The Amateur Etymologist

Humility vs Humbleness

When someone demonstrates the quality of not being proud or haughty, we say that person has humility. Or is that humbleness? Both words are legitimate and both have the same meaning. They are interchangable.

Example: Instead of arguing, he showed humility when he apologised for his mistake and took responsibility.

It also works if you use humbleness instead of humility.

Example: Instead of arguing, he showed humbleness when he apologised for his mistake and took responsibility.

But to my ear, the word humbleness doesn't sound as good as humility. Try reading out loud the two variations of the above sentence and you'll see what I mean. So I'd rather use humility over humbleness any day. That's my humble opinion.

Plural of genius

Here's another odd plural. The plural of genius is... genii. Yes, most people use geniuses but it's more accurate to use genii. (It's pronounced gee-nee-i). Unusual plurals like genii tend to get abandoned over time as people assign more common plural forms to these words. I can understand the desire to make plurals more standaradised. It also makes English easier to learn. But then again, having quirky words like genii makes the language interesting and helps to reveal the history of the word.

Genius has Latin roots and hence the unusual plural. We can tell a word probably has Latin roots when you study their plurals. Other Latin words with unusual plurals include

Stadium (plural: stadia)
Gymnasium (plural: gymnasia)
Formula (plural: formulae)
Antenna (plural: antennae)

The list goes on. You get the idea.

The plural of cannon is...

At dinner with colleagues while on a business trip in Manila, one of them asks, "Do you know what the plural of mongoose is?"

I know the answer. It's mongeese. But I try to be modest about it. "It's mongeese I think," I tell him.

"Really? They're not related to geese you know," he says. "The plural of a moose isn't meese," he adds.

"I'm pretty sure it's mongeese," I say, now not so sure. (Later I check. The plural is either mongoose or mongeese.)

Another colleague pipes up. "Do you know what the plural of cannon is?"

The folks at the table look around at each other. "I don't suppose it's cannons?" someone suggests.

The knowing colleague shakes his head. "This one I know for sure. I got it wrong at a spelling contest. I'll never forget it. The plural of cannon is cannon."

I didn't know that. And Iater I check. He's right. Of course, dictionaries will say the plural can be cannons but really, the plural of cannon is cannon. Wow, the things you learn at the dinner table.

Just now

Funny how simple English phrases can meaning totally different things to different people. Take the phrase just now. The definition is "a short time ago".

Example: I had lunch just now and bumped into an old classmate.

Seems straightforward enough. But when my family lived in Japan, my father had Japanese colleagues and I remember he related a hilarious incident concerning the phrase just now. He had asked someone if a task had been completed, and the man replied, "Yes, just now!"

Great, thought my dad. He went to inspect the work but found the task not done. "I thought you said it was done," he said to the man.

"Yes, just now!" came the reply and the man proceeded to start the task. My father was bewildered for a moment, and then realised that the other man had used just now to mean, "starting in a short time." I always laugh at this memory. It reminds me that English isn't straightforward and its shades of meanings can trip up even the best of us.

Nauseous vs Nauseated

I've been taught that if I feel like I'm going to throw up, then I'm feeling nauseated. I was also taught that saying "I'm feeling nauseous" is incorrect as nauseous actually means "causing nausea or disgust". In other words, nauseous was best used in sentences like:

• The nauseous fumes from the bus caused the people waiting at the best stop to scatter.

• It's best to boil the kimchi in the soup stock longer if you know your guests are sensitive to its nauseous flavour.

Because English is such a living and dynamic language, the usage of nauseated and the definition of nauseous have been changing rapidly. This is both amazing and frustrating at the same time as it means users of English need to constantly update their knowledge of English. Nauseated still means "to be affected by nausea" but you rarely hear people saying, "I feel nauseated" these days. Instead, you hear people saying, "I feel nauseous." As much as people like me who have learnt the "old" usage would like to keep to that, sometimes we just have to move with the times. That's not to say we can't say "I feel nauseated" anymore, it's just that it's now acceptable to say, "I feel nauseous."

