By Bob Yearick
A Different Problem
The needless adjective different continues to be inserted in sentences such as these:
• “The Kentucky Derby consists of 19 different 3-year-old horses.” – John Leuzzi, in USA TODAY.
• “Five different Penn State wrestlers finished third.” – From a Penn State news source.
• “In Florida, eight different parks are equipped with ABS technology (Automatic Balls and Strikes system).” – Steve Gardner, USA TODAY.
Leave it to Leavitt
Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump’s press secretary, is a veritable malapropism machine. Recent examples:
• In response to questions that she can’t (or won’t) answer, she often says, “I would defer you to . . .” She means refer, of course.
• Using a noun where an adjective was called for, she claimed that the president has promised to “make the government more efficiency.”
• She also praised his activism, saying he “has exuded much energy” in creating many executive orders. She meant exerted.
Phony Sophistication
That’s the term that describes writers who try to sound learned, only to wind up displaying gaps in their grammar knowledge. Their gaffes often involve incorrect use of whom or whomever instead of who or whoever and opting for he or she instead of the correct him or her, as in these examples:
• Nate Davis, USA TODAY: “Tight end Mason Taylor should either provide immediate help to new QB Justin Fields … or whomever replaces him in a year or two.” (Also, either should precede “new QB.”)
• Reader Jane Buck submits this one from a New York Times review of Her Majesty, on Amazon Prime: “Suddenly she has a new attaché coaching her on where to go and what to say, whom to be and whom to trust.” The verb “to be,” unlike transitive verbs (such as “trust”), does not take a direct object.
• Matt Hayes, USA TODAY: “. . . I mean reportedly deleting 52 text messages between he and Stalions the day the scheme was exposed.”
Media Watch
• Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY: “After he was gunned down by police, McCurdy’s body laid unclaimed in an Oklahoma funeral home for months.” The past tense of lie is lay. Laid means placed.
• Reader Larry Hamermesh submits this from a Reuters story in The News Journal: “The U.S. Department of Education informed Harvard University on May 5 that it was freezing billions of dollars in future research grants and other aid until the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college concedes to a number of demands from the Trump administration.” The better choice would be accedes, although agrees would also work. Both concedes and accedes indicate a giving in or acquiescence, but concedes implies defeat, while accedes indicates simple acceptance. Also, concedes is often not followed by “to,” while accedes is.
• From Page 6, an online entertainment site, courtesy of reader Judy Tribbey: “Lastly, Olympia tasks Matty with detailing every single lie she has told since they met on a legal pad, before heading back downstairs to her own office.” Not grammar, but sentence structure, this makes one think perhaps Olympia and Matty met on a legal pad.
• Lochlahn March in The Philadelphia Inquirer: “Jose Alvarado, Joe Ross, Jordan Romano, and Orion Kerkering pitched a scoreless inning in relief.” While the sentence is not technically wrong, the careful writer would have made it “. . . combined to pitch a scoreless inning.”
Department of Redundancies Dept.
• Blake Toppmeyer, in USA TODAY, writing about Mississippi football coach Lane Kiffin: “Kiffin is a former hotshot wunderkind . .” A wunderkind is a young hotshot.
• Bryan Alexander, USA TODAY: “[Gene] Hackman was nominated for a second supporting actor nomination for his role in 1970’s I Never Sang for My Father.”
• Olivia Reiner, The Philadelphia Inquirer: “In addition to his penchant for sacks, Powell-Ryland also has a knack for knocking the football from his opponent’s grasp.”
• And finally, this is the recorded message for a local medical practice: “We are currently unavailable at the present time.”
Word of the Month
gracile
Pronounced grah-sile, it’s an adjective meaning slender, physically slight. (Think Timothy Chalamet.)
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