Month: September 2008

“Let’s discuss about it.”

Common English Blunders, Prepositions, Verbs

I recently saw this in an email message.

Problem:
The preposition “about” should never follow the verb “discuss”.

Explanation:
The definition of the verb “discuss” is to consider by argument or comment; to write or talk about.

Therefore, “discuss about” literally can mean to talk about about.

Following the verb “discuss” with the preposition “about” seems to be a fairly common English blunder, given that a search of Google for “discuss about” (with the quotation marks) returned approximately 1,340,000 matches.

I believe that this blunder represents a belief by some people that the verbs “discuss” and “talk” are equivalent, given that “Let’s talk about it.” is grammatically correct and given that a search of Google for “talk about” (with the quotation marks) returned approximately 120,000,000 matches.

Solution:
“Let’s discuss it.”

“Swimming Suit” vs. “Swim Suit” vs. “Swimsuit”

Adjectives, Devolution toward Simpler, Nouns, Versus

I have been wondering all summer about the evolution of these, and I finally decided to investigate.

Problem:
Each spelling is considered to be correct, but not everyone agrees which among these three spellings is/are correct.

Explanation:
These three items mean the same thing, but the different spellings here represent historical variance.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “swimsuit” — spelled S-W-I-M-S-U-I-T — 27,700,000 matches
  • “swim suit” — spelled S-W-I-M-SPACE-S-U-I-T — 2,110,000 matches
  • “swimming suit” — spelled S-W-I-M-M-I-N-G-SPACE-S-U-I-T — 313,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used these three spellings by a compound ratio of 88.5-to-6.74-to-1.

This compound ratio seems to reflect the evolution of the compound noun “swimming suit” into the space-free noun “swimsuit”. From what I have seen, “bathing suit” was the original way to describe this piece of clothing. This seems to have morphed into “swimming suit”, especially in the USA. This seems to have morphed into “swim suit” without the I-N-G but still with a space before “suit”, which seems to have morphed into “swimsuit” with no space.

I believe that evolution of this word is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to write or type “swim” than to write or type “swimming”, and it is simpler to omit the space than to include it.

Solution:
Use any these three forms, but realize that the most popular spelling today uses “swim” instead of “swimming” and joins “swim” with “suit” without a space.

“The fund-raising campaign is underway!”

Adjectives, Prepositions

I saw this in an email message.

Problem:
The writer used an adjective where a prepositional phrase was required.

Explanation:
The writer of the email message was trying to say that a fund-raising campaign was in progress.

The word “underway” — spelled U-N-D-E-R-W-A-Y — is an adjective that means “occurring while under way”, with a space between “under” and “way”.

An example of proper use of the adjective “underway” is “The underway activities on the space shuttle include checking the toilets and watching the ants in the ant farm.”

The adjective “underway” is derived from the prepositional phrase “under way” — spelled U-N-D-E-R-SPACE-W-A-Y — which means “in progress”.

This gives us the solution.

Solution:
“The fund-raising campaign is under way!”