12.27.08
Here we grow again
I spent a good number of my growing-up years on a farm. My uncle raised chickens, milked cows, and grew corn, oats and wheat. I grew intransitively; my uncle grew transitively.
This subject came to mind when I was writing my post about gift as a verb. I had found a list of “Words you don’t need to use,” and gift (presumably as a verb) was among them*, which was what had led me there. Not in the list but in the comments was this: “I hate it profoundly when ‘grow’ is used as a transitive verb!”
My first thought was of my uncles and my cousins and my grandfather out in the fields not growing corn, oats and wheat. But I quickly realized that the profound hatred was likely directed at a more modern transitive use of grow. The growing my farm-employed family was synonymous with raise, cultivate, nurture. (The OED’s first record of this use is from 1774.) The profound hatred was likely reserved for the transitive use synonymous with expand, as now often heard in corporate jargon-friendly situations, such as “We must grow the business.” (Oh so modern. The OED’s first record the sense of “To cause to increase, to enlarge” is from 1481, though interestingly the OED labels this use as obsolete. So it’s not modern after all. It’s archaic.)
In some word-watching quarters, the transitizing of verbs (as in this case, grow intransitive being grown into grow transitive) seems to attract as much ire as the verbing nouns (hmm—is verb as a verb transitive, intransitive, or both?). But here again, conventions and preferences and everyday usage shift over time.
It is a matter of, shall we say, growing the language.
*Other words not included in “Words you don’t need to use” are utilize (which I defend as the right word in the right usage), and impact as a verb, which I cheer. Words appropriately not included in “Words you don’t need to use” are flange, carburetor, chartreuse, Brobdingnagian and plotz—and just about every other word anyone has spoken, because, as with utilize, it’s a matter of using the right word at the right time. The only words you truly need to use, as both your mom and mine told us, are please and thank you.
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Hanasu said,
December 27, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Thank you. Please keep writing about all these kinds of interesting things… please!
Bill Brohaugh said,
December 28, 2008 at 10:29 am
You’re growing my ego, Hanasu . . .
Thanks for the kind words—and I’ll be blabbing about such things for a while, because the topic fascinates me so.
goofy said,
December 30, 2008 at 3:53 pm
It’s not the transitive use that people complain about. No one minds “I grow plants.” “I grew the business” means “I caused the business to grow”, but “I grew plants” doesn’t exactly mean “I caused the plants to grow” – it means “I cultivated plants.” The disputed usage is a inchoative/causative alternation, where “grow” is being used causatively, like “melt”, “open”, “close”, or “pour”.
The business grew.
I grew the business.
The ice melted.
The sun melted the ice.
The door closed.
I closed the door.
The beer poured.
I poured the beer.
Bill Brohaugh said,
January 2, 2009 at 6:28 am
Agreed, goofy, though the inspiration for the post was indeed a specific “I hate it profoundly when ‘grow’ is used as a transitive verb!” with less nuance and more exclamation points than your points.
Dr. Fred Lieberman said,
January 8, 2009 at 11:03 am
The first time I heard the verb ” to grow” being used as a transitive for such concepts as the economy, businesses, etc., was by Bill Clinton. I considered it very low class, especially from someone who was well educated and seemed to otherwise speak the English language well. I don’t know where he picked up his use of the word, but since then it has received traction. When I hear it over the airways, or read it in periodicals, I too “hate” its—-what I consider—misuse.
Would you please consider writing an Op-Ed to the LA Times, expressing our, and others’, mutual hatred of the misuse of the verb, so it can eventually be expunged from our vocabulary by means of a backlash?
Sincerely yours,
Fred Lieberman, M.D.
Aravinda said,
February 24, 2009 at 2:13 am
It indeed odd that we all dislike Bill Clinton’s usage of the transitive grow, even though we all depend on the farmers who grow millet, rice, wheat and so many other things we eat as we uphold the integrity of our beloved language. Maybe we are offended because the farmers who are really growing things are being sidelined as the economists, whose stuff is fluff are bagging prizes for spinning policies putting the farmers out of house and home, driven to starvation and suicide.
Unfortunately Bill is at least as notorious for this line as Ronald is for “Mistakes were made,” an example I routinely use in communications class exhorting my students against passive. Of course most of them are going to use it anyway because hell if they are going to say whodunit — but maybe their alarms will get activated when someone tries to run a passive by them.
Or insinuate that they can grow the economy. While keeping their shoes shiny.