Q:  Can you suss the pronunciation of “wash”?  I’m from central Illinois and I forced myself as an adult to pronounce it “wawsh” instead of the colloquial “warsh.” A: In American English, the word “wash” is usually pronounced “wawsh” or “wahsh” (wɔʃ or wɑʃ in the International Phonetic Alphabet), according to the Oxford English Dictionary. However, a lot of Americans pronounce it with an “r” before the “sh,” a usage that may be dying out. The Dictionary of American Regional English describes the dialectal “warsh” or “worsh” pronunciation (wɑrš or wɔrš in DARE’s phonemic system ..read more

Q: Can you shed any light on the origin of the (mainly) Australian phrase “wouldn’t have a bar of it,” especially what “bar” is doing in there? A: The expression “not to stand [or “have” or “want”] a bar of something” first appeared in Australian English in the early 20th century, according to Green’s Dictionary of Slang. The earliest example in the dictionary is from a Sydney newspaper: “He attributes most of his trouble to the fact that he is a married man and father of a grown-up family, but neither wife nor children will stand a bar of him at any price” (Truth, May 21, 1904). Thi ..read more

Q: Have you come across the word “chumbolone”? It’s a new one for me. I found it on John Kass’s website. He was a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and now writes a lot of angry screeds about the state of everything. A: It was unknown to us, too. The rare slang term “chumbolone” was first recorded about a decade and a half ago at the federal trial of Anthony Dale, a former Chicago police officer accused of leaking information to the mob. Here’s the relevant passage: “ ‘I  don’t wanna look like a ‘chumbolone,’ an idiot,’ said Doyle, using street slang” (from a report by Jeff Coen in the Ch ..read more

Q: Why do I see the word “preternatural” all the time, especially in The New York Times? I don’t see it elsewhere. What’s the story?  I had to look it up! A: The adjective “preternatural” (extraordinary, unnatural, supernatural) dates from the late 16th century. It was quite common in the 1700s and 1800s, then gradually fell out of favor. It was relatively rare by the early 1900s, but rebounded somewhat at the end of the 20th century. A search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books, indicates that the use of “preternatural” began rising in the 1 ..read more

Q: James Joyce mentions “The Lass of Aughrim” at the end of “The Dead.” I looked the song up online, but was puzzled by the use of “will” here: “Oh Gregory, don’t you remember, / In my father’s hall. / When you had your will of me? / And that was the worst of all.” A: Joyce has only a small excerpt from the ballad in “The Dead,” the last story in his collection Dubliners (1914): “O, the rain falls on my heavy locks / And the dew wets my skin, / My babe lies cold…” “The Lass of Aughrim” is an Irish version of “The Lass of Roch Royal,” a Scottish ballad that “relates the story of ..read more

Q: I’m not sure if this is all over the South or only in Kentucky, but people here use “like” to mean “lack.” Just the other day I heard a baker say of her cupcakes in the oven, “They still like some time.” Do you have anything to say about this usage? A: The use of “like” to mean “lack” is a Southern regionalism, not just a Kentucky usage. The Dictionary of American Regional English describes “like” here as a “pronc-sp” of the verb “lack” in the South and South Midland regions. A “pronunciation spelling” is one that represents the pronunciation of a word more closely than its tradit ..read more

Q: Can you please tell us the rules for using the suffixes “-tion,” “-sion,” and “-cion”? Very Interested, Busy and Confused Teachers. A: English borrowed all three endings from French in the Middle Ages, but they ultimately come from the same word fragment in Latin. So etymologically they’re three different spellings of the same term. However, the suffixes have evolved in English and are used in so many different ways, depending on placement and pronunciation, that we’d recommend consulting a dictionary when in doubt. But since you’ve asked for specific guidelines, we’ll pass along a usage no ..read more

Q: Charitable giving is often characterized as “giving back,” which has a connotation of paying something owed.  My wife and I make substantial donations. I think of this as freely giving, not paying a debt. A: We’ve also made quite a few charitable donations over the years, and done many hours of volunteer work. And like you, we see this as giving freely of our savings and our time rather than repaying a debt to society. Merriam-Webster defines the phrasal verb “give back” in this sense as “to provide help or financial assistance to others in appreciation of one’s own success o ..read more

Q: Do you have information on the origin of the phrase “don’t  sweat the small stuff”? I didn’t find a convincing answer with Google search and ChatGPT. Any light you might be able to shed on the subject would be appreciated! A: As far as we can tell, the slang expression “don’t sweat the small stuff” first appeared in the US in the 1970s. The earliest example we’ve seen is from a June 26, 1973, devotional address at Brigham Young University by a senior leader of the Mormon Church. In the address, “Essentials for Success,” O. Leslie Stone, an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apo ..read more

Q: I have a question about how suffixes are chosen. Specifically, why did the noun/verb “impact” turn into an adjective by adding “-ful” instead of “-ive”? A: You’ll be surprised to hear that both “impactive” and “impactful” can be found in standard dictionaries. Merriam-Webster, for example, defines “impactive” as “having an impact or marked effect,” and “impactful” as “having a forceful impact: producing a marked impression.” It treats both as standard English. M-W has this “impactive” example (which we’ve expanded) from F. Scott Fitgerald’s 1934 novel Tender Is the Night: “Feeling ..read more