Kirk Mahoney . com

A reader named Warren emailed the following message to me recently: “I’m still a bit confused between to go and to come. U said it’s all about movement to or away from where the speaker or hearer is, my question is how do you define who the speaker is? is that the one that is talking? What about the following example: the doctor asked me to stop COMING back. In this case who’s the speaker? the doctor or the one who is talking?”

Warren, those are excellent questions. The best answers come from rewriting your example in three different ways.

1. “The doctor told me to stop COMING back to him.”
Consider an equivalent form but with a different person being told by the doctor what to do:

(a) “The doctor told Ms. Jones to stop coming back to him.”

Statement (a) puts you as the listener/reader in the location of the doctor. From the perspective of the doctor, Ms. Jones is COMING back to him.

2. “The doctor told me to stop GOING back to him.”
Consider an equivalent form but with a different person being told by the doctor what to do:

(b) “The doctor told Ms. Jones to stop going back to him.”

Statement (b) puts you as the listener/reader in a location OTHER THAN the location of the doctor. From the perspective of someone who is NOT at the doctor’s office, Ms. Jones is GOING back to him.

So #1 and #2 are each correct, but you have to decide as the speaker/writer whether you want to put the listener/reader at the location of the doctor (#1) or at your non-doctor’s-office location (#2).

In other words, you have to decide whether you want to focus the “told me”

• on the act of the doctor (#1)
   
  -OR-
• on what the doctor is requesting from your perspective/location (#2).

But let’s change your original sentence (#1) slightly:

3. “The doctor told me that I should stop ____ back to him.”
Consider an equivalent form but with a different person being told by the doctor what to do:

(c) “The doctor told Ms. Jones that she should stop ___ back to him.”

Statement (c) is equivalent to “The doctor told Ms. Jones that ‘X’.”, where ‘X’ is a complete sentence on its own.

For example, ‘X’ could be “The sky is blue.” — giving us “The doctor told Ms. Jones that the sky is blue.”.

So what should we put in the “___” in #3?

Sentence #3 becomes “The doctor told me that ‘X’.”, where X = “I should stop ___ back to him.”.

Try replacing “___” in this X with “GOING” and with “COMING” to see which one is correct:

(d) “I should stop GOING back to him.”
(e) “I should stop COMING back to him.”

Given that you (the “I” in (d)) are NOT where he (the “him” in (d)) is, you have to GO back to him.

In other words, you, where you are, cannot COME back to him.

So the correct completion of statement #3 is always “The doctor told me that I should stop GOING back to him.”

I overheard this verb used in a sentence the other day.

The sentence was something like (quote) “If you want to go to college, then it behooves you to do all your homework in high school.” (unquote).

I had been intending to look up this verb, and I finally did.

You see, I was wondering whether “behoove” was somehow related to the noun “hoof”, the plural of which can be “hooves”.

In particular, I was wondering whether “behoove” in some way once meant to put hooves on (oneself) and had its meaning become a more generic to protect (oneself).

Okay, maybe that is a stretch.

And I should have known better, given my knowledge of Spanish-language false cognates for English speakers.

One of my favorite false cognates is the Spanish word “embarazada”, which looks to many Americans like the English word “embarrassed” but actually means pregnant instead.

But I learned when I looked up the verb “behoove” that it originated a millennium or so ago and is related to the noun “behoof”, which means behalf.

Lesson learned (again!): Check your assumption about the meaning of a word when it looks like another word that you know.

I sometimes see or hear these verbs used interchangeably.

Problem:
The verbs “flaunt” and “flout” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The verb “flaunt” — spelled F-L-A-U-N-T — dates back to the 1560s.

When used with an object, “flaunt” means to display ostentatiously.

When used without an object, “flaunt” means to parade oneself conspicuously.

The verb “flaunt” apparently comes from the Norwegian dialectical word “flanta”, which means to show off.

