Month: December 2007

“Disection”

Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Mispronunciations

I heard this on CNBC.

Problem:
“Disection” is not a word.

Explanation:
You might wonder how I could hear the misspelling of a word. The answer is that the mispronunciation is common.

Many seem to believe that “bisection” has a counterpart word that is spelled “disection” (and perhaps even that these are interchangeable). This belief is erroneous.

“Bisect” means to cut into two, where “bi” refers to two and “sect” refers to cut.

“Dissection” is the word that the CNBC journalist should have spoken.

“Dissect” means to cut apart, where “sect” (still!) refers to cut and “dis” — NOT “di”! — refers to apart.

I believe that the mispronunciation of “dissection” as “disection” (sic) comes not only from the similarity to “bisection” (and ignorance about roots of words) but also from the fact that “disection” is simpler to say than is “dissection”. This is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis about American English.

Solution:
“Dissection”

“Las Vegas was beat out by Liverpool.”

Adverbs, Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Passive Voice, Verbs

I heard this on a Travel Channel show about “extreme Christmas” celebrations.

Problems:
1. The verb “beat” is incorrect here.
2. The adverb “out” is unnecessary.

Explanation:
The statement is written in passive voice, albeit incorrectly. In particular, “beaten” — not “beat” — is the passive form of the verb “to beat”. (The statement in active voice would be “Liverpool beat Las Vegas.”)

I believe that the use of “beat” instead of “beaten” when the latter is appropriate represents

  • ignorance about passive voice, and
  • a laziness that favors shorter, fewer-syllable words over longer words.

The one-syllable “beat” is simpler than the two-syllable “beaten” to say, which is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis about American English. Throw in a common lack of understanding how sentences in the active voice are converted to sentences in the passive voice, and it’s no wonder that many English speakers choose “beat” (incorrectly) instead of “beaten” in a statement posed in the passive voice.

The other problem with the original statement is that the adverb “out” is unnecessary. Even in active voice — “Liverpool beat out Las Vegas.” — the adverb “out” is unnecessary. I have noticed a trend in American English (I can’t say whether the trend exists in other English-speaking countries.) to add one or more unnecessary adverbs after verbs, and this problematic statement contains yet another example of this trend.

Solution:
“Las Vegas was beaten by Liverpool.”

“Ourself”

Common English Blunders, Pronouns

I heard this on National Public Radio.

Problem:
The pronoun “ourself” is nonstandard.

Explanation:
The pronoun “ourself” has only a couple of entries in most dictionaries. The first entry typically says used as a reflexive pronoun in royal proclamations. The second entry typically says that “ourself” is nonstandard.

In other words, “ourself” in most situations is an incorrect replacement for the reflexive pronoun “ourselves”. The word “ourself” is incorrect because “our” is plural and takes the plural “selves” (instead of the singular “self”).

I suspect that the increasing use of “ourself” outside of royal proclamations is due to increasing misuse of the reflexive pronouns “himself”, “herself” and “yourself” in non-reflexive situations. For example, many people have become accustomed to saying “yourself” when the correct pronoun is “you” instead.

Solution:
“Ourselves”