Common English Blunders

“Alumnus” vs. “Alumna” vs. “Alumni” vs. “Alumnae”

Common English Blunders, Foreign Languages, Nouns, Plurals, Versus

I thought about these nouns after seeing what I considered to be a misuse of one of them the other day.

Problem:
Many people are confused about which noun to use for which group of people.

Explanation:
My wife received in the mail two days ago a publication by her undergraduate and graduate-school alma mater.

The publication had a page devoted to one of its graduates.

The graduate was a woman, and the title on the page was “Alumni Profile” followed by her name.

I consider “Alumni” in the title to be inappropriate. I would have used “Alumna” instead. Here is the explanation.

The noun “alumnus” means a male graduate or former student of a particular university, college, or school.

The noun “alumna” means a female graduate or former student of a particular university, college, or school.

The noun “alumni” means male graduates or former students of a particular university, college, or school.

The noun “alumnae” means female graduates or former students of a particular university, college, or school.

Many colleges and universities use “alumni” to refer to males and females. This is analogous to the use of the masculine plural form in Spanish when referring to a group of only males or to a group of males and females.

Historically female colleges and universities that now accept males take a different tack: they use “alumnae and alumni” or “alumnae/i” to refer to their collective group of female and male graduates.

Solution:
Use “alumna” for a woman. Use “alumnae” for a group of women. Use “alumnus” for a man. Use “alumni” for a group of men or for a group of men and women. Never call an individual “an alumni” of a school, college, or university.

“A permit had been attained.”

Common English Blunders, Verbs

I heard this yesterday during a television program.

Problem:
The speaker used the wrong verb.

Explanation:
I was watching an episode of “Forensic Files” on the truTV channel.

Someone by the name of Randy Scott, identified as Lead Investigator, was discussing a crime.

Mr. Scott said, “A permit had been attained.”

The verb “attain” — spelled A-T-T-A-I-N — means to accomplish, achieve, or reach as an objective, as in “He attained success on the racing circuit at the age of 25.”

Mr. Scott should have used the verb “obtain” — spelled O-B-T-A-I-N — instead because this verb means to acquire, procure, or get.

Unfortunately, there is not a simple way to search the Internet for mistaken use of “attain” as a substitute for “obtain”; otherwise, I would put some statistics from Google here.

This is not the first time that I saw or heard the mistaken use of these two verbs as synonyms, and I believe that it is a relatively common English blunder.

The confusion between “attain” and “obtain” provides yet another example of the value of knowing the roots of words in the English language.

The verb “attain” comes from the prefix A-T, which means toward or near, and T-A-I-N, which comes from the Latin verb “tangere”, which means to touch.

The verb “obtain” comes from the prefix O-B, which has many meanings including to and on, and T-A-I-N, which comes from the Latin verb “tenere”, which means to hold.

In other words, the T-A-I-N in “attain” the T-A-I-N in “obtain” are from different Latin verbs, so “attain” and “obtain” are NOT synonyms.

Solution:
“A permit had been obtained.”

“member priviledges”

Common English Blunders, Misspellings, Nouns

I saw this yesterday on a website.

Problem:
One of the words is misspelled.

Explanation:
I had just registered my name and address at a website where I wanted to make a purchase.

The website permits purchases by returning members, by new members, and by those who choose not to create a member account.

I chose to create a member account so that I could track my order.

An account-creation confirmation page appeared, apparently to allay my concerns about creating yet another identity (“member account”) at yet another website.

The Web page referred to “member priviledges”, with the second word spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-D-G-E-S.

The misspelling was obvious to me, if not to the page’s author. The second word should have been spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-G-E-S (with no “d” in the middle).

This misspelling is a common English blunder, but I wondered just how common it was.

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:

  • “privilege” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-G-E — 31,400,000 matches
  • “privileged” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-G-E-D — 16,900,000 matches
  • “privileges” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-G-E-S — 21,100,000 matches
  • “priviledge” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-D-G-E — 694,000 matches
  • “priviledged” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-D-G-E-D — 354,000 matches
  • “priviledges” — spelled P-R-I-V-I-L-E-D-G-E-S — 362,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct spellings versus the incorrect spellings by a ratio of 49.2-to-1, which is good but not excellent, especially in light of the more than 1.4 million total misspellings.

I suspect that these misspellings come from mental interference by the word “ledge” — spelled L-E-D-G-E.

Solution:
“member privileges”