike), but was it really “unthinkable”?
The same two dictionaries offer an
identical second definition: “Not to be
thought of or considered.” That one is
more tenable. There may be certain con-
cepts that, though they can be thought,
should not be thought. In that sense, dic-
tators regard democracy as unthinkable;
and, in promoting their product,
cigarette companies regard the danger to
health as unthinkable. Normally you can
think what you want in our society. Our

laws restrict only what you do; thought-
control is generally unacceptable.
It is verbal profligacy to use “unthink-
able” just to express disagreement with a
proposition, unless it is horrible or evil
beyond contemplation. To use it to de-
scribe something that actually exists or
has already been done (“the administra-
tion’s unthinkable actions in Latin
America”) is preposterous.
See also Verbal unmentionables.
UNTIL. See TILL and “’TIL”; UN-
LESS AND UNTIL; UP, 2 (end).
UNUTTERABLE. See Verbal un-
mentionables.
UP. 1. As a verb. 2. In phrases. 3. Prefix
and suffix.
1. As a verb
As a verb, up is more or less colloquial
and not for all occasions.
Using it in the (transitive) sense of
raise or increase—to “up prices” or
“prices were upped”—is scorned by
some critics, one of whom calls it “jour-
nalese.” At least one expression of that
sort has become established: to up the
ante, meaning to increase the stakes, par-
ticularly in a poker game.
To up (intransitive) is also to rise or
get up, or to act unexpectedly or sud-

denly: “She upped and walloped him on
the jaw.”
2. In phrases
When added to a number of verbs, up
(adverb) forms distinctive phrases, in
which up does not bear its literal mean-
ing: higher or the opposite of down.
Make up, for instance, can mean to
put together, form, arrange, complete,
compensate for, become friendly again,
or put on (cosmetics). We bring up (chil-
dren or topics), get up (in the morning),
keep up (an activity or appearance), look
up (information in a reference book),
and turn up (something lacking).
Up may intensify verbs, adding an ele-
ment of completeness or thoroughness.
Treasure-hunters dig, hoping to dig up
riches. To dress is less formal than to
dress up. To tear a book damages it; to
tear up the book destroys it. Clean up
and tie up are somewhat intensified ver-
sions of clean and tie in literal senses,
and they have respectively the additional
meanings of make a lot of money (collo-
quial) and delay or immobilize.
Nevertheless, up goes unnecessarily
with some other verbs, making no differ-
ence in their meanings. Two professors
wrote that “some of the resources freed

up by pruning military outlays should
permit Democrats to advance the ‘pock-
etbook issues’. . . . ” No one is likely to
miss “up” if it is removed from a sen-
tence like that or phrases like these: “end
up” (the meeting), “light up” (a cigar),
“finish up” (the job), “head up” (a com-
mittee), “make up” (the beds), “match
up” (cloths), “open up” (the gate), “pay
up” (the money), “write up” (an article).
450 until
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The “up” in “hurry up” / “join up” /
“wait up” adds nothing to hurry, join,
wait.
Instead of telling someone just to lis-
ten, it is fashionable (at this writing) to
tack on the appendage “up.” On a radio
news network, the remark “Listen up,
Steven Spielberg” prefaced a broadcast
of a computer-generated portrayal of a
dinosaur cry.
Up is the first word in sundry phrases.
Among useful ones are up against,
meaning confronted with; up for, pre-
sented for (election, trial, etc.); up to, oc-
cupied in, capable of, or equal to; and up
to date, current. (“These accounts are up
to date” or “These are the up-to-date ac-
counts.”) The “up” is redundant in “up

until” or “up till,” inasmuch as until or
till means up to a point or time.
See also CAUGHT and CAUGHT
UP.
3. Prefix and suffix
Up- is joined as a prefix in many
words. Some of them, accenting the up-,
are upbeat, upbraid, upgrade, upkeep,
upright, uprising, uproar, upshot, up-
start, and upward. Others, such as up-
heaval, uphold, upholster, and uproot,
accent the second syllable. Still others
give about equal stress to both syllables:
upside (down), upstairs, upstream, and
uptown. The stress may vary, as in upset:
the noun is UP-set, the verb up-SET; the
adjective goes either way. Dictionaries
disagree on the pronunciation of some
other up- words.
Up is hyphenated in the adjectives up-
and-coming, meaning advancing toward
success; and up-and-down, meaning
fluctuating in direction or vertical.
As a suffix, -up may or may not be
joined by a hyphen. Examples are the
nouns breakup, buildup, holdup, setup,
windup, close-up, make-up, and shake-
up (all accenting the first syllable). As
verbs, each of the root words would be
separate from up. Dictionaries do not

agree what to hyphenate, and several
dictionaries show no pattern behind
their choices. For instance, one book
runs wind-up, shakeup, and a choice be-
tween make-up and makeup. Another
spells them windup, shake-up, and
makeup.
A usable rule of thumb for words
with up suffixes (suggested by Roy H.
Copperud) is to follow the root word
with a hyphen if it ends in a vowel.
See also UPCOMING; PICK UP and
PICKUP; ROUND UP and ROUNDUP;
SET UP and SETUP.
UPCOMING. Upcoming dates back
to the fourteenth century. For about 500
years it was solely a noun, meaning the
action of coming up; for instance, “From
the hill, we watched their upcoming.”
Then it began to be used also as an ad-
jective, in a similar sense, e.g., “the up-
coming travelers.”
Its adjectival use as a synonym for an-
ticipated, approaching, coming, or forth-
coming, as in “the upcoming election,”
began still later. The Oxford English
Dictionary can trace that “chiefly U.S.”
application only as far back as 1959.
In its newest sense, upcoming has not
won general acceptance. Use it if you

have to, but never as a replacement for
coming up, the way a telecast of enter-
tainment news misused it: “With the
new season upcoming, optimism is
high.” The flavor is German, not En-
glish. Change “upcoming” to coming up
or just coming.
A predecessor of the original upcom-
ing, by about three centuries, was up-
come, a rare verb meaning to come up.
See also Backward writing, 3.
US and WE. See Pronouns, 10.
USE. See UTILIZE, UTILIZATION.
USE TO and USED TO. Each of
the samples below displays a wrong
use to and used to 451
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 451
tense of the verb use. Past should be pre-
sent and present should be past.
“ ‘What did your name used to be?’
this reporter couldn’t resist asking.”
Change “used” to use: “ ‘What did your
name use to be?’ ”
“I use to like people for what I could
get out of them.” Change “use” to used:
“I used to like people. . . . ”
Used to, indicating a former state or a
former activity, often is correct. But
when did goes with a verb, it takes over
the job of casting the verb’s action in the

past. In that way, use is no different from
other verbs. We say, “When did she
leave?” (not “left”) or “I did not sleep”
(not “slept”).
The fact that used to and use to sound
so similar can account for the confusion.
In the negative, two constructions are
possible. One may say either “He did
not use to drink much” or He used not
to drink much.” The first is more com-
mon, especially in speech. The meaning
of use to may be expressed in other
ways: “He did not drink much in the
past” or “in past years” or “in those
days.”
Used to can mean accustomed to. “I
am used to hard work.” / “We were used
to walking barefoot.” That sense em-
ploys only used, the past participle, and
only in the passive.
UTILIZE, UTILIZATION. Utilize,
often conscripted as a high-flown syn-
onym for use (verb, transitive), has its
niche. It implies putting to practical use
something that has not been practical so
far, or making something more produc-
tive or profitable by finding a new use
for it.
These are appropriate examples:
“Many companies would like to utilize

the natural resources of the Antarctic.” /
“Silicon was utilized in the computer
revolution.” In the examples below
(from a book and a newspaper), “uti-
lize” is used loosely.
You should be able to boost your
usual weekly or monthly sales figures
from time to time by utilizing one of
the more popular promotional tech-
niques.
If the techniques are already in popular
use, using will do in place of “utilizing.”
To avoid becoming a rape victim,
there are several precautions to follow
as well as a variety of defenses to uti-
lize if assaulted.
Again, use is enough. Utilize would be
the right word in speaking, for instance,
of “a variety of common objects to uti-
lize as defenses.” (See also Crimes, 1.)
A related noun is utilization, which at
times is forced to serve as a pretentious
synonym for the noun use. In a dictio-
nary article, a linguist describes a mil-
lion-word sample of American writing
containing 61,805 word forms.
As already suggested in our discussion
of the frequency of words of different
length, word utilization in actual use
varies enormously.

