LEND ME YOUR EAR: USAGE AND ABUSAGE ACCORDING TO MERRIAM-WEBSTER

Until a month ago, I considered the books on language gracing my shelves more than adequate. Then Quality Paperback favored me with a bonus The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage. I didn't know how needy I was!

This new addition new to me though the copyright date is 1989 contains a wealth of information about the history, development, and changes in meaning of a vast number of familiar and unfamiliar words and expressions. Well-known names in the language filed are documented, along with quotations from literary figures long since gone.

Weeks before the new reference work arrived, I had come across "abusage" and listed it as a new coinage. According to Merriam-Webster, this term was in use in England in the 16th and 17th centuries! Later, it fell into disfavor, but Eric Partridge revived it in his 1942 book Usage and Abusage. Today, "abusage" seems to be used chiefly by commentators on language. I hope I qualify as a member of the loop, seeing that the word appears in today's title.

Another word I was surprised to find listed as valid is "boughten", which I use purely in fun, as in "store-boughten." I had no idea it was authentic. "Boughten" originated in England and was once used by literary giants in the sense of "purchased." Oddly, it turned up in a poem by Robert Frost in 1949 to mean "freely given" the opposite of purchased. However, some time after the word reached America it began to be considered rustic or uneducated, despite its continued use by people of culture. In Webster's Ninth New Collegiate, 1984, "boughten" is listed as an adjective, chiefly dialect, meaning "bought" or purchased not freely given or donated.

Also astonishing to me is that it was once proper to use "learn" for "teach." Noah Webster, father of the American Dictionary, wrote in a letter to a weekly in 1785, "I have too much pride to stand indebted to Great Britain for books to learn our children the letters of the alphabet." In 1828, Webster declared this usage "inelegant and improper." See why I have no urge to write a book on language?

When I was a child, an aunt of mine used "aim" facetiously in place of "intend." This is how I learned that I could "aim" an arrow at a target, but I couldn't "aim to please." What neither my aunt nor I knew was that it had once been correct to "aim at" in England, in the sense the aunt now belittled. In our country, "aim to" (intend) is now gaining acceptance in some of our dictionaries, though it has not replaced "aim at." We still aim at a target even if we aim to kill.

Among the many words I've never hoped to find in a dictionary is "anywheres" along with "somewheres", "nowheres", and "anyways." According to Merriam-Webster, "anywheres" originated in New England, but was declared "illiterate and nonexistent" in a Handbook for Vassar Girls in 1917. "Anywheres" is not listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, but "anyways" is as nonstandard. In my view, "anyways" and all related words are nonstandard. Chop off the s's, and you have them right: anywhere, somewhere, nowhere, backward, forward, and by all means, "in regard to."

James Kilpatrick, frequently quoted throughout the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage, presents an illuminating slant on the use of "dialogue." As stated earlier in his book The Writer's Art, 1984, "a curious notion took root that dialogue should be restricted to describe a conversation between two persons only." Continues my favorite wordmaster, this is a gross misconception. The term derives from the Greek dia meaning "through, across, apart and several other things, but never two." In general, dialogue denotes the exchange of ideas and opinions among groups or nations. But the notion of "between two" persists even with some language experts.

Kilpatrick's feeling about the misplacement of "only" is nothing if not passionate, and a gem from The Writer's Art is quoted by Merriam-Webster: "On the matter of the misplaced only, I am as crotchety as an old bear with a thorn in his paw, and I nurse a lasting grudge against Fowler and Follett because of their indifference...."

Fowler and Follett were/are not the only authorities who were/are careless about where to place "only." This problem has been with us for two centuries, we are told, and is not likely to go away.

For which we remain humbly grateful. Without usage problems, look who would be out on a limb!