From Mr. Roger Alvarez in the United States (January 23, 2010):In an article entitled “How to sound smarter?” in the February 2010 issue of the
Reader’s Digest, some of the explanations did not help nonnative English speaker like me. Can you please elaborate on the differences between “I hope” and “hopefully” and between “nauseous” and “nauseated” as well as on the unnecessary use of “most” when saying “most everyone”?
My reply to Roger:On “I hope” and “hopefully.” In a posting last January 2
about the adverb “overly,” I took up the objection of some grammarians to the use of “hopefully” as a frontline adverbial modifier, as in “
Hopefully summer this year won’t be so hot.” The objectors point out that such usage of “hopefully” in the sense of “in a hopeful manner” is nonstandard and grammatically wrong. They insist that there should be a subject doing the “hoping” in such constructions, as in “
I/we/they hope summer this year won’t be so hot,” or, if the subject can’t be specified for some reason, at least the sentence should take the form “
It is hoped summer this year won’t be so hot.”
IMAGE CREDIT: EMMA KAPOTES/RD.COMI mentioned that the controversy over the usage of “hopefully” had been so fierce that William Safire, the late American grammar maven, was quoted as having remarked: “The word ‘hopefully’ has become the litmus test to determine whether one is a language snob or a language slob.” He fiercely opposed the use of “hopefully” in such frontline adverbial constructions, but he eventually relented in the face of the growing currency of that usage.
So, the question that I’m sure is topmost in your mind is this: Is such frontline use of “hopefully” acceptable or not?
Simply as a stylistic preference, I personally make every effort to avoid that usage of “hopefully,” but at least two language authorities now recognize that usage as standard.
Here’s
Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary on “hopefully”:
hopefully
Function: adverb
Date: 1593
1 : in a hopeful manner
2 : it is hoped : I hope : we hope <hopefully the rain will end soon>
usage In the 1960s the second sense of hopefully, which dates to the early 18th century and had been in fairly widespread use since at least the 1930s, underwent a surge in popularity. A surge of criticism followed in reaction, but the criticism took no account of the grammar of adverbs. Hopefully in its second sense is a member of a class of adverbs known as disjuncts. Disjuncts serve as a means by which the author or speaker can comment directly to the reader or hearer usually on the content of the sentence to which they are attached. Many other adverbs (as interestingly, frankly, clearly, luckily, unfortunately) are similarly used; most are so ordinary as to excite no comment or interest whatsoever. The second sense of hopefully is entirely standard.
And here’s what the
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has to say about “hopefully”:
hopefully
adv.
1. In a hopeful manner.
2. Usage Problem It is to be hoped: "Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring" (William O. Douglas).
Usage Note: Writers who use hopefully as a sentence adverb, as in Hopefully the measures will be adopted, should be aware that the usage is unacceptable to many critics, including a large majority of the Usage Panel. It is not easy to explain why critics dislike this use of hopefully. The use is justified by analogy to similar uses of many other adverbs, as in Mercifully, the play was brief or Frankly, I have no use for your friend. And though this use of hopefully may have been a vogue word when it first gained currency back in the early 1960s, it has long since lost any hint of jargon or pretentiousness for the general reader. The wide acceptance of the usage reflects popular recognition of its usefulness; there is no precise substitute. Someone who says Hopefully, the treaty will be ratified makes a hopeful prediction about the fate of the treaty, whereas someone who says I hope (or We hope or It is hoped) the treaty will be ratified expresses a bald statement about what is desired. Only the latter could be continued with a clause such as but it isn't likely. • It might have been expected, then, that the initial flurry of objections to hopefully would have subsided once the usage became well established. Instead, critics appear to have become more adamant in their opposition. In the 1969 Usage Panel survey, 44 percent of the Panel approved the usage, but this dropped to 27 percent in our 1986 survey. (By contrast, 60 percent in the latter survey accepted the comparable use of mercifully in the sentence Mercifully, the game ended before the opponents could add another touchdown to the lopsided score.) It is not the use of sentence adverbs per se that bothers the Panel; rather, the specific use of hopefully in this way has become a shibboleth.
On “nauseous” and “nauseated.” I haven’t read what the
Reader’s Digest says about the usage of these two words, but I would presume that it’s about the insistence of some grammarians that the adjective “nauseous” can only be used in the sense of “causing nausea or disgust,” and that it’s wrong to use the adjective “nauseated” in the sense of “affected with nausea or disgust.”
I really don’t feel strongly about the usage of either “nauseous” and “nauseated.” In the admittedly few occasions that I found use for these adjectives, I actually thought of them as synonymous and practically interchangeable. I therefore won’t loss sleep over the choice between them. Formally, though, here’s what the
Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary thinks about the usage of the two:
nauseous
Function: adjective
Date: 1612
1 : causing nausea or disgust : NAUSEATING
2 : affected with nausea or disgust
–nauseously adverb
–nauseousness noun
usage Those who insist that nauseous can properly be used only in sense 1 and that in sense 2 it is an error for nauseated are mistaken. Current evidence shows these facts: nauseous is most frequently used to mean physically affected with nausea, usually after a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative use is quite a bit less frequent. Use of nauseous in sense 1 is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating. Nauseated is used more widely than nauseous in sense 2.
nauseate
Function: verb
Inflected Form: -ated ; -ating
Date: 1625
intransitive verb
1 : to become affected with nausea
2 : to feel disgust
transitive verb : to affect with nausea or disgust
On the supposedly wrong use of “most” in “most everyone.” At the outset, Roger, I have to disagree with the notion that the use of “most” in “most everyone” is unnecessary. That usage is actually an established fact, with “most” used as a more concise substitute for “almost.” What’s in question really is whether the construction “most everyone” is correct and acceptable usage.
Formally, of course, we are expected to say or write, for example, “
Almost everyone is afraid that someone incompetent might be elected chairman of the company,” not “
Most everyone is afraid that someone incompetent might be elected chairman of the company.” I won’t quibble over this usage prescription.
But let’s seize the cat by its tail, so to speak, and see what happens. Take your pick between these two alternative constructions of that sentence: “That someone incompetent might be elected chairman of the company is the fear of
almost everyone.” “That someone incompetent might be elected chairman of the company is the fear of
most everyone.” (Or, alternatively, “That someone incompetent might be elected chairman of the company is
most everyone's fear.") For me, version 2 that uses “most everyone” is better and more euphonic. It’s for this reason that I think we should be more flexible when faced with the choice of using “almost everyone” or “most everyone.”
But is my call for flexibility in this choice misguided and misplaced? I don’t think so. At the very moment of this writing, Google records the following entries for the usage of the two:
“most everyone” – From everywhere, 326,000,000; from the Philippines, 828,000
“almost everyone” – From everywhere, 95,600,000; from the Philippines, 229,000
The usage of “most everyone” beats that of “almost everyone” by a ratio of about 7:2, proving that the frowned-upon “most everyone” is closer to the heart of most everyone in terms of communication utility.
