The Grammar Logs
#602

Is there such an expression as "Like as not?"

We are having a debate in my office and I have never heard of this one before. The person who uses this is from Ohio. Is it a regional expression?

I don't know how regionalized the phrase might be. It's used adverbially and means "likely" or "probably." My Shorter OED says the phrase (along with its cousin "as like as not") is a colloquial idiom "also used as a filler of little or no meaning."

Authority for this note: Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Fifth Edition. Oxford University Press, New York. 2002.

Our local newspaper had a story that contained the line "the window was busted out" That sounds very wrong to me! Have the rules changed since I was in school?

No, the rules haven't changed. The use of "busted" is restricted to humorous text that attempts to duplicate the way that unlettered people sometimes speak, but it probably has no place in a newspaper. The writer probably meant the the window was broken from the inside.

Having said this, though, I have to note that my most recent Merriam-Webster's contains the sentence, "I busted my watch" (without comment), and Merriam-Webster's usage dictionary says that "'busted' [meaning broken] seems to be gaining in status and appears with some frequency in well-edited and widely distributed publications." Other usage guides are not so kind toward "busted." Wilson's guide notes that "busted" is limited "mainly to the lower Conversational levels and the Informal writing that imitates them" — but, then, Wilson's guide is more than a decade old already.

By permission, From Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage © 1994 by Merriam-Webster, Inc. (www.Merriam-Webster.com).

Authority: The Columbia Guide to Standard American Usage by Kenneth G. Wilson. Published by MJF Books (New York: 1993).

The following sentence appears in a document, exactly as shown. I believe that refers is the correct verb; is my belief correct?

For the purposes of this document, "municipalities" refer to all upper and lower tier municipal governments.

You're right. The word "municipalities" is being used as a word in itself, not as the plural of "municipality." It's as if you're saying "the word "municipalities" refers to …"

Please advise if the phrase "born of the fact that" should be written "borne of the fact that" as in

"The application of these values is quite different in the different divisions, borne of the fact that they operate in different sectors."

I have to confess that I have never paid any attention to this phrase before, nor was I aware of the possible confusion of these words. A Google search for these phrases does one absolutely no good. Ken Wilson has the clearest analysis that I can find:

The verb bear has two past participle forms, born and borne. Born is used in the passive voice and as a participial adjective whenever the topic is birth: She was born in Ohio. We are New England-born, all of us. When the topic is birth, use borne as the past participle, as in She has borne three sons — but only in the active voice (i.e., do not say The baby was borne to a very young woman). In the senses of bear that involve carrying, enduring, proving, and the like, the past participle is always borne, whether the verb is active or passive: He had borne his guilt for many years. It was an insult not be borne even by a placid person.

Since your sentence needs the past participle of bear in the sense of "carrying, proving, and the like," I vote for borne.

Authority: The Columbia Guide to Standard American Usage by Kenneth G. Wilson. Published by MJF Books (New York: 1993).

What is the correct answer to this:

Neither Connie nor I (is, are) going to attend.

I hate to say it, because it sounds so stupid, but it should be "Neither Connie nor I am going to attend." If that sounds too horrid for you, switch the positions of your subjects so you can write "Neither I nor Connie is going to attend," or forget the "neither-nor" construction and say that "Connie and I are not going to attend."

Why are the basic form of the verbs for shout and prepare being used for the following sentences below:

• I heard someone shout,"Fire! Fire!"
• They heard the protester shout,"No more fascism!"
• He watched the barman prepare the beer he had ordered.

Verbs of perception — hear, see, watch, overhear, feel, watch, observe, etc. — are followed by what is called the bare infinitive — "to shout" and "to prepare" in your sentences, but without the "to." And infinitives, of course, are not inflected (they do not take the "-ed" ending or any other ending for that matter).

I am very tired of hearing the now popular term "went missing", such as in: The man went missing yesterday. Although the adjective 'missing' may be used with a linking verb, it is not to be used with an action verb. Am I correct?

"To go" is often used as what is called a "resulting copula," as in "The milk went sour"; "it'll go bad by morning." That's how "went" is being used in the phrase "went missing." I don't like it myself, but it's a persistent and widespread idiom and newspaper editors seem to love it. The phrase seems to have escaped comment or censure in my usage manuals.

Is the phrase "each and everyone", as in, I want to thank each and everyone, incorrect English or just redundant and annoying?

We need to split the "every" from the "one" in that sentence — "each and every one of you." Over the years, many commentators have come down hard, with both feet, on "each and every" (as in "I want to thank each and every one of you") calling it trite, commonplace, redundant, etc. Others give it a bit of slack saying it is not so bad, that it lends an emphatic tone to the sentiment. Burchfield says that the construction is "not common and not easy to replace."

Authority: The New Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by R.W. Burchfield. Clarendon Press: Oxford, England. 1996. Used with the permission of Oxford University Press.

From Garner's Modern American Usageby Bryan Garner. Copyright 2003 by Bryan A. Garner. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., www.oup-usa.org, and used with the gracious consent of Oxford University Press.

Trying to determine what "YEARS" is in the following sentence:

Thousands of YEARS ago, fish were caught in nets and traps.

The entire phrase, "thousands of years ago" is adverbial, telling us when fish were caught in this manner. I've been told that Russian has a separate word category for numerical values or quantifiers like "thousands of," which would be a handy thing here. At any rate, within this adverbial phrase, "years" is simply the noun object of the preposition "of." But it's more accurate to say that "thousands" is a quantifier modifying "years" in this idiomatic fashion. "Ago" is then a post-noun adjective meaning "earlier than the present time."

When you have two nouns as antecedents, what exactly determines the type of relative pronoun (who vs. that)? This sentence below is the one bothering me. I don't know if I am using the term antecedents correctly, but the antecedents (organizaton and journalist) here make it difficult to choose between who and that in this sentence:

This award will go to a media organization or individual journalist who (or that!!!???) has demonstrated accuracy and a lack of bias in his/her (its???) reporting.

The real problem comes up when you run nose-first into "his/her/its." I thought his/her was bad, but this is ridiculous. If we switch around "journalist" and "organization," the who/that dilemma can be resolved: "This award will go to an individual journalist or media organization WHOSE WORK demonstrates accuraacy and a lack of reporting bias." I don't know how someone's work can demonstrate a lack of anything, but we'll leave that up to the judges. There must be a way of stating the same thing more positively.

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