The sentence would be improved by
changing “word utilization in” to their.
Another synonym for use is employ
(verb, transitive), which has its own nu-
ance: to apply or devote to an activity.
“She employed her time and energy in
helping the poor.” Of course employ
also means to hire or to use the services
of an employee.
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04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 452
VASELINE. Vaseline is a brand of
petroleum jelly, used for medicinal pur-
poses. As a trademark, it should be capi-
talized.
A book of language instruction for
newcomers prints the commercial names
of several products in lower case. In
sample dialogue, a customer tells a phar-
macist, “I’ll need some vaseline, too.”
Another commercial product that the
book incorrectly mentions in lower case
is Q-Tips. See also BAND-AID.
H. L. Mencken, who refused to capi-
talize Vaseline and many other trade-
marks, wrote that it had entered
German and French dictionaries and, as
fan-shih-ling, was among four “Ameri-
canisms” borrowed by the Chinese.
(The others were p’u-k’e, poker; tel-lu-

feng, telephone; and ch’ueh-ssu-teng,
charleston, the dance.) He described its
origin: Robert A. Chesebrough coined it
in 1870 or so, drawing from the German
wasser, water, and the Greek elaion, oil,
for he believed that the decomposition
of water gave rise to petroleum.
VENAL and VENIAL. See Confus-
ing pairs.
VENUE. Venue is a legal term. It is
the locality in which a crime is commit-
ted or the cause for a civil suit occurs. It
is also the political division from which
a jury is called and in which a trial is
held. When a lawyer requests a “change
of venue,” he wants the trial moved else-
where.
Lately it has been used as a highfa-
lutin synonym for a variety of simple
words, which would generally be quite
adequate and often be more specific. It
has been particularly common in show
business, but some in other fields too are
forcing it into service. This is from a
book about marketing (emphasis
added):
Still, consider if this [a newsletter]
is a good venue for you. . . .
But particularly for consultants
whose strong suit is not the written

word, it [use of a newsletter service] is
a plausible venue.
Before “venue” began circulating pre-
tentiously outside the legal community,
the writer might have used medium (first
sentence) and course (second sentence).
A weekly newspaper chose to use
“screening venue” rather than movie
theater. A restaurant reviewer preferred
“lunch venue” to lunchroom. A radio
commercial for language instruction
used “venues” in place of schools. And a
notice posted at a legitimate theater an-
nounced “EVENTS AT OUR OTHER
VENUS” (sic).
VERBAL. 1. Oral and verbal. 2. Pop-
ular definition. 3. Technical meanings.
verbal 453
V
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1. Oral and verbal
A lawyer did not write this sentence,
which is looser than it may seem.
A written, detailed contract has the
virtue of specifically spelling out terms
and mutual obligations, but it also
binds a lot tighter than a verbal agree-
ment.
The opposite of a written contract is an
oral contract; that is, one that is spoken

rather than written. All contracts or
agreements are verbal, because they have
to do with words, whether or not the
words are written down.
Verbal (adjective) pertains to words. It
can have any of these senses:
A. In words or through the use of words.
Songs communicate in both musical
and verbal ways.
B. Emphasizing words as such, without
regard to the ideas or facts that they
convey. This is purely verbal criticism,
not substantive.
C. Word for word. A verbal translation is
literal, rather than literary.
Verbal and oral both come from
Latin, in which verbum means word and
oris means mouth.
Oral has other mouth-related mean-
ings. An oral vaccine is one that is swal-
lowed. Oral hygiene is health care for
the mouth.
The adverbs related to verbal and oral
are verbally and orally.
2. Popular definition
“Verbal” often serves in popular
speech as an antonym for written. Gen-
eral dictionaries offer that loose use
among their definitions. But why choose
a fuzzy word when using a precise one is

so easy?
The Random House Dictionary adds
a note defending the use of “verbal” to
mean spoken: The practice dates from
the sixteenth century; it rarely produces
confusion; one can tell the meaning from
the context.
Contrarily, The American Heritage
Dictionary (first edition) cautioned
against the application of verbal to terms
such as agreement, promise, commit-
ment, and understanding; it can mean
what is written, while oral cannot. Ver-
bal (says the third edition) “may some-
times invite confusion,” as in this
example: Does “modern technology for
verbal communication” refer to devices
like radio and telephone or those like
telegraph and fax?
Webster’s second edition said, in the
main text under verbal, that “by confu-
sion” it was taken to mean spoken. Web-
ster’s Third drops that qualification.
3. Technical meanings
In grammar, verbal has some technical
meanings. Verbal (adjective) means per-
taining to a verb, or having the function
of a verb, or used to form verbs (such as
the verbal suffix -ize). A verbal (noun) is
a word or phrase formed from a verb

that is used as a noun or adjective.
Gerunds and at times infinitives and par-
ticiples may be called verbals.
Verbal unmentionables. Unmen-
tionables is a euphemism for underwear,
little used now, except in an attempt to
be humorous. It was once applied to
trousers. We are assigning the designa-
tion of verbal unmentionables to a cate-
gory of paradoxical expressions or
words. What distinguishes each is that it
seems to discourage any reference to the
very thing it is used to refer to. If taken
literally, it might not be used at all.
Expressions include it (or that) goes
without saying, needless to say, not to
mention, not to say, to say nothing of,
and words cannot describe. Single words
include inconceivable, indescribable, in-
effable, inexpressible, unimaginable, un-
mentionable, unsayable, unspeakable,
unthinkable, and unutterable.
This quirk in our language is far from
new. In Eureka, an essay on the universe,
454 verbal unmentionables
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 454
published in 1848, Edgar Allan Poe
wrote that “a certain inexpressibly great
yet limited number of unimaginably yet
not infinitely minute atoms” had radi-

ated from a primordial particle; that
traveling from the star 61 Cygni, even at
an “inconceivable rate, light occupies
more than ten years”; and that stars give
“birth and death to unspeakably numer-
ous and complex variations” of life.
(Emphases are added.)
To hint at or mention something
while feigning an unwillingness to men-
tion it is a rhetorical device known as
apophasis (a-POF-a-sis), adopted from
the Greek word for denial. A guest on
the air who says “I won’t plug my
restaurant, Joe’s Eatery” is using it.
See also INDESCRIBABLE, UNDE-
SCRIBABLE; OF COURSE, 3; NOT
TO MENTION; TO SAY NOTHING
OF; UNTHINKABLE.
Verbosity. Using many words or too
many words, either in writing or in
speaking, is verbosity or wordiness. Usu-
ally it means using more words than are
necessary to communicate one’s mean-
ing. Verbosity (pronounced vur-BOS-ih-
tee) can in addition imply an instance of
speech or writing that is obscure,
pompous, or tedious; or a tendency to-
ward such speech or writing.
A noun with similar meaning is pro-
lixity (pronounced pro-LIX-ih-tee), the

