LEND ME YOUR EAR: VERBS: TURNING THE INTRANSITIVES INTO TRANSITIVES

From time to time, readers have requested a column on transitive and intransitive verbs. Because so many verbs can serve in either capacity, I have hesitated to comply lest I confuse readers unnecessarily.

However, a recent article featuring a small town in Michigan, home of the world-renowned magician Harry Blackstone, changed my mind. The town of Colon is called the magic capital of the world because it sells properties used by magicians and has become famous for it. What does this have to do with transitive and intransitive verbs? I discovered how much fun the author of the article had turning intransitives into transitives!

But first, let's consider how much grief we have caused and suffered, trying to explain the difference between the transitive verb lay and the intransitive lie. A transitive verb takes an object: "Lay the book on my desk." The intransitive is not permitted an object: "Mother, lie down and rest." Trouble is, too many speakers and writers seem to think lay and lie are the same verb, perhaps because the past tense of lie is lay. However, the transitive verb is lay, laid, laid; intransitive, lie, lay, lain. How many times have you read this in these columns?

Two examples of misuse have recently come my way. My Chicago friend Helen Lange sent a card she'd received from the city's Streets and Sanitation Department advising residents to "Just cut your grass once a week and let it lay." Let it lay what? An Easter nest?

From the Washington Post, my cousin Paul Walters of Alexandria relayed an intentionally-incorrect item: "On lying an egg." Everyone seems to know you can't lie an egg, but not being allowed to "lay down" or "lay low" continues to frustrate otherwise literate folk.

Let's try something simpler. Try "Never buy a car on impulse." The verb, buy, takes an object car. Try another. Take "Ted threw his mother's rolling pin out the window." Ted threw an object out the window (we hope it wasn't through the window), so again, the verb is transitive.

Consider the next two sentences. 1. "Holidays tend to complicate rather than simplify home life." 2. "Years passed before we saw each other again." Neither tend nor passed takes an object, rendering both verbs intransitive. However, both can serve as transitive in other constructions. One may "tend bar" or "tend a child" and we could just as well "pass the buck" (or cake) as allow years to pass by.

Sometimes, transitive verbs play tricks on us, with objects not detected but implied. "The family ate in silence" is an example. The family must have eaten something, but it was the silence that was important, so who cares what anyone ate? "My father thinks he hears well" is another example. We know he hears something, but who knows what? Verbs of this sort are called Transitive Verbs Used Absolutely. If this little-known truth escapes you, don't lose any sleep over it. No one has ever put me on the spot about it, so you too will probably be spared.

Now for a few verbs that are absolutely intransitive. Not long ago it was announced over the air that "Our fear of flying needs to be subsided." No dictionary will permit anything to "be subsided." Flood waters may subside, but we can't subside them. Neither can they be subsided. Moreover, subside was the wrong word to begin with. Our fear of flying may need to be dismissed or even eradicated, but idiom will not allow it to be subsided.

To return to the article that precipitated this column, it was the intransitive verbs used as transitive that added humor to the magic. "He vanished the ball," wrote the author. "He disappeared the girls." Then there was something about a "device that disappeared the elephant" that I didn't quite catch because my reading was interrupted by a timely announcement over TV:

"We need to reduce Saddam Hussein's power in size," declared an announcer whose named I'd missed.

What size power would be fitting for the Iraqi dictator? I asked myself. His power, I pursued, is not the only thing we want reduced. The device that disappeared the elephant, it seemed, was a magician's secret. How about trying to track down the magician and borrow his device long enough to disappear the maniac?