Prepositions

“… disposing the body …”

Devolution toward Simpler, Prepositions, Verbs

I heard this a couple of weeks ago on a Discovery Channel program.

Problem:
A preposition is missing.

Explanation:
I heard a detective say “… disposing the body …” while discussing a homicide during a Discovery Channel television program.

The correct expression is “… disposing of the body …” because “dispose of” is the verb phrase that means to get rid of or to discard.

I believe that the homicide detective’s omission of the preposition “of” after the verb “dispose” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to omit “of” than to include it.

Another possible reason for omission of the preposition “of” is that the detective mistakenly equated the verb “dispose” with the verb “discard”, the latter of which does not take the preposition.

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:

  • “disposing of the body” — 165,000 matches
  • “disposing the body” — 4,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used these three spellings by a ratio of 37.5-to-1, which is good but not excellent.

Solution:
“… disposing of the body …”

“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.”

“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!”