quality of or tendency toward such ex-
cessive length or elaboration in speech or
writing as to be tiresome.
The related adjectives are verbose
(vur-BOAS), wordy, and prolix (PRO-lix
or pro-LIX).
Nouns pertaining to unnecessary rep-
etition are pleonasm, redundancy, and
tautology. See Tautology.
The prose of government, academia,
art, science, business, and other fields
can be verbose, jargonal, or just windy.
An official in southern California re-
ported that an earthquake was mild by
saying, “We have not activated the disas-
ter mode.” To announce that an epi-
demic was going away, the director of a
federal health agency said, “There is a
downslope on the curve of occurrence.”
A Tennessee school board considering
curricula decided that “pre-assessment,
post-assessment, learning alternatives
and remediation will be an integral part
of instructional modules within the
framework of program development.” A
collegiate dean in Wisconsin said she had
worked at “conceptualizing new thrusts
in programming.”
An artist wrote this of her abstract
paintings: “A strong frontal progressive

image of light through the layers declares
the present, which is, life existing in the
now.” (See Punctuation, 3D.) A plaque
in an art gallery said of another abstract
artist, “Through the use of layering, her
paintings invoke a sense of continuum, a
present tense portrayal that reveals a
connection to our past as well as prepar-
ing ground for the future.” (See EVOKE
and INVOKE.)
The beginning of a study by two pro-
fessors in a scientific journal is quoted
below. The study deals with pigeons.
Had it dealt with people, it might have
been complicated.
In general, research on concurrent
choice has concentrated on steady-
state relations between the allocation
of behavior and independent variables
that are associated with reinforcement
or aspects of responding. The devel-
opment of quantitative models de-
scribing stable-state choice has been
successful, and is exemplified by the
generalized matching law (see Davi-
son & McCarthy, 1988, for a review),
which provides a description of the re-
lation between behavior-output ratios
and reinforcer-input ratios when two
variable-interval (VI) schedules are

concurrently available.
Now some bedtime reading for stock-
holders, excerpts from a corporation’s
annual report:
verbosity 455
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 455
The portion of sales hedged is based
on assessments of cost-benefit profiles
that consider natural offsetting expo-
sures, revenue and exchange rate
volatilities and correlations, and the
cost of hedging instruments. . . . For
foreign currency denominated bor-
rowing and investing transactions,
cross-currency interest rate swap con-
tracts are used, which, in addition to
exchanging cash flows derived from
rates, exchange currencies at both in-
ception and termination of the con-
tracts. . . . Because monetary assets
and liabilities are marked to spot and
recorded in earnings, forward con-
tracts designated as hedges of the
monetary assets and liabilities are also
marked to spot with the resulting
gains and losses similarly recognized
in earnings.
Popular language has deadwood too.
“In spite of the fact that” can often boil
down to although; “was in attendance

at” to attended; “for the reason that” to
because; “of a friendly (or cheerful etc.)
character” to friendly (or cheerful etc.);
“is in possession of” to has; and so on.
Recent decades have brought many
roundabout expressions, such as “I am
supportive of him” instead of I support
him; “at this point in time” instead of
now; “in terms of” and “all that” used
unnecessarily; “for” free and listen
“up”; and “person” and “people” as
suffixes.
Even a short piece can be too long if it
has unnecessary components. A long
work is not necessarily too long if it is
tightly composed. That means being
concise and to the point; preferring ac-
tive verbs to passive verbs and fresh ex-
pressions to clichés; avoiding
highfalutin, obscure, or superfluous
words and phrases; not being too ab-
stract; illustrating generalities with spe-
cific examples; favoring simple sentences
over complicated ones; using long sen-
tences sparingly and with clear, consis-
tent structure; and using grammar, sen-
tence structure, and vocabulary
carefully.
Verbosity should not be confused
with verbiage, an instance of (not a ten-

dency toward) an overabundance of
words. Verbiage can also denote a style
of using words, such as legal verbiage in
a court document.
Among pertinent entries are Active
voice and passive voice; ADVOCATE;
“AT THIS POINT IN TIME”; A
WHILE and AWHILE; BOTH; BU-
COLIC; CAUGHT and CAUGHT UP;
CHARACTER; Clichés; CONSENSUS;
DEMOLISH; Expletives; FRACTION;
FREE; IDYLLIC; IN ATTENDANCE;
IN TERMS OF; IS IS; KNOT; LIKE, 3;
MEAN (adjective); OFF and “OFF OF”;
ON, 2; PEOPLE as a suffix; PERSON;
PERSONAL; PRESENTLY; REVERT;
SITUATION; SUPPORTIVE; THAT,
ALL THAT; Twins; UP, 2; WITH.
Verbs. 1. Basic facts. 2. Creation from
nouns. 3. Mistakes in number. 4. Prob-
lems in using auxiliaries. 5. Shortage of
objects.
1. Basic facts
A. What is a verb?
A verb is typically a word of action. It
tells what someone or something does.
“The boy works.” / “This monkey
howls.” / “Paris fell on that day.”
The person, creature, thing, or ab-
straction—that is, the subject—need not

act overtly. The subject may just exist in
some way, or something may happen to
the subject. The verb tells us that. “I am
the captain.” / “They live in Detroit.” /
“The city was besieged for two years.”
B. Verb phrase
A verb may consist of more than one
word, usually termed a verb phrase.
“The dog has eaten my manuscript.” /
456 verbs
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 456
“The kettle is whistling.” / “I will re-
turn.” In each example, has or is or will
serves as an auxiliary verb (also called a
helping verb or just an auxiliary). It com-
bines with the main verb (the word that
expresses the main action), e.g., the par-
ticiple eaten or whistling or the infinitive
return, in a verb phrase.
Many (composite or phrasal) verbs
have adverbial tails: burn down, check
in, hold up, and so on.
C. Transitive and intransitive verbs
Verbs fall into two main categories:
transitive and intransitive.
•A transitive verb needs an object to
complete the meaning. An object is
that which (or one who) receives the
action or is affected by it. In “He
makes money,” makes is the verb;

money is its object. In “Jenny plays
the harp,” plays is the verb; the harp
is its object.
• An intransitive verb completes its
meaning without needing an object.
“Jesse ran.” / “I hope.” / “Stop!”
(The subject, you, is implied.)
A given verb may fit both categories
or just one of them. In most general dic-
tionaries, an abbreviation like v.t. (verb,
transitive) or v.i. (verb, intransitive) indi-
cates whether or not a verb’s particular
meaning needs an object to complete it.
(Some verbs that are commonly tran-
sitive [requiring objects] are used intran-
sitively [without objects] in legal writing.
A book on law says, “The owners . . .
defended on the ground that . . .”; and
later, “The Supreme Court affirmed.”
That is, the owners defended themselves
against an accusation; and the Supreme
Court affirmed the judgment of the
lower court. Another book says, “The
Court of Appeals, after a careful review
of the record, reversed.” Inasmuch as the
latter book is for laymen, reversed the
judgment, a transitive use of the verb,
would be more idiomatic. Reverse has
also a general intransitive sense: “The
machine reversed.”)