I first learned the verb “flaunt” from a Braniff Airlines TV ad, in which Braniff had stewardesses proclaim (quote) “If you’ve got it, flaunt it!” (unquote) to brag about Braniff’s superiority over other airlines.

The verb “flout” — spelled F-L-O-U-T — dates back to the late 1300s.

When used with an object, “flout” means to scorn, scoff at, or mock.

When used without an object, “flout” means to show contempt or disdain.

The verb “flout” comes from the Dutch word “fluiten”, which means to play a flute. That word also means to jeer, which apparently was often accomplished hundreds of years ago by someone playing a simple flute or whistle around another person.

Solution:
To remember that “flout” is different than “flaunt”, notice that “flout” looks somewhat like “flute” to remember that “flout” means to mock or to show disdain, as if you were playing a flute in a mocking way around someone else.

I started thinking about these two verbs the other day after seeing a reference to one of them in a technical document.

I saw a reference to the verb “black”, which dates back to the 1200s, in an IPTV technical document.

The document referred to a (quote) “blacked screen” (unquote).

The transitive verb “black” means to make black.

The intransitive verb “black” means to become black.

Now consider the verb “blacken”, which dates back to the 1300s.

The transitive verb “blacken” primarily means to make black or to darken and secondarily means to sully or defame.

The intransitive verb “blacken” means to become black or dark.

For example, “blackened chicken” and “blackened salmon” and “blackened tuna”, which are popular American menu items now, are not completely black.

So it seems that one can blacken the flesh of animals used as food and can black a TV screen, but not the other way around.

I heard this yesterday during a conference call.

Problem:
The phrase “up front” introduces a redundancy.

Explanation:
The speaker on the conference call was telling the other call attendees that he wanted to say something before he said something else.

The noun “preface” means a preliminary statement in a book or speech.

So the verb “preface” means to provide a preliminary statement.

And therefore following the verb “preface” with the phrase “up front” introduces a redundancy.

Solution:
“I want to preface this by saying …”

I sometimes see these words used interchangeably.

Problem:
The words “hoard” and “horde” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The word “hoard” — spelled H-O-A-R-D — dates back to before 900 to the Gothic word “huzd”, which literally meant treasure.

When it acts as a noun, the word “hoard” means an accumulation that is carefully guarded for future use.

When it acts as a verb with an object, the word “hoard” means to accumulate for future use in a hidden place.

When it acts as a verb without an object, the word “hoard” means to accumulate food, money, or anything else valuable in a hidden place for future use.

The word “horde” — spelled H-O-R-D-E — dates back to about 1550 but apparently originated before then with the Turkic word “ordu”, which literally means royal camp or residence.

The primary meaning of the word “horde” as a noun is a mass or crowd, and an alternate meaning is a nomadic group.

The word “horde” can also be used as a verb without an object, in which case it means to gather or assemble in a horde.

Solution:
Remember that the word “horde” — spelled H-O-R-D-E — seems to come from the Turkic word “ordu”, which means royal camp or residence, to remember that this word relates to a crowd or mass or group of people and to distinguish it from the word “hoard” — spelled H-O-A-R-D — which comes from a Gothic word for treasure.

I sometimes see or hear these verbs used interchangeably.

Problem:
The verbs “defuse” and “diffuse” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The verb “defuse” — spelled D-E-F-U-S-E — was coined in the early 1940s and means to remove the fuse from, where the “de” prefix in this verb indicates negation and the “fuse” suffix refers to a cord of readily combustible material and comes from the Italian word “fuso”, which literally means spindle.

Unless you are a terrorist or sadist, you want the police to defuse a bomb.

The verb “diffuse” — spelled D-I-F-F-U-S-E — dates back to the late 1300s and means to spread or disseminate, where the “dif” prefix means apart or away and the “fuse” suffix comes from a form of the Latin word “fundere”, which literally means to melt.

Once the police have defused a bomb, they often will diffuse a message to the public about their success.

I believe that the oral/auditory confusion comes from mispronunciations of these two verbs.

