#usage panel

Two weeks ago, we sent out the 2017 ballot to the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel. Among many other topics, we’re surveying their opinion about the use of reticent for reluctant, the word thusly, and their preferred pronunciations of banal and comparable. Results will be available in early 2018.

In the meantime, here’s another finding from last year’s usage ballot, regarding the members’ preferred pronunciation of status:

In our 2016 survey, 85 percent of the Usage Panel preferred the pronunciation STAT-us and 15 percent preferred STAY-tus, although both forms were considered acceptable by large margins. This is a noticeable shift from our 1997 survey, which was the first time the Panelists, by a narrow margin, preferred STAT-us over STAY-tus. The pronunciation STAY-tus is the older pronunciation, and it remains the most common one in British English.

In the recently released semiannual update to the American Heritage Dictionary, 1,400 entries were revised. (That’s not an approximation – there happened to be 1,400 on the dot!)

The staff and our consultants added dozens of brand-new words and senses, continued a multiyear process of completely researching and updating biochemistry terminology, and revised etymologies, to name a few areas of editorial focus.

We also included updates to our Usage Notes based on the 2014 usage ballot results. The note at anticipate is a good example that tracks the changing viewpoint of the Panel over time. In fact, questions about anticipate were included in the very first ballot back in 1964!

Traditionally, the verb anticipate has been used to mean “to deal with in advance, to forestall” (as in We anticipated the storm by boarding up the windows, which was accepted by 70 percent of the Usage Panel in 2014). Some commentators have frowned on the more recent usage that means “expect or look forward to,” as in He is anticipating a visit from his son. But this usage has become increasingly accepted, with approval rates that grew from 62 percent in 1964 to 87 percent in 2002 and 95 percent in 2014. Even when the anticipated event is expressly stated to be positive, with no possible need for preventive or compensatory measures, as in We are anticipating a pleasant hike in the country, 93 percent of the Panel approved the usage (up from 81 percent in 2002). The fact that the Panelists now rate the “expect” sense higher than the “forestall” sense shows that the newer one is actually supplanting the old as the primary meaning of anticipate. There is a third sense, “to act in a way that blocks or vitiates the action of another” as in I ran to answer the doorbell but found my brother had anticipated me and let the guests in, where the object of anticipate is the one whose plans are rendered unnecessary rather than the plans themselves. A bit more than half of the Usage Panel accepted this sense of the verb, which is best considered uncommon but acceptable.

It’s always exciting to see how attitudes shift from decade to decade, and we look forward to reporting on similar usage items in the weeks to come.

We were saddened this week to hear of the passing demise decease death of William Zinsser, member of the original American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel and our longest-serving Panelist. We were fortunate to have had the pleasure to interview him two years ago about jargon, euphemism, and other obstacles to clarity. He was particularly dismissive of euphemisms for death. “I hope that when I die,” he remarked, “people won’t say ‘he passed away.’ ” You can read our interviews with him here and here. His obituary was published in the New York Times on May 12, 2015.

In December 2014 he returned his last usage ballot, voting against the acceptability of the jargon words finalize and grow, and indicating his continued engagement with clear language in these suggestions for usage issues to poll in future ballots:

           Graduated, as in “He graduated high school.”

           Going forward, as in “Going forward, the future looks good.”

For the editorial staff, one of the pleasurable aspects of reviewing Usage Ballot responses is getting to read the comments from the Panelists. These comments are often insightful, and sometimes they’re downright amusing.

Agoraphobia is pronounced two different ways: the more traditional pronunciation with secondary stress on the first syllable (ăg′ər-ə-fō'bē-ə), and the newer pronunciation with secondary stress on the second syllable (ə-gôr′ə-fō'bē-ə). In 2001, 66 percent of the Usage Panel preferred the traditional pronunciation.  We decided to reballot this question for our 2014 survey.

Panelist Roy Blount, Jr., responded that the traditional pronunciation was “such a nice double dactyl.” What is a double dactyl, you might ask? A dactyl is a unit of poetic meter consisting of three syllables, the first of which is stressed, so a double dactyl is a unit consisting of six syllables with stress on the first and fourth syllables. A double dactyl is also the name of an eight-line verse form in which the first, second, third, fifth, sixth, and seventh lines follow this stress pattern (DAH dah dah DAH dah dah). The first line usually consists of two nonsense words, the second line usually includes the name of a person, and one of the lines in the last stanza consists of a single word. The fourth and eighth lines have four syllables with the first and last syllable stressed (DAH dah dah DAH).

Mr. Blount emphasized his point by penning a double dactyl, which we share here with his kind permission:

Hippity-hoppity John Lawrence Sullivan Crowded and crowded his Foe in the ring.