Confusion between the two categories
comes up in ADVOCATE; CLINCH;
COMMIT, COMMITTED; CULMI-
NATE; LAY and LIE; LIVE, 2; OBSESS
(etc.).
D. Predicate
Another important term is the predi-
cate, the part of a sentence (or clause)
that tells about the subject. It consists of
the verb and any object, modifier, or
complement it may have. In the sentence
“Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on
a pony,” everything after “Yankee Doo-
dle” is the predicate.
E. Objects, direct and indirect
An object like dams in “He built
dams” is a direct object. It tells what or
who receives the action. A transitive verb
may have an indirect object too. It tells
to whom (or what) or for whom (or
what) the action is done. In “I gave my
love a cherry,” my love is the indirect ob-
ject; a cherry is the direct object.
F. Linking verb
A special type of intransitive verb is a
linking verb (also known as a copula or
a copulative verb). It links the subject
with a word that identifies or qualifies it:
“Tubby is a cat.” / “We became fat.” /
“She seems happy.” Is links Tubby with

cat. Became links we with fat. Seems
links she with happy. Note that it is not
“happily.” The linking verb is not modi-
fied. (The subjective complement, the
word linked to the subject, may be a
noun, adjective, or pronoun.) See also
BAD and BADLY; FEEL; GOOD and
WELL; Pronouns, 10D.
G. More
Hundreds of word entries deal with
verbs, from ABIDE and ABIDE BY to
ZERO IN. So do some topic entries be-
verbs 457
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 457
sides this one, including Active voice and
passive voice; Complement; Infinitive;
Mood; Sentence fragment; Subjunctive;
Tense.
2. Creation from nouns
A group that declares its opposition to
pollution says in a brochure, “Our staff
attorneys and scientists . . . watchdog
government and corporate actions. . . . ”
The staff members may watch those ac-
tions, but watchdog is a noun. They can
no more “watchdog” actions than
singers can “songbird” melodies.
The Weather Service announced on
the telephone, “Please selection the ex-
panded menu for weather information.”

Selection is a noun. Just as we cannot
“adoption” or “perception,” neither can
we “selection.” We can adopt, perceive,
or select.
This is not to say that a verb should
never come from a noun, but those sup-
posed verbs are longer than the regular
verbs, fill no need, and just repeat the
nouns.
Some verbs formed from nouns have
gained full acceptance. Among them are
diagnose from diagnosis; donate from
donation; edit from editor; and scavenge
from scavenger. Not everyone is com-
fortable with burgle from burglar, emote
from emotion, and enthuse from en-
thusiasm. Most accept orate, from ora-
tion, in a contemptuous sense. Surveil,
from surveillance, is fairly new to dictio-
naries.
A verb like those is called a back-
formation, a word that seems to be the
parent of another word but really devel-
oped from the latter.
Escalate, a back-formation from esca-
lator, came out of the Vietnam era.
Meaning to heighten (the war), the verb
served a purpose. It has a shortcoming
that limits its value, however. Escalators
go down as well as up.

Similarly, when a television reporter
said, describing a traffic accident, “The
car was accordioned,” how promising
was that makeshift verb? An accordion
may be either pulled out or squeezed in.
During telecasts of the Olympic
games, commentators like to say, for in-
stance, “I think she has great chances
here to medal”—instead of win a medal.
They may find such a verb useful, but its
general use should be discouraged.
Sounding just like meddle, it has an in-
herent potential for misunderstanding.
A reporter spoke of the need “to inert
fuel tanks” in airplanes. Did insert mis-
lead her? Or is a national telecast an oc-
casion for experimenting with verbs that
have not entered the dictionaries?
A columnist wrote, “If he doesn’t in-
come average, Mr. Lucky’s federal in-
come tax alone will be $456,400.”
We will probably not see much of that
purported verb again, fortunately, for in-
come averaging has since been abol-
ished.
3. Mistakes in number
It is an elementary rule that a singular
subject takes a singular verb; a plural
subject takes a plural verb. Sometimes
people find it tricky to interpret or just

slip up.
The essential noun of the subject con-
trols the number of the verb. Do not be
distracted by any intervening words.
That noun and its associated auxiliary
verb are emphasized in these correct ex-
amples: “The information about the ar-
rests was released yesterday.” / “This
book of new poems has just been pub-
lished.” In the next example, also cor-
rect, the essential noun is plural and it
follows a qualifying phrase that fools
some writers: “A total of 1.3 million
votes were cast for both candidates.” See
TOTAL.
A cooking columnist and a news re-
porter should have known better but
may have been distracted by irrelevant,
singular nouns:
I like to serve it [a French fish dish]
with croutons on top that is flavored
458 verbs
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 458
with olive oil and crushed black pep-
per.
The layoffs, which trimmed the
party’s paid staff to 35, was just the
latest indication of tough times for
California Democrats.
The “croutons . . . are flavored. . . . ”

The “layoffs . . . were just the latest. . . . ”
This was reported in a radio newscast:
Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of
Vermont, is among senators who is
opposed to calling witnesses.
Yes, he “is among senators,” but those
senators “are opposed.” See ONE OF, 3.
Usually a subject made up of two or
more nouns or pronouns (or both) that
are connected by and demands a plural
verb. “Frankie and Johnny were lovers.”
An exception is made when the nouns or
pronouns express just one idea or iden-
tify just one person: “The hue and cry
over this issue surprises me.” / “Our
vice-president and general manager is
here.” The two examples that follow call
for no exception.
A university president wrote that col-
lege applicants need, not prestigious in-
stitutions, but “the firm knowledge that
their education and growth as human
beings depends on themselves alone.”
Change “depends” to depend. Educa-
tion and growth are two ideas.
Another president—of the United
States this time—said, “Democracy and
freedom is what the concept of the new
order is about.” Make it “Democracy
and freedom are. . . . ” They are two

ideas. See DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM,
and INDEPENDENCE.
Contractions do not excuse errors in
number. “Here’s the pitching probables
for the three-game series against the Pi-
rates . . . ,” a sports item said. “Here’s,”
a contraction of “Here is,” should be
Here are. See Contractions, 1.
Traditionally a phrase or clause intro-
duced by the expression along with, as
well as, in addition to, together with, or
just with does not affect the number of
the verb. By that view, the expression ei-
ther is not a part of the subject or is a
subordinate part. (Grammarians give
varying explanations.) For instance,
“The farm, as well as the house, is up for
sale.” A few critics allow a plural verb if
the items are supposed to get equal em-
phasis or if a plural feeling prevails.
Nouns with exotic endings account
for many errors. A common error is to
mistake a plural, like media or phenom-
ena, for a singular. See Plurals and singu-
lars, which lists many pertinent entries.
At times a group may be either singu-
lar or plural, but a sentence should not
treat it in both ways. See Collective
nouns.
The functions of many common

words and phrases are often misunder-
stood. They include each, every, either,
neither, or, and nor and words and
phrases with (-)one. These examples
(like all those following in this section)
are correct: “Each of the athletes is vy-
ing . . .” / “Neither he nor I was cho-
sen.” / “Everyone in these parts knows
everyone else.” / “He’s one of the few
people who live here.” See Number
(grammatical) for a list of many perti-
nent entries.
Placing the verb before the subject
does not change the need for agreement:
“In this square stand the county’s first
residence and the original courthouse.”
When a fraction is followed by a
prepositional phrase, the latter deter-
mines the number: “One-fourth of our
taxes go to support government waste.”
/ “Two-thirds of the county lies under
water.”
4. Problems in using auxiliaries
Sometimes it works: letting two auxil-
iary verbs (helping verbs) help one main
verb. “We can and must win,” for in-
stance, avoids repeating “win.”
But sometimes this locution turns into
verbs 459
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 459