And what about the original meaning of nauseous which is "causing nausea or disgust"? That definition appears to be slowly transferring over to nauseating. So for the two examples above, it's no longer wrong to replace nauseous with nauseating. Although, truth be told, that makes me a little nauseated.

Competitor watch

There is some confusion with the construction competitor watch. Specifically, when one needs to talk about monitoring what the competition is up to, is it better to say competitor's watch or competitors watch, competitor watch or competitive watch?

Well, competitor's watch doesn't mean monitoring the competition. It either means a competitor's timepiece or a competitor's effort at monitoring something. The 's denotes possession, in this case, something in the competitor's possession. So this construction is inaccurate.

Competitors watch is just clumsy. If we want an adjective to modify watch, then it's much better to use the root word competitor. Using competitor in this way makes it an adjective modifying the word watch.

The last one, competitive watch, can also be used. Technically, it's a better construction because competitive is an actual adjective so it's the right word doing the right job.

Therefore, if you're talking about keeping an eye on the activities of a competitor, use competitor watch or better yet, use competitive watch.

I.e. vs E.g.

This is a simple one. I.e. is Latin for id est, which in English means, "that is". E.g. is exempli gratia, which means "for example". The two clearly don't mean the same thing. I.e. is not a substitute for e.g.

Example: There are many types of caffeine-laden soft drinks, e.g., Coke, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper.

Example: The delivery service is available only on weekdays, i.e., from Monday to Friday.

When you use either short form in speech, you don't say the letters. You say the English phrase. So for the first example, when you say it out loud, you say, "There are many types of caffeine-laden soft drinks, for example, Coke, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper." You don't ever say, "EEE-GEE."

Similarly, for the second sentence, you say, "The delivery service is available only on weekdays, that is, from Monday to Friday." You don't ever say, "I-EEE."

Please also note the punctuation marks in both short forms. It has a period after each letter: e.g. When you use it in a sentence, you pause after saying "for example", so you put a comma after the second period like this: "e.g.,"

It's the same with i.e. You write: "i.e.," when you use it in a sentence.

I hope that clears it up.

An occasion of great moment

I saw this expression in a news article the day after Obama Barack's inauguration: an occasion of great moment. They were uttered by Chee Soon Juan on a YouTube video congratulating the US President. I found the phrase intriguing and had to look up moment in the dictionary.

Besides the main definition of "a minute portion or point in time", the Merriam Webster listed six other defintions for moment. Not surprising since the simplest words often have the most definitions. (I remember flipping to the word be in the OED and was floored to see over 300 definitions.) The definition that caught my eye was the third one: importance in influence or effect. How very interesting.

So one could write: This was an decision of great moment.
Or another example: For Herbert, his wedding vows would be a promise of great moment.

It's amazing what one can learn from just reading the news.

Historic vs Historical

Akin to the entry I posted about geographic vs geographical, the pair of words historic and historical also deserve a few comments. Is there a difference between the two? Yes, there is.

Historical refers to or relates to something having the character of history. In other words, it's an adjective that links a noun to something related to something that happened in the past. Examples: historical novels (novels based on events from the past); historical data (data collected from times past); historical perspective (a view on things from the eyes of people from the past).

Historic means a famous or important point in history. What I did last year isn't historic but Barak Obama getting elected as the first black president of the United States is historic. When you use this adjective, it means you are referring not only to something from the past, but something significant or important.

These are the distinct definitions of historic and historical. This is not to say that dictionaries don't make these two words share definitions. But the primary definitions are what I laid out here.

Fungible

You've got to love a word like fungible. I came across this word in an email from a colleague. When I saw it, I figured he wasn't talking about mushrooms. So I looked it up and it's an adjective that means interchangeable. (It's also a noun.)

Example: The product was designed modularly so that the user has a set of fungible features he can choose from.

But that's not the primary definition. The Merriam Webster states it as: being of such a nature that one part or quantity may be replaced by another equal part or quantity in the satisfaction of an obligation.

Now I can't wait to use fungible in a conversation.