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.

(* Fubar is an acronym of “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition,” in case you haven’t encountered it—with Fouled generally considered to be another word in the F-initial family, one that I hesitate to use only because it’s the holiday season and I’m feeling double-F family-friendly.)

Granted, I present the latter choice as a cynical joke, but then again, let’s listen to the subject of the discussion—Sarah Palin herself—fall into the same grammatical trap with perhaps even stronger Freudian overtones:

After being found guilty on seven felony counts, I had hoped Senator Stevens would take the opportunity to do the statesman-like thing and erase the cloud that is covering his Senate seat.

I was alerted to this by a Fritinancy post, which eloquently addresses the subject of dangling clauses, particularly Palin’s. Read and enjoy.

When asked whether she and her husband had any more unusual names up their sleeves, the politician [Sarah Palin] said: ‘We did. We never got to get our Zamboni in. I always wanted a son named Zamboni.’

Her husband Todd, however, seemed less than impressed with the suggestion. ‘I don’t think that would have flied,’ he said.

What wouldn’t have “flied”? Zamboni the name or Zamboni the machine? This sounds a bit like Henry Ford naming his son after a car—the Edsel. (Yes, I know it was the opposite—Edsel the human came before the premiere of My Son the Car starring Jerry Van Dyke, or something like that.)

I’ll give Palin the gov a pass on the Zamboni name claim—it was probably a joke. (On the other hand, she characterized as a joke her comment in the pre-VP-selection days that someone would have to tell her what the vice president does—then subsequently proved that she really didn’t know in her odd description of job duties to young Brandon Garcia. So maybe we can anticipate a grandchild named Zamboni or John Deere or Ski-Doo at some point.)

But Todd, man! First dude! Get yer grammar on! Your grammar done slud off the trail!

On the other hand . . . What does a vice president do? “Not only are they there to support the president . . . ”

The vice president they? Plural? Is Sarah including Todd as part of the office, the way she included Todd in her Alaskan administration? We saw how well that little singular/plural misconception flied, now didn’t we?

As explained by Yahoo sports blogger Kevin Kaduk . . .

The slogan was taken from a grammatically-challenged sports radio caller — yes, I realize that is redundant — and it has already grown so large that Scott Van Pelt reportedly dropped it on Sports Center last night [Thursday, 10/16.]

Such cultural phenomena lead—of course!—to T-shirts, which I’m quick to point you toward not because they promote inevitably-bad sports grammar but because proceeds are going to a good cause.

I can now imagine a Philly player coming to the plate—bottom of the ninth, two out, one man on—and thinking, “Why can’t us?” And after he wallops the walk-off home run, he circles the bases, taunting the opposing pitcher with the classic “All your base are belong to us!”

Which, I kid you not, is the name of my Fantasy Baseball League.

Then there’s Freudian grammar. As recently reported:

Asked if Gov. Sarah Palin has become a drag on his ticket, McCain said, “As a cold political calculation, I could not be more pleased.”

Mr. McCain is a cold political calculation? As I said, there are failed communications. And then there are Freudian slips.

I [use the word] intermittently, and I have a fairly clear idea in my head of a few instances when one ought to use shall:

(1) We shall overcome.
(2) Shall we dance?
(3) You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Okay, that’s about it.

I shan’t look for more examples, either. But in case the precise use of will and shall confuses you, consider this 1900 visual guide presented by Motivated Grammar:

To me, this kind of looks like a Buck Rogers decoder ring, or a map of Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell. Check out the example in the upper left: “Because what must be will be” (the future’s not ours to see! Que sera, sera, which I believe to be the official elevator music between at least two Circles of Hell).

Years ago I attended a business convention in the city of Elision, Louisiana.

Elision is not the name of the city, though it certainly sounds like a good Cajun name—the convention was in New Orleans. Before I left, a colleague asked me, “When you’re down there, find something out for me. Is the city name pronounced with four syllables—new-or-lee-ans—or three—new-or-leens?”

On my return, I reported: “One: nawlns.”

Elision is the act of eliminating letters or syllables when pronouncing a word. Think of libary instead of library, wershester sauce instead of worcestershire sauce, dint instead of didn’t. (The opposite—inserting letters or syllables in pronunciation, as in sherbert instead of sherbet—might be known as “anti-elision” or “confusion.” And who the hell knows what it’s called in instances like Farve instead of Favre.)

And while we’re on the topic, I hereby declare today National Elision Day. Why today of all days? It’s Wensday, of course . . .

(And, oh yeah—Arlo Guthrie? He votes for three syllables:)

I feel no pain in splitting infinitives. In fact, I’m among the many to vigorously ignore this “rule,” which was thrust upon the language by admirers of Latin. Their thinking went something along these lines: Latin infinitives are single words, and you can’t split a single word, can you? (Umm, you abso-frikken-lutely can split single words.)

My continuing rant about split-infinitive persnickitors was rekindled when, while skimming The Online Dictionary of Language Terminology, I came upon an entry for a term I hadn’t heard before:

compound split infinitive
Definition: A split infinitive that has been split by a multi-word phrase.
Example: Try to never ever split your infinitives.

Three reactions:

• I cheer the matched form and content. In the example, the infinitive is to split and the phrase that splits it is never ever.
• I suggest that “splitting an infinitive with another split infinitive” would be a cuter but increasingly stupid definition of “compound infinitive.” (Example: “Mr. Brohaugh, I dare you to, with your unwillingness to glibly follow every grammatical edict, give a damn.”)
• I sigh over the fact that the entry exists in the first place. Splitting infinitives is apparently so bad that if you do it with two words, the egregious indiscretion deserves a name unto itself. (And possible jail time!)

I just hope that, now that I’ve introduced some folks to the acceptability of even compound split infinitives, some persnickitor out there hasn’t begun thinking about introducing me to a compound fracture.

Hold on, Mr. Brohaugh, I hear some data-R-us prescriptivist saying. You should say, “stamina is required.” The word is singular.

That’s what I thought until I stumbled across a fascinating post in the Languagehat blog archives (which the “Stupid Grammar Rules II: Data Are” post at the Motivated Grammar blog pointed to). Languagehat explains that stamina is technically plural, and then concludes:

Heretofore, when encountering people who insist that data should take a plural verb, I have said “I presume, then, you feel the same about agenda“; I will now add stamina to my arsenal.

My own heretofore has rarely taken such a logical route. I like to confuse such insistent people, with a response more like “So, then, why don’t you insist on a plural verb for minutia, which is the plural of minutium?” I love the moment of quiet, the eyes darting back and forth. It’s a test of mettle—or mental stamins, maybe. The response is going to be a) silence; b) “I do use plural verbs with minutia“; c) “You’re full of shit.”

Answer a) speaks to the confusion caused by such Latin words as datum/data, stadium/stadia, graffito/graffiti, and balonum/baloney (well, maybe not the last pair). Answer b) speaks to the “depth” of their knowledge of Latin words, because . . . Answer c) is correct. Minutia is indeed singular, and minutium exists only in my mind as a contender for being the singular of baloney.