a trap: “The fair shows what our county
can and is accomplishing.” To say
“can . . . accomplishing” is wrong, even
with the two words in between. A simple
correction presents the main verb twice,
in the two forms needed: “. . . can ac-
complish and is accomplishing.”
A similar example: “This department
may—and occasionally has—looked
outside for its leadership.” To say “may
. . . looked” is wrong. A correction fin-
ishes one idea before turning to the sec-
ond: “. . . may look outside for its
leadership, something it has occasionally
chosen to do.”
Several decades ago there arose a false
doctrine that declared a verb phrase to
be an indivisible unit; no auxiliary verb
might be separated from a main verb;
any adverb must go outside that unit.
By that rule, instead of saying “The
facts have long been known” (correct),
one had to say “The facts long have been
known” (questionable). And not “The
vehicle is slowly gaining speed” (correct)
but “The vehicle slowly is gaining
speed” (questionable). The second sen-
tence of each pair is less idiomatic than
the first, though clear.
It may not be as clear if instead of say-

ing “He appears to have partly recov-
ered” (correct), one says “He appears
partly to have recovered” (incorrect).
Which verb the adverb belongs to may
not be immediately apparent.
Even conservative grammarians have
no sympathy for that doctrine, which
seems to have developed from the fear of
splitting infinitives. It is not only permis-
sible to split verb phrases but desirable
when idiom and meaning so demand.
Splitting infinitives is not necessarily
wrong either. See Infinitive, 4.
See also WHO, 3, concerning the per-
son of a verb following I who or you
who.
5. Shortage of objects
Multiple verbs in a sentence may have
the same object: “She buys, cooks, and
serves food.” Buys, cooks, and serves
share one object: food.
If another word or phrase follows the
object, the verbs may or may not share
the object. Here the verbs do: “We in-
vited and welcomed Ben in.” Both in-
vited and welcomed fit both Ben (the
object) and in.
This faulty sentence is another story:
“He insulted and threw the people out.”
Only the second verb accepts the object

(the people), because only that verb ac-
cepts the tail word (out). Threw and out
go together; the people is locked up be-
tween them, unavailable to insulted. The
defect may be fixed by relocating the
noun and inserting a pronoun: “He in-
sulted the people and threw them out.”
A defective sentence in a biography
presents four verbs that are supposed to
be transitive. Only the last has an object
(them).
For the younger ones, Emma was
their mother-figure, who fed, dressed,
bathed, and put them to bed.
The verb put goes with to bed. The ob-
ject, them, is locked up in between. It is
unavailable to the other three verbs,
which do not go with to bed. A correc-
tion is to insert another and and another
them: “who fed, dressed, and bathed
them and put them to bed.”
VERTEBRA and VERTEBRAE.
A vertebra is any one of the thirty-three
bones of the spine. It is pronounced
VUR-tuh-bruh.
Vertebrae is plural, using a Latin
form. It is pronounced either VUR-tuh-
bree or VUR-tuh-bray. An alternative
plural is vertebras, VUR-tuh-bruz.
Said on a television news program:

“She has a broken vertebrae” (-bray).
Correction: “She has a broken
vertebra,” designating one of the bones,
not more than one.
The spine is known also as the back-
bone, spinal column, or vertebral col-
umn.
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04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 460
VERY. 1. Limitations. 2. Overuse.
1. Limitations
Very is a very common word and a le-
gitimate one, classified as both an adverb
and an adjective. Its use as an adverb is
limited and the subject of divided opin-
ion.
Bearing the sense of extremely or
truly, very easily modifies words that are
solely adjectives: large, strong, brightest.
Hardly anyone would try to say, “The
medicine very helps him” or “The speak-
ers very praised her.” Very does not
modify verbs, even though modifying
verbs is a normal activity of adverbs. But
may we say, “He is very helped by the
medicine” or “She was very praised by
the speakers”? In other words, may we
use very before a past participle, which is
a verb used as an adjective?
Those with easy-going ears and eyes

would say yes. Those who are more par-
ticular would probably give a qualified
no and disapprove of those examples.
Such critics have included seven-eighths
of The American Heritage Dictionary’s
usage panel, which rated “She was very
disliked by her students” unacceptable
in writing but approved “He seemed
very worried.” The difference is that dis-
liked—like helped and praised—is not in
common use as an adjective. People do
not usually speak of “the disliked
teacher” any more than “the helped pa-
tient” or “the praised woman.” But wor-
ried, as in “the worried parents,” is
considered to be a full-fledged adjective
as well as a past participle.
When in doubt, a writer should re-
word the thought. A participle may be
properly intensified in several ways, with
or without very. “He is very much
helped” or “greatly helped.” / “She was
very highly praised” or “profusely
praised.”
When very serves as an adjective, the
often precedes it, but not invariably. The
adjective can mean actual (his very
words), identical (this very spot), mere
(the very thought), necessary (the very
solution), precise (the very center), or ut-

ter (the very bottom).
2. Overuse
An episode in an old comedy series on
television depicted an intellectually defi-
cient anchor man straining to write a
thoughtful essay. He could get no further
than “Freedom of the press is very, very
good and very, very important.”
Inexperienced writers indeed tend to
resort to very too freely. Speakers too,
both amateur and professional, are
known to overdo it. A restaurant critic
on the radio described a county’s restau-
rants, “some of them very, very small but
all of them very, very good.” A TV re-
porter said, at the scene of a search for a
missing person, “The bushes get very,
very thick. It would be very, very easy to
lose someone out here.”
A second very says nothing that the
first does not say. And if one very is inad-
equate, perhaps what is needed is an al-
ternative adverb—or a stronger adjective
and no adverb. For instance, an alterna-
tive to “very, very small,” is extremely
small or tiny.
VIABLE. Viable (adjective) means ca-
pable of living. A human fetus or a new-
born is viable when it has developed to
the stage at which it can survive outside

the womb. Usually at twenty-eight
weeks it reaches the stage of viability
(noun), the capacity to live and grow.
A viable seed is one that is capable of
taking root and growing.
The adjective or noun may be used
figuratively for something that does not
possess life or its potential, just as born
and live may be so used: “Many doubted
that the new country could survive, but
it proved its viability.”
The essential idea is the capability of
existing and surviving. Where is that
sense in the passage below, from an en-
cyclopedia?
viable 461
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The invention of the semi-conductor
device known as the transistor in
1947 . . . ushered in what many have
called the second industrial revolu-
tion. After a decade of further devel-
opmental work, the transistor became
a viable alternative to the electron
tube. . . .
If the device could exist for a decade af-
ter its invention and 1947 was the year
of its invention, 1947 was when it be-
came viable. It seemed to be viable
enough then to start a revolution. If

commercial, durable, effective, feasible,
practical, practicable, or usable was
meant, the writer should have used it.
A retired appellate judge, who used to
be expected to use words judiciously,
said of the jury system, “I’m beginning
to wonder about its viability.” How can
one doubt the viability of a system that
has existed for centuries? If the speaker
meant advantage, benefit, usefulness,
value, workability, or worth, he should
have said so.
Whether the age of a president mat-
tered to voters was a question on a tele-
vision panel. A panelist quoted Richard
M. Nixon:
He said he thought that the baby
boomers, having seen Clinton in
there, would decide that was no
longer viable to have somebody [like]
that.
In “viable,” the panelist seems to have
meant nothing more than desirable.
For the four following uses, one could
substitute feasible, practical, promising,
or a comparable adjective. Television:
“For an engineer, the standard is
whether it works or whether it’s com-
mercially viable.” / An editorial: “The
voters . . . instructed our city officials to

