This column is mostly concerned about the written word, but even so, pronunciation will inevitably enter the picture from time to time.<\/p>\n
The expressions chomping at the bit<\/em> and stomping ground<\/em> are both corruptions of the original champing<\/em> and stamping<\/em>. People find this incredible. But, for instance, consult the 1961 cult-favorite western film One-Eyed Jacks<\/em>, and you\u2019ll hear Marlon Brando clearly say, \u201cI know all his old stampin\u2019 grounds.\u201d My 1968 Random House dictionary and my 1980 American Heritage dictionary (the one with its own usage panel) don\u2019t even list stomping ground<\/em>, only stamping<\/em>. Nor do they list chomping at the bit<\/em>, only champing<\/em>.<\/p>\n My 1999 Webster\u2019s lists both, but Webster\u2019s is more permissive by design; it\u2019s what\u2019s called a descriptive<\/em> dictionary, as opposed to prescriptive<\/em> ones like American Heritage, which presume, unlike Webster\u2019s, to act as guardians of proper English.<\/p>\n Here are some more words and phrases that make word nerds wince:<\/p>\n Kudos<\/strong>\u00a0 To this great man, kudos are overdue<\/em>. That\u2019s not a sentence that would raise many eyebrows, but kudos<\/em> is not the plural of kudo<\/em>. There\u2019s no such thing as a kudo<\/em>. Kudos<\/em> is a Greek word (pronounced KYOO-doss or KOO-doss) meaning praise or glory, and you\u2019d no more say kudos are due<\/em> than you\u2019d say glory are due<\/em>. You must change are<\/em> to is<\/em>: kudos is overdue<\/em>. Of course, if you ever said that, everybody\u2019d think you\u2019re strange\u2014everybody but that word nerd skulking in the corner.<\/p>\n Snuck<\/strong>\u00a0 A lot of people these days think this is the legitimate past tense of sneak<\/em>. A lot of people are wrong. The past tense of sneak<\/em> is sneaked<\/em>. Even my Webster\u2019s has a problem with snuck<\/em>, calling it \u201cinformal.\u201d<\/p>\n Flaunt, flout<\/strong>\u00a0 He was a rebel who flaunted the rules<\/em>. Make that flouted<\/em>. To flaunt<\/em> is to display ostentatiously; to flout<\/em> is to ignore, disregard. Don\u2019t flaunt your ignorance by flouting the correct usage of flout<\/em>.<\/p>\n Close proximity<\/strong> \u00a0Also commonly used by a lot of smart folks who should know better. There is a creek in close proximity to the cabin<\/em>. This is ill-advised for a number of reasons. First, proximity<\/em> already means \u201ccloseness,\u201d so the phrase is redundant: \u201cclose closeness.\u201d And this is just an affected way of disdaining nice clear words like near<\/em>, nearby<\/em>, et al. What\u2019s wrong with \u201cThere\u2019s a creek near the cabin\u201d? Word nerds believe that the fewer words and syllables it takes to get your point across, the better a writer you\u2019ll be.<\/p>\n More importantly, most importantly<\/strong> \u00a0When grammatical cluelessness combines with a desire to sound glib, we get maddening phrases like these two. I\u2019ve been a pedantic prig, er, copy editor, a long time and I\u2019ve never<\/em> seen a valid use of more<\/em> or most<\/em> importantly<\/em>. Just drop the -ly<\/em> and make my day. More important, you\u2019ll be using good English. Most important, you won\u2019t sound like some pseudo-scholarly fusspot.<\/p>\n This grammar tip is by our late copy editor and word nerd Tom Stern. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This column is mostly concerned about the written word, but even so, pronunciation will inevitably enter the picture from time to time. The expressions chomping at the bit and stomping ground are both corruptions of the original champing and stamping. People find this incredible. But, for instance, consult the 1961 cult-favorite western film One-Eyed Jacks, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-definitions","category-effective-writing","category-humor"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}