A work in progress. Contributions welcome.
Years ago, when ads for smoking were permitted on television, one brand ginned up a faux debate about how grammatical its slogan was or wasn’t.
I have no idea why; did they think people intelligent enough to know spelling and syntax and the like were stupid enough to suck on cancer sticks?
Anyway, the fine folks from North Carolina staged a quibble-fest between their existing “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should” and “Winston tastes good, as a cigarette should.”
(Winston tastes like $#1t, as all cigarettes do. But that’s off the topic.)
This series of ads capitalized on the notion that language is always changing, evolving, reflecting the times and the people who speak it. Those of us who make, or have made, their livings shaping written or spoken communication know we walk a Wallenda-style tightrope balancing grammatical purists on one side and vernacular evolutionaries on the other.
My first real head-butt came early in my editing career when the estimable Robert Wright, he of later accomplishments and prestige in historical and scientific journalism, insisted on using “presently” interchangeably with “currently.” His insistence: It’s a variation of “at present,” having shed its “momentarily” definition the way a snake sheds its skin.
Bob and his allies won this battle; scarcely anyone outside of broadcasters on the BBC and scholars of Shakespeare use “presently” in its classical form. Far fewer people would understand it, even in context.
And so goes the vernacular. Language belongs to those who understand and are understood.
Still, I’d argue that we usually have a plethora of synonymous options that would obviate rewriting a definition merely because a word seems as if it should mean something it doesn’t. “Presently” has “present” within it, right? Or so goes the argument.
Interestingly enough, the clarity and spatiality that, first, CDs and now nonstop streaming services added to the flood of remastered 1960s rock also exposed us to lyrics we could only guess at when we heard them on 16-transistor Kent AM radios. British and some American lyricists peppered their tunes with allusions to Tolkien — “…in the darkest depths of Mordor / I met a girl so fair / But Gollum, the evil one, crept up / And slipped away with her” — and dozens of other literary lights who used florid language. Who used “presently” to mean “shortly.”
Please note, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” doesn’t count.
For reasons that will become clearer early this December, I’ve had The Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” kicking around my brain a lot, and one adjective my mother’s mother used a lot — “dear” — has lost any meaning save “sweetheart.”
Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save…
The List
Presently — Then: shortly, in a little while. Now: now.
Dear — Then: expensive. Now: loved, lovely, cute.
…to be continued. What are your words?