develop a viable plan for the water-
front.” / An article: “. . . Switching to
computer programming is not a viable
option.” / A headline: “Private fire dept.
may not be viable.”
Feasibility, practicality, or a compara-
ble noun could have replaced “viability”
in an article: “. . . Giving the [Internet]
system a new purpose has unearthed
fundamental problems that could well
put off commercial viability for years.”
The English language adopted the
French viable, likely to live, derived from
vie, life, which came from the Latin vita,
life.
See also VITAL.
VICE and VISE. See Homophones.
VICIOUS and VISCOUS. See Con-
fusing pairs.
VIRGULE. See Punctuation, 12.
VIRTUAL, VIRTUALLY. Virtual
(adjective) means being so-and-so in ef-
fect or in essence, though not in actual
fact or name. This is a strict use:
Gorbachev . . . has calmly accepted
the dissolution of what had been a vir-
tual Soviet empire of Communist
satellites in Eastern Europe. . . .
While it was never officially called any-
thing like the “Soviet Empire,” it

amounted to that.
Often “virtual” or “virtually” (ad-
verb) becomes just a fancy way of saying
near or almost. Almost would be prefer-
able to “virtually” as loosely used twice
in this passage:
. . . Samuels has major expenses and
virtually no income. . . . “Virtually
everybody who knows about this has
called to volunteer”. . . .
An editorial about a candidate for the
U.S. Senate illustrates confusion about
virtual:
462 vice and vise
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 462
First, the notion that he is a “vir-
tual candidate” under the direction of
his wife . . . is absurd and, frankly,
misogynist.
Let us postulate, for argument’s sake,
that the man’s wife was the politically
ambitious one, was telling him what to
do, and was doing things that a candi-
date would do. Then she would be the
virtual candidate. The husband would
be the official candidate, perhaps a pup-
pet candidate, but not a “virtual” candi-
date.
In computer applications, the adjective
is used for simulated: “virtual reality.”

See also VIRTUE.
VIRTUE. Virtue usually denotes ei-
ther good moral quality (in a person) or
merit (in a thing). It can also mean effi-
cacy, effective force, especially the power
to strengthen or heal: a drug’s virtue.
A speaker was technically correct but
risked being misunderstood: “The great
virtue of using that stuff is that it’s ubiq-
uitous. It’s available everywhere.” He
was talking about the “virtue” of using
the particular explosive that blasted the
World Trade Center in New York. Bet-
ter: “To the terrorists, the benefit of that
stuff is. . . . ”
An obsolete meaning of virtue is that
of manly merit, courage, or strength.
Those are meanings of the Latin virtus,
the source of virtual and virtuoso as well
as virtue. Virtus stems from vir, a man or
male, the source of virile. Yet virtue and
virtuous, with the meanings of chastity
and chaste, have often been applied just
to women.
VISCOUS and VICIOUS. See Con-
fusing pairs.
VISE and VICE. See Homophones.
VISITING FIREMAN. See -MAN-,
MAN.
VITAL. Vital (adjective), stemming

from the Latin vitalis, of life, has essen-
tially the same meaning in English: relat-
ing to life, characteristic of life, essential
to life, imparting or renewing life, or liv-
ing. We speak of vital statistics, vital en-
ergy, the vital organs, vital fluid. “When
I have pluck’d the rose, I cannot give it
vital growth again” (Shakespeare). In
creation “the Spirit of God . . . vital
virtue infused and vital warmth
Throughout the fluid mass” (Milton).
By figurative extension, vital is used to
mean essential or indispensable to the
life or existence of something. “Water is
vital to agriculture.” But the word is de-
graded when it replaces needed, wanted,
important, significant, or less substantial
adjectives.
Those in the news business, enamored
of short and exciting words, have long
overused and trivialized vital. A copy ed-
itor will choose it for a headline over
needed, if not important, as a matter of
course. One TV reporter called Egypt “a
vital American ally” and another said,
“Helicopters are vital to modern military
operations”—meaning that the U.S.
could not survive without Egypt or fight
without helicopters?
The following samples, from a head-

line and two articles, may illustrate the
ultimate degradation of that word of life:
its application to devices for the mass de-
struction of life.
“How a Vital Nuclear Material Came
to Be in Short Supply” / “The shortage
of tritium, a vital material for nuclear
weapons, arrived right on schedule.” /
“The Savannah River Plant, near Aiken,
is the nation’s only source of tritium, a
perishable gas vital to thermonuclear
warheads.”
All the blame cannot be placed on the
news business. Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher of the United Kingdom de-
clared that “Short-range nuclear missiles
are absolutely vital” (not just “vital” but
“absolutely vital”). The chairman of the
vital 463
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 463
Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed “a re-
duced but still vital nuclear force to deter
nuclear adversaries.”
In the seventeenth to nineteenth cen-
turies, vital could be legitimately used to
mean destructive to life. A vital wound
would be a fatal wound today. When
news people or public officials speak of a
diabolic weapon as “vital,” let us think
of the word in that archaic sense.

See also VIABLE.
VIZ. (namely). See Punctuation, 2A.
Voice. See Active voice and passive
voice.
VULGARITY. See OBSCENE, OB-
SCENITY.
464 viz.
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 464
WAITER, WAITRESS. See PEO-
PLE as a suffix; PERSON, 1 (end);
WAIT FOR and WAIT ON.
WAIT FOR and WAIT ON. You
wait for a bus. A waiter waits on pa-
trons. To wait for something or someone
or some event is to remain inactive or in
anticipation until it or the person arrives
or the event takes place. To wait on
someone is to serve the person.
Wait on is dialect or slang when used
in place of wait for as a newscaster used
it in speaking of a budget bill “that ev-
eryone is waiting on” and as a magazine
did: “You don’t boot up your juicer or
even your video. So who wants to wait
on their PC?” (The plural “their” dis-
agrees with the singulars wants and PC.
See Pronouns, 2.)
Among several obsolete or rare mean-
ings of wait on is to pay a formal visit to
someone considered a superior. “He

waited on the king in his palace.”
See also ON, 2 (end).
WAKE, AWAKE, AWAKEN,
WAKEN. 1. First choice: WAKE
(UP). 2. The other verbs. 3. Past tense;
participle; other forms.
1. First choice: WAKE (UP)
When the alarm clock rings in the
morning, do you wake, wake up, awake,
awaken, waken, or go back to sleep?
The (a)wake(n) verbs, Old English de-
scendants, all mean to arouse from sleep
or a state like sleep, or to come out of
that state. The distinctions in usage are
complicated. In general, wake is the util-
ity tool, good for most everyday use.
The other words are substituted in figu-
rative or poetic use, in the passive voice,
or for the sake of formality or meter.
Wake is the only one that goes with
up. The up does not affect the meaning.
You cannot go wrong with it. Tagging it
onto wake is common and idiomatic
when wake is used as an intransitive
verb, especially so in the imperative and
the present tense: “Wake up!” / “We
wake up at 7 a.m.” In the past tense, up
is optional: Either “I woke up at dawn”
or “I woke at dawn” is acceptable.
When wake is used as a transitive