Not that he needed such Closeness to box well, just Agoraphobia Wasn't his thing.

As for the results of the survey in 2014, the proportion of the Panel that preferred the traditional pronunciation plummeted to 43 percent. Further, the new pronunciation was acceptable to more Panelists (73 percent) than was the traditional pronunciation (67 percent). For our first 2015 update later this spring, our entry for agoraphobia will be updated to indicate these results, and a new sound file will be recorded to reflect the switch in preference.

We welcome six new members to the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel:.

 Joan Bresnan

Sadie Dernham Patek Professor Emerita in Humanities and Senior Researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University

 Robert Lane Greene

Author; Correspondent and language columnist, The Economist

 Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham

Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University

 Megan Marshall

Biographer; recipient, Pulitzer Prize

Anna Deavere Smith

Playwright; actress; professor; MacArthur Fellow; recipient, National Endowment for the Humanities Medal

 Deborah Tannen

University Professor and Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown University

Visit AHDictioanry.com a full list of our Usage Panelists 

In late August, we sent the members of our Panel the 2014 ballot. Two of the words we are balloting this year are grow and orientate. Use of the verb grow to refer to items other than vegetation is often reviled as business jargon. We last balloted it in 1992, when a majority of the Panel found it unacceptable (with 98% rejecting grow down). Has acceptability increased since then? Orientate has not been balloted before. Some language mavens find it incorrect, others regard it as a quaint Britishism, and yet others view it as interchangeable with orient. What will the Panelists say? And will their responses differ depending on exactly how it’s used?  Here are the ballot questions we devised for these two issues:

 Are the following sentences completely unacceptable, somewhat unacceptable, somewhat acceptable, or completely acceptable?

 grow                      One of our key strategies is to grow our business by increasing the number of clients.

We’ve got to grow our way out of this recession.

If elected, I shall do my utmost to grow down the deficit.

I'm trying to grow my Twitter following.

 orientate             On emerging from the subway station, I had to take a moment to orientate myself.

On emerging from the subway station, I had to take a moment to orient myself.

The architect orientated the building on an east-west axis.

The architect oriented the building on an east-west axis.

The building is orientated on an east-west axis.

The building is oriented on an east-west axis.

  The Panelists will have several weeks to fill out the ballot and then, with the help of Steven Pinker, the Usage Panel chair, we’ll tabulate and analyze the results and incorporate them into our Usage Notes in 2015.

Today we bring you a guest post by Susan Steinway, Archivist Coordinator at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  We recently unearthed the original paper ballots from the early years of the American Heritage Dictionary’s Usage Panel, and we wanted Susan to have a chance to look at them before we sent them off to a storage site. She spent an afternoon digging through boxes and documenting interesting comments that the Panelists had written on their ballots. Her account of what she found was originally written for HMH’s internal online newsletter, HMH Headlines.

The American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, by Susan Steinway

We all know (and love) the American Heritage Dictionary. We know about its pioneering use of both prescriptive and descriptive information on word usage, as well the panel of experts on usage, but have you ever really thought about all the work involved in gathering all of that together?

A few months ago Senior Editor of Trade and Reference, Louise Robbins, offered me the opportunity to look over some of the usage questionnaires from the mid-1960s before they were sent off to storage. It was bracing to spend a couple of hours with such an opinionated and often cranky group. 

For example, here is historian Barbara Tuchman on the use of “author” as a verb:  

But for the most part, the panelists were a little bit more diplomatic in their comments.  Here’s Isaac Asimov on the same question:

  And, of course, they were occasionally funny.  Here’s American Heritage magazine editor Oliver Jensen on the word “trek:”

And writer Russell Baker on splitting infinitives with a sideswipe at corporate jargon:

The panelists were often aware of their own imperfections, as well as the pitfalls of being an expert.  That’s probably what makes them so useful to HMH and the dictionary, and why the American Heritage dictionary is so useful to everyone.  Here’s author and critic Malcolm Cowley’s final comment on his questionnaire:

And Isaac Asimov again:

Finally, a personal note: as sometimes happens when you are delving into recent archives you encounter something quite familiar, or in my case something family. I had forgotten that my uncle, William Zinsser, was on the panel.  He is the only remaining member of the original panel still serving on it.  Suddenly, I was looking at comments written in familiar handwriting and sounding so like him, both amusing and thoughtful, along with a touch of the teacher.  Here he is on the word “zoom”:

on the word “transpire:”

And finally, a comment reflecting his lifelong love of baseball:

When I visited Uncle Bill over the holidays and I mentioned reading his questionnaires, he said he didn’t remember writing so many comments on them, and went on to speak of how much he loves being on the panel and fighting the good fight for proper usage while allowing the language to evolve.