I believe that the written confusion comes from ignorance about the roots of these two verbs and from misspellings originating from that ignorance or the mispronunciations.

Solution:
Remember that the “de” in “defuse” indicates negation, and remember that the “dif” in “diffuse” means apart or away.

I heard about this phrase yesterday at a party.

Problem:
The modifier of “dress” is incorrect.

Explanation:
My friends Erik and Nickie F. told me yesterday about this phrase.

It seems that someone was trying to refer to a dress made of sewn-together sequins.

Apparently the originator of the phrase (quote) “sequenced dress” (unquote) heard the plural noun “sequins” — spelled S-E-Q-U-I-N-S — perhaps mispronounced as the verb “sequence” — spelled S-E-Q-U-E-N-C-E — and then added a “d” to make it an adjective to modify the noun “dress”.

The potential for things to go astray in the English language never ceases to amaze me.

Solution:
“sequined dress”

I heard this in a preview for a TV program that aired last night.

Problem:
The verb does not match the subject.

Explanation:
I was watching a preview for an upcoming episode of the “Hell’s Kitchen” television program when I heard chef Gordon Ramsay say (quote) “One of you are going home.” (unquote).

I believe that Ramsay succumbed to the common English blunder of getting distracted by the pronoun “you” right before saying a form of the verb “be”.

No matter whether the pronoun “you” is being used in its singular form or its plural form, (quote) “You are going home.” (unquote) is correct.

But “you” is not the subject of the sentence.

Instead, the subject of the sentence is the word “One”, which acts in (quote) “One of you” (unquote) as a singular noun that means a single person.

The solution comes from recognizing that singular nouns require the “is” form of the verb “be”.

Solution:
“One of you is going home.”

I instant-messaged this to a friend last week.

Problem:
The statement is ambiguous without a hyphen.

Explanation:
What does (quote) “Face time matters.” (unquote) mean to you?

Soon after I instant-messaged this statement, I realized that my friend could interpret what I wrote in two ways.

One interpretation of the statement is that I was commanding or imploring my friend to seriously consider (quote) “time matters” (unquote).

In other words, one interpretation of (quote) “Face time matters.” (unquote) is that this was an imperative statement.

The other interpretation of (quote) “Face time matters.” (unquote) is that I was telling my friend that (quote) “face time” (unquote) with other people makes a difference.

These two interpretations are possible because the word “face” is both a noun and a verb and because the word “matters” is both a noun and a verb.

The solution comes from using a hyphen to indicate whether one is talking about about (quote) “time matters” (unquote) or about (quote) “face time” (unquote).

Written schematically, what we have is [NOUN|VERB] NOUN [VERB|NOUN], and any sentence that follows this pattern will be ambiguous without a hyphen between the first and second words or between the second and third words.

Some might argue that using an exclamation mark instead of a period in (quote) “Face time matters.” (unquote) would make it clear to the reader that the statement is an imperative.

Unlike Spanish, which tends to favor the use of exclamation marks for imperative statements, American English seems to have dropped the common use of exclamation marks for imperatives a long time ago.

Using a period instead of an exclamation mark at the end of an imperative statement is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to write a period than it is to write an exclamation mark (one stroke versus two strokes). And it is simpler to type a period than it is to type an exclamation mark (one key versus two keys).

So the absence of the exclamation mark does not assure American readers that the statement is not an imperative.

But I would counter-argue that the presence an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence with this pattern does not ensure that the sentence will be interpreted as imperative. Instead, the exclamation mark could be interpreted as turning a declarative statement into an exclamatory statement.

Solution:

• Use (quote) “Face time-matters.” (unquote) — with a hyphen between “time” and “matters” — to ensure that the statement is interpreted as an imperative sentence about facing matters of time.
• Use (quote) “Face-time matters.” (unquote) — with a hyphen between “Face” and “time” — to ensure that the statement is interpreted as a declarative sentence about the importance of spending face-to-face time with others.