verb, it is just about as common and id-
iomatic with the up as without it: “We
should wake him” or “We should wake
him up.” / “Don’t wake the baby” or
“Don’t wake up the baby.”
Unlike the other three words, wake
has the additional sense of be or remain
awake. It is commonly expressed in the
phrase waking hours.
2. The other verbs
In figurative and poetic senses, the
verbs starting with a—awake and
awaken—are favored: “They awakened
wake, awake, awaken, waken 465
W
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 465
to the danger.” / “The country has
awaked.” / “Awake! for morning in the
Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that
puts the Stars to Flight.” Sometimes,
however, the other words are so used:
“Wake up, America!”
In the passive voice, the words ending
in n—awaken and waken—are often
chosen: “The world was awakened by
the event.” / “They were wakened by the
bell.”
Although each of those verbs has been
used both transitively and intransitively,
usually awake is intransitive—“She fi-

nally awoke to the problem”—and
awaken and waken are transitive: “Re-
vere awakened the town.” / “The rooster
wakens us each morning.”
3. Past tense; participle; other forms
The past tense of wake is woke, and
the past tense of awake is awoke. For the
past participle of wake or awake, simply
add d: “She had waked [or “waked up”]
at 5 a.m.” / “The world has awaked.”
For either the past tense or the past
participle of awaken or waken, just add
-ed: awakened, wakened.
When a political party spokesman
said on American television that “the
country has woken up,” he used a par-
ticiple that would have been more ac-
ceptable in Britain. In the U.S. it is has
(or had) waked.
In saying that “Africa . . . has awoken
to life a second time,” the translator of a
book used an obsolete participle. Has
(or had) awaked is the modern style.
A policeman said (about the victim of
an intruder), “She wasn’t positive how
she became awoken.” Make it “how she
became awake” (adjective) or “how she
was wakened” (past participle).
The gerund of wake—“WAKING”—
is the title of Chapter XI of Lewis Car-

roll’s Through the Looking Glass. The
title could have been “AWAKENING,”
but then it would not have rhymed with
the title of Chapter X, “SHAKING.”
WANT and WISH. See WISH.
WARRANT. A warrant is a written
authorization. A warrant of arrest, or ar-
rest warrant, is a court order, usually to a
law enforcement officer, to arrest some-
one for a particular reason and bring
him before the court.
When a television newscaster an-
nounced, “The FBI has issued arrest
warrants for two young white men,” he
was confused and inaccurate. The Fed-
eral Bureau of Investigation makes ar-
rests. It does not issue “warrants” for
those arrests. Only a judge or magistrate
may issue an arrest warrant or a search
warrant.
A search warrant directs a law en-
forcement officer to search a person,
place, or thing for property or evidence
needed for a criminal prosecution and
bring it before the judge or magistrate.
WAS and WERE. An article said that
Congress was cutting the Pentagon’s
budget requests for a defense program. It
commented:
But even if the “Star Wars” pro-

gram was not running into budgetary
problems, there would be other
doubts about [it]. . . .
“Was” should be were. The were form
(the past subjunctive of the verb be) is
used in clauses describing situations that
are purely hypothetical or plainly con-
trary to fact. More examples are “I wish
that I were rich” and “He acted as
though he were king.”
When the situation is not hypothetical
or contrary to fact but merely uncertain
or conditional, was is the form to use
(for the verb be in the third person):
“She looked out to see whether it was
raining.” / “He promised to cut spending
if he was elected.” / “If that nugget we
saw was real gold, the man struck it
rich.”
See also Mood; Subjunctive.
466 want and wish
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 466
WATCH and WATCHDOG. See
Verbs, 2.
WAY and “A WAYS.” An editor of a
California weekly wrote: “Zap [North
Dakota] seems like such a long ways
from home.” A network anchor man ad-
dressed this comment to women politi-
cians: “You’ve come a long way. There’s

still a ways to go.” And a reporter on the
same news series said about the Los An-
geles Police Department: “The commis-
sion’s chairman believes LAPD still has a
ways to go.”
“A ways” is regional and colloquial.
Combining singular and plural words, it
is not acceptable in strict usage. A and
way are both singular and may be com-
bined (“such a long way from home”) or
a synonym may be preferable (“still a
distance [or “some distance”] to go”).
WE and US. See Pronouns, 10.
WEATHER and WHETHER. See
Homophones.
WEIRD. Weird means eerie, mysteri-
ous, occult, supernatural, unearthly, un-
canny. This adjective has been watered
down in popular speech, particularly
that of juveniles, to describe what is
merely different from the norm, out of
the ordinary, unconventional, or un-
usual. In a TV cartoon, a husband says,
“Your guitar teacher looks pretty inter-
esting, and by ‘interesting’ I mean
weird.” (No, he means unconventional.)
The wife replies, “Well, she is weird.”
The word’s ancestor was the Old En-
glish noun wyrd, meaning fate or des-
tiny. It became werd or wird in Middle

English; its related adjective was werde
or wirde, concerning or having the
power to deal with fate or the Fates. In
Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the three
witches call themselves “the weird sis-
ters.”
WELL. See AS, 5; GOOD and WELL.
WENCH and WINCH. “Were you
alone on the boat or was there a crew
milling about with wenches and jibs and
such?” The host of a television show
probably was not trying to be funny
when he asked that question.
A wench is an archaic term for a
young woman. It could refer particularly
to a country girl, a maidservant, or a
prostitute. Today it is used, if at all, in a
humorous or facetious way.
The word intended by the host was
probably winch, a machine for hoisting.
It has either a motor or a hand crank
that winds a rope or a chain around a
drum as a load is lifted.
WEND and WIND. Seeing the high-
way blocked by earthquake damage, Los
Angeles motorists proceeded to “wind
their way” either northward or south-
ward. So said a newscaster on television,
possibly aiming for wend but missing.
To wend is to direct (one’s way) or to go.

Still, if the road was a winding one,
“wind” (long i, as in find) could be ac-
ceptable.
A similar use was questionable in a ra-
dio report on “the Chinese New Year’s
parade, which is continuing to wind its
way down San Francisco streets.” Wend
its way (his way, her way, etc.) is the ex-
pression. The route did not wind. Some
of the participants, however, carrying
along stylized Chinese dragons, did pro-
ceed in a twisting or curving manner, so
perhaps they were winding their way.
WENT. See GONE and WENT.
WERE. See WAS and WERE; Sub-
junctive.
WHAT EVER and WHATEVER.
See (-)EVER.
WHEN AND IF. See UNLESS AND
UNTIL.
when and if 467
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 467
WHENCE and “FROM
WHENCE.” A senator said, “These
young people [cadets] are a reflection of
the society from whence they came.” A
critic wrote, “No one is seriously urging
the novelist to return to the verse epic,
from whence he sprang.” And this was
in a travel article: “Thus, people re-

turned to Brussels from whence they had
wandered.”
Whence means from where or from
which place. From is part of the mean-
ing. “. . . The society whence they came”
/ “. . . the verse epic, whence he sprang”
/ “. . . to Brussels whence they had wan-
dered” are enough.
WHEN EVER and WHENEVER.
See (-)EVER.
WHEN, WHERE in definitions.
Teacher: “What is the real meaning of
dumb?” Johnny: “That’s when you can’t
talk.” The teacher would probably ac-
cept the boy’s answer. He lacks the ver-
bal facility to say “inability to speak.”
Children explain things that way—and
so, alas, do some adults: “A perfect
game is where no batter of the losing
team reaches first base.” Better: “A
perfect game is a baseball game in
which. . . . ”
Using when or where to connect a
word or phrase with a definition or ex-
planation is not necessarily forbidden. It
is acceptable, at least informally, if the
definition or explanation deals with
time, after the when; or place, after the
where: “Dusk is when it starts getting
dark.” / “The range is where the buffalo

roam.” For more completeness, insert a
noun between the is and the w adverb:
“the time” or “the place.” General dic-
tionaries favor noun phrases, without
when or where, such as “the start of
darkness in the evening” and “a large,
open area suitable for animals to wander
and graze.”
An author tells of lessons in flying a
small airplane. “The only thing” that
fazed her “was when David [the instruc-
tor] demonstrated” a certain maneuver.
A clause beginning with the adverb
when is not a thing, a noun. Better: “was
David’s demonstration of. . . . ”
WHEREAS. See Sentence fragment,
1.
WHERE EVER and WHEREVER.
See (-)EVER.
WHEREFORE and WHEREOF.
A radio host recommended a far-off
restaurant. Having been there, “I know
wherefore I speak,” he said. If he meant
“I know what I’m talking about” and
was intent on making his point through
archaic language, the word to use was
whereof (adverb). It can mean of which,
of whom, or whence. What he said in ef-
fect was “I know why I’m talking.”
Wherefore (adverb) means for what,

for which, or why. Shakespeare’s Juliet
asks, “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art
thou Romeo?” Wherefore is not just an
elegant synonym for “where,” contrary
to the belief of some. The moderator of a
television forum titled a sequence, about
shortcomings in the economy, “Where-
fore Art Thou, Rosy Scenario?”
Wherefore can also be a noun mean-
ing cause or reason, as in “Never Mind
the Why and Wherefore” (from Gilbert
and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore). Both
whereof and wherefore have been used
as conjunctions too.
WHERE in definitions. See WHEN,
WHERE in definitions.
WHETHER. Something is missing
from a sentence in an article for con-
sumers:
New York’s new law . . . also re-
quires that every automobile-
insurance policy . . . provide
468 whence and “from whence”
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 468
consumers with collision coverage for
cars they rent—whether they buy col-
lision coverage for their own cars and
whether they rent more expensive cars
than they own.
Each whether demands or not, either im-

mediately (“. . . whether or not . . . and
whether or not . . .”) or later
(“. . . whether they buy collision cover-
age for their own cars or not and
whether they rent more expensive cars
than they own or not”).
Most of us probably would stick in
the or not automatically, whether or not
English grammar figured in our occupa-
tions. Perhaps the writer of the quoted
sentence gave a vague thought to the
matter: Somewhere in his past, some edi-
tor had instructed him that “whether”
alone was enough, that “or not” was su-
perfluous.
At times, it is true, whether alone is
enough. That is so when whether, intro-
ducing an indirect question, can be re-
placed by if. For example: “I asked
whether [or if] he had bought collision
coverage for his car.” In such a sentence,
or not is unessential, though it cannot
hurt.
Otherwise, whether introduces a set
of possibilities or alternatives, connected
by or. The gist is often that something
takes place or exists regardless of other
events or conditions. “We will meet
whether it rains or not.” / “We will meet
whether it rains or shines.” / “I’ll quit af-

ter this hand, whether I win or lose.” /
“The problem will persist whether one
candidate or the other is elected.” In
such sentences whether (conjunction)
means essentially in either event. It can
mean just either: “He intends to get
what he wants, whether honestly or oth-
erwise.” / “The cabinet was considering
whether to enter the war or to remain
neutral.”
Or may be followed by another
whether: “Whether we win or whether
we lose, we’ve put up a good fight.” The
extra “whether we” is unnecessary but
acceptable. There may be more than two
possibilities: “Whether we win, lose, or
draw. . . . ”
Each example below (from a syndi-
cated advice column and an authorita-
tive law book) contains a redundant pair
of words and lacks two needed words.
DEAR DAD AND MOM: You are
under no obligation to foot the bill for
your daughter’s wedding regardless of
whether she and her fiancé lived to-
gether prior to their marriage.
Thus . . . a novel completed in 1980
. . . would enjoy Federal statutory
protection at fixation in manuscript
or other form, which protection

would continue for the life of the au-
thor plus fifty years, regardless of
whether published.
In each example, omit “regardless of”
and insert or not after “whether” or af-
ter the final word of the sentence.
An occasional expression is whether
or no, meaning in any case. “The delega-
tion flies home tomorrow, whether or
no.”
WHICH. 1. Ambiguity. 2. Overuse. 3.
Parallels; people; possessives.
1. Ambiguity
Everything is clear here: “Come and
see the show, which opened last week.”
Which (as a relative pronoun) represents
the show (a noun) and introduces a
clause giving further information about
it.
Too often, which is meant to represent
something other than the normal noun
or noun phrase that a pronoun is sup-
posed to represent (its antecedent). For
instance: “My neighbors were celebrat-
ing boisterously, which kept me up till 2
a.m.” The thing that “kept me up” may
which 469
04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 469
be inferred, but a sharper sentence
would specify it. Which might be

changed to and the noise.
Can which ever stand for the entire
idea of a preceding statement? Maybe. It
depends on one’s tolerance for disorder
and whether or not the material is am-
biguous. “Which” has been applied to
amorphous ideas so often that when a
noun does precede it, it may not be clear
what “which” is meant to stand for.
“The job requires her to walk dogs,
which she dislikes.” Does she dislike the
task or dogs? Changing “which” to ei-
ther a task or animals would answer the
question.
Carelessness about antecedents some-
times results in sentences that say the op-
posite of what the writers intended. A
sentence in an autobiography refers to a
general:
Norm Schwarzkopf did not suffer
fools gladly, which you can get away
with in the absolute command envi-
ronment of the battlefield.
“Which” has no literal antecedent. To
“suffer fools gladly” seems to be it, and
the “which” clause seems to say that you
can do so in the environment of the bat-
tlefield. The context suggests the reverse
meaning: You can refuse to do so in the
environment of the battlefield.

This sentence from an article (in a
weekly paper) deals with a presidential
election campaign:
Nor does he [Jerry Brown] have the
money to buy TV time, which is the
kiss of death in a state like Texas, with
its 23 media markets.
It says that “TV time . . . is the kiss of
death in . . . Texas.” From the context, it
appears that the writer meant roughly
the opposite: The lack of television expo-
sure is ruinous in Texas. (“Kiss of death”
describes something that is supposedly
helpful though actually harmful. In the
quotation, the expression is misleading.
Where is the “kiss”?)
Which is more liable to cling to the
closest preceding noun or noun phrase
than to some vague idea in a writer’s
mind.
See THAT and WHICH for a discus-
sion of restrictive and nonrestrictive
clauses and how a failure to discriminate
between them can cause confusion.
2. Overuse
Journalists, with their aversion to rep-
etition, are fond of the pronoun which.
It permits a writer to avoid repeating a
noun after the first mention. The sample
below (from a picture caption) illustrates

overdependence on the word.
There were no injuries in the blaze,
which ruined the third floor of the
building, which was being remodeled.
Presumably the two whiches were in-
voked to prevent repetition of “blaze”
and “building,” although the writer did
not seem to mind the repetition of
which. But it was not necessary to repeat
both nouns when a personal pronoun
could replace one of them. Nor did ev-
erything need to be stowed into one,
graceless sentence. This is a possible
rephrasing: “There were no injuries in
the blaze. It ruined the third floor of the
building, which was being remodeled.”
3. Parallels; people; possessives
A clause starting with and which nor-
mally needs to follow a parallel which
clause. The same principle applies to but
which. See also THAT, 3; WHO, 2.
“And” serves no purpose here; either
replace it with a comma or insert which
is after the first comma: “Acme Corp.,
the city’s largest employer and which re-
cently announced an expansion, has
been bought by a Japanese company.” If
which is is inserted, the second which be-
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